Cabra History.Com

‘I hated Saturday morning in our house because the Ma’ would have us all up early to clean the house for her. It had to be clean for Sunday you see, in case we had any visitors. The skirting boards all had to be wiped with a damp cloth to get all the dust off them. All the ornaments had to be taken off the mantle piece and washed in a basin of warm soapy water And the one thing I hated most of all was having to clean the brasses on the hall door, especially the little brass wheel under the weatherboard. I mean who the hell would ever look underneath there. Could you imagine the Parish Priest arriving at the house and asking the Ma’ if that little thing was clean and shining? “Now Misses Coffey, you could end up in Purgatory if that’s not shining’. I don’t know if that place is still there or not, I know that Limbo is closed down due tot he cutbacks.
The two bedrooms upstairs had to be swept out and tidied. If you were lucky you might find a sweet under the bed and if you washed it under the tap in the toilet you’d get all the dust and hairs off it. I gave one to the brother one time if he made our bed on his own and let me off. I think it was a Bulls Eye with a piece bitten out of it but he didn’t mind, he was sucking on that sweet for hours. And then the best thing of all was killing all the Hoppers that were hiding under the edge of the mattress. Splish Splash they’d go and their blood spurting up into our faces, it was great craic altogether.
Now when all the house work was done and the Ma’ had finished her inspection we’d get a few pennies each and off we’d go to St Finbar’s Hall to see a film. We’d be galloping all the way up Killala Road, slapping ourselves on the hips of our pretending horses. My one was a Palamino Pony like the one Roy Rogers had, I caught it up in the fields near Finglas, you know where the back of the dump used to be? Now Finbar’s Hall of a Saturday was pure magic with hundreds of kids jammed in together and all munching away to their hearts content on boiled sweets.
The screen was actually the wall up over the door into the hall. The projector was up the top at the stage and your man’d be shouting and roaring at the top of his voice “If youse don’t shut up I won’t show the picture”. The next thing someboy’d fling a sweet back at him and hit the projector with it. Then it happened, silence all round…a great big whirring noise would take over as the lights went out and then on came the film. My all time favourite was “The Lone Ranger”. I would have given anything, including my bag of boiled sweets to have a mask like his. It’s gas all the same when I think about it because he never got off his horse to go to the toilet and neither did Tonto. At the interval we’d all be bursting to go, so maybe that’s when he went as well.
I have to tell you that every now and then I go onto Youtube and watch some of the old pictures we used to see in Finbar’s and the Cabra Grand. And there I am shouting all over the house “He’s ahind yeah mister…” Do you know, there’s nothing like it all the same, an oul stroll down memory lane on the old horse. Well I’m off now to clean the brasses on the hall door, so talk to you soon…