Cabra History.Com

‘I remember years ago in our house when the Ma’ had one of these old machines. She could mend and fix anything with it, skirts, trousers, shirts and blouses. And she’d even be able to make up her own Net Curtains and sometimes she’d even do some for the neighbours. She had her own special oil for putting on it so as to make it go even faster. I remember one time her can of special oil went missing and the first one she blamed was the Da’…‘Did you take my sewing machine oil for your bike’? And there was the poor oul Da’ with guilt written all over his face. ‘I only took a drop for the back wheel, that’s all’, says he. The Ma’ knew she had him up against the ropes and moved in for the kill. ‘And where’s me oil now’. You see, the Ma’ had searched high and low for the oil and it wasn’t anywhere in sight. ‘Eh, I must have lended it to Jemmy from across the road because he told me that he was having trouble getting his key in the hall door at night and that it made an awful squeaking noise, so I must have lended it to him, I think’. Eventually the special oil came back to roost. One of our neighbours used to work in Boland’s flour mills and he used to bring home the flour sacks and get my Ma’ to make pillow cases out of them and one time she even made him a shirt. Of course that was before we ever got the electric one that the Da’ bought in Sloans on the Never-Never. Now I have to say that the Ma’ was never too keen on this new contraption, she always said it used up too much electricity…’