Sep 28 2016
‘Step into the parlour…’
‘I remember one time, it was on a Saturday morning when it was spilling down with rain and the Ma’ told me to light the fire in our parlour. ‘For what Ma’…’ says I ‘…we never light the fire in there’. ‘Well…’ says she ‘…the Jewman will be here in an hour or so and I want to give him a cup of tea’. So of course I ups and says ‘Sure why can’t he sit in the kitchen’ and you know that look the Ma’s used to have back then, you know that one that says ‘Another word out of you and you’ll get it’? Well she gave me one of them looks. So I tied the Evenng Herald up in little knots like the way the Da’ had shown us, he told us that’s the way it’s done in the army and in no time at all I had the fire blazing up the chimbley.
Then your man comes knocking on the door, soaked to the skin and looking as miserable as a half drowned cat just picked out of the canal. He took off his big wet overcoat and hung it on the end of our bannisters. Now let me tell you that whenever we hung our coats there the Ma’ would go on the warpath ‘Get that off a there, you’re not in the tenements now…’. So, the Jewman gets his cup of tea, and a piece of toast if you don’t mind and warms his knees at our parlour fire while the Ma’ fusses over him. And in next to no time at all he’s gone and the Ma’ is grinning all over the place. Then the Da’s comes intot he parlour and says ‘Well, did you get it’? And the Ma’ waves a cheque from the Jewman in the air and does a little dance. The next thng I know is the Da’ shoves me out into the hallway and locks himself and the Ma’ into our parlour and all I can hear is the Ma’ giggling and the Da’ singing ‘Now were set for Christmas’…