Cabra History.Com

Did you’se ever have one of these fancy Sugar Bowls? We had one that only came out on Sunday or if we had visitors. During the week it went into the Glass Case along with all the other stuff that was never used like the Ma’s best china or oul ornaments from Bray or Arklow. We had to make do with the oul Sugar Bag on the table. As soon as the Ma’ would turn her back there’d be killins between all the brothers to see who could shovel a load of it into their gob without being caught. ‘Ma’ he’s eating the sugar again’. ‘Will you’se ever stop or you’ll be full of worims’. And sure enough within a couple of days you’d be scratching at yourself and one of the older fellas would always say ‘Is there a bit of dirt in your eye’? And then you’d say back ‘No, me bum is itchy’. We never knew what he meant or how it had anything to do with your eye. And then sometimes we’d put the spoon straight from our tea into the sugar bowl and over time some of the sugar would go into little hard lumps. I loved that because it was like having Sugar Lumps, you know, like the ones they used to have in the Pillar Café in O’Connell Street. Any chance we got we used to fill our pockets with them and eat them on the way home in the bus. We used to buy our sugar in one pound bags or you might get a smaller bag of half a pound. Now it’s all weighed in Kilometers and Meters, I don’t know where I am with them nowadays…