It's my father's 21st anniversary today and it occurred to me that when he died I was almost exactly the same age as my oldest daughter is now. I thought I was a right old age when Daddy died but these days when I look at my first born I think she's just a slip of a girl.
Also, it was today that I learned that I have completely run out of uncles as my father's brother Dessie has just died in Australia at the age of 95. He was the last of his generation. I never knew him as he emigrated to New South Wales when he was very young. A family story has it that when he left his family home on the now Lisnevenagh Road the only one of his family who waved him off was his older sister Mary. His mother did not even come out to the bus stop to see him on his way. I don't believe he ever returned to Ireland again. His mother was a hard woman.
Anyway, Dessie made a good life for himself in Australia. Married, had two sons. He is the only one of my father's siblings to have made it to his nineties.
My mother knew him. She said he was a bit of a teddy boy. I think when they talked about teddy boys they meant any young man who didn't dress just like his da and his granda before him. There is one photo I have of Dessie, probably taken by Daddy and he's along with Mammy. It would have been taken in the early 1950s.
Photograph taken just up from the Wayside Halt, Dessie's home place. I think he looks more like James Dean than a teddy boy.
.jpg)
Myself and the da when he was in his prime and I just a slip of a girl.
