The First Judy

This picture of Jess was taken the first day she went to live with my parents. She looks a bit unsure of herself.

I were looking through a box of old photographs, mostly of dogs. I turned up a snap of Mum’s dog Jess from when she was a puppy and asked Bert,

Do you remember Jess?

Jess? The Pup that came from Sammy Grey’s. How long was she around?

At least ten years. Mum got up one morning and found her dead. She was their last dog. They never had another.

Your dad wasn’t that keen on dogs, was he?

I don’t know about that.

So I told him about the second Danny and the first Judy.

Both dogs came from the same mother, a wee spaniel that belonged to a friend of a friend. Danny was the first of them. At that time I had little need of a dog but allowed myself to be persuaded. He was such a gorgeous pup and I named him Danny after a dog we’d had at home. He was probably only about six weeks old when I got him, far too young to be separated from his mother but that was common then to take a pup away at that age. I’d been advised by a neighbour to get him his inoculation soon as distemper was rife in our area. But I’d little spare money then and didn’t get round to it.

It’s a horrible thing to watch a tiny puppy die of distemper. Thanks be it is almost a thing of the past now. He became ill and declined fast. After one horrible night of fitting I took him to the vet but it was too late. Allowing little Danny to die is a huge regret.

About a year later Beryl’s friend’s bitch had a second litter. At first I was reluctant to have another pup but went to see them. Always a mistake. I chose a sweet little bitch and named her Judy. This time I made sure she got her inoculations. That done I could pat myself on the back and consider myself a good dog mum. But I wasn’t.

Judy spent a lot of time in the street outside our house. Drumtara was a newly built estate and there were a lot of children and dogs around. When Zoe was outdoors playing with her group of friends Judy was always with them. There was one young boy who tormented the girls and he had been kicking Judy. Understandably, Judy snapped at him and this caused a big problem. His mother came to my door and threatened to call the police. I asked my parents if they would take her off my hands and, slightly reluctantly, they agreed.

Judy adapted well to country life. She decided that my father was her hero and followed him everywhere. If he was at the farmyard she would be with him. If he went to the moss (which he often did) she’d go too, trotting beside his tractor until they arrived at the turf banks.

She was always well-behaved when she was with Daddy until the day when one of the fellow turf cutters brought his dog along and which excited Judy so much that she did not mind herself around Daddy’s tractor and was killed under its wheels. He buried her there and then in the bog that she and my father loved so much then returned home alone. Mammy knew the moment he came in that something was wrong. He went to his customary place at the kitchen table, sat down, folded his arms in front of him, laid down his head and wept.

Not long after these photographs were taken Judy and Katy set off on an adventure. Whether it was Judy's idea or Katy's we'll never know but they both left my mother's house and turned up at the next door neighbour's house which was a good fifteen minute walk for a toddler and a terrier. Both were returned safely and we were advised that one of them might need a nappy change.

Trawling the Archives Again

Last night Bert was trying to work out how long we've been living in our present house. He says,

I'm sure it must be thirteen years now.

And I say, 

I think it has to be more than that. We moved house not long after I began blogging and I've had Nelly's Garden much longer than thirteen years.

I do tend to use this blog as an aide-memoire, and God knows, I need one of those. I checked it out. Found out that come next month we will have been living at Springhill for sixteen years. I also realised that once again I'd missed Nelly's Garden's anniversary. Yes, folks, Nelly has been cultivating this particular Garden for seventeen long years. Of course, we all know by now that personal blogs are kind of over. It's all Twitter and Instagram now for the oldsters and Snapchat and TikTok for the youngsters but I don't care. I have a blog that's gearing up to do its 'A' levels and will soon be heading off to Uni. And if I get the chance I'll do it for another seventeen years.

Another thing I checked out while I was trawling the archives was mentions of parties and wild times. I'd assured the Wee Manny on Tuesday that I never blogged about the mad shenanigans he and we got up to back when we were young striplings in our fifties. I believed I was telling the truth. Well, turns out I wasn't and there are lots of accounts of those crazy nights. But no photographs. Glad to see I had some shreds of sense and decency.

I'll just throw this one in there. Some of the musicians (Bert is the one with the clarinet) that played at my birthday party eight years ago. 

Sister Benedicta Revisited

I wrote Sister Benedicta over fifteen years ago. I'm so glad that my oldest granddaughter, going to her new school in September will not experience anything like this.

By the way, that being on the brink of ruin period did come to an end soon afterwards. It is just unfortunate that it coincided with my starting grammar school. Another thing, although I never told my mother about charity collections or sports kit I always asked for and got my art supplies. I had priorities.

 

SISTER BENEDICTA

For most of his life, my father had two jobs. He was a HGV lorry driver and a farmer. There was a time just a few years after he bought the farm when things did not go well for him. He had replaced his old faithful ERF truck with a more modern Seddon-Atkinson lorry. And this lorry gave him a lot of problems. He was sold a pup. And because he was self-employed he earned no money on the days that the lorry was broken down. That would have been bad enough but then there was also a run of bad luck on the farm. He lost a bullock in a freak accident; a cow died calving and there was a run of dead calves. This left my parents with a lot of financial worries, which my mother confided in me. In hindsight, she realises she probably shouldn’t have because I was only 11 or so and took it very much to heart.

“We might lose the house. We might be very poor.”

What did that mean? I hardly dared to ask. I couldn’t comprehend what losing the house might mean. Maybe living with Granny? Horrible thought. As for ‘very poor’ I thought I knew what that meant. It meant nothing to eat but dry bread and water, crying hungry children, being barefoot in the snow and no Christmas presents.

I remember praying very hard in Chapel that we would not starve. Then I passed the 11+ and I was going to The Convent. I knew Mammy was worried about the price of the uniform but she got it all anyway except for the jumper and the scarf, which the nuns sold themselves at a ridiculously high price.

So I started The Convent. Maybe it was nerves or maybe it was a particularly chilly September but it was very cold. The uniform was so cheap and shoddy you could have spat through it. The rumour was that McKillen's bought it in for a pittance, sold it to us for a fortune and gave the nuns a kickback. The blazers were warm enough. They were probably made from the bits of felted up wool sweepings from the Lancashire factory floors, dyed navy blue and sewed into an ugly box-shaped garment with a posh badge and braid added on afterwards to give it a bit of ‘class’. But the sadistic nuns didn’t allow us to wear the blazers inside so we froze. They kept the central heating turned off too. Within a couple of days at least half the girls had bought a school jumper.

After the first week, there were only a dozen of us without the jumper. I was so cold I could hardly think. By the end of September, there were just two of us, myself and a girl called Eilish. And then there was just me. My humiliation was total. Or so I thought. For there was a lot more to come.

Mammy finally scraped the money together to get me the jumper in October. I honestly don’t remember what it cost but it would probably have bought her enough wool to knit the entire family jumpers. Oh aye, I forgot to mention that we weren’t allowed to have home knit jumpers.

Oh, The Convent! It was money, money, money all the time. At least once a week Sister Diabolical would sweep into our classrooms and announce that we were taking up a collection for the poor starving Black Babies in Africa or the poor starving White Babies in Dublin and we were all to bring in at least two shillings the next day. We were to ask our mothers as soon as we got home. Of course, I never mentioned this to my mother for fear of worrying her and then got roundly humiliated the next day when they took up the collection.

Then there was the PE kit. We were to have tennis rackets, hockey sticks, this kind of a skirt, that kind of shoes. Once again this was never named by me at home. So I spent my entire first year in an agony of shame and dread and consequently never learned a thing.

Then Sister Benedicta took a pick on me. She thought I was a scruffy tyke and she was right. She sent me out of class one day to comb my hair.

“Nelly Moser, your hair is a disgrace. Go to the washroom right now and comb it!”

So I went to the washroom and looked in the glass. My hair was untidy, too curly and tangly. I had no comb so I tried to fix it with my fingers but it was no good. I was terrified going back to class because I thought she’d have another go at me but she never even noticed my hair was no different.

Then there were Sister Diabolical’s surprise fingernail inspections. She’d sweep in and go round everyone and inspect our fingernails. Humiliation for anyone whose nails were less than pristine. We’d all be frantically using compass points to clean them before she got to us. Once after failing inspection, I got sent to the washroom to give them a good scrub and when I got there I scrubbed and scrubbed till they were nearly bleeding. Then Sister Benedicta nobbled me at break time for having all these white soap flecks on my jumper.

“Nelly Moser, you dirty, dirty girl. You’ve been eating ice cream and got it all over yourself!”

As if. As if I had the money for ice cream.

In those days it was a small school with just two streams. We’d all been streamed on the first day. The second class was for those who’d scored less well on the initial tests and a lot of them were being paid for anyway because they hadn’t passed the scholarship. But at least their families were wealthy enough to afford the fees.

After the first year, I got put into the second stream because I’d performed poorly in my end of year tests. I was mortified but in the good old Convent tradition more was to come. Sister Benedicta was our form teacher. She introduced an encouraging little ritual to motivate us to be smart and tidy schoolgirls. At the end of every month, she’d have a class prize for the most well-turned-out girl. And while she was about it there would be a dishonourable mention for the least well turned out. The prizes were nothing to get excited about – maybe a holy picture or a cheap set of rosary beads. Anyways Mary Teresa won it the first month. Her father was a wealthy businessman and she got a new uniform every term. I got the dishonourable mention. The second month Mary Catherine won it. I got the dishonourable mention. The third time it was Mary Teresa yet again and myself for the booby. After the Christmas term, Sister Benedicta got bored with her little scheme and it was never mentioned again. Maybe she just got bored of humiliating me because by that time I’d gone numb and had stopped reacting. Bullies need a reaction.

I begged and begged Mammy to let me leave after the third year. I told her they’d probably throw me out anyway. I did no revision for Junior Cert and failed Math, French, Irish, Geography and History. The parents relented and I went to Antrim Tech to do a pre-Nursing course. I learned to enjoy school again and when I wasn’t top of the class I was second. I also smartened up my act and became one of the most well-groomed girls in my class.

Incidentally, Sister Benedicta was her real name. She’s probably dead now. I don’t really care.

Look Back In Bemusement

I am planning a visit to Belfast* for recent pokings about online has led to me discovering little snippets of family history on one those genealogy sites. Of course, I could register and pay for more information but why would a penniless not-even a pensioner** wish to do that when she’s in possession of a free travel pass and could do with a day out in the big city. Through reading these snippets I discovered that I come from a family of incorrigible lawbreakers. Don’t worry, Mammy’s ones – it’s all on the da’s side so far.

The great-grandmother set it all in motion back in 1906 and 1907 with several summonses for allowing drinking in her public house outside opening hours. It was to be hoped that when, in 1910, she transferred the licence to her son, our grandfather, that a more law-abiding era would ensue. Alas, this was not to be for the granda was in the papers a time or two himself for selling hard liquor after hours. It can only be assumed that they were at this kind of thing a lot as the peelers couldn’t have caught them every single time.

Then the young ones grew up and what a crew of villains they turned out to be. Never out of the news from 1939-1950. Out after dark with no lights on the bicycle, fined one shilling, shamed in the papers. That happened a lot. Then there were the motoring offences. The roads were a lot quieter in those days and, where we came from, chances were that the only vehicles on the local roads would be driven either by a police officer or one of the Byrnes. Easy pickings for the constabulory.

The authorities must have taken a very dim view of motoring offences as fines were massive. In 1941 Shemus*** (the da) was fined 15 shillings for having no insurance for a tractor and no brakes on the trailer. His brother was fined at the same court for some other piece of motoring villainy. Outlaws. The bobbies sure took no nonsense from the public in those days.

Meanwhile in Randalstown in 1924 a Constable Seay summoned five young boys, aged about 9 or thereabouts and hauled them off to a special Children’s Court. Despite their young age, they were named in the papers. Two of them were friends of my mother’s family. Their crime? Playing football in the street. What happened to them? I don’t know for I only got to see a snippet but the full story will be there in the newspaper archives in our local library. I do know that at least one of those boys died at Gallipoli whilst serving in the British Army.

Constable Seay must have been a terror to the people of Randalstown and about. In 1924 he charged an omnibus driver for allowing more passengers on his vehicle than were permitted by law. In 1926 he charged a Moneyglass man for working a pony in an unfit condition so, obviously, he wasn’t all bad. Seay must have had a soft spot for the animals for in 1934 he went after a man who shot a duck on a Sunday. He persecuted drunks from Toomebridge to Ballymena and, sad to say, was himself assaulted by a Mr and Mrs Clifford on the Twelfth Day in the year 1934. I believe the Cliffords were intoxicated.

*Newspaper archives, Belfast Central Library.
**Sore point.

***How the paper spelled it.

The Pig's Head

Tonight I prepared French Onion Soup, probably for the first time in over forty years. I don't know why I left it so long because I remember thinking it was rather fine the last time I made it, in Domestic Science (Home Economics) class, Antrim Technical College sometime in the 1970s.

The teacher we had, she was only a young girl, in her first job and she had very grand ideas about cooking. No plain soups or puddings for the pre-nursing class. We made chocolate profiteroles and other fancy stuff. Before Christmas, Miss S, to impress the other teachers, had us cook them a four-course lunch, turkey, ham, every imaginable trimming and a well-laced sherry trifle for pudding.  The centrepiece of the table was a pig's head, boiled and glazed with the traditional apple in its poor, murdered mouth. This was a feast very far from the simple (yet delicious) Christmas dinners enjoyed in our happy home on the Murphystown Road.

I'll never forget the sight of those teachers sitting down to that meal, averting their eyes from the pig's head and recoiling at the sherry trifle. I believe many of them were teetotallers and would have considered that dessert a sin on their souls. I only remember a few of them, John Bell, the headmaster, a Miss Something, horrible old cow that she was, Miss Law, best teacher in the school, a Mr Anderson, Math and Economics, jolly and sinister. Miss S, the Domestic Science teacher I remember very well but I daren't name her for fear of a libel suit. She was a card. Invited a group of us to her parent's house for coffee and homemade petit-fours and turned out to be an anti-Semite. I was shocked. She didn't last as a teacher after she developed a tremendous pash on a boy of seventeen, who she first tormented with smouldering glances and later with love letters. He was afraid of her and told his Mammy. Miss S was history.

I worked hard in Domestic Science and still failed the 'O' level, despite excelling at my practical. Miss S had neglected to put us through the less glamorous side of Domestic Science and I got a long question on drainage systems that I totally flunked. Most disappointing.

There was one other thing. We all broke up for the Christmas holidays after that lunch and somehow the pig's head got forgotten about. When we returned in the New Year, the stench that wafted down the stairs from the Domestic Science room was abominable.

Antrim Technical College as it was when I attended. It has since been demolished.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Zoe's sketch of her grandmother.

663 views, taken 2005

That is a month and a bit of Flickr's mostest views and interestingness all redd up and I can't say I'm sorry. That picture of Jazzer and her oldest girl (married with a baby now) has the 30th most views. We were visiting Swisser on that August day. Seen in the background Bert with Swisser's dog Tracey (I know! A dog called Tracey) and our dog Paddy. Both of them gone now.

Matty, 448 views, taken during the Second World War.

My mother aged about thirteen. This photograph was taken by the Belfast Telegraph to illustrate a feature on war time food production, the Digging for Victory campaign. Matty's school teacher, Master Duffy, had turned over part of the school yard in Creggan to vegetables. That picture was only a fragment. Matty said that the entire image showed her standing framed in a trellis of runner beans.

This is what Matty wrote herself about the school garden.

We had a big garden at the back of our school and when the weather was good we spent a lot of time working in it, digging and planting and then weeding. We had a lot of different vegetables growing and a few flowers. We were allowed to take vegetables home when they were ready for harvesting and they were much appreciated by Mammy even though we had a vegetable garden at home. At the beginning of the war our school garden got a write up in the Belfast Telegraph for the way in which every inch of ground had been used for growing extra vegetables. We were all very pleased at getting a picture in the paper of us working in the garden.

Guilt Trip

Me on an outing. 1,322 views

It's hard to know why this picture is the seventh most viewed on my Flickr photostream. I don't remember much about it, or who took it, or even where it was. I can roughly date it to the very early nineties. I had met Bert for that is his Indonesian batik bag in the foreground. I was at university for that was my look back then. I would have been coming up to forty, still without a driver's licence. We went out a lot in those days. See a bit of fine weather and off we sped. That never seems to happen now. Cow still not calved, Bert a ton of things to do in the polytunnel, pigs to look after, me a ton of things to do as well but sitting here in front of this screen feeling vaguely guilty that I am not sowing seeds or planting hollyhocks. Guilt trips are the only trips I take these days. Where did it all go wrong?

The Olden Days Revisited

Last day of the month and, boy, was it a stinker. Lashing rain, sleet and high winds. thankfully, apart from a little bit of yard work, I was able to stay indoors for nearly all the day. We had few callers (yippee!) just my brother and partner collecting their Jack Russell we'd been minding while they had a little break. And Clint but I managed to avoid him as I was watching House of Cards which is beginning to find its form after a slow start.

Tomorrow is the first of April so there will have to be more seed-sowing action in the poly tunnel. There are a few bits and pieces sown but the to-sow list is rather long.

Today Flickr's 31st most viewed picture is this house in the olden days.

Springhill in the Sixties (596 views on Flickr) 

The 31st most interesting picture is of Nelly in the olden days. The long hot summer of 1977, my first trip to London. Still rocking plaid flannel shirts. 288 views on Flickr.

I remember the photograph was taken by Margaret Donnelly, a young innocent  from County Kildare. She confessed to me that the reason she befriended me was because she wanted to learn how to drink alcohol, smoke cannabis and have sex. On our return to London we wrote for a while. Imagine it! The days of writing letters. She was planning to enlist in the RAF and, eventually, I lost touch with her. No Facebook, y'see. Those were certainly the days.

Starved

I was brought up in a family where breast feeding was the norm. I had been breast fed myself, I'd seen all my six brothers and sisters breast fed and it never occurred to me to do anything else.

Back when I had my children feeding one's child oneself was not the norm and midwives did not seem to encourage it. Nevertheless I persevered and it all went well for me. There were no problems, my little ones thrived and that thing called 'baby weight' melted away in no time.

As time passed I found out more about my own and Matty's early experiences. My mother let the odd thing drop and eventually it all became clear. She had a difficult breech birth with me and did not recover well. She felt isolated and unsure of how to deal with her first child. I was very underweight and she struggled with nursing. As her anxiety increased, she neglected to nourish herself and consequently I was starving at the breast. She told me that there were fierce District Nurses who called very often such was their concern for this baby that failed to thrive.

Then my Aunt Sarah visited. She had a son six months older than me. He was a giant baby, dark curls, the fattest chubby cheeks, a great lump of a well-fed infant. Aunt Sarah was horrified to see the scrawny thing that Matty had produced.

Give that child a bottle! Thicken it with Farex. Put sugar in it.

Matty did as her sister said and I started to thrive. Got chubby. But I never, ever forgot that early starving. All my life I have wanted more food. At times of anxiety I just want to eat and I especially want to eat starchy, sugary things. I must have adored those thickened, sweetened bottles of milk.

I've been thinking about this recently for I've gained weight. Again. I can't stop eating. And that cousin? The one who never knew hunger in his entire life? You should see him now. He's as lean as a whippet and a right handsome devil.

Jilted!

There was this boy I fell in love with way back in 1976. It was a short relationship, late summer to Christmas Eve and its end took me by surprise. He was a very attractive boy, maybe a little on the small side but that didn't matter for I am short too. My mother did not take to him. I think she found him glib. To tell the truth she did not take to anyone I went out with for she suspected (rightly) that I was not adhering to the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church. This boy, I will call him David, was not from Ireland and he must have been quite lost to end up adrift in Ballymena. He had nowhere to live and was sleeping on various friend's sofas. I think he might have wanted us to find a place together but I had a daughter and I knew that she and I were both better off living at home with my family.

I was so happy then. Somewhere, at the back of my mind, I must have known that David and I were not going anywhere but I ignored these doubts. We were both so young. Our jobs were crap and we had very little money.

Christmas Eve came. I hadn't got David a present. He said it didn't matter. I said I would buy him a gift after Christmas. He said he had something for me but he would give it to me on Christmas Day. He wanted me to stay with him that night but I had my taxi booked. I needed to be home to sort my daughter's Santa presents. He pleaded. I was firm. I would see him at Rob's party the next day.

He never came to Rob's party and no-one knew where he was. There were no mobile phones in those days, no way to catch up with people. I tried to put on a brave face. A couple of days later a friend told me what had happened. After I left on Christmas Eve he had got talking to a girl and he had left with her. She had a cosy flat and he moved in with her that very night!

And that was that. I think about it every Christmas. And I feel for anyone who has a relationship fall apart during this season. But when I do look back what I remember best is the support of my friends and family. And am so happy that I put my little girl before my boyfriend. And I know now that he was definitely not the boy for me.

Jilted Nelly putting on a brave face at Rob's party, Christmas 1976

Katy's Rescue: A Story About A Man Who Kept His Head

I found this delightful book in Bellaghy's one and only charity shop. It was published in 1953 so is the same vintage as me. Martha adores it and I read it to her at least two times every day she is here. Both Martha and Evie love stories and love being read to. And I love to read to them. I also enjoy telling them stories that are not written down.

Madeline's Rescue features a dog, later named Genevieve, who kept her head and rescued Madeline when she fell in to the River Seine. I told the girls a true story about a man who kept his head when Aunt Katy fell in to the River Braid.

So girls... are you sitting comfortably? This is a true story that happened a long time ago when Mummy and Aunt Katy and Aunt Hannah were only girls. Hannah was the youngest, She was about the same age as you Martha. Katy was about 8 or 9 years old and your Mummy was 12 or 13. Bert had a yellow car that we called the Yellow Submarine and we'd often jump in to it and go somewhere nice for a walk. One of our favourite places to go was Currel's Avenue just outside Ballymena. We'd take Danny (he was our dog back then) and we'd walk beside the river. There was a swing there. It wasn't a proper swing like the one in the garden. It was just a piece of stick on a rope. You'd stand on the bank and get the stick between your legs and go swinging over the river. It was very exciting and a bit dangerous. Bert went first and he was very good at it. Then it was your Mummy and she was good at it too. Then it was Katy's turn. Katy was lighter than Bert and Zoe and she bounced around when she swung over the river. The next thing she bounced off and went splash! into the water. Down she went under the water! Then her head appeared. Down she went again! I could see Bert starting to kick his boots off and throw off his coat. Aunt Hannah, who was very young, started to scream and she ran off in a panic. I could see that Bert was going to get Katy out so I ran after Hannah who was racing away and not seeming to care where she ran or what she ran in to! She thought that her sister was going to die. I knew that Katy was going to be OK because Bert was keeping his head. By the time I caught Hannah and soothed her and brought her back Katy was safe. Zoe said that Danny the dog had jumped into the river too. He liked swimming and he thought that if everyone was going to be splashing about in the river he should too! Poor Katy was soaking wet so all of us shared out our clothes so she could go home in dry things. Bert just drove us home even though he was drenched. He didn't mind because he was very happy that he had kept his head and been a hero. When we got home Katy had a warm bath and Bert got dry clothes and a nice hot cup of tea and everyone was very happy.

Did you like that story?
Yes. Tell it again.

So I did.

Country Living

Old photographs can make an excellent aide-mémoire. Looking at this one from 1992 I realise that we've been living in the country for over two decades now. Miss Hannah was still at primary school (St Mary's in Ballymena, now demolished) and her headmaster, who lived in Portglenone, would pick her up at the end of our lane in a big station wagon crammed to the doors with his own children. Those where the days when child seats were not compulsory and youngsters could bounce around in cars largely unrestrained.

Without this picture I would not have remembered that the last time I made wine was 20 years ago. Unfortunately I don't remember what I made it from or if it was any good but I'm sure it was. I'm sure too that we didn't give it much of an opportunity to mature because 20 years ago I still wasn't fully mature myself. And, it seems, according to my children, I still have some way to go.

The chair Bert is sitting upon and the sofa on which Hannah perches upon a heap of hideous mismatched cushions are long gone. The table is still around. The house that Bert built, and the table I bought for it belong to Clint now and he uses it as a potting bench in one of the poly tunnels.

Davy Jones

It's easy to mock the attraction that many young girls have for performers such as Justin Bieber. The fact is many of us not so young ones had our own version of the baby-face crush. Through the years there have been many of them - David Cassidy, Donny Osmond and way, way back in the day Davy Jones, the Monkees front man. Davy was a teeny-tiny English boy, trying to make his way as an actor when he auditioned for The Monkees TV show. The show was wildly successful and Davy became a pin up. I was one of his hundreds of thousands of fans.

In those days we didn't get to hear every detail of our hero's life. We only got to hear what publicists told us. Our crush was a blank canvas on which our innocent, or not so innocent fantasies could be projected. We did not have to deal with glamorous girlfriends, paternity suits or tales of drunkenness and debauchery. Davy and his ilk were the boys next door, the ones that could be introduced to Mum, who would, of course, disapprove of the long hair but would admire every other aspect of their being.

I bought the Monkees fanzine and relished every lying word. I was thirteen and hadn't discovered Radio Geronimo. Eventually my tastes changed and I transferred my affections to Mickey Dolenz. By fifteen I had outgrown the Monkees entirely.

Davy grew up, lost his teenage heart throb looks, got fatter and died. Those baby face boys don't usually make for handsome men. Donny Osmond might be an exception to that rule but that's Mormon clean living for you, or botox - who knows?

Biking It

Matty and I went out for a bike ride probably a quarter of a century ago. I can't recall very much about it. I only know that I was with her for that is my blue ladies racer lying in the hedge. It's not that good a photograph - I should have got all of Matty's bike in there and avoided those pylons. And yet - it is a good picture. Look at her happy, happy face.

It is one of those pictures taken in the olden days that were not considered good enough for a frame or an album, just one of those photographs thrown in a box and forgotten about. Then decades pass and everything changes and then they become precious. That bike ride I can barely remember but there she is. We must have enjoyed ourselves for just look at her happy, happy face.

More Tales From The Negative Scanner

Hannah and Katy should both sack the stylist! Mmmm. That would have been me.

Early Ambitions

  

The first job I ever thought of taking up wasn’t a job at all for it was more of a vocation. I was going to be a nun. Of course, I hadn’t a clue what it would entail, I just had an idea that Mammy and Daddy would be very, very pleased with me. Now, where did I get that from? It must have been from snatches of overheard conversation. I was such an eavesdropper in those days. My method was to play quietly, seemingly deeply involved in some childish occupation, my tiny ears on stalks and if adults nudged each other or pointed to the little ones, that was my cue to be rapt, engaged with dolls, puzzles, books, anything that would make them believe that I could not hear, understand or care what they were saying.

You’d hear,

Young Thomas Maguire is going to Maynooth. The family are delighted. He has the two aunts on his mother’s side in the Poor Clares and his Uncle Emmanuel Maguire a curate in Hannahstown.

Father Emmanuel never got his own parish?

No word of it. His mother can’t understand it at all. I think myself he is too soft to make a good PP.

There was talk…..

Shush! There’s nothing in that. His mother’s a saint.

So it was that I learned to have a vocation, to become a priest, a nun or a brother was a wonderful thing. A thing that brought pride and delight to your whole connection. Little wonder it seemed like such a good idea even for a bad rip like myself. Today I could be merry and bad and then far, far in the future I would be old and good. First I would be a nun then eventually I’d be a saint. I would have brown wooden beads; carry a cross and a wreath of pink roses. My mother would be delighted with me.

It was later on that I learned about vocations. You didn’t choose to be a nun or a priest. God chose you by calling you to it. But by this time it was starting to seem an unappealing idea. I was less enamoured with pleasing Mammy and Daddy and more interested in pleasing myself. Being a nun sounded dreary. The clothes were bulky and cumbersome, you had to be bald and obedient, you’d never be out of the chapel and the food wasn’t great and you would never have any money nor get a lie-in. But what if God called you? You’d have to go in for it if God called you. I dreaded getting a vocation. Having to be good would be dull, dull, dull and being a saint meant being tortured or murdered for your virtue whatever that was. It just didn’t seem worth it to me.

And so it was that I would forgo the Convent’s call and became a nurse instead. But, as they say, that’s another tale.

The Things She Left Behind (continued)

I first came across this abandoned and derelict house over a year ago but on that occasion I didn't have a camera with me. I had always intended to go back and document what I saw there. Last week I finally got around to it, despite one of the fellows from work, a local man, telling me to be careful going poking around old houses 'up there'.

Them boys up there would be straight out blasting at you with a shotgun and ask no questions.

But I do love a long lane and a derelict homestead and it is even better when there is enough detritus left behind to get some idea of the person or people who lived there. The house itself was not that old. The buildings around it, many of which had been dwelling houses, were a lot older. I'd say a number of folk had lived there at a time. Over time their dwellings had become sheds or were simply left tumbledown.

She was rightly on in years when she left. But she had been active. She liked to sew, she liked to keep herself smart and she was a keen baker. She laundered the old-fashioned way with a boiler and a mangle and she did her laundry in a wash house. She cooked on a range. Her big kettle sang on the range from morning to night, always ready to boil for a pot of tea should visitors call. She admired the Royal Family and had a soft spot for the Queen Mother and she loved flowers. She liked to keep in contact with the outside world. Her house was neat and tidy. There was a place for everything and everything in its place. She hadn't much time for reading but there were a few books around, old-fashioned children's books by R.M. Ballantyne and Captain Marryat. Perhaps they had been Christmas presents for children long grown old themselves? The books were mouldering to dust when I first saw the house, and gone by my second visit.

All this I know from the things she left behind. They were the things that no one else wanted. No one wanted her shoes, her great ancient kettle, her mangle or her boiler. No one needed her 1950s patterns or her telephone. No one had any use for her baking ingredients or her musty books. No doubt her good delph and china and linens and ornaments found another home and hopefully, her personal photographs and other knick-knacks were taken and treasured by someone close to her.

I see her in my mind's eye. She would have been strong, a well-made woman but nifty with it. She would have bustled and busied and kept herself active. She would have been hospitable and kind. In early summer, twenty-three years ago, for reasons I do not know, she left her home up that long lane and she did not return.

Where The Dead Things Are

Some might say that I’m a morbid person because of my keen interest in road kill. It’s a fascination that stems from my childhood. Doesn’t everything?

In those days I had a favourite cousin who truly was a mine of misinformation. We were visiting her house one day and she says,

There’s a dead RAT stuck in the hedge down the lane. Do you want to see it?

Oh yes!

It’s really rotten and it’s stinking too!

Urrgh!

C’mon then…

We headed down the lane.

We’re coming near it now.

Where? Where?

It’s down there under that tree. Now hold your nose.

Why?

Because if you breathe in the smell of it you’ll DIE!

On we went, me holding tight to my nose and not daring even to open my mouth. My face was purple and my eyes were popping with the effort of holding my breath. I tried so very hard to see the dead rat but it must have been covered in long grass and I was frightened to get too close, so never got a glimpse nor a whiff of it at all.

Of course I passed this interesting information on to my other cousins and my brothers and sisters.

You must never breathe in the smell of a stinking dead animal, or you'll DIE!

They weren’t as gullible as me for we all walked to and fro school along the Lisnevenagh Road where the Burnhouse trucks with their loads of dead animal carcasses passed often enough, leaving behind a miasma of putrid reek that hung in the air long after the lorry passed and none of us ever died of the stink of dead animals, not even one of us. So far.

This photograph taken on the Pipe Road during the 2009 Spring heatwave

When I was a child I'd have walked five miles to see this dead lamb melted into the tarmac. I still would. And I'd take a photograph too.

You Don't Say

What would we do without these health pundits? I really don't know. The latest bit of unbelievable news  concerns chocolate. You know...that brown stuff made from lard and sugar with a tad of cocoa bean somewhere in there - apparently it's bad for you if you eat too much of it. And, because we are all thick as bricks and don't know what is good for us, the brown stuff should be taxed so we don't eat so much of it.

Chocolate is already as dear as poison. I remember when Mars bars cost five pence - that is  five old pre-decimal pennies and the chocolate was thick enough to break your teeth on and the caramel was awesome and the whipped bit was...alright. Because if I'd wanted a Milky Way I'd have bought a Milky Way. And they were about 8 inches long. You ate them by nibbling off all the chocolate, which took ages, then you ate the boring Milky Way bit. Then you ate the chewy caramel. By this time there was chocolate up your nose and  caramel in your hair but you didn't care because you were only eight years old and you only got about three Mars bars a year.

Compared to the Mars Bar of yesteryear, today's  is a far inferior product. But taxing them? They're dear as poison anyway. Aren't they already taxed?

So leave us alone Health Bullies and Bosses. We're paying enough tax already.  If we want to eat sugar and lard and the food companies are mustard-keen to sell it to us then keep on saying so on the packet and let us make our own choices. 

Clean Meat Never Fattened A Pig

The Cave Hill, Belfast

I used to wonder what the saying 'clean meat never fattened a pig' meant and, to this day, I'm still not sure. It was often said in our house if, for instance, one of the wee ones dropped their jam sandwich (alternatively 'jam piece') and picked it up again for the scoffing thereof. With seven children in the house, it wasn't just that food couldn't, shouldn't be wasted, it was also a matter of us living not that handy to the shops.

Another one of the parents favourites when one of us (never me) was tardy about redding the plate was, 'think of the poor starving children in Africa.' As I grew older and hungrier the cleaning of the younger sibling's plates was never a problem. The new mantra was, "Ate your dinner quick before Nelly has it off you!" Daddy would often remark of my appetite, "Sure thon Nelly one would ate her way through the Cave Hill if it was made of apple tart," or whatever the plat du jour happened to be.

There was rarely a meal time passed in our house without a glass of milk or cup of tea spilled all over the table. Jerry, who often helped Daddy on the farm, would remark, "Matty, ye'd need some class of a drain and spoutings on this table."

But still I never worked out what 'clean meat never fattened a pig,' meant. I used to think that pigs wouldn't thrive unless you introduced some form of dirt into their food. When I was very young I'd watch the Hannas mix up the pig swill using their forearms to stir the feed and I'd think this was how they introduced the dirt. I also thought it wasn't very effective because the Hannas were very clean people and Mrs Hanna kept a spotless house. All the men were required to remove their work boots before crossing the threshold. This was a far cry from the housekeeping standards set in our house. Like Bert today, my father paid little heed to the scatterings of mud, straw, silage and worse that fell from his clothing and boots.

But it seems that he had the right idea after all. Because when I googled 'clean meat...' I discovered that some scientists are saying that exposure to dung is actually very good for the health because it strengthens the immune system and that keeping too clean a house can lead to an increase in the incidence of childhood asthma and allergies.

Did I ever mention that my three lovely daughters aged 34, 30 and 26 are as healthy as trouts and always have been?