Irish Dancing Friends Then and Now 59

family stories went over my head as a child. I was too engrossed in playing with my friends and toys and going to school. Now, when I eventually started to look through the many albums, loose photographs and boxes of slides, I had no one to answer my questions. I didn’t know who some of the people in the older photographs were, but boy, did I feel rich with the treasure trove of photographs. Photographs of my family, my parents newly married, my brother and sister’s childhoods and my own childhood. The photographs have come back to life and sing to me of outings, holidays, family, friends, and wonderful lives. I’ve been getting to know my family all over again in a new way with the distance of time.

This photo of a family picnic was taken by my brother Brian while we were on holidays during the summer of 1960 or 1961. We were staying in a rented house near the beach in Woodstown, County Waterford. My Dad had hired a car for the holidays as we didn’t have one of our own at that time. Dad was no stranger to driving though, as he had worked as a Post Office driver since the late 1920s. A few years later we got our own car, a little red mini, which took us on lots of outings and picnics to the country and seaside.

In the photo, my mam and dad are smartly dressed for the picnic, maybe because we were on our holidays. It’s certainly different to what we would wear today on a picnic. I never remember my dad wearing casual clothes unless it was to put on a cardigan instead of a jacket. At that time, men wore suits a lot and women would

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