Covid 69

The year before I was born, my mam had breast cancer, but thankfully she fully recovered. I was told that I had come along as a surprise after that. This photo of our picnic makes me remember my childhood with gratitude for the loving family I was born into. I think of all the good times we had when I was a little girl. The memories that come flooding back when I look at the old photos really are my true inheritance.

We bought our own car, a little red mini, in 1962. I can still remember the registration – GZA551. Dad rented a garage for the car a short stroll from where we lived. The garage was attached to a house in Carlisle Street off the South Circular Road. As a child I thought it was funny that the first three letters of that street name spelt CAR. Our mini lived in the garage nice and snug and well maintained when we weren’t using it. Dad would walk up to collect the car when we were going out and he then would drive to our flats to pick us up. We would keep an eye out for him and when he’d come around the corner in the car, someone would shout, “Here he is!” Then we would come down the stairs from our flat on the third floor carrying all the paraphernalia for the picnic: a rug, a bat and balls, a bucket and spade, newspapers, comics, swimming togs, towels and our transistor radio, not to mention the food for the picnic itself.

Sometimes we just went for a little drive to the Phoenix Park, the Pine Forest, Dollymount Strand or the Shelly Banks, where my Dad taught me how to swim and to float. Other times we went to the countryside for a walk. I remember picking primroses in the

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