16. Life in Cooley

Life in Cooley

On the 1st of September 1964, as I approached my 13th birthday I put on my first pair of long trousers and headed off to boarding school in Monaghan. While I returned home for holidays, including the long three month Summer breaks, that was when, in reality, I left my childhood home in Castletowncooley, in north County Louth. We always refer to it as Cooley for short. I didn’t feel this departure at the time and I had a choice about going to boarding school or travelling on a daily basis to school in Dundalk but I suppose that is just a part of growing up. We still own the house and pre-Covid I would have visited on a weekly basis, so Cooley remains an important part of my life.

The house I was raised in is quite old. The part of the house referred to as the “new house” was built around 1910 by my grandfather. My father was born and raised and lived in the house for all but the last of his 98 years. His grandfather and great-grandfather would also have lived in the house and perhaps several other generations before that. The nearby Newtown Cemetery in Mountbagnal has a family plot and a headstone.

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While my father always said that this was a family headstone I have not been able to make the connection back to the people remembered on the stone. A more recent headstone, erected by my father in the 1970s or 80s remembers these three people along with his father, his aunt and a cousin who are all buried in this plot.

The photo above shows my brother Sean, our mother Sheila, Turlough in the pram, myself and my brother Dermot. My father, Tom, is probably taking the photo and my youngest brother Daniel would not be born for another couple of years. Turlough was born in December 1953 so the photograph was probably taken in 1954, just outside the back kitchen door, beside the yard gate with the cow shed in the background. My wife says I was born on the side of a mountain and that is not far from the truth. If my mother stood up and looked to her left from where she is in the photograph she could look right down along the east coast as far as Skerries. I had a rural upbringing and while we had some land and always had cattle and hens and at one stage turkeys we did not rely on the land for our main family income. The yard gate in the photo has chicken wire on it to prevent the hens from coming down into the garden or onto the driveway, which we always called the Street for some unknown reason. In fact I can make out an old branch tied to the end of the gate which allowed the chicken wire barrier to be extended another two feet above the gate. The hens were quite capable of flapping their way to the top of the gate and then down onto the street and into the garden so this extra precaution was necessary.

The cow shed was where the cows were brought in for milking,

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with a part sectioned off for young calves. The cow shed had no windows, just two narrow slits, one of which can be seen in the photo. At the front there was a manger and chains that were put around the cows’ necks during milking. We had one very old cow who was the matriarch of the herd (the total number of cattle would usually be around ten or twelve, so not really a herd!). She used to walk into the cow shed, go over to her place, the furthest on the right, put her head down so that you could put on the chain and then she would start to eat her hay or whatever food was in the manger.

Whenever we moved the cattle from the top fields back to the house she would lead the way. The rest of the cattle would follow behind. Sometimes the younger calves would be rushing about and this was not a problem provided they stayed behind her. However if they got in front of her, even though they were in a different part of the field, away from the path she was on, she would give them a look and they would fall back out of her line of sight. They might carry on with their antics respectfully behind her.

We had no running water in the house at Cooley until 1966, by which time I was 15 years old and in my second year in boarding school. Water therefore had to be carried from various sources. Where it came from depended on what type of water it was – drinking or non-drinking – and on the time of year and weather. Drinking water came from the public pump about a quarter mile up the road from the house. In fact it was not a pump but a fountain fed by gravity from a spring in the bog which was on our land. You just turned the knob and the water flowed until you let the knob

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go. When we were smaller two of us would go with a bucket and a stick. When filled, the stick had to be placed through the handle of the bucket and the water carried back to the house that way, always trying not to spill any of it. This was a very good source of water and very consistent. On very rare occasions it would run dry and then we had to go to a well in Woods’s field about a thousand metres away but that might only happen a couple of times a year. The pump is now long gone, we were probably the last to use it, but the spring in the bog still provides water to the house in Cooley.

The non-drinking water came either from water barrels that collected rain water from the shed roofs or from the well at the road. There were three barrels so throughout most of the year they provided the necessary non-drinking water but in dry weather a slightly longer trip to the well was necessary. The well wasn’t actually a well in the usual sense. It was a deepened section on a stream that ran past the house along the side of the road. There may have been a concrete bottom and sides to it and there was a board to stand on to make filling the buckets easier. The flow would diminish during the Summer but I don’t ever recall that stream not providing water.

The barrels were open topped so the bucket had to be dipped into the barrel, filled and then lifted out – easy if you are an adult and the barrel is full but more difficult if you are small and the water level in the barrel is low. Filling the bucket then involved leaning into the barrel. Two of the barrels had two steel hoops around them, presumably to facilitate rolling them when they were being used for their original purpose. The lower hoop was one third the

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way up the barrel and I used to stand up on this and the lean over the rim to get water when the barrel was nearly empty – certainly not a safe manoeuvre and something we would be horrified to see a child doing today. We have a water butt in Cooley in the same location as one of the old barrels. It is sealed on top by a lid with a catch, it sits on a base and has a tap at the bottom to allow the water to be drawn off safely. The same purpose achieved with no risk, so some things have improved over time.

The land we owned was not very good and much of it was almost mountain, not including the part share we had in an actual mountain. What we called the “top fields” were the rock field, the fort field and the mountain field, whose names give a good impression of the nature of the land. Whins (furze or gorse to other people) grew extensively on these fields and would over time encroach on the fields. To combat this we children would be sent up the fields to “burn the whins”. We were given a box of matches and some old newspapers which we rolled up and used as torches. While there is fresh green growth on top of the whin bushes, underneath the bushes the old growth is grey and withered and once dry is very easy to light and will burn fiercely and quickly. We raced around setting fire to every bush we could find. If someone went into a horseshoe shape of bushes to light the centre we lit either side of the entrance behind them so that when they turned around to exit they had to dash out between the blazing bushes. We would come back down to the house smelling of smoke and probably scorched in places too.

I think it is now illegal to start fires like that. Perhaps it even was

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then – and I think that sending children off, unsupervised, to “burn the whins” might also be frowned upon these days. Once burned, the whin bushes died back and fresh growth began at the base for the process to begin again. After a time the remnants of the bushes were collected and used for firewood – a dirty job as they would still be black from the burning.

Speaking of dirty jobs, I already mentioned that we always had hens. They lived in the hen house, now known as the boiler house. Well, that’s where they roosted at night and where the nest boxes were, where they were supposed to lay their eggs. Normally they were well behaved in this regard but on odd occasions my mother would notice a dip in the egg production and we would be sent to seek out the unofficial nest being used by one of the hens to lay her eggs in. They were given free rein, excluding the street and the garden, and would roam at will around the yard and out into the edges of the nearby fields. On one occasion I remember my father spotting a fox making for one of the hens. The hen was about halfway between my father and the fox. My father started to shout at the fox and ran towards the hen. However the fox must have been hungry and reckoned he could move faster than my father, so he kept coming forward, grabbed the hen and then ran off.

I was going to speak of a dirty job! The hens’ roost consisted of poles spanning above a bed of straw. The poles were tiered like seats in a cinema. The hens sat on these at night, like sitting on the branches of a tree. The straw collected all their waste and this accumulated over time. I seem to remember that it was only cleaned out once a year. It might have been twice a year but it was defi-

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nitely an infrequent event. It was an horrific job. The smell was unbearable and would leave you gasping. We were used to smells from mucking out the cow sheds but cleaning out the hens was something else entirely.

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Building a Hut

Cooley was the childhood home of my father’s brother and two sisters, and his mother, our grandmother, still lived in the house, so our two aunts and our uncle visited regularly. During the summer their children, our first cousins, would come to stay for a period and we would then get the opportunity to stay with them. Our uncle Sean lived in Dublin and his son John was virtually the same age as myself with just a few months between us. We must have been about thirteen or so the summer we built the hut, in 1964 or 1965. Morning time was chore time: weeding the garden, cutting hedges, painting or whatever but after lunch we were on our time.

Myself and John explored an overgrown area a distance from the house. It was across a small stream and was wild with sally trees and briars. We found a clear area in the middle and decided to build a hut. We started by digging down, perhaps two feet or so, and using the excavated clay to build up walls around our hole. The tops of the walls were about four feet or more above the floor. We then got branches and ferns and put a roof on the hut. Access

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to the hut was at one end by means of steps cut into the clay. We made a fireplace opposite the entrance by digging a hole a couple of feet into the side of our excavation and then we dug down outside the wall to form the chimney for the fireplace.

Each afternoon we would head off with a pick and shovel and I recall being questioned about what we were up to – taking work tools off on our own time was unusual. I’m sure we never gave a straight answer to the question and we were never pressed to explain ourselves. There was quite an amount of work in building the hut. It must have been about six or eight foot by four or five, so we had to dig out more than three tonnes of earth to form the hut and to make the walls.

We did light a fire in the fireplace and the smoke, if I remember correctly, went more or less where it was meant to go and left our hut smoke-free. The hut was not used very much – the main fun was in building it. John was probably just down for two weeks and I probably travelled back with him to Dublin for two weeks. Then it was back to school and the hut was forgotten about. I remember investigating it at some later stage but while the structure was still there the roof had collapsed in. Some years later when the Troubles in the North had started, someone came across the remains of the hut and it was examined to see if it was a hiding place for the IRA. Well, that was the story my parents told me. We all kept quiet in any event and heard nothing more. I was speaking to my youngest brother Daniel about “The Hut” recently and he recalled myself and John bringing himself, our brother Turlough and John’s younger brother Peter to see the hut, a sort of official

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opening. He remembered going down a steep bank across a small stream and then into a heavily overgrown area to the hut and “for goodness sake ye had a fire lighting in it”. It sounded like our efforts had made quite an impression. I am sure that nature has, at this stage, obliterated any trace of our hut.

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The Cooley Photograph

Like millions of people around the world myself and my family owe the existence of the photographic record of our lives from the mid 1940s to the 1960s to the Kodak Box Brownie. The first model of this camera was released in 1900 and many models continued in production until the late 1960s. Our version was the Kodak Six20 Brownie C, a model that was made in England between 1945 and 1953. I wonder if it was bought when my eldest brother was born in 1945. The photograph here shows the actual camera used to record our life and times in Cooley.

The camera produced eight 31/4 by 21/4 inch photographs from each roll of film. In theory it should be possible to identify the eight photographs taken on each roll of film. However we don’t always finish the roll at one sitting, so there may be a shot or two remaining that may not be used up for weeks or even longer. As a result there could be several shots already on the roll when the camera was picked up to take a particular photograph, so each group of eight may not relate to a single event or a single day.

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The photographs from Cooley are now in different boxes and different albums but quite a number remain in the old album from under the radio in Cooley though it now has a toothy grin with many gaps where photos have either fallen out or been removed. The central image (a colourised version of the original black and white) in the collage is still in the album and shows my family as it was around the end of 1954, excluding my father who was probably taking the photograph. It was taken at the yard gate, just outside the back kitchen door and shows our mother Sheila, Sean, Turlough in the pram, then myself and Dermot, with the yard and front field in the background.

Examining the photo and the appearance and clothing of the people in it, it is possible to identify other photographs taken around the same time. Two other photographs were taken at the same location, one has just Sean and Turlough, again in the pram, and the third shot has myself and Dermot, a turkey and a hen in it. There appears to be quite a bit of snow on the yard and on the front field as well, so were taken at a different time or perhaps a different day. A turkey and snow implies December. We don’t get much snow in November and if it was January would the turkey still be around? Perhaps this was Turlough’s 1st birthday party. His birthday is in December shortly before Christmas.

Three other photographs from this roll were taken at the other end of the house. Turlough is in the pram in two of them and my father appears in one of them. The final photograph is of Sean. His clothes are the same or similar to what he is wearing in the other shots. Of the eight shots on this roll of film six have been identi-

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fied as belonging to this roll and this has allowed me to correctly identify the baby in the photographs as Turlough. I had mistakenly thought that two of the shots had been taken several years earlier and were of Sean when he was a baby.

Two other details helped to group the six images as belonging to the same roll. On the back of most of the six images the number 4 is marked in pencil and there is a very small defect on the equipment used to print the images. This allowed a tiny bit extra of the negative to be printed in what should have been the border of the print. We can never look close enough or note everything that is there to be seen. Too often we look without seeing and miss an interesting piece of information.

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Pulling the Sinews

Our Christmas dinner was very much along traditional lines: turkey, ham, Brussels sprouts, stuffing. The turkey was prepared on Christmas Eve ready for cooking on Christmas Day. Part of the preparation involved the pulling of the sinews – well, at least an attempt to pull the sinews. This involved cutting the skin just below the fleshy part of the leg to expose the sinews. The handle of a wooden spoon was then forced in behind the sinew. I can still picture the next part: a tug-of-war with my mother holding the turkey and pulling in one direction and me with the wooden spoon grasped with both hands pulling in the opposite direction. This was not a gentle operation as even with full commitment on both sides, which was always given, a successful extraction of the sinew was not guaranteed. I can’t recall how many sinews there were in each leg but it seemed to be a lot, so after a success the operation was repeated. I do not remember the turkey ever being dropped or the wooden spoon breaking but both were always a possibility.

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At some stage my mother decided that as it was so easy to remove the meat from the sinews when the meat was cooked that whoever got the drumstick could deal with the sinews and the tug-of-war was dropped as part of the Christmas Eve tradition.

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I took this photo in 2019 and used it in a calendar I send to family each year. In April 2020 when my nephew turned the page at the end of March he remarked on the similarity between the half sphere of the flower and the shape and form of the images of Covid-19 that were dominating our screens then.

I subsequently manipulated the half sphere into a full sphere. I prefer looking at this image to looking at the image of the virus!

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Writing the Stories

In 2020 Covid restrictions forced us all to seek activities online to occupy our time. This in some cases restricted what was possible, in other cases it increased the options. Whatever the case was it changed the way many things were done. Online contacts and communication became more important and we were forced to look at options we might not have considered before.

When I heard that South Dublin County Council were organising an online project, ‘Memoir Writing from Photographs,’ I was intrigued and interested. The project was to be delivered by Cathy Fowley of Silver Thread. I had started working on my family history in 2009; births, marriages and deaths mostly, though I had written up some of the stories of my mother’s life. I was hoping that this project would show me how to approach a topic and how to present a story properly, as well as giving me a reason to write more.

While I had used photographs to illustrate my mother’s story, us-

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ing a photograph as the starting point was a new approach to me. The first task we were given was to write about the photograph itself, the actual piece of photographic paper. I found that a very interesting approach and something I would never have thought of doing myself.

The first draft of my story, about my great-grandmother Catherine Mc Donald was very much just facts and figures, too much genealogy and not enough family history, not enough about Catherine, not enough of her story. The suggestions and advice offered were subtle but made the story more about the real person that Catherine was and made more of my connection to her, which was through my father. He had told me about his grandmother Catherine and about his boyhood memories of her. He was thirteen when she died in 1925.

The project also had the significant advantage of allowing me to hear the stories written by the other people involved in the project. Seeing the topics they chose to write about and hearing the way they approached their stories made me think more about what I was writing.

In 2020, amidst Covid restrictions, the nature of the project must have been considerably different from the normal in-person, inclassroom, experience. The method of delivery was very different being remote via Zoom rather than face to face. However despite the remoteness it was possible to get to know the other people and feel part of the group. I believe this may have been helped by the small number of people in the group and perhaps more so by the

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nature of the project where each person read and shared the stories they had written about their lives or about the lives of their family.

The project has proven to be all that I hoped for and more. I have found the exercise educational, entertaining and inspirational. I have heard wonderful stories told wonderfully about the ordinary lives of ordinary people. I have seen wonderful snapshots from everyday albums that demonstrate very clearly how precious these snapshots are and how each of them instead of being worth a thousand words has become the spring from which thousands of wonderful words have flowed.

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Aerial Photo of Cooley

An aerial photo of Cooley taken between 1957 and 1966, probably in the early 1960s. The last door on the right, partly obscured by the cow shed is the hen house door. The next door to the left of that is the back kitchen door. The back door in Cooley was on the front of the house! The group photo was taken on the street in front of that door. Some of the other photographs were taken on the white garden seat that can be seen to the left of the house. The taller section of the house, on the left, with the three chimneys is the new house built around 1907 as part workshop and part living quarters. The white dots near the shed, the building furthest to the right of the photograph are some of the hens. The water barrels can just be made out at the front corners, left and right of the shed and at the front left of the cow shed. The well at the road is just in from the parked car. The pump is up the road from the top of the photograph. The car is a Morris Minor, maroon coloured which belonged to our postman. I recognise the two bald spots on its roof! Across the back field, the field behind the house, the track the cattle used to follow is visible leading towards the trees to the right of the house.

Just above the car is a gate into the fields. This is where my father was when he tried unsuccessfully to save the hen from the fox.

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Rita O’Regan

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My Family, 1952

This photo was in a box of photos and papers that I inherited about ten years ago. Back then, I looked through everything and then put a few things away in an envelope to follow up on later. That “later” happened a during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020 around the time the Silver Thread workshop was put up on the SDCC Facebook page. Now is a perfect time to put names to faces and to put my memories in writing.

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The Dressing Gown

When my cousin Billy died in 2007 I inherited a few framed pictures along with various bags and boxes containing hundreds of old and not so old family photographs. While I had great intentions to sort them out and catalogue them, family life, and life in general, took over. I put a few aside in an envelope to look at a bit closer and the rest went up into the attic.

How the years fly by. When reorganising a cupboard a few weeks ago I found the envelope pushed away at the back of a drawer and discovered some small black and white photos taken way back in the 1950s. These photos, although clear after all these years, were only two by two inches, probably taken with a Brownie camera – I still have mine! Trying to enlarge these little photos could prove to be a bit tricky. However, this discovery all coincided with an online notification from Tallaght Library that a memoir writing workshop via Zoom was due to start. How could I not sign up for it?

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This is my family. The photograph must have been taken around 1952 when I was six – that’s me in the front row with my hair in plaits. How I loved my plaits with brightly coloured ribbons keeping them neat and tidy. I think that was my rosebud dress with smocking on the bodice, all made by my mother from glazed cotton which always looked fresh and crisp. My brother Brian is sitting beside me, and my sister Mary, partly hidden, is sitting behind Brian. Our cousin David is sitting on the grass beside us.

I don’t know who took the photograph. Possibly cousin Billy, David’s brother.

From left to right are my father Kit Madigan, Granny Gillett, who died in 1952, the year this photo was taken, Pearl Gillett, Gerry Gillett, Alice Blaney (nee Gillett), Austin Gillett, May Gillett, Henry Blaney, married to Alice, and my mother Jenny Madigan (nee Gillett).

There were ten siblings in the Gillett family, all born two years apart from 1902 to 1922. My grandfather, William Gillett, a ship’s engineer, died in 1924, leaving my grandmother to raise nine children on her own. They lived in a house by the Liffey, just off the South Quays where the Guinness ships docked. The house is still there today together with about ten other houses, all well maintained, but now surrounded by high-rise office buildings.

Siblings not in the photograph are John, William, Richard and Peter. John died of Spanish flu in 1917 when he was 15. William died in

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1943 aged 37. In 1944 Richard, aged 29, and Peter, aged 27, both died within four months of each other. My grandmother lost three sons to tuberculosis within two years.

How my grandmother and the family coped with such loss and tragedy is difficult to imagine, and recounting those statistics stops me in my tracks and leaves me lost for words.

This photograph would have been taken when Alice (centre) was home from the USA with her American husband Henry Blaney (second from right).

I think the picture must have been taken at my aunt May’s house. Pearl is wearing a dressing gown – I can only remember Pearl being either in her dressing gown or in bed. This was the time when tuberculosis was rife in Ireland, and there were special hospitals and sanatoria just for TB patients. Pearl spent a lot of time in St Mary’s Hospital in the Phoenix Park. I remember seeing photographs of her when she was there, and when the beds were rolled out onto a veranda so that patients could benefit from clean fresh air. She was allowed home occasionally and was probably staying with May at the time this photo was taken. However, she had to have her own room, her own cutlery and crockery, and everyone in the house had to be very careful to avoid cross-contamination. Pearl was a quiet, gentle person who had a lovely smile for everyone. She was my godmother but she died when she was 37.

My mother Jane (or Jenny as everyone called her) looks fit and well in this photo, but she also contracted TB and needed to have

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part of her lung removed. She was only a young woman of 41 in this photo but she too died a few years later in 1958 when she was 47.

This was the time of mass X-ray. People were terrified of contracting TB. There were mobile X-ray units, or vans, parked in different parts of the city where people could queue up, walk in and have a chest X-ray taken. While my mother was in hospital I lived part of the time in Clontarf with my dad, sister and brother, and sometimes with my aunt May in Dundrum. I recall having a cough which gave me a pain in my back, but I can also remember trying to stifle my cough so that people wouldn’t hear me. I know I was afraid they would think I was sick and that would have been another problem for them to worry about. Of course the family heard me coughing, and I remember Aunt May worrying and bringing me to an X-ray unit parked on O’Connell Street. My memory of that X-ray unit is of a silver, ambulance-type van. I felt so embarrassed having to take off my top clothes, and then lean forward onto the big cold steel plate, take in a deep breath and stay still until I was told to breathe again. Something showed up on that X-ray and so it was followed up with more detailed X-rays in a building just down the road from Christchurch Cathedral near City Hall, outside Dublin Castle. It’s funny how you remember the little things. It was a grey building and there were granite steps up to the front door. There, they spotted a shadow on my lung and found that I had also contracted primary TB and went into hospital for three day’s observation.

That was in March of that year, around Easter time. I eventually

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ended up in the same hospital as my mother and Aunt Pearl, Ballyowen Sanatorium in Lucan, where I stayed for nine months, finally being allowed home for Christmas. I was assured that I would be stronger and healthier for having spent time in the sanatorium, and thank goodness, I’ve lived a long, healthy and happy life ever since.

Ballyowen Sanatorium was way out in the country surrounded by green fields. There was a bus stop at the entrance gates, and then a long walk down a straight road to the units which were all single storey prefab buildings. Wards were either for one, two or four beds. I know that while I was there I was the youngest in the facility, and I don’t remember mixing with any other children. I can’t remember getting any formal schooling, but there was a lady who taught “occupational therapy” where I learned embroidery and other crafts, and there were books and magazines and comics to read. I still have a couple of jewellery boxes I made from a pattern used by patients in the sanatorium. It was constructed using recycled greeting cards, old X-ray film that was cleaned with some strange solution, scraps of material, cotton wool and embroidery thread.

While in the Sanatorium my daily medication was called PASS. I never knew what was in it. It was a brown liquid and tasted awful! It was put in a little glass like a shot glass and I had to drink it back while a nurse stood beside my bed to make sure I finished the lot! The windows in my ward were opened fully almost every day, and in the summertime I sometimes climbed out the window to collect cowslips (a taller version of primroses) in the field outside. Every

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time I see cowslips now I’m reminded of my time there: lush green grass, bright vibrant yellow cowslips dotted in clumps all over the field and bracing fresh air that sometimes took my breath away.

I had my blood checked regularly, which I didn’t like one bit! Needles back then weren’t as refined as they are now, and sometimes it would be difficult for the nurse to find a vein in my little arms. I’m sure my roars were heard in wards and corridors all over the sanatorium!

In Ireland from the mid 1800s, tuberculosis was referred to as “consumption” or the “silent killer,” and was easily spread through coughs and sneezes from infected people. The similarity with Covid-19 in 2020 is chilling.

Dr Noel Browne was a medical doctor and politician who was Minister for Health from 1948 to 1951. His personal story is quite tragic. His mother, father, brother and sister all died from TB. From the time he became Minister for Health, he diverted money received from the Irish Hospital Sweepstakes into building sanatoria around the country, ensuring that everyone who contracted TB would receive free treatment, and also that needy families would receive a subsistence allowance so that breadwinners could recuperate in hospital.

Through his tireless efforts, he managed to stop the disease in its tracks within three years, and almost eliminated it over the following twenty years, which all became possible through the use of the so called “miracle drugs” of the time, the antibiotic

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Streptomycin and the BCG vaccine.

Dr Noel Browne died aged 81 in May 1997. Among his many other achievements, his lasting legacy was eliminating TB from Ireland.

To the best of my knowledge, I was the last person in my family to contract TB.

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Snapped on O’Connell Street

People from all over Ireland had their photographs taken on O’Connell Bridge. If you ask anyone about the man who took photographs there, people are bound to remember some special time in their lives when they were “snapped” by him. He always seemed to be there when you were crossing, and he certainly had an instinct as to who would make the best customer. If he did take your picture, whether you kept walking or posed for the shot, he would hand you a card which had details of where and when you could pick up your developed photograph.

He had a camera with a concertina-type casing on it, and in later years would also have a Polaroid slung across his chest for instant prints. When the Polaroid camera came on the market it was very expensive, and like all new technology, would have been beyond what most people could afford. He wore a home-made sign strung around his neck which read “Instant Colour Photographs,” and in 1972 that was what everyone wanted. Instant! And colour! At that time, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had walked on the moon,

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mini-skirts, hotpants, flared trousers and platform shoes were high fashion, and instant freeze-dried vegetables were supposed to be the answer to every housewife’s dream to cut down on lengthy food preparation for the family. I shudder when I think how tasteless those vegetables were. The texture was rubbery, and the colour was never far from grey! Everyone to their own taste I would say, but thank goodness, I don’t see those packets on the supermarket shelves any more.

I never knew the name of the photographer on the bridge. He always seemed to be there, and if you tried to dodge past him he would pretend to take your photograph and then, if you slowed down or stopped, he would take your picture again. He had his business down to a fine art.

In 2013 on RTE’s Late Late Show an appeal went out for people to send in their treasured photographs taken on the bridge. The response resulted in over 1,800 snaps being submitted, and what followed on from that was a book and a film covering the life of Arthur Fields: The Man on the Bridge.

Arthur came to Ireland in the 1930s to escape anti-semitism in the Ukraine, and over his 50 years on the bridge it is estimated that he took more than 180,000 photographs.

Arthur photographed families, clergy, people up from the country for the day, young couples out on a date, groups of young people out on the town for the night, celebrities and movie stars. He captured people from all walks of life and created a social history of

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Dublin and Ireland from the 1930s up until the time he retired in 1985 aged 84.

This photograph has the inscription D54603 on the back and is of me with my brother Brian and sister Mary. We were probably brought to O’Connell Bridge to have our photograph taken there, as our parents didn’t own a camera back then. Mary is wearing her Confirmation outfit and I seem to have a matching coat. Our mammy had the coats made for us. They were a stone-coloured wool with brown velvet or felt contrast. Mary’s hat was made to match her coat, and for a young girl she looks gorgeous and extremely fashionable. My brother Brian looks polished and dressed up for the day in his winter school coat complete with tie and school cap – a bit on the Kildare side! Like all schoolboys of that age, he probably hated wearing it!

Mary remembers walking all over town with Mammy to find shoes to fit her narrow feet, before they finally found a suitable pair in a shop on Grafton Street. After all that time and trouble, Mammy made sure that the new shoes were seen in the photograph. In the photo I am dressed in my light-coloured coat – probably not the best choice of colour for a child – and have a ribbon in my hair. I wasn’t lucky enough to get new shoes for the occasion, as I still seem to be wearing my summer closed-in brown sandals with ankle socks and some sort of tights. I have a look of worry or apprehension on my face and am holding on to my big brother’s hand for reassurance.

The year is most probably 1949 because there is a tram in the background approaching the bridge from Westmoreland Street,

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and the last trams finally went out of commission in Dublin city on the 9th of July 1949. The tram to Howth, however, was in use for another ten years until 1959.

Thank goodness that snap was taken as it has restored so many wonderful memories, not just for me but for Mary and Brian. I’ve had the photograph for years in an album stored away in the attic but I can’t remember how it came to be in my possession.

The word “snap” can have a variety of meanings. It can be used as a noun, adjective or verb.

In this story I’ve used “snap” to mean “an informal photograph taken quickly.” How thankful I feel now that I was “snapped” all those years ago!

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Christmas Garlands

Mammy taught me how to use the sewing machine when I was about eight. We were getting ready for Christmas, and of course we needed to decorate our house before the arrival of Santa Claus, not forgetting, of course, the arrival once more of the baby Jesus.

She would buy rolls of crepe paper in red, green and white – the choice of colours was very limited. There might be some yellow left over from Easter time and if there was any black paper, it would be used for the crib for the Holy Family and the baby Jesus. We would make a stable from an old box with the crepe paper wrapped and stuck onto it. It was a messy business: the glue stuck to your fingers, and then the ink from the black paper stuck to the glue on your fingers, and then you might want to brush away your hair from your eyes…

And then, the glue would take ages to dry!

Mammy used a big scissors and cut three inch strips across the

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long rolls. Along with my big sister and brother, I matched up the different coloured strips and put one on top of the other. Mammy would have cleared a space on the kitchen table to make room for her Singer sewing machine, and she would set up a long stitch on the machine with whatever thread she had. The thread colour didn’t matter – in fact, the brighter, the better! She showed me how to use the machine and let me practice stitching in a straight line all the way down the centre of the long strips. It’s funny how the ends of those strips never lined up and one piece would be always longer than the other. Mammy showed us how to put a knot in the loose thread-ends and we would all help to gently stretch the edges of the crepe paper without tearing it. Then she would carefully pull the threads to loosely gather up the long strip, twist the whole thing around, et voila: a multi coloured garland!

We’d make enough garlands to drape around the walls of the rooms, using tacks to stick into the plaster or layers of wallpaper, and if the ceiling was too high, there was the picture rail we could reach if we stood up on a chair. At the corners we’d stick in a couple of balloons and hoped they’d stay there until Christmas was over. Sometimes they worked themselves loose, and floated down off the wall, and we’d have great fun punching them at each other before they finally burst with a big bang!

We always tried to hang the garlands from the corners of the room into the centre at the light fitting, but Mammy wouldn’t allow us – I think she was afraid we’d stick a tack into a wire and blow a fuse, or worse still, electrocute ourselves!

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Some of our friends and neighbours had very fancy decorations bought in Hector Gray’s: decorations they kept from one year to the next, garlands that concertinaed together and when opened out were silver on one side and bright red, green, blue, yellow and sometimes pink on the other. And they had big silver stars made from shiny paper, that were like heavenly bodies twinkling in the sky on a clear frosty night.

Hector Gray’s, now there’s a name to remember! Hector’s shop was on Liffey Street, and if you needed any toys, decorations, lamp shades, bulbs, kettles, cups and saucers, pots and pans, you name it, his was the shop to go to. Hector was always in his shop, and at Christmastime he had all sorts of novelties, tinsel, and decorations in bright shiny colours, silver and gold and as sparkly and as gaudy as you wanted. These all came to our little island from far off exoticsounding places like China, India and Taiwan. If Hector Gray didn’t have what you wanted, the stall holders in Moore Street and Henry Street were next on the list. This is where you’d find your “Cheeky Charlies” and hear, “Get the last e’ yer jumpin’ monkeys.”

When Christmas was over and it was the new year and we were back in school and had the day off for the epiphany on the 6th of January, the decorations were taken down and put away for another year. If the balloons still had some air in them, we’d have a play around with them until they were all burst. We’d roll up the garlands, but invariably some would have got damaged, so we always needed to make more the following year, always hoping that maybe, just maybe, we could make a special trip into town to visit Hector Gray’s.

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The Jewellery Box

Now, after all these years when it was tidied away in a drawer, the little red and black jewellery box was beginning to fall apart. It held some of Alice’s treasures, memories and little things she couldn’t bear to throw away.

Alice had made the jewellery box. As a child, she was confined to a Sanatorium for nine months surrounded by other patients who had also contracted the scourge of the time, tuberculosis. Fortunately for her, she was diagnosed early and after treatment with the newly discovered antibiotics, she made a full recovery.

There was no TV to watch in the 1950s, and in the Sanatorium radio was limited to Hospitals Requests on Radio Eireann when all the patients would listen out hopefully to hear their names announced over the airwaves. You felt so excited if your name was mentioned by the presenter on the radio, knowing that someone had sent in a request especially for you. When all the names and greetings were read out, the presenter followed on with a chosen

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piece of music. Alice’s favourite was ‘Smile’ sung by Nat King Cole.

As she carefully tried to sew the pieces of the jewellery box together again, Alice lined the needle up with the tiny stitches she had once sewn as a ten-year-old. Occupational Therapy it was called back then.

“I wonder if the term is still used today,” Alice thought. “Sounds old-fashioned to me, now it’s probably called ‘Mindfulness Therapy’ or suchlike!”

As the name would imply, occupational therapy was to occupy patients as they rested and hopefully recover from TB, and was also a way of distracting them from the monotony of lying in bed all day. In the Sanatorium, there was just one occupational therapist who would visit the wards regularly. She always came armed with interesting projects to make or do, but patients who had different skills would also teach each other crafts like knitting, crochet and embroidery.

Alice turned the box over, and the underneath looked almost as good as the day she made it. The colours were bright, and she could see that the picture underneath the X-ray film had been a combination of a couple of old card cut-outs to balance the shape of the flower basket design. The crochet around the edges was neat and very well sewn together. She marvelled at what she was capable of doing when she was so young. Many of the patients in the Sanatorium made jewellery cases or boxes. There were different

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designs, sizes and shapes, but the one Alice liked best, and the one she wanted to make, was a heart-shaped one with padding on the inside covered in a red material, finished off with a tassel so that she could lift up the lid. It was a tricky enough design to make, even for an adult, but she was a determined little miss with busy little hands! That was the one she wanted to make!

These boxes were made from materials the patients had to hand in the sanatorium: old card, black paper, old greeting cards, pieces of fancy paper, used and cleaned X-ray film, cotton wool, scraps of material and embroidery thread. No wonder Alice continued with the recycling habit throughout her life! Also needed was a crochet hook and a hole-punch to make holes around the edges to crochet and secure the layers together.

Alice’s little jewellery box was well used over the years, and bore the scars of pins and brooches on the lid, and specks and spots from other bits and pieces of jewellery. Nothing too flashy or expensive, just the jewellery of the time.

She found other odds and sods in the jewellery case: keys to a trunk and some other safe boxes that were long since gone (probably thrown out because their keys were missing!), a watch she used to wear around her neck when she was a trendy young thing in the 60s, a ticka-ticka-Timex watch one of her own girls used to wear (just waiting to be fitted with a new watch strap before it went out of fashion), a relic from some saint, or was it a pope, she’ll have to look that one up!

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There was a 50 pence piece from 1988 celebrating the Dublin millennium, and a coin with a very young Elizabeth II on the front and what looked like Chinese writing on the back!

“Probably came from somewhere like Hong Kong,” she thought. Another thing to check out!

Oh yes, and she found a miraculous medal hanging on a safety pin!

Fluff had built up inside around the edges of the jewellery box, and she used a cotton bud to gently tease out the debris and tip it into the waste bin.

“When I’m gone,” she thought. “That’s probably where this will end up.” She didn’t feel sad about thinking that way, it was just reality, and she had enjoyed not only making the box, but loved putting it on display when it was new.

She used a damp cloth to clean the surface of her jewellery box, and as memories flooded her mind she happily and gently hummed along to that song going round and round in her head, and for a short while she lost the worries of the day. Ah! Nat King Cole! Your memory lives on in your music.

Light up your face with gladness, Hide every trace of sadness Although a tear may be ever so near

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That’s the time you must keep on trying Smile, what’s the use of crying You’ll find that life is still worthwhile If you just Smile

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Lockdown Diversions

The Beast from the East

The “Beast from the East” struck on 24th February 2018. We watched the snow falling, thinking as in other years it would melt away within a couple of days. How wrong we were.

On doing some research on this episode of unseasonal weather I’ve discovered that the Beast from the East was the name given to Anticyclone Hartmut, and little did we know at the time that “Hartmut” would be with us until 4th March and that we would be in lockdown until the thaw set in. We were almost up to our knees in snow, ice and more snow, and we thought we would never escape from our homes. For days on end, we had snow blizzards, and as soon as we cleared the snow away from our doorsteps, it would be piled up again the next morning. I would look out into the back garden and see the round bird table resembling an American Angel Cake after the snow had been falling, and the garden table looking like a bigger version with about 8” of the fluffy white

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stuff sitting flawlessly on top.

Thinking back, that lockdown only lasted 8 days and we thought we had lost our freedom and would never get back to normal activities again.

The main roads opened up first when the council lorries sprayed them with salt and sand and used snow ploughs to clear the snow and slush to the sides of the roads. However, many housing estates had only one road in and out, with a maze of roads within the estate. The Residents Association mobilised willing and some less than willing volunteers to help clear the packed snow and ice, and soon we had tracks dug through the snow, and at last a few of the desperate workers were finally able to drive (carefully) along the tracks and escape from the estate. Most cars were still getting stuck, so eventually the residents clubbed together to pay for a digger to scrape the snow and ice into mounds to let traffic through.

Family life had to carry on even during a blizzard, so meals were cooked daily, and as stocks ran low, it was amazing how adventurous we became with the ingredients we had to hand.

During this Covid lockdown we’re discovering just how resilient we actually are. This pandemic will not last, and in time we will get back to a new normal life.

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First Holy Communion

I made my First Holy Communion in St. Vincent de Paul Church on Griffith Avenue Marino, and had my photograph taken outside. I was wearing my knee-length white communion dress with a short veil and a headband of flowers and petals. I felt very holy. I remember looking up at the high ceiling in the church and believing that the decorative panels were doors into heaven, and could picture myself flying up there on angels’ wings.

I had dead straight hair, but yearned to have curls, so the night before my communion mammy set my damp hair in strips of old sheets wound tightly around in sections all over my head till I looked like a mop. The next day I was thrilled with myself, checking in the mirror admiring my lovely ringlets bouncing over and back as I swished my head around from side to side. Now, Irish weather can be a bit unpredictable, changing seasons throughout the day, and wouldn’t always favour fancy hairstyles. By the end of the day my crowning glory was looking decidedly raggy, as straight bits fought their way out through the curls. Mammy wouldn’t have the time or patience to set my hair in ringlets every night, so the rag bag was put away in a drawer, ready and waiting for my next big day out.

Soda Bread

I’ve re-discovered the joy of making soda bread again – taking it out of the oven and breaking it in half to check the texture, and holding my arms out to keep the family of vultures at bay, they

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having little patience to wait until the bread cooled down. They would circle with the breadknife and clean tea towel, and holding onto the hot bread, would saw back and forth, claiming their own slice of bread and leaving a beach of breadcrumbs on the breadboard and countertop. They couldn’t wait to see the butter melt in liquid pools before they savaged down the mis-shapen slices, closing their eyes in ecstasy as they savoured every golden moment of bliss.

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The Writers

Ann Goucher

My name is Ann Goucher. I was born and raised in Dublin city centre. My family and I lived in the Iveagh Flats in Kevin Street. I attended school in Loreto College, Stephen’s Green. After finishing school, I worked in the Civil Service for 11 years until shortly after my first child was born.

When my husband Pat and I got married in 1983, we made our home in Old Bawn, Tallaght where our three children Daniel, Seán and Niamh were born. After a number of years as a homemaker, I returned to the workforce in 2000, joining South Dublin County Council as a clerical officer, where I worked for almost 14 years.

Since taking early retirement, I have enjoyed having the time for my hobbies which include reading, gardening and walking in the outdoors enjoying nature. I have also enjoyed taking part in a lot of different classes run by South Dublin Libraries.

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Pat Jacob

My name is Pat Jacob and I grew up in Oldcastle, Co Meath and life for us as a family of 6 was very simple and fulfilling growing up in the country in 1950s and 1960s. This is definitely where I got the love of the outdoor life, music and lots more.

I moved to work in Dublin after I finished school and my first job was in the Civil Service, Valuation Office and then the Department of Foreign Affairs. I met my late husband, Kevin some years later and left work to be a stay at home parent when my children were born and felt privileged to have been afforded that opportunity. I returned to employment in the 1990s and retired from banking some years ago.

Family and friends mean everything to me and I have enjoyed every minute of the precious time I have now to spend with them and continue my interest in hill walking, which has included many amazing holidays abroad with a fabulous group of people and music which has led me to learning to play the ukulele. My other interests include psychology, holidays and travelling to new places, genealogy, reading, knitting and many more.

I also appreciate the opportunity I have had from Tallaght Library to have been part of this project, which I have really enjoyed and look forward to many more.

Spread kindness, laugh often and never take life for granted.

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Brian McKeown

I was raised on the Cooley peninsula in north Co. Louth, in the house my father was born and raised in and my great grandfather was also born and raised there. I came to Dublin in 1969 to study and have now lived here for over fifty years. When I started working in 1974 I bought a camera and photography has been my hobby ever since. I attended the inaugural meeting of Clondalkin Camera Club in January 1988 and, thirty three years on, I am still an active member of that club today.

I had started investigating my family history following my mother’s death in 2009 and that intensified after my retirement in 2011. I attended a marvellous three year Genealogy and Family History course in UCD, Sean Murphy lecturer, and received a Diploma in 2017. Unfortunately the course has been discontinued and we were the last class to complete it.

As well as the details of births, marriages and deaths I am also interested in the stories about the times, the places and especially the people. In discussing the family stories with my four brothers I realised that we all recall different stories or recall the same story differently. Writing the stories down and recording the different versions is important so that the family history can be passed on to the next generation.

Because of my interest in photography I have also taken on the role of ‘The Keeper of the Family Photographs’. The South Dublin County Council project facilitated by Silver Thread ‘Memoir Writing from Photographs’ fitted right in with what I had been doing. The task of recording all the stories and exploring all the photographs may never be completed but each story recorded and each photograph explored is another step on the way.

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Rita O’Regan

My name is Rita O’Regan and I live in Dublin. I’m a septuagenarian with a busy brain and an enquiring mind. My hobbies include music, sewing, gardening, walking, crafting, travelling and generally filling my life with things that interest me.

I’ve lived in Ireland, England and Africa, and I’ve travelled extensively, particularly since my husband retired early, and together we’ve tasted life from The Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Peru, through to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Australia, New Zealand and east across the International Date Line to Samoa in the South Pacific.

I have two adult daughters and two wonderful grandchildren who are a delight and who keep me young at heart.

Music, and singing in particular, has always played a big part in my life, and when I grew too wrinkly for the bright lights I carried on my love of singing when I joined the Culwick Choral Society in 1998 around the time they were recruiting new members to celebrate their Centenary Year – that was 23 years ago! I’m also a member of the Tallaght based choir, Arabella Voices, and really miss all the rehearsing and performing with choir members. During this Covid lockdown, online rehearsing can help, but I sadly miss the face to face social interactions, and that wonderful fusion of sounds when all our rehearsing finally comes together.

Since 1995 I’ve been a member of Marlay ICA and have met a wonderful group of women, including many neighbours that I may never have got to know if it weren’t for our bi-monthly meetings when we would regularly have guest speakers and where I enrolled for classes in new skills such as basket weaving, various methods of sculpture and crafts, yoga and a myriad of other activities.

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With a busy brain and having had such a full life, my head is buzzing with stories that I want to write down – not just for me – but for my family. If other people enjoy what I have to say, that’s a bonus. Silver Thread Memoir Writing has given me the perfect opportunity to reflect on times and people in sepia-tinted photos carefully filed away in albums but now sadly consigned to the attic.

No doubt you feel exhausted reading this – but my family laugh at me when they attempt to make me rest – they sigh in unison and repeat my motto “If I Rest I Rust”!

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When Silvija Grigulis Jones was in her eighties, she started writing stories about her early life; she wrote them in English, the language of her children and grandchildren, even though she sometimes felt they suited different words, in a different language. Her memoir takes us on a long trip through time and places. Her young granddaughter Amber summarized it well:

“Granny was born in Riga, Latvia. She had two brothers and lived with her mam and dad by the sea side. Then World War II came. Her family had to leave. They went by boat, horse, train, lorry, walking and hitchhiking across Europe.”

Through a series of stories about small events, seen through the eyes of a child, with the background of pre- and post-war Europe, a larger story is told, of culture, family, displacement, and hope. Silvija takes us with her and her family, she shows us the life of a headstrong little girl in Latvia, the resilience of a child refugee, with the humour and positive outlook that would carry her through life. Throughout the book are echoes of her father’s words:

“Dzīvo dzīvē dzīvu dzīvi”

“While alive, live a lively life.”

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