Choirboys

 

It was with trepidation that I went to audition for the St. John's National School Choir. Brother Einard was the choir master and I always was a bit afraid of him even though I never had him for class. This test of suitability for the choir was not voluntary. Every boy in 5th. class was given this trial hearing, and failure to progress meant you were dispatched to the "crows nest". I succeeded, and the blemish of being a branded a crow was no longer a possibility. 

We rehearsed in the choir master's classroom. There were tiered benches on which we stood to practice and for the most part it was very enjoyable, and Brother Einard was not the tyrant I had been expecting. Occasionally, of course, he flew off the handle but mostly he was patient and pleasant but seldom smiled, unless he was conducting us in competition. In competition,his face took on a myriad array of playful expressions, which had the desired effect. We all smiled back.  

We learnt the hymns for Requiem Mass: the Tantum Ergo and Lux Aeterna and sometimes we sang them in the cathedral in Sligo at funeral Masses. We never knew what the words meant but the haunting sound of these Gregorian chants remains with me still.

We learned other choral songs too, for the Feis, which was a singing competition in the town. My favourites were: The Trout, The Dying Swan, Brochan Lom (a Scottish Irish song about porridge!), Oklahoma and many others. We were winners at every Feis  but the highlight was when we won the National Championship in Mullingar, County Westmeath, in 1969.

One of my most pleasant memories was singing in St. Patrick's Night concert in the Gilhooly Hall. We were decked out in our white shirts, black trousers and sky blue ties (Our Lady's colours). My mother was in one of the front rows and I caught a glimpse of her, enjoying our performance, while Brother Einard was, of course smiling maniacally at us, as he conducted. Afterwards I sat in the audience with her, and we chewed our way through a bag of Emerald chocolate toffees very contentedly.

As Christmas comes around, and the clear, frosty weather sets in I am reminded of the times that the choir travelled around the housing estates of Sligo, singing carols on a trailer pulled by a tractor. We were well wrapped up, and I was a happy ten year old as we sang out: Adeste Fidelis, Away in a Manger and Silent Night. There was a sprinkling of red-glass, Christmas candle lanterns amongst us too, to add to the atmosphere and the sound of our voices seemed to travel off into the distance. A team of collectors knocked on each door and gathered together donations that would later be distributed to the poor of the area, by the St. Vincent de Paul Society. On Christmas Eve we sang outside Cavendish's, in O' Connell Street, to the great enjoyment of the passing public, who smiled benevolently at us in this season of goodwill. Brother Einard's smile grew broader too as the afternoon grew to a close. Someone said he had a wee tradition of dropping in to the nearby pub for a warming hot whiskey. He deserved it.
 

My proud inscription on the back of the picture above.

These Hands

These are my hands after working on the set of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat for a few hours. There was a time when it was not unusual to see the colours of my day's painting spattered on me after painting a backdrop, flats or props in some theatre. Now it is a novelty and I am enjoying it thoroughly. I get caught up in the act of creating, and it is exhilirating, especially when it is progressing well.

 

Sunnyfresh

I don't remember when I first started working on Sunnyfresh farm. I think I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I cycled there with the Morrisons, twin brothers, Sean and Gerard, and their younger brother Martin. It must have been late Autumn because it was still dark when we set off to begin work at eight o clock. I spent most of that first day digging.
Sunnyfresh was a tomato farm and at the time there were about three acres under glass. We started at eight and finished at six in the evening. I worked Saturdays during school term and then five days during the holidays.
It was interesting seeing the season develop, watching the two leaf seedlings grow to large fruit bearing plants. We were paid sixteen shillings per day, which in today's money would be a little less than a Euro. It kept me in pocket money and I even felt proud to be grown up enough to contribute to the family budget at home.
There was great cameraderie between the diverse range of employees. A lot of the men were elderly, small farmers, who worked there to supplement their income.  Others were younger men from the town. The work was hard, especially in the Summer when the weather was hot outside and very humid in the glasshouses themselves.
There were various jobs to be done, watering, weeding, de-leafing, removing sideshoots but mostly it is the picking of the fruit I remember. Racing to see who could get to the end of their path first. The tomatoes were picked when they were yellow-orange in colour and it was important to make sure the green calyx stayed on the  fruit. At the end of  a day's picking our hands  were green and the best thing to clean them was a squashed green tomato.  Even with  a lot of scrubbing our hands never came fully  clean and we were left, each evening, with a brown stain impregnated into our skin.  One of the perks,  was that we got to take home tomatoes any evening, not that many of us ate them, having looked at them all Summer.
The farm grew by another acre during my time there but when the oil crisis hit in the 1970s it nearly marked the end of the business. It was getting too expensive to heat the  glasshouses. There were three managers, an Irish man called Fred Duffy, an English man, Bill Dray and a Dutch man, Jan Moret. I think it was Duffy who got the  brainwave to buy up all the waste oil in garages. Mostly they got it free. It was collected in a truck and taken to the farm where it was passed through a long pipe that had a series of sieves or filters built ino it. When the oil came out the end it could be used to heat the glasshouses, for practically nothing. As time passed the managers discovered that they had a surplus so they began to sell it to other businesses. Soon they then realised there was more profit in selling this oil, than burning it, to grow tomatoes. Sunnyfresh was wound up and a national company, Atlas Oil was formed.
The site of Sunnyfresh Farm is now a housing estate and the ghosts of some of the former workers maybe wander through it occasionally.
Two of the lads, Sean and Gerard, that I started with that first morning have since passed on, but I have great memories of us learning to drive the old dumper and tractor and planning camping trips to Rosses Point. We told jokes planned our futures and discussed our favourite music and  clothes. Mostly we  talked about the girls we danced with at the weekend disco and wondered if any of them would be in the Mayfair Cafe that night.
I have especially warm memories of breakfasts with my father, Jerry, quietly eating porridge and drinking tea, while the rest of the house was asleep.
In all I suppose I worked there for about four years and I have always thought about growing my own tomatoes. This Summer I did. My small house of four plants grew well and the crop yielded lots of small, sweet cherry tomatoes. It is now the end of August and there are still a few trusses to be picked and enjoyed over the coming weeks.

  I also grew a few strawberries.

Opening Lines

Recently I came upon an article on famous opening lines.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
- Charles Dickens: A Tale Of Two Cities.

I was born in the year 1632, in the City of York, of a good family, tho' not of that city, my Father being a Foreigner of  Bremen, who settled first at Hull.
- Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again.
-Daphne Du Maurier: Rebecca

Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent from London during the war because of the air-raids.
-C.S. Lewis: The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
-George Orwell: 1984

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book about the jungle called True Stories.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery: The Little Prince

Once Upon A Time.
-Author Unknown: 14th. Century

I remembered back to when striking mental images became clearly perceptible to me having listened to and read  a passage of writing. I must have been about thirteen and was in secondary school. My English teacher was a wonderful gentleman called Brendan O' Connor. He read short stories for us, from our text book, an anthology of short stories: Exploring English 1. The dull, uninteresting title belied the magic that was conjured up for  me, on the pages within its covers.
The sun, seemed always to stream in through the classroom windows, and flood the room with light as I listened to the vivid words of Irish writers like, Liam O' Flaherty, Frank O' Connor, Sean O' Faolain, Mary Lavin and Michael Mc Laverty .
I laughed at the uplifting humour in the story of  young Jackie's, First Confession.
I was amazed in the sad account of The Story of the Widow's Son, that there were two endings.
My favourite short story was The Wild Duck's Nest by Michael Mc Laverty.
It too, has a wonderful, opening sentence and continues....

The sun was setting, spilling gold light on the low western hills of Rathlin Island. A small boy walked jauntily along a hoof-printed path that wriggled between the folds of these hills and opened into a crater-like valley on the cliff-top. Presently he stopped as if remembering something, then suddenly he left the path, and began running up one of the hills. When he reached the top he was out of breath and stood watching streaks of light radiating from golden-edged clouds, the scene reminding him of a picture of the Transfiguration......

The enchantment of the story has always stayed with me, and I still appreciate the enjoyment I derived from hearing these tales. Some thirty five or so years after listening to the telling of The Wild Duck's Nest I boarded the ferry at Ballycastle on the north Antrim coast and travelled the six miles to Church Bay on Rathlin Island.

I have been enjoying visits to the islands off the coast of Ireland since.

The Key Man

From 1978 to 1983 I was sexton of St. John's Cathedral in Sligo. The Cathedral is situated in the centre of the town and set back from John Street. It is surrounded by tall stone walls and the grounds are entered by one of the three sturdy iron gates. Once inside these gates, the atmosphere becomes muted and you are unaware of the busy traffic passing outside.
We lived in the sexton's house, just beside the church. It had two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and downstairs was a spare room, a sitting room and a built on kitchen. We occupied the house rent free, as payment for our duties at the church. We also had our coal and electricity paid for. The work involved, opening and closing the church daily, preparing the church for Sunday Service, polishing the many brass plates, changing the beautiful altar cloths, vacuuming the floors and cutting the grass in the graveyard. We were very young and the first Catholics to occupy the post and we were very determined to discharge our duties well.
Cutting the grass and trimming around the many old headstones was the only tedious job. At first I used a scythe and the a Flymo Hover mower.  One day in early Summer, a lovely member of the congregation, Drummond Nelson came up to me in the graveyard, with a piece of apparatus I had never seen before. Drummond was the owner of a shop in the town that sold everything from hardware, to clocks and fishing tackle. His premises was a treasure trove of interesting stuff and had always been one of my favourite shops to venture in to. He said, "Try this out. I had a man in today who said these things might catch on" It was a grass strimmer, and it certainly made my life much easier, and they certainly caught on. Drummond kindly donated the strimmer to the church. Afterwards, I often had people stop and look curiously at me using it. Others would come up to me and ask what it was, and what it was called and where did I get it. I am sure it must have been the first strimmer in the town and the novelty of it intrigued many of the tourists visiting St. John's that first Summer.
The key below is the one I used each day to unlock the church door. It had to be inserted upside down and turned anti clockwise. Towards the end of our tenure in St. John's, a new lock was fitted and the old key was given to me as a memento. I have it set in a frame and hanging in our bedroom, a reminder of that short interval of time we enjoyed in 22 John Street.

Do you see me ?

The names of most of these young boys have faded from my memory. This picture was taken in Scoil Fatima, Sligo when I was in First Class. There must have been two classes taken together that day at the back of the school....47....48 boys...I missed one.... seems too big a class even for back then.....and it might explain why so many of the faces are unfamiliar to me. No school uniform... Some of them I remember.. but I can’t think of their full names. Short trousers and long socks...... Sometimes we used elastic bands to keep our socks up. I see Sean Hughes in the front row has long trousers....how could I forget that we all wanted long trousers at that time. Eoin O’Sullivan... Tony Moony...who used to “gather” apples (cookers) in the Autumn and sell them to my mother who made apple tarts with them, Ronnie Dunne..deep voice, Sean Mc Gowan, Michael Moyles....his family owned The Imperial... Reggie Armstrong...good footballer, John O’ Connell, Martin Morrison...from 10 Doorly Park..a friend, Oisin Gilbride, Billy Adams...from Garavogue, Lily’s brother, Liam Mc Gettigan...his family owned the Cruiscin Lan in Old Market Street, Sean Hughes from Martin Savage Terrace, Martin Callaghan another good footballer...Nelius Flynn, sixth from left, second row from the back.....a shy, quiet seven year old. I loved a new, thick, colouring book and a packet of crayons. My sister Ann and myself coloured happily for hours.

I wonder who the boy on the right is who is cropped out of the picture......I missed him the first time I counted. He is number 48.

Clooties

Many of the sites, now associated with Christianity, can be traced back to a time when the influence of Celtic druids flourished throughout Ireland. One of the remnants of this era, the rag tree, can still be seen throughout Ireland, to this day.
Recently I visited St. Patrick's Chair and Well. St Patrick’s Chair and Well (also known as the Druids Chair and Well) lies within Altadeven Wood, not far from the Ulster Way footpath, in County Tyrone. The chair is a huge 2m high stone block, shaped like a throne. The well, which is said to never run dry, is set within another rock close by. It is a 25 cm bullaun, or depression filled with natural water. According to folklore, this water has the power to heal.
Between the chair and the well is a small tree. It is still common practice today for people to tie rags as votive offerings for ailments to this tree. Tradition dictates that the pieces of cloth are dipped in the water of the well and then tied to a branch on the rag tree while a prayer is said to the spirit of the well. As the rag disintegrates over time, the ailment is supposed to fade away also.
The rags, and other offerings tied to the tree, are known as clooties.

My clootie (curious trinket) is the green wool

This is one of the remarkable places in Ireland that bridges that dark mysterious otherworld of the Druids, to Christianity and the modern world.

Billy's Boots

Billy was a comic book character. He was a young boy who found a pair of old football boots belonging to some very famous footballer...maybe Dixie Dean. Whenever he wore them the magical skills of the former star were transferred to him and he got his team out of many a tight spot on the playing field.
We were all football mad in Doorly Park and took part in the Sligo town league. We had two teams, Doorly Slashers and Distillery. The former was the A team and the latter,the B team. I played for Distillery and we trained enthusiastically in Chips Field. Chips was the council horse who grazed on our pitch in the evenings, and pulled a cart that contained the swept-up roadside dirt, during the day.
One day my father arrived home with an old style pair of football boots for me. They were black and I coated them with Dubbin to keep them in good condition. The first day I unveiled them at training the boys all gathered around and exclaimed, "Billy's Boots" The boots were frequently the butt of many a joke but secretly there remained a sense of some wonderment about them. I continued to train and became, what I thought to be, quite a good player.
Recently, after about forty years, I was in touch with our former trainer from that time, Eugene Mc Gloin, by email. The email was not related to football but I happened to ask if there was a photograph of the team from that time. As it transpired there was none. Looking back Eugene was not that much older than the players he was coaching but he commanded the greatest of respect from each of us. We knew he kept records and statistics of all matches which inspired us to play our best. To my great surprise he emailed me some facts, relating to myself a few months ago.



To my amazement I had been the leading scorer for our team that year.
But better was to follow.




Eugene had picked me on his Team Of The Year from all the players in the Sligo town league for that year.
It is one of my proudest achievements and perhaps due to some leftover magic in my old boots.

Green Milk

This is a curious photograph. It is a postcard, dated September 1972. I was 14 years old.
I attended St. John's National School from 1966 to 1970. I had a marvellous teacher in my final two years there. His name was Frank Mc Gill and I really thrived in his class. I remember him telling us one day in class that milk would soon, no longer be sold in one pint glass bottles, but in plastic containers . We all laughed at the daftness of such an idea and after much hilarity lessons resumed, with a number of us still shaking our heads in genuine disbelief.
At the time we had our milk delivered to the front door of our house. It didn't come in glass bottles. Instead we left out a metal container, on our doorstep, and the delivery boy would empty our measure of milk into it, from his metal can. His can was made from a heavier material. It had a lid, and a carrying handle and was always shining. Our milkman was Petie Harte and he supervised matters from the roadside. That's his delivery cart outside Peebles shop. The large churn can just be seen at the back of his "pony and trap".
Recently, my sister Marie told me that Petie used give her apples and oranges, and sometimes even a spin up as far as Gilmartin's shop, but no further.
My former teacher was proven right of course, but maybe in this age of Green policies, Frank Mc Gill would be foretelling of a return to this, more environmentally friendly way, of delivering local produce.

The House Lights Grow Dim

When I was in my early twenties I met Joe Meehan. Joe, then had built a vast resevoir of knowledge and experience of theatre in Sligo. He had liked some scenes I painted for a school production of The White Horse Inn, and invited me to work on the set for the next production of the Sligo Musical Society.
It was the beginning of an exciting involvement for me as set painter and designer working with Joe, in many productions in the Hawkswell Theatre, Sligo.
Following weeks of effort by us, the house lights in the theatre would grow dim and conversation in the auditorium subsided. There was an air of expectation in the now darkened hall. The curtains opened and an appreciative murmer greeted the scenery. That moment, before a word was spoken onstage, was the moment most savoured by the backstage team.
From my initial, sometimes vague design concept, and together with Joe's store of knowledge and practical experience we had determined the shape the set would eventually take. I remember us planning together for big productions like The Pirates of Penzance, Viva Mexico, My Fair Lady and Where's Charlie. We also also created settings for plays and Summer cabaret shows producing satisfying environments within which the cast could perform, and act out their roles. Another member of our backstage team was Phelim O Doherty, who took responsibility for the construction of the stage scenery and properties. Between us, we also took charge of the movement of scenery on and off the stage between acts so that the pace of the production was maintained. Joe as stage manager, had us, and any co opted stage hands drilled so that we worked like a well oiled machine, most of the time.
In most productions I think I succeeded in producing a set that not just looked right but also one that worked well for the director, the cast, the stage crew as well as the audience. There were some parts, of all of these sets that I liked, but my favourite was the one I did for Guys and Dolls. For some reason eveything came together in it, and by being innovative and confident in our approach we created a set that captured the mood of this great show. Its effectiveness added to the enjoyment of everyone in the theatre, especially me.
I especially loved the planning of a show and discussing with Joe, the design of the set I planned to make. We spent many hours talking about productions in the shop he owned in Grattan Street. His premises is the brown building on the right, Meehan Bros.
This year in our school we are staging Guys and Dolls in the small College Theatre. I am looking forward to this years production and reminiscing on the one I enjoyed so much twenty eight years ago.

Peebles

This is a curious postcard. I don't own it. It is dated 1972 so I was 14.
When I was somewhat younger I seemed to be at the dentist fairly often and my mother used to have to bribe me to go. My reward, on the journey home, was a visit with her to Peebles' shop in 4 Grattan Street. There I could choose from a selection of Matchbox model cars. I loved the boxes the little cars came in nearly as much as the shiny, glossy toy itself. It was a bonus if the doors or bonnet opened or if it was a truck that tipped up its load.
Peebles shop was a very old premises, almost of a bygone age, musty and athmospheric like a Dickensian curiousity shop. In every corner and on every shelf, there were pleasing touches of magic, books, toys, papers and and other items to imbue wonderment.
Billy Peebles, the elderly proprietor, seemed to have the same distinctive character as his shop. He was polite and jolly, bald, short and round-faced. He smiled a lot and always seemed to take delight from selling you the item that was perfect, just for you. He wore round, wire-framed glasses and a printer's apron. The apron, was possibly the last vestige of an era when his family printed a local paper, the Sligo Independent, on the premises.
The promise of a visit to this quaint Aladin's Cave certainly sugarcoated the dentist's visit, and was fair recompense for the discomfort undergone just a little while earlier.