Found stuck to the bottom of a folder....

Tons of Crap (Retd.)

‘Once up on a time.’ When we were growing up didn’t all good stories start like that?

Aye! And didn’t most end ‘and they all lived happily never after’? It’s hard to find a story like that nowadays.

Once up on a time I worked for a large international airline, you know the one I mean, Yea that’s it. It was a good place to work in then: good management, good staff, good pals and after work a good social life, and fun like the Inter Departmental Competitions.

Once when our section was training some staff from another airline, Air Lanka, here in Dublin, we would have won the Inter D hockey competition, except some smart ass discovered that two of the players we had successfully petitioned the ALSAA council to allow play with us were Sri Lankian hockey internationals.

One was the goalkeeper, the other an attacking forward. That was one story that didn’t end ‘and they all lived happily ever after’.

One of the teams in the soccer tournament for a couple of years was The Tons of Crap team. Their mission was never to win a match and never to have a man or woman booked for tackling another player. The goalkeeper would be dropped if he stopped a shot and any forward who failed to shoot over the bar at an open goal, would be transferred to a better team: and a transfer payment would be made to that team if they took him.

For a few years the team played badly enough and lost all their matches, then disaster struck. Late in injury time in a nil all match the other team scored an own-goal and the referee blew up before the Tons of Crap team could pay back the favour. They had won a match and despite their appeal and protests to the Fair Play Committee the result was a win for Tons of Crap.

The following year the team did not play in any competitions in protest and to my knowledge have not participated in any Inter D to this day. Another unhappy ending.

If they made a comeback today how would they line up? Who would be recruited to play with them? What strategy would they adopt to loose all their matches?

As it so happens, this reporter has been contacted, by their old manager Snitchy and that is just what he is now proposing: the All Old Tons of Crap (Retd.) Team. He even has a wish list of the type of players he wants to attract if you feel you can fill any of there positions contact snitchy@tonsofcrapagain.com.

For the goalkeepers he wants someone who once guided large aircraft to their stand on the ramp. Snitchy told me. “I want men who when they see a ball approach will confuse it with the nose cone of a large jet. I want them to put their right hand to their ear and scream, LEFT LEFT LEFT YA SO'NSO and then jump out of the way and run along the end line with both hands over their head”.

He is looking to appoint a Team captain who would once have been a manager or director of a division. He will play in the midfield position, a kind of Roy Keane role. When he gets the ball, Snitchy says, “I’m hoping he will fall back towards defence and pass the ball to the vice-captain, also midfield, who will run with it, while the captain shouts CARRY IT, CARRY IT, DON’T LET US DOWN, KEEP WITH THE PLAN. MAKE SURE IT’S IN THE BUDGET!”

He says he might have a bit of a problem if he messes up the rest of midfield. The players he need to attract will once have been sales or marketing managers who will bring with them two forwards that have previously worked with. “My master plan, depends on them regressing back into their work role. When they get the ball they will only pass it to their man, the sales or marketing forward, with instructions to do their best and report back. The best men for that job would be ex-cargo, they could run at the opposing team roaring NETT NETT, FIVE PLUS FIFTEEN. This would be real confusing in that the NETT NETT would confuse the other team: they would think we were serious about having a real go. I don’t know what the FIVE PLUS FIFTEEN means, as what it was all about, was a secret.”

That’s his plan for the one-four-two roles. The backs he says will be a real problem. He needs stoppers who will fall over when challenged. Retired Business Development Analysts looked promising but when he put the case to them they said it would take three months before they could get together to discuss it. He met a few retired systems programmers but when he said Good Morning at the meeting they replied SIX MAN MONTHS. So he gave up on them as well.

He asked the pilots, if they could supply two centre backs, but they were all working for other outfits and had to look at the roster to see if they would organise a gash day so that they could meet him.

In the end they appointed a committee and two outside advisors to discuss the issue and report back. Then they propose to have discussions and ballot their members to see if they will participate, they also proposed that if they did take part all their members would have to be trained at Old Trafford so that they could rotate players in case of work commitments. If a potential player had not been called on for a certain time they indicated that would need a Soccer Skills Simulator at base in Dublin for refreshers. Snitchy says he is waiting , but not with much hope of a result, for their representative, “TO GET BACK TO HIM.”

He says he rang Reservations three weeks ago and he is still listening to The Jingle, and sometimes he even gets up at night, just in case he is off hold. He considered going in and establishing contact in one of the booking offices but he can’t find any in town. He asked a travel agent to help, get him in contact, but they asked him for a commission. He says he went out to the HOB but he couldn’t get into the car park.

So then he fell back on the old reliable and went looking for the Personnel Department to ask for advice but the PCB is now a Lap Dancing Club. For some reason he said that didn’t surprise him. I advised him to put an advert in Aer Sceala: he said it was gone too. He went up to the Dublin Passenger Terminal but couldn’t find the front door and when eventually he got in all he could see were Ryanair desks.

In the end he fell back on an old reliable; he went to ALSAA on a Friday evening around five, but it was empty; a fellow called Tommy said he hadn’t seen a face he knew in ages.

Snitchy has given up. He says he never thought putting another Tons of Crap Team (Retd,) together for a few Sunday morning games would be such a difficult thing.

All I could say to comfort him was, “Maybe they all lived happily ever after.”

The O'Connors get what they deserve - gaping mouths!

Peggy is at rest now, beside Jonnie and her parents. The funeral was big, dignified and the headstone now had, as she had instructed Jonnies' name, his date of birth and the date he died, inscribed there. Below it her name and date of birth sat waiting for the final chiselling.

"As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. World without end. Amen. God rest her soul."

The priest turned to Donie and shook his hand, "She is at rest now Donie. I heard what you did for her, James came to me to make the arrangements."

"Did the O'Connors not meet you to arrange things?"

"No. One of them rang, the eldest I think. I told him it was all looked after. He may have assumed it was you who arranged things. I left him none the wiser."

"Three Our Fathers, and Hail Mary's for deception so."

"No Donie. The deception was in their own minds. We are in the clear."

"Amen so, Father."

MacDonald the solicitor sat behind his desk, in his overheated office, and closed a small, slim, tidy file. To an onlooker it would appear he had a smile, more a smirk on his face. It was a smile! The smile of a man who had completed a good job for his client.

"That’s all the business concluded then in the case of the last will and testament of the late Peggy Murphy. "

The solicitor rose. Nodded. Offered his hand in condolence and then realises that it’s not going to be taken. Still, he leave his hand outstretched: a talon that won't be grasped.

The Nephews and niece stood as if to leave the office and then they turn on one another.

"You lot weren’t watching her. How did she slip that one past us? A son! A bloody son that no-one knows about. She had the bloody birth cert. She thought of that. And now he gets the feckin' prize. You lot weren’t watching her. You let her out of your sight. You lost the feckin' plot. There’s no way out of this. Shit! The bitch! After all we did for her. The ungrateful bitch. Feck you two. Were ye feckin' asleep? The Bitch. The Fecking Bitch!"

"There goes the villa in the South of France so...."

There is a stunned pause before the other two physically turn on him.

"Lady and gentlemen. Can I respectfully advise you to take this argument outside. The business here is done, and it's satisfactory, very satisfactory. Good Day. "

The Caged Songbird (the title of the play) sings again...

Well Jonnie, you left a trail and I followed it. I found James. Peggy's sleeping now and I’d say it won’t be long now before she joins yourself and the Bossman and the Mam and the rest of the clan. My parents as well, This is the first time I saw her peaceful in a while. I’d say she’s dreaming. We will wait for a while to see if she wakes up properly. I did the job for you. I watched over her. I made up my mind and brought the boy to see her. Rest easy now. I know it troubled you that you let the Bossman send the baby away. Made him an orphan you said. But sure I knew the Bossman too. It would have been hard to change his mind.

The Club Football Final was a bad match. Our lads couldn’t match the Boys from Knockbride around midfield...

Peggy is home again talking to Jimmy. The years have rolled back just like a dream travel daydream.

The day is lovely and bright: a happy day. I’m looking out across the fields. The hens and chickens are fussed, shoving one another away, pecking at the grain, I’m throwing to them, cackling and squabbling.

I’m glad you came back. They all said you were gone for good, that you were married over there. I told them they were wrong. I waited. I knew you would come back. They took our son away. I called him James. I cried for him and that you were not here with us. Now you found me. Just like he did. He came for me. I told him I never wanted to give him away. That they made me. I told him to keep quiet or they might hunt him away again. He forgave me. When I got the place, after Jonnie, I made a will. I left it all to him but he won’t need it now you’re back. This time you don’t have to go away. This time it will be different. This time we will look after him together. Will we sing our song? It's been so long since I felt like singing anything.

My thoughts today, though I'm far away,

Dwell on Tyrconnell's shore,

The salt sea air and the colleens fair,

Of lovely green Gweedore.

There's a flower there, beyond compare,

That I'll treasure evermore,

It's that grand colleen, in her gown of green,

The Rose of Aranmore.”

Peggy's Secret...Is Revealed....

They’re at it again Fighting. All we do now is fight. About me and the baby. I didn’t mean to get this way. In the family way. It’s not as if I planned it. It just happened. I love him and he loves me and that’s all that matters. He says we can run away to England, but if I do that who will look after Bossman. They’re going to send me away to have it. Then they will take it away and I’ll never see my daughter or son again. It will be a son and he will grow up to have his fathers smile. It’s a lovely smile - a scamp’s smile.

They’re gone. Thank God. They’re gone. Here’s Bossman and the dinner’s ready. He might be in good humour. Here’s the dinner Boss. It’s bacon and cabbage just what you like.

I didn’t do it on purpose. Molly didn’t want him! She married his brother. He’s older and has a few pounds. Jimmy has nothing: just the shirt on his back.

I DON’T KNOW WHY! What Molly has is only a bit of paper. ONLY A BIT OF PAPER. I’LL HAVE ONE TOO. SOON. You’ll see. Everyone will see…

At the entrance to the Nursing Home, Donie and a younger man get out of a car.

"Go in through the front doors. Don’t go right: there’s a door to the left. That leads to a small stairs. Go up that to the first floor. Go out the door in front and it’s the second room on the left."

Donie pays the hackney fare, and slowly follows the younger man into the home and up towards Peggy' room.

He arrives and glances into Peggy's room, where she is alone. Moved to solitude to await death. James sits beside the bed, he is holding her hand, leaning down and crying, the tears fall on to the white bed sheet. A mirror to the colour in Peggy's face. Donie stands at the door: a sentry, on guard.

"Mam. Mam it’s me. It’s James. I came, Donie found me and got in contact, He phoned. I’m here now. It’s going to be all right Mam."

Hearing his voice Peggy stirs, trying to move towards the sound.

"Jimmy? Jimmy is that you?"

" No Mam. It’s me James. Remember?"

"James. Oh! James. I missed you. You’ll have to go! They’ll run you."

"Not any more Mam. Not this time, I won’t let them. I’m here to look after you now."

This is just a normal conversation - among relatives in a nursing home!

"Go home. Go Home. I don’t want you here. Go away and leave us in peace. Go to your own places."

"What’s she on about - NOW?"

"She’s been like that all week. She thinks she is back in the old house. She keeps talking to her Father and him dead since 1964."

"Christ I hope I never go like that. Feck me! Spending all your days in the County Home, out of your head. Living in the past.”

What are all these people doing in the house. I keep telling them to go, but they won’t listen. When Bossman comes home he will be cranky about it and he’s going to blame me for letting them in. He’ll want his dinner and I haven’t enough for all of them. Why won’t they leave. I don’t want them here. I have work to do.

"I keep telling you. It’s NOT The Home any more. It’s a Nursing Home now."

"It still smells the feckin’ same. Wee and vomit."

"Like your place? Shut-up She’ll hear you."

"I don’t know why we come in at all. She doesn’t know we’re here."

"Has she made a will? Who will she leave the place too?"

"I don’t feckin’ know. You shower were around her. I’m was up in Dublin."

"If we don’t watch it she might leave it to the other shower. They were in to see her all the time when she was in the house."

"I asked the Solicitor MacDonald. He said she tidied up all the bits, when she went to him over Jonnie’s will. She told none of us she was going, or what she was at."

"That was before the Hospital. She had her wits about her then?"

"Yea, well about her I’d say."

"We’re all right. She always said she would leave it to the O’Connors. To us."

"Yea. That’s right. She did. Could we get a look at it? Do you think?"

"Don’t be stupid. John Joe."

"I was thinking of nominating you Kate. I wouldn’t say she will last long in here. It’s a terrible place."

"We're in it so."

"Who else? She has no one else, but us."

"God help her!"

"F-off John Joe. Are the pubs open yet?"

"Give me a few bob and I'm out of here, me money is not due 'till tomorrow."

"What about last weeks?"

"Gone with the wind Sister Dear, gone with the wind."

Ringo the mule! Not as mad as it seems...

Donie made the trip to the bog. It was almost a daily ritual when Jonnie was alive. Well! A fair day ritual then. There was nothing as miserable as a wet day in the bog, no shelter and maybe a whipping wind. The wind in summer, made the bog cotton dance on their tall thin green stalks, and the gentle breezes created miniature tornados, never, ever, more than a few few tall.

Thank God. The turf is all saved. Poor auld Jonnie. I miss you. At this time of the year with your turf saved you’d say: Sound now for the winter. We have a shed full of dry turf.

I went to the Nursing Home to see The Sister. Most days now she just sits beside her bed muttering, and sobbing. I think she’s remembering things that upset her. She’s troubled. I’d say she’s angry about something. You know the way she used get. All huffy - with that look on her face.

Maybe she feels ashamed that it’s turned out this way. Sometimes she gets frustrated when you don’t understand what she wants.

Poor Peggy her mind is trapped in the past. She just has today and there will be no tomorrow: all she has is yesterdays. Just yesterdays. Only the past for company...

I have your caged birds. They're singing again, went silent for a few days after I moved them.

Ringo, the Mule, with his fringe, took a bit longer. The call eegits birdbrains, feather heads, but I think the birds missed you as well.

What that lot are at isn’t right. She deserves a lot more.

Somethin’ has to be done about it. For all our sakes, I better start looking for him. For the boy.

Peggy falls the first time - couldn't resist it Easter week...

The county hospital was a place where sick people from the locality were taken for treatment. The locality was a loose term, it could be near, but also far, to far sometimes for stroke or heart attack victims to survive long enough in the back of an Ambulance on narrow bumpy rural roads.

Peggy had only been transported a short journey. The hospital in the county capital was relatively close and accessible. She was also lucky in that in those days a bed would be available immediately, Progress in Ireland with the jobs boom and cheap drink would soon mean that real sick older people would find that the beds they paid for with their welfare contributions and taxes were filled by drunks, brawlers, drug addicts, and others who in their short lives so far had made no contribution to earn them the space they came to occupy.

Just when I was starting to get back on me feet. I don’t know how I fell or how I got here. It’s the Hospital and that’s a blessing. I was afraid it would be the other place they would put me into. I don’t know what I was thinking when the neighbours were knocking at the door and the windows. I think I tried to chase them away. Thought it was Bully-boys after the money. Am I gettin’ forgetful?

The O'Connors huddled, bedside crouchers, watching Peggy, counting her breaths, wondering, maybe even hoping.

"Would ya look at her, away with the fairies, muttering to herself. Once they think she is over the fall, they'll want her out of here. They said she didn't break anything, so the writing's on the wall. We better be ready to move her somewhere."

"She can’t look after herself Miki, and the ravin’ is getting worse. She keeps talking to people who are dead. Last night she thought she was married and had a husband and a son."

"Maybe she was. Maybe she had a son. Wouldn't that be somethin'. Somethin', man alive."

"Don’t be a smart-arse, John Joe."

"Leave it with me I’ll make some calls. We’ll get her in somewhere. Don’t let them move her out of here ‘till I have a place fixed up. Don’t let her go back home what ever happens. Are you two listening? On no account is she to be let go back home."

Part 4 ..Peggy continues her monologue. And we meet the baddies.....

I can hear him now. Feckin’ Publicans have bought enough cars out of my money. I have the lump now, a nice whack of money, and I’m holding on to it.

But to his credit he did change. Began to look after the house, paint it and repairs and the like, and to be fair he even gave me a a bit more money.

He put in his time catching songbirds, and making small cages and perches and gettin' food bowls and water bowls, and seeds for them.

I enjoyed their singing in the evening. What will I do with them now? They can't be let out into the wild, they are not able for that any more. Maybe Donie will take them. I'll ask him, when he comes up to the house.

The only thing was, Jonnie wouldn't give up the coffin-nails, even though I nagged him about cancer and lung disease. I even stooped smoking myself and asked him to do it as well, at the same time.

Then now: at a time when the roles should have been reversing, when he was due to pay back his debts and look after me a bit, he went back to being selfish, he went over the bridge.

That’s what they call death in this town: goin’ over The Bridge to the Graveyard.

He always said. 'Over the Bridge, it's the graveyard, but people are dyin' to get into it.'

The pub was not elaborate, it was a dingy dark place: a country pub. Not a happy cheerful place: a place for drowning sorrows, fuelled by low incomes and welfare payments. An old man's refuge. It had to be that way since few young people would forsake the bright, music filled lounge bars for dismal.

The O'Connors are sitting around a rickety round single pedestal beer ringed and otherwise stained table: the origins of the dirty patina long forgotten.

"Get some drinks. Get hot whiskeys, I’m freezin’. "

"Jees Miki. That bloody graveyard gives people their deaths."

"What killed him in the end? Was it the breathing of was he just gummed up in the veins? Kate, you were keepin' and eye on him. Any clues."

"He was bet that’s all. Bet up. Worn out. You could play the drums on his thighs. What I want to know. What’s to be done with Peggy? I’m not sure she can look after herself there in the house."

" Leave it for a while. See how it goes."

"Kate, Peggy's bet in the legs. The feet are crippled with the arthritis."

"Wait for a while. We can’t have them saying we fecked her out: into The Home."

"Hey! Shut up, keep it down. Here she is now. Who’s that talking to her? Who is it? Do anyone of you know? Is it some of the other nieces and nephews? John Joe sidle over and keep an eye on them."

"Sidle yerself, Miki, or better still have Keyhole Kate go over and snoop. She's good at that, not minding her own business."

"Drunk."

"Noser, Busy Body."

"Shutup, quiet! I'll go."

Mikie, approached his cousins, smiling, hand outstretched offering condolences, and platitudes. "He was a great Uncle, will be badly missed...."

Peggy's Secret Instalment three

"Sorry for your troubles Peggy. Sure he’s in Heaven now. Away from all that pain - the gasping for breath."

"Thanks Donie, you were always a good friend to us. I told him....Coffin-nails...they’d kill him. I did....."

She goes silent, slouching back into the wheelchair, alone now in life and alone with her thoughts, her reflections.

Jonnie, brother, I can't help thinking I'm near finished myself. Jonnie, you're gone now and I'm alone. I did me best for you all the years. I hate this wheelchair and all the neighbours staring at me. I wonder when they got this for the day was it for me or for them? So that they could push me where ever they wanted to put me. The arthritis was only an excuse.

To say I’m crippled! I'm not: I could have walked. I would have if the hadn’t bullied me: as usual. I wonder will they try and put me away now?

I can look after myself. Let them try…

It’s going to rain heavier now. It always rains at funerals. I’m on me own now. Alone in the house for the first time ever: the time flew.

It seems only yesterday that I started looking after Bossman when Mammy died. Daddy was easy to look after. But Jonnie! You were a different matter; an alcoholic and a briar always looking for a fight. Oh! Your drinking pals didn’t know all there was to know about you: Bucko. A Street Angle and a House Devil.

I used look forward to the evening when Bossman was fed. Then I could cycle the three miles to Molly’s to give her the news. He had a good day. He is working on a pony’s trap. What? The other fellow? I don’t know where he is or when he might come home. I left his dinner in the oven. He will probably go to bed and not have it at all. But if it wasn’t there for him. Well, you know…

Then I’d have the cup of tea: made for me. I’d smoke me Afton and hear the news from Molly - her day and her house and her family.

Then Daddy died: prostate cancer. And I buried him and continued looking after Jonnie. I kept me head down and never complained. He tried but could never throw me out. Bossman saw to that: left the place to both of us. I suppose, it’s mine now.

At times I was miserable with all the problems of married life without any of the advantages. What Bossman did was right, but at times I hated the ‘till death do us part partnership.

At least I wasn't like one of those unfortunate women who married farmer's sons, elderly bachelors and only fit for the grave and then when she moved in with him to the farmhouse, she found out it was a trap with all of the house, old mother, old father, brothers, and the lad looking for someone to skivvy for them.

Two women in one house and mammy thinking the poor unfortunate wife was not looking after her child like he was used to. Some of those women were widowed and then the miserable family threw her out into the streets. At least I had my share of the house.

Jonnie often acted the Thick Eegit, and lost his job over the drink. But the Union and Molly’s man fought and in the end they gave him early redundancy and he got The Lump: and a bit of sense.

The Portarlington to Mountmellick Canal

The Canal

In 1772 the Grand Canal Company was founded to build a waterway which would link Dublin with the Shannon and capture midland trade. When completed the main line of the Grand Canal linking Robertstown, Edenderry, Dangan and Tullamore passed north of Portarlington. A branch line was constructed south-west through Rathangan, Monasterevin and Athy to the Barrrow.

On August 14th 1800 the Queens County Canal company was formed to link Monasterevin, Portarlington and Mountmellick to the branch canal. Up to then the branch canal and Barrow river met at Monasterevin and a river ferry system was in operation. The cost of carrying the canal over the river by bridge and of raising the canal to its present level was to paid for by the Queens County development bringing the estimated cost for the twenty foot wide by thirteen deep excavation to £90, 000. The wages for the construction crew was two shillings a week with a ganger in charge of fifty men to get half a Crown. Construction costs were a shilling a yard through sand or gravel and three shillings through rock.

My memories of the canal are of a time when it was used by Odlum's Mills to transport grain and flour between their Mills at Dublin, Sallins and Portarlington. The large black canal boats were power driven although I have some memories of seeing horses pulling canal boats, where the horse and a man walked along the tow path.

During the Emergency, when petrol was scarce, the canal was used to ferry turf from the bogs near the town to Dublin and to ferry the provisions for the town back down.

The canals also helped to build up the distribution and popularity of Guinness which from the turn of the century was transported from St. ,James's Gate Brewery by canal because in those days the porter was not a good traveller over roads .Rural areas would have a better pint if the brew could be transported under gentle conditions. Canals were ideal, because the brew was cushioned against bumps or knocks or rolling about. The porter was carried in wooden barrels which were filled through a hole at the top which was then bunged with a wooden plug. The tap for drawing off the drink was inserted into the barrel in place of the wooden plug which was knocked into the barrel.

These wooden barrels were returned to the brewery for cleaning which involved scouring out the inside of the barrel by flaying the wood with chains. Over a period of time this scouring increased the carrying capacity of the barrel. A new barrel would hold eighteen dozen half pint bottles, but a well washed barrel would hold twenty four dozen half pints. The boatmen knew this and would use selected barrels to draw off their "Tilly ". The result of this was that many farmers along the canal side exchanged vegetables or potatoes for porter with the "Tully Men ". The publican who received the barrel with the regulation amount of Porter in it could have no real complaint with the brewery.

We used to go and watch the sunburned red faced men move the boats through the lock, or moor and unload at the Canal side storage depot. The locks were to me an ingenious device for lifting the boats up from the lower canal level to the higher level. The boats entered the lock through the big wooden gates and when the gates were closed water was let in through trap-doors in the gates which the keeper opened to flood the chamber and lift the boat.

The sight of the boat and men raising silently and without effort past the granite kerb stones that formed the top of the chamber was like some magic trick in the circus When boats were travelling down through the lock coming in at high tide and moving away at the low level the magic never appeared as awesome or amazing.

We fished for perch, eels, roach and tench with bread, dough or worms on bamboo rods, nylon line and eel hooks. The canal at evening would be dotted by kids almost hidden in the bank-side vegetation holding rods over lily pools and watching intently for the sinking white dough ball to disappear. Then we knew the fish had the bait in his mouth and it was time for the strike. Over enthusiastic upward strikes, or over-estimation of the size of the fish, sometime led to flying fish as the quarry flew high in the air before landing on the bank or in the bushes.

Eels were a harder prey: they hid in holes in the underwater walls of the storage depot. We would open the waterside doors and drop the nylon line and the baited eel hooks down gently past the holes. A flash deep down in the water and a sustained tug-of war was the signal to slide a forked stick down the line to form a fulcrum to pull the eel out of its lair. After the capture we admired the eel and told stories of how previous eels, dead for hours or days, had wriggled on the pan when being fried.

Once in the late fifties the canal banks burst and because of the low water level and lack of food the usually elusive fish were easy to catch on rods or in corrals of rocks, into which we herded the fish before throwing them out onto the low banks. After a week or so of this type of fishing not even the cats in the town could face their fish supper.

In the warm Summer days we swam in the still waters, jumped from the bridges into the lower lock waters and once even boated-up the long stretch between Lanagan's Lock and the Mill in a rowing boat. We were like Venician Gondoliers, until one smart-alec overturned the boat and tossed us all into the water, just as an admiring crowd of young ladies had gathered on their way home from a football match in the canal side football field.

In late Summer , sun-browned we walked towards Lee Castle, to where the grove of hazel trees grew to collect shiny sun-browned nuts. These nuts were either cracked immediately between our back teeth, or opened by pairing and splitting by penknife, or taken home to store in drawers for Halloween.

Our stretch of the canal was bridged by two roads, the Monasterevin Road: a high humped back bridge, and the Station road: a wooden swing bridge. The swing bridge was at road level and was arranged to swing back over the canal bank to allow the boats pass. It was just above where the boats unloaded and the Mill wall formed the town side of the canal bank.

The run up to this bridge was a long straight stretch of road, but just before the bridge the road curved slightly to cross the canal, while a lane-way for watering cattle or drawing water ran straight and down beside the road to the water's edge.

One gentleman Dan rode a bicycle home from the town on Saturday nights. Frequently in his sups he failed to make the turn and rode down the lane and ended up in the water. It became almost part of the night-watchman job at the Mill to pull Dan from the water and dry him out beside the boilers which dried the wheat. When we walked along the canal to the football match on Sunday we always came home, the long way by the wooden bridge, just to check if Dan's bicycle was lying deep down in the clear water.

If Summer was a time of fun along the canal, a frosty winter was a delight. If the canal froze over we threw large rocks onto the ice to test its strength before skating or sliding along it. One year a flock of swans attempted to land in the canal while it was frozen and they too skidded all over the place just, we imagined, like swan lake. For a while afterwards the swans became land locked having no stretch of water to build up speed on before taking off and flying away.

In the sixties the canal became unused, fell into disrepair and was filled in to form a long straight narrow road from Lanagan's Lock, under the iron Railway Bridge to meet the Ballymorris road at the haunted house along the outskirts of the town.

Second Installement Peggy's Secret.

Donie stands, apart in the Graveyard, watching as the coffin is shouldered and borne to the grave. Behind him the gravestones, some old, not straight, leaning, some tall, some short, stand ghosted in a morning dimness. A light rain falls straight down.

Jonnie, in the box over there Paddy, was only sixty-five: not old today, we were cousins. His mother and mine were sisters. We were neighbours and we were friends too. Old friends, who grew up together. I thought we would grow old together.

We were friends as well on the bog. Investors each year in the bank that he always said had no big locked door, no money, no manager, shareholders or funds.

He laughed each time he visited the Bookies. The Turf Accountant, the official taxman's title on the betting business. Are they countin' the sods - of turf? He laughed and said, as well: the only loan we would get from our bank, was the loan of a bog-barrow that was hidden in a drain.

That’s the sister, Peggy in the wheelchair. She looked after him most of the time, even when he used be on the batter, on the drink. He gave that up in the last ten years, but he kept puffin’ on the coffin-nails. That’s what got him in the end.

That lot around her are the nieces and nephews, the ones on the edge of the circle, are the O’Connors. She used call in and keep an eye on them after Molly, her sister died. Martin did not last long after. A broken heart they said.

They're all away in their own places now, with their own families, except the youngest. He's in the home place, letting it fall down around his ears. Too lazy to shake himself, never mind work for a living. On the scratch, calling it disability, 'cause he says his back is at him. It's his elbow resting on a bar counter that is the real culprit.

In isolation - going up the walls - must paint them as well!

Over the next few weeks. I will post extracts from my new kindle - it's short stories - and a short book to boot. Maybe this is what I should do-  Boot It.

A man told me my paperback was a grate book - just great for lighting a fire in the grate! This will fix him - it's a kindle....

Peggy's Secret

Streets of Birdsong

Buteo buteo

&

Other Short Stories

© Pat Mc Namara

writing as Lazarian Wordsmith 2019 2020

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Peggy's Secret

Cill Malogue was a village on the outskirts of the planted town. The English arrived late in the 1600's and founded their Burrough Town, wrote a charter, set up a council and built their Protestant church. Later the Huguenots also arrived and built their dwelling houses, set up their own church and their industries. The native Irish were no longer living in County Laois and County Offaly, but lived in Queen's County and King's County. They built their own Catholic Church in the village, and anglicised the Gaelic name so that the English could pronounce it. Along the road a half mile away they used a scraggy field, near the river, as their burial place. To frustrate the English or French they named it Reilig. In Gaelic the cemetery.

Over time mourners followed the coffin on foot to this place and buried the dead there. As time passed and society changed, the bare footed peasants became the farmers and craftsmen, the planted became the prosperous merchants, and their children became the new generation of the next century, when motorised hearses carried the dead, but from then up until today the locals still walked behind the hearse.

They talked, smoked and slow marched along, over the new railway bridge to the graveyard.

"He didn't last long, when they opened him up."

"Bloody cancer, it's the family disease, got the mother and the father, two sisters and his brother: Billy. He was only twenty or so, no life at all, just a youngster really. It even passed on to the next generation, the nephew who lived with them got it as well. The Big C."

Through the crowd the conversations wavered, wafted and, as the final destination arrived, waned. Then low voiced whispers only.

"Yer man there from Dublin, is he a nephew?"

"And a nuisance, the other two are in the car behind with Peggy. Jonnie and Peggy only saw that side, when one or other of them wanted something. A sack or turf to impress the neighbours with the smell of good bog turf, or a sack of vegetable for their occasional dining experiences. I heard them spoofin' one time I got close enough to hear their whispered conversations. Bloody paranoid that someone would hear them, looking around like they were afraid of shadows."

" Mollie's children?."

"Aye. Don't forget the father, the footballer, he had a bit to do with the action there as well. They don't have his temperament though. Scratchy Briars the lot of them."

"I remember Molly when she was young, a smasher, no wonder she married the best man around."

"Quite! We're away now, they're hoisting him out."

More to come tomorrow....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Peggys-Secret-Streets-Birdsong-Stories-ebook/dp/B082MQYP3Y/ref=sr_1_80?dchild=1&qid=1586000028&refinements=p_27%3AThe+Wordsmiths&s=digital-text&sr=1-80