Childhood Memories

I was going to wait till tomorrow to post about this topic, but last night I was playing my regular Sunday evening gig at McGettigan’s here in Singapore, and an Australian gent requested a song called The Old Man by Irish folk legends The Furey Brothers. Finbar Furey wrote the song many years ago shortly after their father Ted Furey, a legendary musician in his own right, passed away.  I haven’t sang it for many years, because I find it difficult to get through without “getting something in my eye”. So when this chap requested it, I was reluctant because it was two days before what would have been my own late father’s 89th birthday, which is tomorrow. But a request is a request and if one knows the song and it isn’t inappropriate to the vibe of the particular gig, then in my personal opinion, one should do it. But that’s not me preaching,  to each their own.

Anyway I got through the song okay, and was pleasantly surprised that I remembered all the lyrics.  But it set my mind wandering back to the now distant years of early childhood. These were the days that , as the song says, “I thought he’d live forever, he seemed so big and strong” but of course nobody does and he left us 19 years ago last month. So in the course of musing about childhood, I remembered that about 15 years ago I started writing a memoir of sorts. I called it “Memoirs Of A Gobshite – An Attempted Recollection of a 1970’s Irish Childhood”. I got about six chapters done , going up to my third or fourth year of secondary school, when the laptop I was using crashed and I lost the lot. Fortunately I had a back up of the first four chapters, 16000 words or so on a CD so I was able to recover them. But Chapters 5 and 6 – about another 8000 words in total- were forever lost, and the thought of having to rewrite them made me go  kinda cold on the whole idea and I abandoned it. It was never going to be on a par with Frank McCourt’s “Angela’s Ashes” or Alice Taylor’s “To School Through The Fields” anyway, not that I even harboured ambitions of getting it published. But as a result of last night, I opened it up again today and started reading through it. I might revisit it, and maybe even continue it but I am not sure if it is worth the time and effort. It’s probably of little interest to anyone but myself. After all, everyone has their own childhood story.

So, I’ve decided to post a little extract here to see if I can gauge opinion on whether I should leave it alone or continue it -or maybe even serialise it on here. All comments, positive or negative, are most welcome. Cheers,  GM

Here we go – from the end of Chapter 2

One final memory from my preschool years, which I am only including because it reminds me of a good joke. Across the road from our house was (and still is) a carpet factory belonging to a Dutch company, and they were building a house next to it for the Managing Director, who came over from Holland, to live in. One of the workers on the site would come over to our house every morning at 11 to get hot water from Mum to make tea. They kind of took me on as a site mascot, and I was able to play around the site, shifting little loads of sand with my toy tractor and trailer, and I’d accompany this bloke over home to get the hot water every morning. “Mornin Missus how is ya?” he’d say and hand Mum his empty kettle. I would immediately follow with “Mornin Missus how is ya?” and hand her a little bucket, which she would obligingly fill also. I imagine Mum was only too pleased to supply the lads with hot water, in return for them taking me out from under her feet for hours at a time.  I wonder who he was and whatever became of him? Anyway, the joke involves a very similar story. A little girl is fascinated by the work being done on the house going up next door, and like me, the builders, rough diamonds all of them, take her on as a “helper” and give her little jobs to do. At the end of a week of this, they even give her a pay envelope with a dollar in it. (Which I never got, now that I think of it – tight bastards) She rushes home to show her Mum, who gives it all oooh and aaah and takes her to the bank to open a savings account. With a nod and a wink from Mum, the bank teller asks the girl where she got the money from. “I’m helping to build the house next door. We’ve laid the foundation. This is my wages” says the girl proudly. “That’s fantastic” says the teller,”and so will you be helping to put up the frame next week?” To which the little girl replies “Yes, I will – if those useless bastards down at the lumber yard send us the f**king timber on time”!