Dun Laoghaire to Hollyhead on a salad.

Dun Laoghaire - above; Hollyhead - below


Hey my novel is available in the UK from Amazon UK in paperback http://tiny.cc/lgtaf and it'll be on Kindle too as soon as they get the title right.

I had a few emails asking me what happened on the edge of the Sahara Desert well I'll leave that for now and relate another adventure.

This was on a ship from Dun Laoghaire to Hollyhead when I was a mere teenager; it was before I left school and as I left school at 15 I was really young; I know I was wearing blue jeans, not Levis, but another make of shiny blue jeans and a blue zipper jacket.

Dun Laoghaire to Hollyhead is the usual route from Dublin to anywhere in England south of Crewe; Dun Laoghaire being about 20 miles south of Dublin and Hollyhead a small island in Anglesey in Wales. When we got to Holllyhead we would get the train to Birmingham which is where we were brought up.

We knew the steamers, the ships, very well as we would go to Ireland a few times every year and would stay for the whole summer holidays – 8 weeks – in Finglas which was miles away from Dublin; maybe only 4 miles or so but still a million miles and a pain in the arse on the bus.

The journey to and from Dublin was about as long as it takes me these days to go between Los Angeles and London. We would leave the house on Moseley Road, in Birmingham, at around 6:00pm and wait for a number 50 bus across the street.

The bus would take us to New Street Station and we would get the train from there to Hollyhead arriving there at around midnight. Then we would get on the ship, wait till it set sail and arrive in Dun Laoghaire at around 6:00 or 7:00 am the following day; from there we took a train into Dublin and then a bus to Ballybough.

In earlier years my grandad would pick us up with the donkey and cart but he died when I was around 10 years of age.

So it was a long journey; most of these journeys were over night but the one I'm referring to was in the day time. Most of the time, if it wasn't raining, we would hang around on deck; a lot of people would frequent the bars and partake of the Guinness and usquebaugh; but I was too young as the age for drinking was 18.

There were restaurants on board and places where you could get a cup of tea but I only had one shilling to my name; a shilling these days would be one twentieth of a pound – five pence!

When I got to the restaurant I looked at the menu and the only thing they had for a shilling was salad; mmmm salad. There was no choice so that's what I decided to order.

It was a cafeteria style service where you grabbed a tray and put food on it when you got to it as you entered the queue; I looked for the salad but couldn't see it so I asked one of the women behind the counter where the salad was and she pointed to a plate with ham, cucumber and scallions on “That's the salad” she said so I put it onto my tray.

When I got to the till the cashier said “That'll be three and six!” Three and six!! That was three shillings and sixpence – three and a half times what I had in my pocket.

“I thought it was a shilling?” I said.

“Where?” she said.

“Look there” I said, pointing at the menu.

“Oh that's just the lettuce” she said.

I was embarrassed; I didn't want to let on that that was all I had in my pocket; all I had in the world to be honest. I looked at the full salad on the plate; not my favourite meal but it looked nice, it would fill me and keep me from being hungry and would save me having the sandwiches my aunt had made for us.

“It's only the lettuce I want” I lied.

So the woman put a load of lettuce onto a plate, which I put on to my tray and went to the till again and paid for. I took a knife and fork from the cutlery tray and found myself a seat.

As I sat down I looked at my meal; I almost think it looked at me; all green a crisp and waiting for me to eat it. On the table was the cruet and I used some salt. Then I looked around for some salad cream – yes that was the kind of kid I was in those days I had never heard of mayonnaise but I would really love to taste that salad cream now and maybe even sandwich spread; oooo yummie!!

But back to those salad cream days – I couldn't see any; I looked at other tables, I looked over to where I had found the the cutlery but nothing. So I decided to get stuck in and eat it.

Wow – did I really need a knife?

A big waiter came through the door from the kitchen and I stopped him “Do you have any salad cream?”

“What?”

“Some salad cream for my salad.”

He looked at my plate; then looked at me. Not an expression on his face.

“Salad cream?”

“Yes please!”

He looked at me again and then at the lettuce.

“Are you broke?”

“Broke? No; I just want some salad cream.”

He picked up my plate and walked off with it.

I sat there; I put my knife and fork back onto the table. I hadn't used them so they were clean; should I put them in place? Why not?

Was the blade side of the knife supposed to face in or out; I tried it both ways and it looked better facing outwards. I looked around and people were getting their meals, sitting down and eating, chatting to each other and some of the food looked really good.

I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do; I was only a slip of a kid but if they didn't give me my lettuce back I would have wasted a shilling.

Then the waiter came back, plonked a plate between my knife and fork, and walked away after saying “there you are.”

On the plate there was boiled ham, lettuce, cucumber, cold boiled potatoes, scallions and the whole works which I heartily ate.

After I finished I put my utensils at twelve-0-clock, to show that I knew my manners got up from the table and went back onto the deck.

“What did you get for your shilling” said my aunt.

“Salad” I said.

The First Day of Spring - next part.

I had a few requests from friends to read the rest of my novel and I sent it off to them; so bearing in mind that this is a first draft I am putting the next chapter here today.

If you would like to read it let me know and I'll send a PDF.

There are no chapter numbers; last week's chapter was called 'Eddie' and this week's is called 'Nuala.'

I will conclude next time with the next part called 'Gertie.'

THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING. FIRST DRAFT.
Nuala

Eddie's funeral took place at Fairview Church; the same place where he took his other sacraments: baptism, communion, confirmation and marriage.

“When Eddie was here just after Christmas attending his father's funeral he had no idea that his own demise would be so soon; he was here ten days ago and as usual, after mass, he lit a candle to his dearly beloved Gertie. After all these years he will be joining his beloved wife Gertie in the . . . . ”

As he spoke Nuala sat in the big church which was full as Eddie was very popular; she let her mind wander and thought about the mother she had never known, the father she had hardly known and her grandparents who had, more or less, brought her up.

She was sitting next to her grandmother, herself a new widow.

She followed the coffin, to Eddie's resting place in Glasnevin cemetery in the back of a hearse and she sat there as quiet as a mouse next to her grandmother, aunt and cousin; the only relatives, as far as she knew, that existed.

Nuala looked around her father's bedroom; his double bed was in the middle of the room underneath the window; it had been there for as long as she could remember. When she was little she would stand on the bed and see the River Tolka through the window.

On one side was a chest of drawers and on the other a small bedside table with a jewellery box on top; the jewellery box had been there forever but she had never opened it; it was time. In the tiny top drawer she found some brown necklaces and a turquoise bracelet; the second drawer had more necklaces and some rings and the bottom drawer had a small purse, a post card of Dublin and a soft brown feather.

The only thing in the purse was the stub for a ticket to a cinema in Sligo.

She turned the post card over and read it; it was signed by Gertie; her mother. Nuala had never met her mother and this was the first time she had seen her hand writing; she held the post card in her hand and stared at the words her mother had written; as she looked tears came into her eyes and one of them fell, just missing the card, as it dropped to hit her knee before splashing onto the floor.

The writing was fairly clear, although a little childish, and it was written in pencil. She put the card back into the drawer and looked out of the window at the Tolka; she must have stood there for at least half an hour staring at the river below; she didn't really see the river or the Fairview Strand as the thoughts were racing through her head.

She wasn't consciously collecting any of her thoughts, although some of them must have been going into her brain and being stored there as brains very cleverly do, as they were coming in and going out so fast she couldn't control them.

Her father had never told her anything about her mother and it was a shock to be so close to her; she had seen her mother's grave in Glasnevin Cemetery many times and was just there to bury her father; as the grave lay open awaiting her dad's body she felt a connection to what was under that ground; that was her mother down there; she couldn't see anything as she looked but she knew that if it were possible she would have opened the coffin and looked at her; nothing morbid but just to look at what clothes she was buried in. Her father said she had been buried in blue, as she was a child of Mary, and she often wondered how her father knew that as he had always said he didn't know anything about Gertie's family or her past and it seemed strange, to Nuala, that any of the conversation when they were courting would be about being a child of Mary.

Eventually she sat on the bed and closed the bottom drawer; then she opened the top one with the jewellery in it and ran her fingers through the necklaces; they felt smooth and clean and there was a very attractive smell from the drawer. She tried the turquoise bracelet on and it was a perfect fit. She knew she looked a lot like her mother, as she had seen the few photographs of her, but she hadn't known her size.

She put her fingers to the bottom of the small drawer and a pin pricked her finger; she took it out and fastened the clip at the back of the offending broach; it was about half an inch long and half of that wide and it was some kind of black stone surrounded by smaller stones; they might have been diamonds for all she knew. She put it back into the drawer and put the turquoise bracelet on top.

Nuala went out of the flat and into the Dublin air; as she walked towards the gates of the flats she could hear children playing and the sound of their play grew quieter as she walked up Poplar Row towards North Strand Road and into Fairview Park.

Being a Saturday there were plenty of people about; couples laying in the grass, some fella throwing a ball for his dog and the inevitable hurlers hitting their hurling ball a good hundred yards to each other; it's a wonder someone didn't end up with a cracked skull the way they hit it.
Something desperate was going on in Nuala's head as she walked. She was trying to plan what she would do with her life now that she was alone – totally alone in the world except for one cousin and an aunt in Finglas, who she had never felt close to for years, and her granny.

Her granny had been like a mother to her but, with her father's death, things were suddenly different. There were things she needed to know.

Was it time to go away and start a new life? She didn't know. What she did know was that somehow she needed to go west to where her mother came from; she wanted to find out who her mother was and more importantly who she, Nuala, was; where she came from.

Her grandmother lived a couple of miles away on Malahide Road and after wandering around Fairview Park, Nuala walked up to her flat; her granny knew that Nuala would be moving into Ballybough House and after a while Nuala left Malahide Road for her new home.

Nuala was still at school but she had a part time job visiting old people in their homes and helping them; she would sometimes cook a breakfast, cook some lunch – maybe do a bit of shopping for them and she would also help some of the really infirm people to get in and out of the bath tub or bed.

She had been doing this for a few years and had managed to put quite a bit of money away but now in the space of six months in her eighteenth year she lost both her father and grandfather; things were different.

In O'Connell Street there are lots of employment and temp agencies and Nuala had been in to every one; she was after a job in Sligo but the only jobs available were in Dublin.

She didn't tell anybody of her plans

Nuala was no stranger to her father's flat as she would see him there most days and many years earlier she had given up trying to shake him out of his mourning. She could see him serving customers at the pub with a smile on his face and a joke on his lips but as soon as he was alone with her he was miserable again; to her it was as if he blamed her for his misery.

Now that he was dead she decided to move into his bedroom and sleep in the bed he had shared with her mother; there was something spiritual about the experience and after the first night she couldn't wait to go to bed early.

The things she was learning about herself took her a few days to digest and she spent a lot of time alone in the flat thinking about them.

Her mother had mentioned someone called Sorcha as the post card read: 'Dear Sorcha; I fell in love in Dublin with the first man I bumped into; a beautiful blue eyed Dubliner. We went to the top of Nelson’s Pillar and he pointed out it was the first day of spring the twenty first of March; how romantic – I wish the circumstances were different and I wished I could give you my address but I can’t and I think you will know why. Lots of love; G.'

The post card didn't have a stamp and was addressed to Sorcha to an address in Sligo Town, Sligo. Who was Sorcha? She had never heard her father talk about her.

My brother.

It seems my last post about abortion and advertising was a bit of a rant; this is according to my brother; he said I lost him at the beginning.

This is my younger brother so I don't suppose it was the first time I lost him in our lives, I mean figuratively of course.

I remember when we were two little boys in an outer area of Dublin called Finglas climbing trees; in fact I think it was closer to Cabra, and my brother fell as we were climbing. We were wearing short trousers in those days, not big enough or old enough to go into longers yet, and as we climbed he slipped and came falling down.

I remember seeing the bits of twigs or sharp bits scratching his legs but he didn't have to worry as he had quite a soft landing; he landed on me!

He nearly knocked me off my branch and we would have both fallen to the ground if I'd have let go.

One day we climbed to the top of Nelson's Pillar in Dublin; it was wearing our poor mother out as it was a long climb up those spiral stairs and my brother didn't like the fact that we were going higher and higher; he had a problem with the height, so he said, but if you shoot forward about twenty years he would climb to the top of a thirty foot A-Frame ladder.

The A-Frame ladder is really supposed to be for a two man operation; one man holding the ladder the other man at the top, unless you are against a wall as in the picture, above, but in the theatre we were in the middle of the stage.

I went to the top of it a few times as we were working at the Alexandra Theatre in Birmingham setting the lights thirty feet above the stage; the height didn't worry me but the seemingly rickety ladder did.

I wasn't sure whether someone would come walking across the stage, as they worked on their part of assembling the set, and kick the ladder out from under me as we were up there by ourselves sometimes; not always a two man job when we were under pressure to get the set ready.

I would stand there when my brother was at the top, and think of the day he fell down the tree and, as he leaned forward to change the angle of a light that the lighting guy would tell him to move, I half expected him to land on me again; only this time it wouldn't be much of a soft landing from that height.

I also remember around about that time playing football (soccer) with him for some made up team or other; he played in defence and I played somewhere out of the way; as long as I didn't do too much damage I was okay. In fact I remember scoring a few goals just farting about.

About ten minutes into the match, or the game as they say here, my brother went in for a tackle and a few people landed on top of him - so what happened? They had to carry him off; he was the soft landing on that particular day.

He was okay as he came back on to a round of applause after a few minutes of touching his toes and a wipe with the magic sponge.

But football wasn't his game; he went on to play rugby for Birmingham and played representative rugby too and one day he ended up in hospital; I don't know whether he broke his ribs or bent them or what but one of them pierced one of his lungs.

I went to see him in hospital and he lay there in bed with a painful look on his face; what could I say to him?

I had come to cheer him up and, as he looked quite stressed, I tried to make him laugh; when he laughed a terrible look came on his face as it was hurting him to laugh - Sorry Pat.