The First Day of Spring; chapter one.

Yesterday I finished my novel and pretty soon I'm going to read another; I jest, of course but I have finished the first draft. Now I'll give it a few days and start all over again.

At the moment I have written 73,116 words and I suppose when I do the next draft it will be more.

It's called The First Day of Spring; my last novel had three or four changes of title but I think I like The First Day of Spring already.

The story is about two Irish women - mother and daughter – and is set in Ireland. The daughter, Nuala, never knew her mother, Gertie, and knows very little about her and when her father, Eddie, dies she sets out to find out about her.

It's set in the 1940s and 1966; the year England won the world cup and there is not mention of it in the novel.

Anyway, here is the first chapter and I hope you like it.

On March 8th 1966 Nelson's Pillar, in O'Connell Street, Dublin was bombed. The statue, itself, came falling down together with Nelson's head which, for one hundred and forty eight years, had nestled on top of the pillar one hundred and thirty four feet from the ground.
The explosion, which was carried out by a rogue element of the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, led by Joe Christle, a qualified barrister and socialist revolutionary, didn't cause any damage to O'Connell Street and there was nobody injured but a taxi, parked nearby, was destroyed. Two days after the timed explosion the Irish Army Engineers blew up the plinth and broke many of the windows in O'Connell Street and the rubble from the monument, including the head of Horatio Nelson himself, was taken to a dump near the North Wall.
For a student prank, Frank Dolan and six other students stole the head and leased it to an antique dealer in London to grace his shop window; it was also used in a television commercial shot at Kilkenny Beach and made its stage début with the Irish traditional music band The Dubliners at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin.
The students eventually gave it to the Lady Nelson of the day and it is now in the Gilbert Library in Pearse Street Dublin.
Thirteen days after the explosion, on March 21st, the first day of spring, Eddie went for his annual visit to the pillar.
Eddie was the widower of Gertie and the father of the seventeen year old Nuala and he would visit the pillar every year to commemorate the day he first walked out with his late wife.
Nuala was born and lived in Ballybough Dublin in a little street called Poplar Row. Some people might say that poplar Row was actually in North Strand or even Fairview, but the people that lived there called it Ballybough. At one end of the street there was a block of flats called Ballybough House; now why would they call it Ballybough House if it was anywhere else apart from Ballybough?
Ballybough has a history of being a place where prostitutes hung out and had the nick name of Mud Island at one time; when Sean O'Casey's play 'The Plough and the Stars' was presented at the Abbey theatre the audience booed and rioted when he introduced an Irish Catholic prostitute to the proceedings; the audience, who said there was no such thing as a Roman Catholic prostitute, had obviously never been to Ballybough!
For most of her life Nuala lived with her granny and granda in a house in Poplar Row only visiting her father who lived in Ballybough House.
All of his working life Eddie had worked as a barman; once upon a time he had aspirations about owning his own bar but when Gertie died he just carried on working to put food on the table and pay the rent.
His work mates said the life went out of him as soon as he lost Gertie and he lived a solitary life in his flat just going through the motions of life.
He would sit in his chair and think of the days he had spent with his blue-eyed beauty walking through Fairview Park, going out to Dollymount or once in a while taking the bus to Portmarnock.
He worshipped Nuala but didn't like to have her near him as she reminded him so much of Gertie.
He was a good barman, having served his time, and he could mix any kind of drink from any part of the world you would wish to name.
If you want a Guinness in Dublin you ask for one and you will be given a pint; the barman will put about one third into a pint glass and let it 'settle' for a few minutes; for a good pint of Guinness needs to settle and Eddie could pour a really good pint; however, he hadn't taken an alcoholic drink of any kind since losing Gertie.
Dubliners have travelled to other countries and seen how they treat Guinness and sometimes have drunk something else rather than see their beloved black stuff being treated like any other beer.
An Irishman walked into a pub in Birmingham, England, and asked for a pint of Guinness, one day, only to see the excuse for a barman put a pint glass under the 'Guinness' tap and press a button; this opened the pipe and dropped a pint of Guinness into a glass; dropped being the operative word as this had as much to do with pouring and caring for a pint of Guinness as throwing a pint of paint at a canvas and calling it art; people have called this art, of course, just as the people from Birmingham used to call that drink a pint of Guinness; they were both wrong.
Of course if you only wanted a half of Guinness in a half pint glass you would ask for a glass but if tourists would ask for a half pint he would know what they meant and give them a glass with as much care as he would give to a full pint; a half in Dublin usually meant whiskey.
After Gertie died he changed jobs – or changed bars more like – and took a job in a bar closer to home where as well as going to work he could go to mass most days.
He was thirty seven years of age when he went on his annual pilgrimage to the pillar and on that day he died; people thought he was drunk but you will know from reading the above that he wasn't. He was standing near where Nelson's Pillar used to be and looking up to where he figured Nelson used to stand.
As he looked he thought he could figure out the exact spot where they stood on their first date and he was sure, as he looked, that he could see a bird hovering at the spot in the sky where he had stood with Gertie, and as he tried to follow the flight of what he thought was the bird he wandered out backwards still looking up and thinking of Gertie, as the bus travelling to the airport went over him on that first day of spring.

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.