Tag Archives: Memories

Can you hand me a towel, please.

How many times have you asked that question?

You know, your hands are wet and the towel is not on the hook where it normally resides.

‘SOMEBODY’ moved it. Grrrr!

Often the answer absently wings its way back to you: Which one?

Let it be beige, blue, pink or yellow but never bring a white one with the yellow stripe.

A pair of white towels with a deep egg yolk yellow stripe loving lives in the airing cupboard and are only for looking at. They are delicate and have a long story. History.

Towels from Cawnpore, India

Towels from Cawnpore, India

Now, to you they might look like old rags. No. They are ‘Anti –queues’ and not faded!

Really.

As I said in a previous post about shapely legs… ‘They were purchased as a gift before I was even a gleam in my father’s eye. A gift for a woman. A woman I never had the opportunity to meet. The fact that she loved, used and cared for them, was enough for me. They may be my treasure at the moment, but I am really a temporary guardian until the day when I pass them on to the next generation.’

The next generation in this case is my Elly.

I have used them many years ago.

After Elly’s first dip in the baby bath, I loving wrapped her in one of these towels and handed her to her dad. It was long before the days of instant cameras & mobile phones with the option of delivering photos round the world as soon as you click. Never mind, I have the memory stored in my head… just as well, my Elly is way to big for wrapping in one of those towels these days. 😉

Muir Mills Logo

Muir Mills Logo

Jack bought the towels in India, when he was serving there in World War 2 and posted them home to his mother. It was before being moved on to Burma and the injury that ended his war.

Right, it is your turn now. What everyday object or item in your house has a long history or story behind it?

I have an ‘under-the-stairs’…

I have an ‘under-the-stairs’… in a house with no stairs.

Let me take you back…

“Elly!  Please bring me a fresh roll of kitchen paper!”  I called as I removed the last sheet of paper from the current one.

“Where are they?”  Came the reply from ‘the One with her face always stuck in a book as she came into the kitchen.

“Under the stairs. I said.

Giving me a rather funny look, she headed to the cupboard in the hall, and retrieved a new roll for me.

Exchanging the paper roll for a warm freshly baked peanut biscuit, I said “Thank You.”

Sending Elly to the cupboard under the stairs was a regular occurrence.  It was the storage space for all the spares – Boxes of tissues, kitchen rolls and loo rolls, soap powder, bottles of vinegar, conditioners, disinfectants and the box of shoe polishes.  It also had space for the brooms, vacuum cleaner, ironing board, iron and my sewing machine.

I suppose in a way, I was following on my mother’s tradition, since that was where she hoarded the many extra bits and pieces.  Back then we had to keep the entrance way clear as the gas meter was housed in there on the back wall.  The gas man needed to be able to bend down and shine his torch on the meter in order to read it.

Now we had no gas meter, so that was a problem less.

My PROBLEM was we had no stairs either!  We lived in a bungalow, so the cupboard ‘under the stairs’ was not!  It was a full height cupboard in the hall. Just like Granny and mammy before me, I brought the name with me from some place in the past.

Is it any wonder Elly grew up like she did!!!!! 😆  😆

Now I need to know if you have a place that has a name that visitors or strangers to your house would not understand?

Folding doors

Mammy had ‘folding doors’ that didn’t!

In my parent’s house there were many rooms, some with more than one door.

The busiest two rooms on the ground floor were the kitchen and the dining room.

Today I am focusing on the latter.

The dining room was a very lived in room. It was warmed by a crackling fire, the food, the banter and laughter of all who spent time there. Breakfast was the quietest meal with the muffled voices of the sleepy eaters at the table as daddy listened to the morning news on the Radio

With eight pairs of long legs (when we were small in number) the dining table was always extended for our meals, there was no hope of feeding all of us round the rectangular enamel topped kitchen table. When numbers swelled the kitchen table was carried to the dining room to extend the table even further. On occasions a small low table was set for the little people allowing all the adults to sit round the large table/s.

The dining room had three doors:

  • The door from the hall which was at a ninety degree angle to the door to the kitchen,
  • The French windows to the garden and opposite them
  • The folding doors opened to the Sitting room as we called it, others might call it a lounge or living room.

In summertime the folding doors and the French windows were always open, extending the room out into the garden. In wintertime the French windows remained locked but the folding doors were opened to double the size of the space with fires brightly burning in both rooms.

The house regularly overflowed with visitors, those invited and expected or those who happened to call in, stay to share our meals or to stay overnight or for a weekend. Nobody was turned away and mammy regularly relived the ‘loaves and fishes’ to extend the food for all the visitors. Nobody ever left the house hungry.

On Christmas morning the folding doors were locked when sleepy little people came down the stairs, prepared to head out fasting in the winter darkness to 6 a.m. Mass a car journey away.

On our return, we little people were packed off upstairs to hang up our coats, go to the loo and wash our hands… Once we were out of sight and busy, mammy pushed on the sitting room door from the hall (to remove the chair she had set against it the night before) to gain entrance to the wonderland inside. She switched on the colourful fairy tree-lights and put a match to the already prepared fire in the grate. When all was done she slipped out the now unblocked door closing it gently behind her, to begin cooking breakfast for the hungry hoard. The table had been set for the meal in the early hours of the morning.

Once the little people returned to the ground floor we gathered in the dining room around the crib as a family to say a prayer of welcome to the baby Jesus. Then we lined up at the folding doors. Youngest first and then the rest of us by age to the eldest with daddy standing like a sentry with hand raised to the sliding locks at the top of the doors ready to unlock them.

Then the doors opened…

Sliding sideways into the stud wall cavity on either side, turning the two rooms into one.

Where mammy got the term ‘Folding doors’ we never discovered, but they were and to this day, my sister (who still lives in the house) calls them the folding doors.

Granny had a ‘coal hole’ that wasn’t.

My wonderful Granny lived in three different houses during her lifetime before spending the final 2 years in a nursing home.

Her third house is the only one I knew from the inside, since she moved there the year I was born. It was a three bedroom red brick mid terrace house. For some reason it seemed rather dark compares to our family home, where granny was a frequent visitor. There was a bus stop just round the corner from Granny’s house with a bus that travelled across the city to the very avenue we lived on and stopped practically at our door.

We as young children loved to go and stay with granny. She found fun in everything she did. Even folding a bed sheet became a game, when little arms and fingers had finally managed to find the corners… the sheet would be given a little tug and fly and flap upward until it finally came to rest on the little helper’s head. All the while, granny would be laughing her head off.

Without the laughter, it was a very quiet house – no gangly long legged noisy brothers running about and it was the days before TV and the radio was kept in the kitchen, where most of the activity occurred. The dining and living rooms were separate with no ‘folding doors’ between them.

Evenings were spent in the living room which was brightened by the setting sun. At times the only noises were the rustle of granny’s newspaper or the loud ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

I remember as a very small child, staying at my grandmother’s house in summertime.  I was in bed before darkness in the room above the living room and through the open bay windows hidden by billowing curtains with plate sized pink cabbage roses on a pale blue background, came the sound of a returning procession of dray horses plodding slowly home to St. James’s Gate Guinness Brewery with their empty stout barrels on huge carts with steel rimmed wheels.  The roads were cobbled and the rhythmic clop, clop, clop of the horses was as regular as a Town hall clock or church bell.

Without the heavy load the horses seemed to dance along with the extra chorus of their tackle clanging with each footfall, perhaps it was the thought of home, food and a bed of fresh hay that put the extra spring in their steps.

A modern tanker emblazoned with the company logo, does not play the same music for me somehow.

To the rear of the house was an enclosed walled yard with a large brick built shed in one corner. The half ton of coal was carried through the house each autumn and deposited in the back corner to fuel the winter fires. The mangle with a tin bucket was closer to the door and daylight, there was no electric light in there. Granny called it the ‘coal hole’.

It always puzzled me that a shed with a full size door and plenty of space could be called a coal hole. There was no hole in the door or in any of the walls. I know. Yes I do, because I searched every inch of them!

It was many years later that I learned that granny grew up in an impressive mid-terrace, two storey over basement period property dating from c.1850. It was on Constitution Hill, off the Phibsboro Road in Dublin. With the city centre just 1.8km away and within a short walk was/is the 1750 acres of The Phoenix Park.

The basement comprised three large storage rooms. One was actually out under the public footpath and had a circular metal access cover that was removed to allow the coalman to drop down the order of fuel from his cart, directly into the basement. A coal hole was where the coal was kept, although Granny did not take the basement area with her when she moved, the name stuck with her and in the post war house I visited, the shed became a Coal Hole!

Family weirdness

I had an idea for a lighter post today, it began like this:

Granny had a coal hole – that wasn’t.

Nana had folding doors that didn’t

I had an under-the-stairs… in a house with no stairs.

I hope this gene skipped my Elly!

£$€£$€£$€

Over the next few days, I hope to tell you more about them…

Then it will be your turn.

A few more Firsts

First driving lesson.

It was on the firm flat 5 km beach called Dollymount Strand on Bull Island. The island was located on the northern end of Dublin Bay. The island is connected to the mainland by the Bull Bridge, a one-lane wooden road bridge. In recent years, access by car is limited to a portion of the island near the Bull Bridge and two sections reached from a causeway road at Raheny.

I was just seventeen and daddy was my tutor for the day. He showed me the clutch, break and accelerator and how to change gears. Then pointing straight ahead he said:

“I’ am getting out, you drive down to that mound of sand, then turn and bring the car back.” Then added “If you cannot bring the car back, don’t bother coming back yourself!” 

****

First sewing machine.

I always liked playing with fabric. My father worked in the ‘rag’ trade – not selling rags, but fashion fabrics. Latterly he worked his agency from home, so we were surrounded with texture, colour, and types of fabric that would be on the streets, at least six months down the road.

When the new season’s samples arrived, mammy and I would spend several evenings helping daddy to record the details of each fabric blanket in his little black book. There might be up from twenty to forty colour-ways on the one blanket. Occasionally we drifted into conversation:

Me: I would love a dress/skirt/coat in this colour.

Daddy: If you would sew, I could get you the fabric.

Me: If I had a sewing machine I would sew.

Daddy: You will have to wait until you leave school, for a sewing machine, You do not need any distraction from your books. (Somehow helping him was not seen as a distraction!)

The morning after I finished my final exams, my first ever sewing machine was delivered to our house. It was a Brother straight stitch. I was in heaven. By the time daddy came home for his dinner, I was wearing a new fully lined sleeveless dress! That machine cost all of £24 sterling and well paid for itself, with the dresses, tops, trousers, suits and even a tweed winter coat that I made during the twelve years I had it.

****

My first formal dance.

Nowadays it would be called a School Prom.

Unlike today, our school Formal Dance was held after we had finished all exams and the final term completed. We left school in June and the dance was in September. The evening consisted of a dinner and dance in an hotel. I no longer remember which one or if it still exists. There were no gatherings in the hours before the event, parents stayed at home and each couple arrived on their own. When the dance was over we returned home, often around midnight.

I spent a couple of days making my own full length dress. A princess line in a beautiful shade of blue with a motif, Dupion fabric.

My beau for the evening was Ray, a regular visitor to our home, a part of the gang and good friend. We had a Dress suit/tuxedo in the wardrobe for the use of all the lads in turn. I offered it to Ray for the evening, He might have been working and studying at night, but pennies in those days were hard come by. He accepted my invitation and offer of the suit.

On the night in question, he arrived in the suit and bow tie, with an orchid and the biggest box of chocolates that I have ever seen. It was the shape of a casket with six tasselled drawers. It became my first work box for sewing!

Ray & Marie

Ray & Marie

We had great fun and we are still friends to this day!

Did you have a Dowry?

“A dowry was the wealth brought into a new marriage by the bride. This could either be in the form of cash, goods or property and was usually provided by the bride’s father. Negotiations over the exact level of dowry for a particular marriage could be complex, there was no standard sum.

I did have a dowry.

A silver sixpence.

If you believed my father, it was payment for Jack to take me off his hands!

When we were well and truly married, daddy asked Jack if he could have the sixpence back… because he had another unmarried daughter on his hands.

The sixpence went back, and when daddy died, it was found in the pocket of a suit jacket, by my eldest brother. On one of our visits to Dublin, my brother handed the coin to Jack with the words “I think this belongs to you”!

I still have it today.

Five Firsts

The idea comes from a post by Nick at nickhereandnow 

First day at school aged four. I remember standing on a chair as mammy dressed me and put a large bow in my hair. She was taking my older brother to school and decided to bring me with her and register me for the following year. The headmistress said she would take me that day, so I went to class and mammy went home alone.

My first boyfriend. He had a makeshift stage in the garage, the family had no car and we put on shows. My party piece was singing ‘How much is that doggy in the window’? We spent evenings collecting mushrooms and at the weekend he took me to the pictures/movies on the crossbar of his bike. He had a summer job in a grocery shop and bought me 4ozs of Kimberly biscuits every week when he was paid. I was all of SIX!

Meeting my sister for the first time. She was twenty days old, I had spent the summer in Sligo on the west coast of Ireland with an aunt and uncle. They brought me home in time for the new school term in September. I had not known the baby was expected (I later learned that like the rest of us, she arrived two months early!) and figured she belonged to one of the many visitors to our house that day. It was only when the last visitor was leaving without ‘his baby’ that I was told she was my sister and would be staying! I was Eight.

First time I was bridesmaid. It was February 1963 in Worcester, England and the worst winter in nearly 20 years. Low temperatures meant snow was thick and solid on the ground.  It was difficult to smile for photos in my long dress with teeth chattering. I was to become bridesmaid three times despite the old wives tale ‘Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride’. Thankfully they were warmer occasions with plenty of sunshine and I eventually met and married my true love, fourteen years later.

First weeks wages. I had to stand in line, sign a register and then I was paid in cash counted into my hand! A total of £6.14, as my mother said, it kept me in nylons for a week! It was the height of the Swinging Sixties; hems were shorter, music was louder and even back then I preferred to hear the words than the loud noise.

♥♥♥♥

Since I have only reached the age of eighteen, I might well return to this topic with a few more ‘firsts’… there are bound to be a few more.

A day to remember

A day of bright sunshine
Glinting on my Autumn Glory
And the Love of my life, my anam cara by my side.

1977-07-09 Marie & Jack

1977-07-09 Marie & Jack

Was it really thirty eight years ago?
We were given twenty years,
But looking at that photo, I am back on that day
And still thirty in my head!

There might be wine tonight!