![]() Then, one day, my two aunts arrived with an idea for my parents, one that would change my family’s life forever. At the end of our visit, we’d say our goodbyes and pile into our Mini and my mother, who learned to drive before my father, would drive us back to the city. Families depended on those catches and I still remember the constant questions that returning fishermen were asked: did ye catch any salmon today, what time is high tide, or are ye going out again today? Those days in Passage East helped shape my understanding of what it meant to live by the sea. ![]() We’d be taken down to the strand to play and on our way we’d run along the cockle walk and out along the breakwater to look at the boats going out to sea, or coming home with their catch at the end of the day. While we were there we became part of the village’s tightly knit fishing community. Passage East, on the banks of the Suir, was where my grandparents lived and to us it seemed as if it was always filled with sunshine, fuelled by freedom and peopled by giants. We started to tune in to its messages of movement and speech, attracted by the flickering screen where characters such as a cartoon duck called Daithí Lacha held us in thrall where an animated pair from Poland named Lolek and Bolek popped and paraded like match-sticks in front of our mesmerised eyes and where Daniel Boone, the American frontiersman of the eponymous action adventure series, kept us tense and separate from everything around us.Īt weekends, we’d leave the city behind us and drive south along the river to my mother’s home place some eight miles away. We settled into chairs and watched silently as the cleverness and magic of it unfolded. We no longer looked outside at the darkening evening. Once the television was turned on, our eyes grew round, our breathing stilled and we became quieter. It drew us in, distracting us from the starry sky outside that arched over the long, narrow gardens in parallel rows at the back of our houses. It banished the sounds of the wind that I used to hear whistling and shrieking through the hallway just outside the dining room. When we still lived in the city we got a black-and-white television. Often in the care of our grandfather, we watched them from the landing, starry-eyed with love and longing to be taken along. My mother and father went out each Saturday night to meet friends, dressing up and standing at the hall door to say goodnight to us. Where did those mimicking voices of urbanity and civility come from? Like others living near us, we had private piano and elocution lessons. We poured imaginary tea for each other, passing little blue cups and make-believe sandwiches back and forth. On sunny days, we had tea-sets to play with in the garden and we chatted through a hole in the hedge with the neighbours. After the rain, boys and girls ran out and once again chased each other from gateway to gateway, step to step, corner to corner. The grey sky would turn to navy and the drops would pour steadily onto the city. If it rained, the boxes washed away and we were called in. On the street, chalk was used to mark out boxes on the footpath: we’d hop away all morning, going from box number one to three to five to nine, then turning to go again. In the back garden we were pencilled in by laurel hedges and tiled passageways, stone steps and wrought-iron railings. From the attic in our house we could see slated roofs, terracotta chimney pots, church spires and turreted towers. The People’s Park was out of sight but it wasn’t far away. ![]() These were tall and dour, peering over lower houses across the street. We lived on an elegant street known as Lower Newtown, in one of its terraced three-storey Edwardian houses. I remember playing with my dolls behind my mother’s chair in the kitchen, or having fun in the garden with my two young sisters, until I got a bit older and I was tempted out by the neighbouring children who skipped and hopscotched on our street’s large slate footpaths. I kept my feet together and, if we had visitors, I sat with my hands together in my lap. I stood quietly to listen when spoken to. My fringe fell like a curtain over my forehead. When we lived in Waterford city I was a quiet little girl who wore frocks, sandals and white socks. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly. This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. ![]()
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