Your right i did copy the last Blog but I taught it was very good.
This is what i remember of growing up in Ballyfermot in the 50s
Growing Up in the 50s
We’d have starved if we’d been vegetarians in the fifties. We weren’t fussy eaters, we licked our plates clean of nourishing dinners made with potatoes and fresh vegetables from our front garden.
Our meat was Pig’s feet, Pig’s head, Cow’s tongue, or stuffed Cow and Sheep’s heart. It was a treat to get rib steak, rabbits, streaky rashers, and chicken.
Our desserts were jelly and custard or if someone boxed an orchard, (robbed) we’d devour the bitter apples cooked in the open fire and dipped in sugar or toffee apples dipped into the hot toffee we made by cooking butter and sugar on the frying pan.
On Sunday we’d help to make apple tarts and scones and we’d fight over who got the most skins and butts of the cooking apples to eat.
We loved waiting day, (Payday) instead of a dinner mammy mixed currants or raisins with rice, semolina, or tapioca and cooked it in a large roosting dish in the oven.
We never had fish fingers or chicken nuggets, our fish was full of bones, or we got cods roe (Fish eggs) and tripe (The stomach lining of a cow).
At Easter Mammy told us “The sun will dance in the sky in the morning ” Although I’d get up early and gawk out the window waiting for it to dance, it never danced for me. However, we loved our hard-boiled Easter eggs decorated with happy coloured faces. Only snobs got chocolate eggs wrapped in silver paper.
Children loved the silver paper and if I got a piece of silver paper, I’d rub in with my fingers until the creases were flattened out, then I’d put it into a book and swap it with my friends.
Our house was like a zoo whenever our two cats gave birth to six kittens each and about the same time as our dog had four pups. The cats were put outside at night, but they’d climb up the wall of the house and as soon as we heard them crying outside our bedroom window, we let them in and hide them under the covers of our bed.
To buy shoes, clothes, pots and bedclothes, Mammy got checks from the Checkman, not like today’s checks they had to be exchanged particular shops. However, she’d never let-on to my Dad she got anything on the never, never. (Pay weekly). If he was home when the collector was expected to call, she’d wrap his money in newspaper and then she’d sit in the bedroom window keeping nix. (Lookout) As soon as she’d spot the collector coming through the gate, she’d drop the money down to him.
Monday was rent day and the majority of people in ballyfermot went to the pawn to get their rent money. You’d see them running for the bus with brown paper parcels, tied up with twine under their arm. The bus conductor knew the people with the parcels were going the Pawn, so he’d shout out, “Next stop Winetavern Street.”
On the way home mammy would walk up to St Catherine’s Bakery and buy the pervious days bread at a reduced price. Saturday morning, she’d get our clothes back out for Sunday mass and on Monday they were back to the pawn. Not talking about the design the joke was, “Have you got a coat, that goes in and out?”
Our systems were cleaned out once a month with a disgusting senna drink and to kill the taste we got two spoonfuls of sugar. After the toilet rush, our systems were clean but it’s a miracle we’d any teeth.
We spent most of the long hot summer days catching bees in Jam-Jars. The minuet a bee landed on a flower, we'd open the lid and trap the bee and the flower inside. Our jars were often packed with bumblebees, sugar bees, footballers, red-arse and wasps, but what was fun to us was cruel to the poor bees because they died very quickly.
