- copyright Tommy Tiernan
Summertime

Summer holidays ! That butterfly feeling that started in
your stomach near the end of May with the sun streaming in the
classroom windows. Hard to do homework in this weather. Hard
to concentrate on exams with such freedom looming ahead of
you. Anyway the results won’t be out for ages. Exams are only
difficult if you try and answer the questions and they know the
answers already so its not like they’re depending on you. If you
don’t know anything at all sure tis best not to waste their time
and let them concentrate on the next lad.
Three months off. God bless the country people. We were
supposed to be out saving hay and dancing barefoot in the
evening but there was no hay in our estate and the junior club
disco insisted on shoes. The sweet bliss of having nothing to do
and loads of time to do it.
These days of course things are different. Kids have
schedules and are treated like visiting dignitaries . Parents have
turned into Personal Assistants who now ask their kids for
permission to do stuff.
Would you mind love if I just popped in here for a
minute, I think me appendix just burst. We can go to
Smyths afterwards. No ? Ok, we’ll go there now so, I
just need to spit this blood into a bag
And God forbid they should ever be allowed get bored .The
best part of being off school when I was a kid was being left
alone. No one had plans for you. Your father gone to work and
your mother having babies, out the door with you on the first of
June and don’t come back til September. You’d be up early and
with some sugary breakfast inside you, gone out the door.
Armies of ye, loose kids wandering around the town, floating
from one housing estate to the next. Playing football, kissing
girls. Eating raspberries off bushes and sucking Mr Freezes til
your teeth went numb. There was an open door policy in most
houses back then. At 1 o’clock you could wander in to
someone’s gaffe and get fed a sandwich and a glass of milk.
You’d finish up and potter out again. It was freedom and it felt
good and natural. And a long gorgeous 12 week stretch of it.
Every now and again you’d be packed off to your
Granny’s. She was 84 years old and ye got on mighty. Ye both
had the same kind of loose grip on reality. Every meal was
sweets apart from your dinner which you got from the chipper.
Permission was given for everything and the only rule was don’t
bring anyone strange back to the house. There were odd jobs to
be done around the place of course. You mowed the lawn,
painted walls and every now and again had to go with her as she
visited another old woman down the road. Your only job there
was to eat whatever the other wrinkle offered and smile. You sat
as a kind of exhibit as they marveled at your youth and teeth and
then they forgot about you. You couldn’t move from your seat
because her dog, some kind of schitt-snauser growled every time
you exhaled.
It was great to be away from home in another town where
kids did the exact same stuff just spoke with a lightly different
accent that’s all. And they all remembered you from the year
before. To them, coming from Navan with your broad vowels
and gutteral drawl you were exotic. Crowds would gather round
to hear you pronounce words like Fttbaaawl and Jaaaamy
Daawjirs.
The worst part of the summer was the Family Holiday. We
were told one year that we were going to Louisburgh and we
thought in was in France We had never been to France and we
told all our friends we were going to France. We did not know
that it was in Mayo. We got in to the car, a five year old Hillman
Hunter and by the time we got to Delvin I said to me sister
This is not the way to France
Eighteen hours later we arrived in Mayo. My father had rented a
small caravan beside the beach. I think he found it. I think a
friend of his called him up and said
There’s an abandoned caravan on the beach in
Louisburgh. I think that IRA lad was in it. Heard he
got a job teaching hurling in Libya. He’s gone now anyway.
And me father thought well that’s the summer holidays taken
care of. Twas the size of a confession box so he invited our
cousins aswell First morning there and there was a big wind
blowing, cold and sharp, so vicious that I swear to God I saw
crows crying with the severity of it. Daddy decided it was
perfect weather for swimming. Mammy gave us a breakfast of
butterless brown bread and black Barry’s tea because that was
all that was left in the shop
We were forced into our swimming togs and frogmarched
down to the beach.
Well if the clouds were grey it was nothing compared to
the sea which had turned into watery lead. Daddy picked up a
stick and began to bate us into it. We all started crying and
Daddy started laughing. He offered us a pound for whoever
dived in first. Me cousin Cuchulainn dived in straight away and
me father spent the next week marvelling at him while pointing
out my deficiencies. The weather got good toward the end and
we were treated to the vision of Mammy walking in her white
bra drinking Harp from a can. Ah, precious memories…………