Routine
When I was a child, everything had its time and its place.
The days were marked by events.
Saturday was bath day, when we all bathed and washed our hair [not all together, I hasten to add]. Because Sunday was Mass day.
Sunday was a big deal. First of all – no breakfast, because in those days, you had to fast from midnight. Then we’d head off to Mass in the car. Sunday was about the only day in the week when we got a ride in the car. Mass, of course was the old style. We stared at the back of the priest as he chanted away in Latin and it all had a great air of mystery. None of this lets-all-be-friends-and-shake-hands stuff. The Mass then had an air of timeless ritual.
On Sunday afternoon, if my Dad was in a good mood [which he usually was], we’d go for The Sunday Drive. This could be anywhere. Slane. Wicklow Mountains. Howth. I never knew where we’d end up, but it was fun.
Monday was wash day. My mother would fire up the big copper boiler, and all the sheets and cloths would be left boil and the place would fill up with a wooley steam. And after they had boiled for while, we had to put them through the wringer and then hang them out on the line. None of your washing machines and tumble driers for us!!
The days themselves had little milestones too. Meals were always eaten at the table. It wouldn’t occur to us to eat anywhere else. And we had to get permission to leave the table! On hot summer’s days, we used to lay the table in the garden, and eat out there. Dinner was at one o’clock sharp. Tea was at five. If you were late, then too bad.
A quarter to two was “Listen with Mother” with Daphne Oxenford, on the radio. My day was incomplete without that [I was only three or four, for God’s sake]. At two, I had to be silent for an hour. This was “Womans Hour” time, and my mother would stretch out on the settee with her cup of tea and a digestive biscuit. I used to get my dose of Virol then too. I loved Virol. It was like liquid toffee. I wonder what happened to it?
Evenings were spent around the fire. This was the time for reading or listening to the wireless. Sometimes my dad would put on a record. It was all very cosy.
Nowadays, people eat around their widescreen televisions that dominate the room. Meals are whenever you want them. Conversation is a dead art. Studies have shown that one of the causes of juvenile delinquency is the decline in the formal family meal. Children identify more with their friends and characters on television than they do with their families. Sad.
I must admit to eating in front of the television myself these days. We have a washing machine and a tumble drier. The car is used whenever we feel like it.
I listen to the radio a lot. But the biggest thing I have brought with me from those days is my love of books.
I’d be lost without my books.
ha ha . . we are the lap diners. My son hates it but mealtimes are erratic as they get older and my dining table was for 4 years a design studio and is now a horticultural platform. We eat together on Sundays . . whoever is around and you’re right we actually ‘talk’. I also dispensed with a dishwasher so washing and drying dishes is a ‘social’ occasion (my kids will disagree). I remember children’s hour on TV Blue Peter and Captain Pugwash . . maybe you’re not that much older than me. Do you really hate your prospective SIL? Oh . . and until my dad passed, we all came home regularly for Sunday hi-chol breakfast. No longer sadly. And I used to get into trouble as a child for sitting on my Dad’s hat in the back of the car – Trilby days.
Ah!! Children’s Hour! But in my day, it the wireless. Yes, we called it the wireless then. Radio came later! We didn’t get a television until I left school.
Me hate my SIL? No. Far from it. Hence the “Apology to TAD”. It was just a case of speaking without thinking 🙁
We had all meals at the table it was covered with a starched white linen tablecloth and my father who never entered the kitchen or did any chores in the house, insisted that we had ‘full cutelry’ double knives etc and side plates. They were all washed whether or not they were used by my siblings and myself.
Then there was the Rosary… The trimmings took for ever. Is it any wonder I have housemaids knee.
ah, down memory lane we stroll again…..
Tuesday lunchtime in our house meant beef stew, “The Kennedy’s of Castleross” at 1 p.m., and my mother standing on a chair near the window…. Our kitchen wireless was a tiny plastic yoke which for some reason sat on top of a tall cupboard and she often had to stand on the chair beside it, straining to hear the latest developments in the family saga – was that Ireland’s first soap opera?
Today if i hear the music “O’Donnell Abu” which was then the Radio Eireann call sign, i am transported back to that kitchen & those memories. Then we got a really smart wooden radio for the drawingroom – oh the excitement of travelling the world along the dial with its “exotic” names and hearing foreign languages! And later discovering Radio Luxembourg!
We had a wind-up gramophone in a mahogany cabinet, and a few 78’s of classical music and great tenors Mario Lanza, Richard Tauber and Paul Robeson. Wintry Sundays, with the rain lashing the bay window and a roaring fire in the huge grate, would be spent listening to music or to a radio play, playing music & singing, or reading. Or sometimes playing chess. I hated when we had sports-loving visitors on Sundays, because then there would be no music – only Micheal O hEithir’s head-wrecking radio commentary on some ball-game.
I share your feeling about books, Grandad. As a sickly child often bed-bound for long periods, my greatest joy was when my dad came home with a pile of books he would have gathered for me from the many second-hand bookstores then found in Dublin’s south city. The greatest gift he gave me was in nurturing my love of reading. Like you, i too would be lost without my books.
My mother was English, so she never listened to Radio Eireann. It was always The Home Service [BBC Radio 4] or The Third Programme [BBC Radio 3]. The odd time, my Dad would listen to The Light Programme [BBC Radio 2], if he could get away with it.
Micheal O hEithir to me conjours up memories of Killiney Beach and other public places. I hated the sound of that man’s voice.
Wireless and Grammophones? Are yous’ guys’ in your late 90’s?
I grew up listening to the radio and my parents may have been the first to get a TV in our neighborhood but everyone had a Hi-Fi set.
Speaking of neighborhoods, as a kid I would go out and play all day coming home for dinner at 6pm sharp!! Kids around here don’t do that anymore. Sports, playing, well everything seems to be scheduled. I coached Little League for alot of years and kids don’t just go out and play anymore. I don’t get it. I remember my Mom telling us to, “get out of her hair”. We played baseball, basketball or football or we made up our own games and nobody died. I once showed my son how my parents back porch was home plate, the birch tree was first, the holly tree was second and the rose bush was third(but you weren’t allowed to touch it). He was amazed and for awhile all he wanted to do was play ball in their back yard.
Oh, yea and I walked to school uphill, in the snow, both ways too. 🙂
Fart fenugan
I am only 38 but i remember when black and white television was the only option. Your TV came in a great big cabinet that also housed a stereo of dubious quality. we werent allowed to watch it any ways we were expected to get outside and amuse our own damn selves. We would play hockey 12 months a year baseball 9 months we never lacked for something to do and we ate like wild hogs and were as thin as rails because we never quit running. We werent chaufered around by our parents we walked,ran or rode our bicycles everywhere.
we fell down, we blead, we fought and we loved everyminute of it. Somehow we never had helmets or bads and we survived
Gees grandad i am going to have to quit reading your blog I am starting to sound like an old fart lol
Grandad: re…
“I hated the sound of that man’s voice.” Me too! Rasping, grating, it seemed to represent for me so much that was harsh and oppressive around us at the time. Church, State, De Valera, Archbishop McQuaid, compulsory Irish language classes – taught in my case by a rough, rude and whiskey-sodden man with nicotine-stained fingers and greasy yellow-grey hair….i’ll leave it there!
Brianf:
No dear, we are in our fifties!! Ireland of the 1950’s was way behind the U.S. I got a hi-fi record-player in the early Sixties. Few people had refrigerators, even. We looked in awe to the States as the source of all that was modern…and liberated.
I remember when colour television first came in. Only pubs could afford to buy them. The first thing you would see was the massive 100 foot aerial on the roof, and then the pub windows would be obscured by huge signs proclaiming “COLOUR TV”.
And to get their money’s worth they used to turn they colour way up so everything flared bright red, green and blue.