Paul Malpas

No sooner was I home from my sojourn in Bordeaux, then I was off again to Manchester to attend the funeral ceremonies of one of Longsight’s and St. Robert’s parish’s greatest women.  A woman born and reared in Denaby in South Yorkshire but who made Longsight and its environs her home.

Ellen Connor (nee Wilkinson) was born into a different world than the one we know today, a world that only knew hard work, plenty of it, done well and for no reward.  She was born on 12th August 1914, eight days after Britain had declared war on Germany, when the British Army were mobilising to face the threat of the Kaiser.  350 of Ellen’s neighbours, who had enlisted for the York and Lancaster Regiment and who had lived in that triangle of Pontefract, Rotherham and Doncaster  were transferred to the green fields of Ireland and the Connaught Rangers 5th Battalion, who were undergoing basic training at Kilworth Camp in Fermoy in Cork because I suppose the York and Lancaster 2nd Battalion was stationed in Limerick only a few miles away and were oversubscribed and the newly founded 5th Battalion Connaught Rangers were in need of drafts.  Many of this gallant 350 were killed at Gallipoli in their first taste of action in July 1915.  I have the great honour of being the General Secretary of the Connaught Rangers Association which serves to remember the sacrifice of the dead comrades of that pernicious conflict, the Great War.  Ellen might well have known the families of some of those men.

So Ellen grew up and went into service in Nottingham and then came to Manchester as housekeeper for the priests of St Edward’s parish in Rusholme and met and married the caretaker’s son, Jim Connor, in 1939.  Jim was an electrical engineer at Metropolitan Vickers in Trafford Park, where my father and mother worked.  They lived in Urmston close to Metro’s which was the biggest industrial complex certainly in England, employing at that time about 30,000 people.  In 1948 Ellen and Jim moved to Kelstern Square on the Anson Estate for their first taste of life under the avuncular yet despotic rule of Fr Vincent O’Shaughnessy.  Already they were nurturing four daughters, Sheila (1940), Joan (1943), Pauline (1945) and Angela (1947).

As was the way with life in those hard post-war years, small groups of women got together and supported each other through pregnancy, infancy and early school days of their families and that was how I came into contact with Ellen.  Ellen Connor, Margaret Mackie, Teresa Robinson and my mother Margaret Malpas formed a quartet that could not be broken, all parishioners of St Robert’s, all members of the Union of Catholic Mothers, all having gone through the war in their early years of marriage and all facing the stresses of spartan existences in those rationed years of the late 1940s and early 50s.

Ellen went on to have three more daughters Eileen (1949), Mary (1952) and Rita (1954).  Pardon me if I have got those dates slightly wrong but they were wrought from a memory that is old and obviously frail.  By now nine of family and with seven daughters, they gradually realised that their little council house in Kelstern Square could take no more, so they moved into a large three storey Victorian semi round the corner, No 17 Birchfields Road in about 1960, which easily coped with the nine of them, which soon became 11 when Jim’s sister died leaving two children, Teresa and Robert.  These two cousins were seamlessly added.  The house also coped with Jim’s burgeoning property repairing business, which he had inherited from his father and Sheila’s hairdressing salon that coiffeured the matronly heads of the Union of Catholic Mothers amongst many others.

My first memories of the Connor family was when Rita was born in about 1954, I went with my mother to Kelstern Square to visit the new born child and that was the start of my constant link with the family, I was however, from the age of four, in the same class as Pauline.  When I was about 15 or 16 Jim gave me part time work at weekends and school holidays, working with his brother Frank, painting most of the ecclesiastical institutions in Victoria Park.  It was like the Forth Bridge, it never stopped and for years after I continued this nice little earner at 2s 6p per hour which financed my early drinking career.

In fact during my late teenage years I was hardly ever out of Jim and Ellen’s house, reporting for duty, watching TV and generally learning how to deal with a family of good looking women.  To the worldly wise it would and must have been like heaven, surrounded by this plethora of beautiful girls but oafish and ungainly me could never measure up and the girls all went eventually their separate romantic ways.  The one constant was Ellen, always putting a plate of food in front of me, she was like a second mother to me for years until I also eventually moved on to seek my fortune.  Since then in the middle 60s until now I used to meet up with each and everyone of them from time to time, there was never any awkward silences, we just took up where we had left off, it was as though we remained in those early 1960 years, so tightly bound together.

So it was with great joy and anticipation that I made my way to Manchester to take part in the celebration of Ellen’s life.  There is little sadness when a person of nearly 98 dies, just happiness at the long, fruitful and deeply fulfilled existence.

At the church of St Winifred’s, where Monsignor Michael Quinlan is OIC and who would not be too happy knowing I was sat in his benches, there appeared many still recognisable faces. Those that had hardly changed in the 50 years of my wanderings were Ellen’s seven daughters, easily recognisable because they all carry some aspects of Ellen’s countenance.  They all retain the fine chiselled features of their mother, none look older than 40 yet I suspect if my maths are correct some of them must be older than that.  Two of the Power girls from Montgomery Road were there, Geraldine and Aileen. Jean Gay and her 94 year old mother, her father is still going strong at 97.  There must have been something in the water in Longsight all those years ago because my father at 94 was also striding up the aisle alongside my two brothers Kevin and Michael, Kevin in need of a haircut and Michael clean shaven and trimmed to match his elevation in life.  Another blast from the past, Miss Wallace was also there still recognisable although well into her 80s.  I did not introduce myself because the palms of my hands were still smarting from the edge of the ruler she wealded with such gay abandon on our ten year old palms and my mind still stunned by the negativity she tried to instill without success into our baby booming confidence.

Above everything else was the mass of the Connors.  Ellen had seven daughters who spawned 20 grandchildren with space and time for many more who again bred 26 great grandchildren with hundreds more to come and also two great great granchildren were present with three more tucked into their mothers’ bellies for deliverance later this year.  Fecundity is without doubt the family’s middle name.

At the funeral breakfast, tears of joy, happiness and a few of sadness mingled with the lump in my throat and I found it hard to talk.  I was just so glad to be there and experience the waft of memory as it rolled over me and the delight of a life that had been well lived.  Ellen and her husband Jim, who died in 2005, were as generous as any two people could be.  In the words of her first grandchild Anthony, Shiela’s son, who offered up the Eulogy at the end of Requiem Mass, Ellen’s “legacy is one of wealth, not of money, but of showing how to live your life through selfless love for other people”.

In the few years I have still to live she will never be forgotten, nor will she be in the minds of two of my daughters, Katy and Louise, who accompanied me and knew the family.  Katy weighed down with her two year old twins who were as good as gold until the eulogy and then started shouting like a Manchester City crowd in full voice drowning out Anthony’s well chosen words.  Louise weighed down by a child yet to be born but at 38 weeks cannot have long to go.  They were massively impressed with the whole celebration.

May Ellen rest in peace.

Helen and myself after much Bordelaise bidding decided to take a springtime trip to Bordeaux to see an old friend and the hutch he lives in.  Our flight was booked on Sunday out of Dublin and has Ianrod Eireann only do reduced journeys of a Sabbath we travelled up to Dublin on the Saturday.  A pleasant journey with my free travel pass granted to all who have lived for sufficient years.  It did entail a 35 minute delay at Mostrim or Edgeworthstown, as it is known today, because of a train failure in the Mullingar region.  It was no discomfort for the new trains are so comfortable and I had my Kindle at hand.

Disembarked at Connolly Station we took a short walk down to the Abbey Theatre to meet our daughter, Paddy, at her place of work.  Although we had been before, I am always struck by the friendliness of the staff and how helpful they always are.  You do not meet this sincerity often in corporative life but these young people from the lad selling programmes at the door, to the young girl in the cloak room and the staff at the bar, welcomed us and directed us in such a pleasant fashion that it took my breath away.  So well done management for picking and training a decent bunch of youngsters in the fine art of front of house.  I will be back again for Tom Murphy’s play The House in June and O’Casey’s masterpiece The Plough and the Stars at its revised location at the Belvedere in the Summer.

The three of us decided to eat at a Moroccan restaurant, Dada’s, on South William Street.  I would recommend it to everyone, especially the Merguez sausages, the salads, the Tagines and the Argentinian Malbec which we consumed in more than sufficient quantity.  Then off to Paddy’s abode by the Grand Canal, to chew the cud and where we tucked into more vino, Sangria de Toro from the house of Torres in Spain, a most economic and lovely wine at 7 euro per bottle.  Who said it was expensive in Dublin.

Next morning, Sunday, we were up at sparrow fart and away to the airport giving ourselves plenty of time in case of delay.  However the journey went like clockwork through deserted Dublin.  No sooner had we reached the Luas stop at the top of Harcourt Street then a tram came along to whisk us into Stephen’s Green.  A short walk across to Dawson Street to pick up the airport bus escorted by a friendly man who was in charge of the tourist horses and carriages.  30 seconds later a bright and breezy young taxi driver seizing his opportunity stopped and said he would carry us to the airport for the same price as the bus, 7 euro each.  Helen and I jumped in followed by two Californian girls who had just finished doing Europe in three days and could not believe their luck.  They remained dumbstruck for the entire journey.

Thus we were at the airport 30 minutes after leaving Paddy and leaving us well over two hours to wait for our plane.  However a full Irish breakfast and people watching soon passed the time.  On journeys I  love waiting and watching and I hate being just on time and rushing.  We had booked to travel by Aer Lingus and I do not know what it is about this airline, they are as cheap as Ryanair but they seem to retain the old world gentility and friendliness that is sadly lacking in its rival airline.  One hour and thirty minutes later we were 10 degrees warmer in Bordeaux, an airport similar to Knock but with two terminals and more runway and apron.  We were in Terminal A which is very quiet traffic wise and we were soon outside in the sun looking out for my friend Monsieur R and then I saw a flash of blue in the distance.  It was half time in the Manchester City game against Newcastle which more or less determined the Premier League for them, R had dashed out on the referee’s whistle and hurtled down the road from his pad in St Jean d’Illac, a mile or so from the airport.

We darted back so that no football would be lost by mine host who was in such a state of nervousness he could not watch but remained in earshot.  He had deposited us outside this sprawling mansion, I was looking round for the gardeners cottage but this was the only residence.  He said it was his, so I had to believe him.  The house was modern, with an extensive open plan layout.  You could have a decent 5-a-side foot ball match in the kitchen with room to park a few spectators cars.  The living room could seat 30 people and still leave room for dancing.  A short walk along a glazed corridor to bedrooms and the obligatory indoor swimming pool, sauna and spa, all superfluously  heated to withstand the permanent tropical temperature of Bordeaux.  Up the open plan staircase which was a feature of the living space past the dazzling chandelier to a full sized snooker table, bar and relaxing sofas.  This arena led off to further bedrooms and bathroom.  Only one word sums it all up, palatial.  Two years R and Madame P spent designing it themselves, they then found a portugoose builder who spent 15 months building it.

The kitchen was a gem and the food better.  He had a couple of hens that looked more like feather dusters patrolling the back of the house and they supplemented the plentiful supply of eggs.  Our first feed was ouefs mimosa ( boiled eggs sliced in half with a topping of crab meat, mayonnaise, paprika and pepper), simple but lovely.  The main course was magret with cooked apples and figs washed down with local illicit plonk from the over-producing excellent local vineyards.  A local bonus for local people which I think is well deserved.  An early night followed after the journey and the excesses of the previous night in Dublin but not before we had welcomed in France’s new president, Monsieur Hollande, who had just beaten the previous pantomime dwarf Monsieur Sarkozy by 4% of the vote.  I suppose a close run thing and not really welcomed around St Jean d’Illac.

I was up early at 5.00am and sat in front of the ever present computer screen and answered my overnight e-mails and made notes for this scruffy little piece.  Shortly Madame P arises and within no time sticks a welcoming cafe creme in front of me.  The day has started.  Madame P runs a music school in St Jean which she started 20 years previously and works a tremendous amount of hours.  It shows you what the community think, with a population of 6500 people the school have 700 pupils of all ages.  We breakfasted on eggs, ham, left over magret, home made bread and fig compote before she left for work.  Monsieur R and Helen slept fashionably late but they eventually arose to a grim permanently sunny morning with a temperature at 9.ooam, a balmy 20C. and it eventually peaking in mid-afternoon at 26C.

A quiet day is planned while Dublin wears off, not the wonders of historic Bordeaux and the recent extensive works along the River Garonne, we have seen it all before and we are not an inquisitive couple.  We spent the morning pottering about, I made a visit to the boulanger and returned with pain et canneles.  Cannele is a Bordeaux speciality, little almost cone shaped cakes made with flour and butter and honey.  Here they make them by the thousand every day and they are delicious.  Within a short time we prepared lunch.  Smoked salmon, ham, tomatoes of strange shape and variety and the rest of the magret, nothing is wasted here.  In the afternoon we took a short trip out to Andernos on the northern shore of the Bassin D’Arcachon.  It is a little resort town at one time famous for its oysters and now just at the start of its busy season.

We returned to the mansion at 4.00pm for a well earned siesta before settling in to a couple of aperos around 7.00am whilst waiting for Madame P to return from her work.  As we wait for her return I look around the house and notice  the flaw.  There is no central heating, no radiators.  “How can you make such a basic error”, I said.  “Because we don’t need it” was the reply.  However after further investigation I did discover that there was an under floor heating system, that they do switch on for a month round Christmas.

That evening off we went to Madame’s sister’s house in Cestas to the south of Bordeaux, for more aperos and the biggest homemade pizzas I have ever seen, washed down by a very palatable local wine.  The sister’s boyfriend was Monsieur Chef and while I was on pastis, the chef and R were guzzling whiskey as though it was going out of fashion.  It is amazing how popular whiskey is over here, most men I met on this trip drank it before and after meals.  Monsieur Chef made the pastry bases in between slurps, which he covered with a tomato and basilique sauce, then lashings of mozzarella and parmigiano cheese and ham and then dropped two eggs into the middle of each one and then into the oven.  Impossible to finish so into a doggy bag for tomorrow’s breakfast.  We returned home at 12.45am to an alcoholic night cap and then to bed.

Day 2 in Bordeaux was a Bank Holiday, we all slept in.  Madame P was out for 10.00am because they have had so many Bank Holidays recently The Music School had to open in order to catch up.  We are off to a local 7-aside football competition where we will have lunch and a few aperos before watching Jeremy and his mates take on other local teams.  Jeremy is Madame P’s son from a previous arrangement, a very nice well mannered young man with mates the same and they all think Ireland is the best country in the world.  I have got to say that the ordinary French person has no liking at all for England and its people but they think the sun shines out of the Irish man and woman’s arse

As soon as we arrived at the Stade and on a wink from Monsieur R, a plastic cup brimming with whiskey was put into my hand and a big lump of bellypork squashed between two halves of a baguette pushed into my face.  Basic but very, very tasty.  We then sat down because it was half time in the competition and our team lunched on pastis and pork filled baguettes, just the foundation to a hard afternoon’s football.  You could see who the winners were, a team of African lads were warming up, no lunch or aperos for them.  They were passing the ball about and showing off their individual skills while the French lads were enjoying their Bank Holiday.  The African lads who no doubt will appear in the Premier League one day wiped the floor with their white opposition, but it was all in good fun.

The whole football experience was quite exhausting, whiskey diluted with ice cubes attentively replenished by Gerard, Madame P’s brother in law, who was one of the competition organizers, the barbecue firing out al sorts of tasty bits washed dow by pastis and local beer.  Jeremy’s team were great guys and stood the pressure well ably aided by their girlfriends who ate and drank what the boys could not finish and we the toast of the team because we were Irish.  I did not like to disavow them.  We returned once more for a well earned siesta and then a game of snooker that made me think I had forgotten more about the game than I had ever learnt but I still beat mine host.  The evening meal was a simple affair of meat loaf prepared by ourselves, mashed potato configured by R and washed down by bottles of Bordeaux rose and rouge.

Day 3 was Wednesday and a day off school for the kids but not the musicians.  Late morning we tootle off to the Medoc and spend time in Margaux, too pricey for our pockets so we retire to the little town of Macau on the Garonne where we lunch in a splendid restaurant renminiscent of France long ago.  We had a three course meal with half a litre of wine each for 12 euro, excellent value.  It was now touching 26C so home James, stopping off at a massive LeClerc supermarket in St Medard.  This was the biggest store I was ever in with an unbelievable display of wines from Bordeaux and half a shelf of Vins Etrangeres.  The poisonnerie was  incroyable, if that is how you spell it, with every known fish and a few more on display.  I could still be at the boucherie if let.  The French cuts look so much nicer than our own.

Home to pintade and peas.  I was given the honour of cutting off its head before it went into the pot.  Monsieur Gerard came round, so six of us sat down for dinner.  After numerous aperos, vino by the litre and digestifs to fill a distillery, the piano cranked up and Helen started the ball rolling followed by Madame on the keys giving it Killarney.  Jeremy who is big into jazz piano and Gerard who is a Charles Aznavour look alike and devotee finished off the evening in style.  Plans were made for a similar meeting in Boyle in September after the vintage.  I was told in no uncertain French to look out for Roscommon ladies with similar dispositions to Gerard And Jeremy before I slipped off my stool about eight hours after I had first sat on it.

I woke at nine with a splitting head but after cafe and petite dejeuner, I was fit enough for a hectic return game of snooker, a very small apero and the thought of lunch which is to be bread, boudin noir et pommes.  It is 11.30am and the temperature 29.5C in the cool interior, God knows what it must be outside.  Our plane is scheduled for4.10pm by which time it had reached 35C and I am not looking forward to the journey.  Off the plane in shirt sleeves in Dublin to a freezing 10C and by the time we made it home to Boyle it was a festering 7C.  How clever we are to pick the Arctic to live in.

On 19th January 2010 I wrote a piece called The Reality of Retirement the intrepid reader should hunt it out and read it, it is awfully good and amazingly short for me at 850 words but each word and idea is a gem.  I was reminded of this posting only the other day, thinking I must have written it a few months back and in fact it was two years since I started to realise the beauties of being unwaged.  If time flies that quickly in this nirvanic state I find myself in, they will soon be carrying me out the door feet first.

Yes I was reminded of this literary gem the other evening, when a chap called by at 7.00pm on his way home, frazzled from a long hard day at work.  He related the events of his stressful day and then asked what I had got up to.  It made me think, “do you know Jack” I said “I don’t think I’ve done anything and I have not been bored but enjoyed every minute of my day”.  On uttering those words I knew I had already reached the liberating state that the world’s population strives for.

In saying I had done nothing, I was obviously telling little porkies, because I had showered and dressed myself, had a leisurely breakfast, sauntered through my e-mails and written 1100 words on the ridiculous Irish Government custom of buying communion dresses for little girls.  I followed this up with an equally leisurely and fashionably late lunch and then spent the rest of the afternoon reading a very interesting novel cum biography of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway’s first wife.  The book called The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, I can recommend to anybody, it tells of their life in Paris and the gifted people who filled this place  after the Great War and during the liberated 1920s.  People like James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, all megastars of the 20th century.  I did all all this at my own pace and enjoyed myself so much it felt as though I had done nothing.

The beauty of this senile exisatence is that since last February, the Queen of England, her glorious majesty, has given me a few hundred drinking vouchers every week, I get free medical care courtesy of my medical card, costs of which in Ireland, which does not have a National Health Service, can be worth an arm and a leg,  perhaps that is why the government here can give out free communion dresses.  On top of all this from next week I am entitled to a free travel card which allows me to travel anywhere in the British Isles for nix on public transport which includes trains, boats and buses.  I am, as they say, on the pigs back.

In my previous posting on this subject I stressed the need for peace of mind being the epitomy of the retired state and how on retirement you should relax in the beginning and slowly find your way to this peacefulness.  Well I reached it by throwing off the man made psychological shackles that the Catholic Church had bound me in all my working and married life and in my freethinking state exposed the bunkum and downright lies that the Church had told in their bid to keep a lid on the clerical abuse scandal that has shattered most of the western world’s religious ideologies and which is only now coming home to roost in England and Wales.  I really enjoyed jousting with the nincompoops of Safeguarding Commissions that the Church in their fat, mindless state had left in charge of this most important of roles.  As these obsequious and obfuscating hurdles, put in place by the Church, were blown away, the younger and more energetic I became.  I was like a youth again, scared of nothing, roaming the internet, like Spartacus in revolt.

When you are mindful of nobody, peace of mind comes easy and your relaxed state takes care of the boundaries you could easily tip yourself over.  So to come down from this buzz, a well written book, a few hours watching test match cricket and a glass of Malbec act as balm on a totally fulfilled life.  I recommend it to everybody who has been round long enough.

In June 1996 the IRA did most people in Manchester a bit of a favour.  They detonated a bomb, the biggest in peace time history, on Corporation Street, near to the junction with Market Street.  The bomb caused that much damage, it advanced the development of Manchester city centre by about 30 years, leaving us with a city centre today that anybody would be proud of.

The damage was so great in relation to the infrastructure that most buildings within a few hundred yards had either to be demolished or had to have fundamental demolition to large parts of its structure.  This led the movers and shakers to think that while we are doing this we might as well do that as well.  Insurance and investment money came pouring in from all angles and kept the construction industry in business for many a year.  No wonder that although the authorities knew who the culprits were they did not have them arrested.  Had they not done Manchester and the North of England a great service?

The only building within the bomb’s vicinity that did not get demolished was the Royal Exchange, a massive Victorian monolith which had experienced Hitler’s bombs in 1940 and stood to tell the tale.  It was formerly the heartbeat of the textile industry which conducted world wide trade within its porticos, but was now offices, shopping centre and avant-garde theatre.  We, as demolition contractors, were lucky enough to win the contract for the complete internal demolition and clean up of this building and so we embarked on two years of hard, busy and lucrative work.

Back at home my fifth child, Paddy Jo or on formal occasions Patricia Josephine, with one eye on her fast approaching second level education, was expressing a wish to learn to play the piano.  She was just over eight years old when the bomb inadvertently did her a favour and well into her tenth year by the time the favour was realised.

The Royal Exchange, as I have explained, was high, deep and massive.  Nine floors above the ground, four floors below and all sat on a footprint of 60,000sq. ft.  As each floor was handed over by loss adjustors and insurance men, we moved in and cleared everything back to structure.  Hard and difficult work in the confined spaces in which we were asked to work.  We literally shifted several thousand tonnes of debris in our time there.

Some time in late 1997 we were given the undercroft to clear.  The undercroft was the lowest floor of four basement floors, accessed by street traffic from a vehicle lift situated on its southern elevation, opposite Half Moon Street.  It was a warren of storerooms and service equipment rooms housing heating and ventilating and electrical equipment.  The tenants of these storerooms and there was several dozen of them had been permitted entry and had taken out what was considered valuable.  Any item they could not remove because of its size had to be bubble-wrapped and it was part of our responsibility to recover the said bubble-wrapped items and place same onto the tenants’ transport.  Everything not bubble-wrapped had to be removed to tip.

One day in the first week of this operation, we were given the keys to a long tunnel-like room, full of point of sale advertising boards for a shop upstairs that had once sold cosmetics and beauty products.  Struggling through this dusty and out of date paraphenalia and right at the end of the tunnel was a piano with no bubble-wrap around it.  I called the Project Manager on the radio, pointed out the instument to him and asked him the obvious question.  He turned to our job description and said “if it is not double-wrapped, tip it”  Although Paddy Jo did not know it then, her constant pleadings had been answered.

Within an hour of our meeting, the not bubble-wrapped piano was on the back of one of our pick-ups and making its way to our house in Heaton Moor.  With a little effort, four of us lifted it off the pick-up and safely installed it in our front room.  Helen set to work with damp cloths and polish and when I returned that evening there was this wonderfully manufactured upright piano dressed in the most beautifully coloured walnut cladding, a most desirable object.

A piano tuner was called and enquiries made for a piano teacher.  Within 24 hours we had both.  The piano tuner said it was a great example of a horizontally strung piano dating to about the 1870-1880 period.  The piano teacher said Paddy was approaching her lessons with great enthusiasm.  All our hopes and dreams were answered.

A couple of weeks later I received a message from the Project Manager asking me to come up to his office.  I entered and there sat a very irate looking matronly figure, who turned out to be the one-time manageress of the previously mentioned beauty parlour.  “Where is my piano, I did not think I had to bubble-wrap it” she squawked.  It seems, to ease the tensions of the day that rapidly build up in beauty emporia, madame used to visit her dungeoned piano and knock hell out of the ivories until her stress levels decreased.  The Project Manager winked at me and enquired as to where we had stored it.  I was nonplussed for a second but thought for the sake of everybody, I had better be straight.  I explained to the rapidly quietening lady that we had to remove it from its position  in order to keep the work moving but we realised that it had value to someone and that we had it in safe storage at our depot.  I received a delivery address but no thanks and the following day Paddy Jo was heart broken, the lady was happy and the piano teacher was out of work.  However the Project Manager was very pleased at the way he had been extricated from a very tricky situation.  But I had a problem how to placate my darling Paddy Jo and how to keep the piano teacher in business.

Longsight, in Manchester, where I spent my formative first 20 years, is a market for anything.  If you want it, Longsight has got it.  Within hours of me sending out distress signals I was informed of this piano showroom situated in an old mill in Hamilton Road, where I used to play as a kid, climbing its sheer vertical sides and generally doing anything that was just one step from death.  This showroom specialised in refurbished pianos and it was from there, having handed over a pocketful of spondulicks, Paddy’s refurbished Walberg piano was delivered next day.  Paddy and the piano teacher happy, me teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Paddy grateful to her splendid father, attacked the piano with all the vim, vigour and verve she could muster and 18 months later won the Music Scholarship to St. Bede’s College, in Whalley Range, my old alma mater. This Scholarship payed 50% of the fees during her stay at College.  With about £3,000 of a saving a year over her seven years at school that piano owed me nothing.  Paddy continued learning and finished up passing her Grade 8 examination which is as good as the normal piano player wants.  Mrs Rosamund Meehan, Deputy head of the school and Head of Music considered Paddy to be an excellent musician  That piano, the mahogany one, mentioned in my blog posting of 13 January 2012 entitled A Man With A Van, after crossing the Irish Sea the other day is hopefully going to earn some other deserving kid’s parents a few quid as well but it is all down to that beautifully clad walnut piano that we borrowed from that lovely lady.