So the afternoon shift started which was always a very busy and intense period of time. All the empty and dirty bottles collected on the the morning milk rounds had to be crated into the wash room at the end of the dairy, washed and sterilized with steam and stacked […]
History
Childhood Holidays, The Afternoon.
Although I was to continue with my holiday trend yesterday, I awoke or more like got kicked out of bed at 5.30 with a violent attack of sneezes, coughs and a nose running like the Boyle River was two months ago. I had been suffering from a cold or some […]
Childhood Holidays, The Morning.
These cold, wet February weeks makes you yearn for the sun and long bright days. When I was young, myself and my brother Kevin were always packed off to the farm, my paternal grandfather’s place in Denton, just to the west of Manchester. These summer holidays were in many respects, […]
Reverie Roused.
I awoke this morning to a pleasant surprise a chap called Jesse who often posts insightful comments on to my blog, came up with a good point. See my blog comments on yesterday’s Admitting Defeat. I immediately dashed off a letter to Pierse & Fitzgibbon, which I give below:- Dear […]
In Memory of John Lovell
I was asked recently by the family of John Lovell, a man born in the shadow of the Guiness Brewery in Dublin, who enlisted in the Connaught Rangers and was part of the British Expeditionary Force that marched on Mons in August 1914, for some background information into this proud […]
Old Days in an Old Church
I remember well the old days in the early 1950s in Manchester as a Catholic. Half the population seemed to be of that ilk. The Church was the centre of our lives, not the alternative add-on it is today. Then the Church was the centre of our lives, everything revolved […]
The Horror of War
Today I want to praise a couple of heroes, one famous, the other not. The latter was Eddie Lenihan, who came to Manchester as a i6 yearold with his brother, Michael, in about 1896. They were two sons of a family of 21 children from Ballyduff, not far from Lismore, […]
My Grandad Part 3
My grandfather was 26 years working in England before he married at the age of 45 to a woman ten years younger than him in 1919. He knew her well, he had been in digs in her family house for at least ten years, a house only 100 metres away […]
My Grandad Part 2
Jim Crehan spent 35 years of his adult working life shovelling coal into the gas retorts, firing the coal and clearing out the resulting coke from those long steel tubes. Back-breaking work, which by its nature, engendered habits which followed him home and into retirement. Those of course who had […]
My Grandad. Part 1
The most significant presences in my life have been my wife, my mother and my maternal grandfather, listed only by age and beauty and not by craftmanship. My mother naturally got to me first and filled my head with masses of dark curls, so much so, that I had to […]