darkness that would envelop the farm at night, turning everything black. The stars
which were so bright.
We went to Mass every Sunday, faces wiped clean with a damp cloth until we were
shining, watching my grandad shave over a basin of hot water in the kitchen sink,
a mirror with a plastic frame propped up against the window. Waiting in the
Church car park afterwards, the rain beating against the glass, until he came back
from the shop carrying wafers and Neapolitan ice-cream, the Sunday papers
propped under his elbow. Going down the yard to collect eggs from the hens for
breakfast, still warm in our hands as we raced back to the house.
Sitting with my grandmother in her spectacular rose garden, finding shade under
the towering monkey trees while she lifted her face to the sky, feeling the sun on
her face, able to relax for once. Bedtime prayers and rounds of the rosary, healthy
sprinkles of holy water and whispered ‘good nights’ as she tucked us into the twin
beds that my mother and her sister had slept in when they had been children.
During the day, we frequently fought with my four uncles over possession of the
remote control, more often than not losing the battle. There were only two TVs
and two channels, so I spent a lot of my childhood watching repeat bulletins of
the RTÉ News, Angelus, Gay Byrne on a Friday, Pat Kenny on a Saturday, and most
excitingly of all — Winning Streak. (Still a life ambition to be a contestant on that
show. Show me all the free, ridiculously easy to win, money.)
Unlike what seems to happen today, with adults and children alike, my sister and
I were allowed to become bored, finding ways to fill in the gaps in between —
books, flights of fancy, making up wild stories, daydreaming for hours and hours.
We would jump on my grandparents’ bed, so violently that the light fixtures in the
parlour below would shake in a rather precarious fashion, try on Granny’s lipstick
and shoes, dragging quilts and pillows outside and draping them over the apple
trees to fashion a tree house.
Going to the nearest village with Grandad for the Cork Examiner, of course, buying
vast quantities of penny sweets and telling the lady to ‘charge that to Mick
Murphy’s account’ with a wave of a hand. In our generosity, we would bring our
grandmother home a single bar of chocolate, a Fry’s chocolate cream. We were, in
153