A short story from the pen of Thurles author Tom Ryan.
“Way back in the late ‘Sixties’, long before Vincent Browne’s famously entertaining People’s Debates on TV3, we had here in Thurles, “The People’s Debating Society”, locally referred to as the PDS.
People’s Debate.
This enthusiastic group of men / women, both of all ages and from all backgrounds, met every fortnight in the local Thurles Confraternity Hall and these entertaining evenings attracted up to several hundred people at times, to discuss, in often animated fashion, the topical issues of the day from ‘Politics’ to ‘The behaviour of young boys and girls in the big bad city of Dublin’; a subject that once propelled the PDS onto the front page of the now defunct national Evening Press newspaper!
Thurles was always a great town for talking, whether on street corners or in pubs and the PDS offered every one the opportunity to discuss the issues of the day in a manner many a Town Councillor must have envied; seen as forthright, frank and honest discussions, some of which I reported for the “Tipperary Star Newspaper”, as PRO of this group. And in fairness many a Councillor bravely attended the sometimes heated battle of words taking place.
The PDS was a great training ground for would be politicians and journalists, and was a mine of information on many matters in the days before Citizens Information Centres were even heard of in Ireland. And many people who might be shy about approaching politicians for information were now being encouraged to stand up for their rights. The self confidence boost and empowerment so many individuals received from those community meetings was incalculable.
I myself had just returned to Ireland, from London, having been impressed by the Citizens Advice Bureau system over there and therefore thought the PDS could lead eventually to similar centres in Ireland. I recall having a letter published in TCD Miscellany of Trinity College, cheekily calling for a coming together of workers, the unemployed and students, the better to be educationally armed for a social revolution. To the magazine’s credit, the Editor of TCD Miscellany took the letter and an accompanying short story of the Thurles man of letters (Auxiliary Postman!) seriously, to his amazement, I might add. Today I am happy to have my books featuring stories from those protesting days in the Trinity Library. The PDS was not the only such forum for discussion in those heady days of the “Dawning of Aquarius” in the protesting ‘Sixties’.
I was a member of Conradh na Gaeilge who held diospoireachtai (Irish: discussions) in Irish and English in the hall of a local restaurant on Tuesday nights in Thurles.
Thurles had, while I was in England, won the prestigious ‘Glor na nGael All- Ireland Award’ as Ireland’s top Gaeilge – speaking town. Some of the organising committee were also to form another forum for speaking Irish called Comhluadar (Irish: Community). Every subject under the sun was discussed as Gaeilge and in English in Glenmorgan House, Thurles. The rationale was that those who could speak Irish at these discussions and those who wanted to learn or improve on their Gaeilge, could listen and learn or speak a little in English and a little as Gaeilge. The spiorad (Irish: spirit) was all that mattered. We were taken aback at what a great gra (Irish: Love) for an Gaeilge was there and still is among the ordinary people as opposed to teachers and academics, who would be expected to be fluent Gaelgoiri, anyway. It was heartening to know that so many people from so many different backgrounds were so interested in the first official language of the nation and were proud of every little focal (Irish: word) they had. And how the late Gay Byrne would have enjoyed these convivial evenings. In those days also ‘Muintir na Tire’ (Irish: People of the Country) had their Fireside Chats and they held great debating competitions for schools, which I used to report upon for the newspapers. Gael Linn also encouraged diospoireachtai and I recall feeling humbled by the power and eloquence of Rockwell College who trounced our Thurles CBS quartet. That night I learned that all the shouting and bluster and passion in the world is no match for calm and measured debate. At one of the famous Fireside Chats of Muintir na Tire I recall a prominent national politician speaking with hugely impressive authority on numerous topics related to agriculture. He mesmerised us with the force of arguments substantiated by a vast array of alleged facts and figures, thrown at us with ease and eloquence as he continually consulted his pack of cards, from which he appeared to have taken all this information. At the end of the evening, having been fascinated all night by this seemingly all knowing genius, who had all the answers to everything, I wondered, being a cheeky young lad at the time, just what kind of cards could have so much information on them. Upon picking up the cards and turning them over I was amazed and puzzled to find the cards were pure blank on both sides. (hmm..)
Then there is the important matter of ‘the way you tell ’em’. During an election campaign before the War of Independence speaker after speaker appeared to be making no headway with the vast crowd assembled in Mullinahone, in South Co. Tipperary to listen to them. But one speaker knew just how to address the plain people of Tipperary. He shouted “Men of Mullinahone!” There was a pause before he roared again; “Women of Mullinahone!” A thunderous roar shook the nearby hills. Former “Tipperary Star Newspaper Editor”, the late great William (Bill) Myles, recalled “He could say or do no wrong at all with the crowd after that”.
Mr Myles himself enjoyed debates and invited a few friends into the Tipperary Star’s editorial office one night a week for a debate, including a gentleman who was on the Republican side during the Civil War, while Mr Myles held the rank of Captain in the Free State Army.
Ah, sure, talk is cheap. But what fun, what fun!”
End.
Tom Ryan ,”Iona” Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
It seemed like only yesterday he had been protesting to Alice how much the writer could achieve if not tormented day and night at his work by the shrill cries of young children with their minute to minute crises. He winced now as he recalled his usual outburst; “Ann! Mary ! I’m working at the typewriter. Stop all that fighting!” It was one of the joys and sometimes irritations of the freelance writer that one was always at home with the partner and children in all their many moods. Yet, as often as he had berated their presence at crucial moments of writing, just as often he had mentally berated himself for his surliness, especially when one of the children was down with a cold or flu. After all, as long as everybody was in their health, that was the main thing, wasn’t it?
It was so quiet now in the kitchen of their rustic bungalow with only the dogs barking in the haggard in the early morning and the clucking of the hens disturbed his train of thought, which was heavy with uncertainty. He had risen very early that morning, had kindled the fire with yesterday’s newspapers and the kippins (light dry twigs), from Ryan’s hedge across the road, and the turf from the bog up the road. He had made a pot of tea for himself, thinking it was too early to be waking Alice for that cup he had dutifully brought to her in bed every morning, since they’d been married. Then, after a few slices of toast, half burned over the top of the range, he had shaved; for he really must be respectable today, for his darling daughter, Ann.
It was Ann, of course, who was so much on his mind today. This beautiful fair haired product of a loving union had, for four years always and everywhere, been with them; never from their side. Even sometimes when he went out on duty as a reporter for the daily newspapers, to gymkhanas, the feiseanna, weddings, festivals, rugby and hurling matches, and the whirlwind social round which he recorded, to bring in the few ‘bob’ to pay the mortgage and the household bills.
Well today was Ann’s big day. He had psyched himself up for the occasion, as he had tried to prepare Ann for this event. It was to be Ann’s first day at school.
As he sipped on his mug of tea now, he smiled recalling how comical it had been the other day. He and Alice and Ann and two years old Mary, the other child in the family, had, together, walked up to the white, pebble dashed, walled school. They had spoken to a new young principal with a ‘Ronnie’ [Dublin slang for an upper lip moustache, named after the British actor Ronald Colman.], Mr O’Regan who had smiled that deferential smile, full of understanding and who had greeted, good-humouredly, his latest pupil.
It was all a far cry from his own days at the Christian Brothers school, now, he thought. The memory of red raw wrists and raw palms from the heavy leather, even on bitterly cold winter mornings, was still with him all these years later. At least Ann now would not have to put up with that scenario.
Still, corporal punishment or not, he had been visibly upset when Ann had not sat down at her desk that day, despite the presence of her mam and dad and they had left soon after they’d arrived at the school. But they had been assured by the principal that Missus O’Brien who looked after Junior Infants, had a great way entirely with children. “Oh, the little ones absolutely adore Missus O’Brien”, the Principal, Mr O’Regan had assured himself and Alice. “I wouldn’t mind a little bout of crying, ‘tis only natural. Anyway, no sooner will you have left the classroom than the child will settle in immediately. It’s always the way, we find.” said Mr O’Regan.
He vividly recalled his own first day at school. His own mother, Bridie, had enticed him to school, one cold September morning, after the All-Ireland hurling final in Croke Park, which Tipperary had won. She had told him they were going to the circus in the field down by the river. The thought had momentarily occurred to him that there had never been a circus in the river field before. But still, he really had not thought it was an unusual hour of the day, to be going to a circus. When you’re that age you don’t, do you? Something inside in him now hurt a little at the remembering, and his mother had brought him to that great awesome pile of a building, that was the local Presentation Convent school. Here a forbidding creature in black and white attire, had frightened the life out of him, and he had fretted and raged as he was abandoned to the mercies of this strange looking creature, dressed like an alien from another planet, like in the cinema. He had constantly struggled with the nun, who had made gallant efforts to keep him quiet in his penny class, study desk, but to little avail. But, of course, those were the days when children stirred out no further than the road where they were bred; in the days before cars and lorries ensured such roads would no longer be happy playgrounds for bowly-rolling, hop-scotch, beds, ice slides in winter, hurling, and all the other delights of childhood of a whole other age.
He rose from the table, shoved the typewriter aside, knowing he just could not work this morning. He wondered again if it might not be a better idea to leave the child alone in bed this morning. Well, he didn’t go to school in the Presentation until he was six years of age and devil a bit of harm it had done him. In fact, he was much more mature and brighter than many another, if all was said and done and truth told. Sure, he reasoned, Ann was only a baby still.
He stared into the shaving mirror and noted a little dampness around the eyes of the anxious-looking beholder, before smiling through the tears at his own reflection.
Oh Lord, after all, wasn’t this to be a happy day, a major moment of development in the life of little Ann; a great new beginning. Ann would now set out in the world for the first time on her very own, to find her feet, as everyone had done since time immemorial. He smiled again. Well, honest to God, he thought, you’d think the wee girl was off to Japan to university, instead of just up the road to school.
He rose from the chair again, sighed, and decided to grab the teapot and pour out another cup of tea for himself. Somehow or another there were few dilemmas in life which did not present either a solution or at least acceptance of matters, after a nicely brewed cup of tea.
He sat down again at the table where he did all his writing and a good deal of his thinking, in the late nights and early mornings. The early morning sunshine beamed in from the back garden, through the narrow back window, over the kitchen sink.
Ann would not like rising early this morning. She, like Mary, had gone to bed same time as Alice and himself; late as usual. He always rose early to despatch a few paragraphs of news or sport to Dublin, for the evening papers. He toyed with the idea of filing a piece on an armed robbery out of town the night before, but, uncharacteristically, lost interest in this. He was beginning to think with his emotions now and he reasoned that if Alice would only sleep on, he would not have to make the journey to the school that day.
For some nights Ann and Mary had slept on either side of their mother. The idea was to get Ann to school while Mary was still asleep. The two children were great pals and were inseparable. They would resent being separated.
A low cry from the bedroom now shattered that possibility and in no time at all Alice and the girls had risen, washed, dressed and eaten their cornflakes, drank their tea and were ready to go out the door to school. Ann, never easily fooled, wondered why she was wearing her Sunday sailor’s suit, and she had asked about their destination; “Is today school, Daddy?”. Ann was indeed brighter than he’d given her credit for. Since she’d got out of bed his wife had said nothing, bar to remark on the promised fineness of the day and the need to hurry up and not be late for the party; which was their euphemism for school. He had told Ann there would be a party with many boys and girls and their friends and everything – there would be ‘marley’ (plasticine), jigsaws, toys, comics.
Alice had felt his deep emotion, which had momentarily rendered him speechless that morning. Like any happy couple they had that way of communicating that required no words, especially on emotion charged occasions. Quickly and in silence they fed the dog in the front of the house; the cats at the other side of the fence at the rear and some bread crumbs for the birds, before setting off to school. As they walked along the potholed country road to the school, he pointed, with forced mirth, to the crows circling over the barley crop in the adjacent fields. The children displayed silence as if having obtained a secret knowledge it would appear, and what seemed to him a sense of betrayal.
When they arrived in the school yard, they were greeted by the good humoured principal, Mr O’Regan. He handed the young man with the ‘Ronnie’ a slip of paper on which he had the night before, typed the name and address of their first child and her date of birth.
The kindly teacher gently took the slip of paper from his proffered hand, like it was some sacred object; a gesture he greatly appreciated. Mr O’Regan suggested they had better put Ann at a desk beside a gregarious little creature, to bring Ann out of herself. Anyway, this was the wee girl to whom they had spoken often, as the veteran of High Infants, who had made her way home, with her mother, past Ann’s house in the past year.
Ann sat down, looking a little apprehensive amidst the harsh discordant mixture of sounds made by the veterans of both the junior and senior infants, who shared the same room. But the man with the ‘Ronnie’ clapped his hands purposefully and called for attention from the pupils. He motioned to himself and Alice to leave now, with a wink that appeared to signal that everything would be all right.
They slowly left the classroom, amidst the many stares from apparently bemused children. But when Ann saw himself and Alice and Mary departing without her, she began to cry and raise her arms to her mother in tearful appeal. It was the moment both of them had secretly dreaded. But they had recalled the Masters advice, as he gently closed the door of the classroom, assuring Ann, “she’d be all right now”. They could hear Ann crying, as they stood silently together in the empty school yard, like two little children in a storm themselves. They did not speak for a long time, but both realised that life has its beginnings and many of them are in some ways endings, too. And it was this sense of ending and finality of all sorts, that engulfed them now.
And he thought again of the alleged importance of art and writing. He asked himself was any art greater than life; its joys and uncertainties, when it made you laugh and sometimes made you bloody cry. But then Alice had always known that, he knew.
Throughout all the emotions they had forgotten little Mary. She clung to him now in his arms, staring in awe at the school building. She said: “Daddy, I miss Ann”. He hugged her tighter than he’d ever done. No, there was never art like this he thought, but he said: “She’ll be back again soon for dinner”. END
Tom Ryan,”Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
I doubt that the majority of kids swap comics any-more? It is a pity if they don’t, as it was certainly, in the past, one of the most marvellous of pastimes.
In my childhood days by the ‘Watery Mall’ [Robert Emmett Street], in Thurles, one of the most common questions on the lips of my buddies in short trousers, whether in high summer out in Lady’s Well by the river or on wet and wintry Sundays in the Capitol or Delahunty’s cinema, was: “E’er a swap?” It was a mighty question to which there were all sorts of answers. And one had to be as cute and foxy as a journalist, to be a success in the field, otherwise, one could fall victim to the slashing capitalism of children.
There were many categories of comics to enthral us in those pre-television days – 68 pagers, classics, funnies like the Beano and Dandy, and Film Fun, or 64 pages of wartime (Donner und Blitzen – thunder and lightning) or cowboy adventures. Some boys, in their desperation to do a ‘dale’ (deal), would have with them on the swop, girls comics like the ‘School Friend’ in the hope that maybe if they threw in a few of them for the buyer’s sister they would dispose of a 68 pager without having to throw in a Classic. Oh, it was a deadly serious business and many boys had fine libraries to be envied, by any boy, anywhere.
The comics were our escape from the dreary world of school in much the same way as going to the cinema to see cartoons like Woody Woodpecker and Bugs Bunny or serials like Flash Gordon, latter space hero of the universe.
And the reason for swapping, apart from our obvious delight in comic yarns, was simply because money was scarce in hard times. We most certainly could not have our Roy of the Rovers, the Marvel, the Lion, and Dandy et al in the same fiscal week. Though an exception was made if you were in bed sick or on your birthday; an rud is annamh is iontach (Translated from Irish ‘The rarest and most wonderful thing’).
So, quite unconsciously we formed a co-operative comics movement, long before the Credit Union concept made its very welcome debut in town. We noted what parts of the town were best for swapping comics, the names of all boys who bought comics and where they lived and what comics they bought and what days they effected such purchases and how long they might take to read them. These and many other comic-pertinent details would be remembered in meticulous manner, though we might not get one arithmetic sum right in our school exercise copies.
If you did a swap and received a new-looking comic, you upped its value, kept it clean (hard job, that!) and smooth. And so, you had an immensely desirable swapping item after reading it. And how we loved to go up to Duggans Newsagents when the comics were coming in and asking how much the annuals would be at Christmas if ‘Santy’ (Santa Claus) did not in every sense present himself to us.
It was a magical and adventurous journey around town from the Watery Mall to the Derheen or Loughtagalla, in search of a swap.
No miner ever set off to the Klondyke, with such fervour or fever, as did the comics -swappers of Thurles long ago. We had a sense of purpose and the entrepreneurial flair of a Wall Street Broker, matched by the cuteness of a politician. Comic swapping was primarily a winter past time especially in the months when ‘Conker-playing’ with Chestnuts (genus Castanea) had lost its fascination and Christmas and ‘Santy’ was still a million years away to a boy or girl.
In the summer we would be busier with catching tadpoles and eels and pike and hurling, hurling and more hurling. So, when the new school term commenced after the all-Ireland senior hurling final on the first Sunday of September, we boys went from door to door with our little bundles of comics under our arms, hopeful of a few swaps to shorten the hours and to while away the time, in the long winter nights after the ekkers (school exercises) were finished.
And just as television is today blamed for bad exercises and bad examination results, so too blame then was apportioned for ‘reading them ould comics’. Though my own people always encouraged me to read them. In truth, children should have been praised for reading anything at all to enhance their literary status and advance their progress in the wonderful world of letters.
Indeed, so great was the desire for a swap some of us risked having our hands reddened with a leather strap by the Master for swapping comics under the school benches. Very often the status of a boy at school was proportionate to the number of comics he had amassed. I myself had built up my own little library but to do so I had to swap away some of my prized trains and tracks and Lion Annuals which I had received from ‘Santy’ for Christmas. All of my Holy Communion and Confirmation money went on comics and I have seldom valued it more or received better value since.
“E’er a swap now before you go way?”
Tom Ryan, ”Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
On Friday morning next, May 26th, at 11:00am sharp in Cashel Library, Ms Stephanie Woods will discuss the women artists of ‘An Túr Gloine(Irish for “The Glass Tower”) latter a Stained Glass Studio, focusing on the works of Sarah Purser, Evie Hone and Catherine O’Brien and the windows they created in Tipperary.
An Túr Gloine was first conceived of in late 1901 and finally established in January 1903 at No. 24 Pembroke Street, Dublin, Ireland.
The aforementioned Sarah Purser hoped to provide an alternative to the commercial stained glass imported from England and Germany, for Irish churches and other architectural projects. Thus, the original impetus for this project, was spurred on by the building of a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Loughrea, Co. Galway; drawing on the artistic tradition of Celtic manuscript illumination.
Note Please: Booking is essential to Tel: 062 63825. Refreshments will be served at this FREE trulyinformative event, where at all possible should not to be missed.
Margaret O’Brien’s gorgeous journaling book ‘Weather Report’ encourages you to document the beautiful and positive experiences of daily life.
Margaret cleverly uses the Beaufort Wind Scale to track personal change each day, starting with the external weather, what time of day is it, what do we see, hear and experience.
She then brings your attention inward; what do we feel inside, where is that emotion in our body? We are invited to write or draw or doodle our experiences, then document one thing we’ve found beautiful today.
Margaret guides you through the joys of keeping a journal and discusses the pleasures and healing potential of writing.
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