Christ, that’s fairly grim.
An Aunt of mine left for London when she was 16, sometime in the 1960s. Fell in with the ‘pub crowd’ and had a few boyfriends and a husband that were complete pricks. A hard, hard life. She died of Covid. Her funeral over there was a glimpse into what life was like for the Irish over there. Salt of earth, but they’ve lost touch with Ireland. I’d have more fingers than most of them had teeth.
All my uncles and my father went to Manchester in the 60s.5 men in total from one farm.One aunt moved there too around the same time never to return only to have her ashes buried after she died.The auld lad was the only one came back.All worked in the buildings.3 of the ended up in Morecambe and the other in Scotland.Two of them ended up very high up with a big crowd called Taylor Woodrow and had fairly big jobs on the channel tunnel when they retired.Some lads just weren’t suited to the big city and found refuge in the pub.
There was also no one who would treat you as bad as your own and that’s still true to this day.
Donall is some man to write tomes about navvying.
An incredible existence really. I’d imagine that 95% of lads who were down that route ended their days in flop-houses or worse.
Whatever about the emigrants of the 80’s they had gotten a bit of an education and were aware of the hardships of their predecessors.
The exodus of the 50/60’s were ill prepared for the life choices they made.
I think that generation would speak to this generation somewhat along the lines of what Svetlana, the one legged Russian lady, said to Tony in the Sopranos.
So, that’s the trouble with Americans, you expect nothing bad to ever happen, when the rest of the world expects only bad to happen and then they are not disappointed
You have everything and still you complain, lie on couches, with your psychiatrist. You have too much to time to think about yourselves
“Kings” is a great film.
Maudlin fuckers today, arent we???
Surely we’ve some success stories to mix with the back-breaking serf-like ones? Ive one.
Ive a gran-aunt from Leitrim who was a nurse in London in the 50s. Young asian lad took a shine to her on the bus to work daily, stumped up the courage to talk to her one day. Fell for one another.
Turns out he was the grandson of one of the founders of cathay pacific and she married upwards! She had multiple restaurants in Chelsea etc
The husband loved leitrim. Loved it so much, he requested to be buried there. Hes interred with my aunt and great grand parents in cemetry in Drumshanbo.
That’s a mighty story!
Another Leitrim man,be god.Whos winning the championship this year?
Yes but more accurately no.
My father’s first cousins all left the North Strand with their parents when they were only nippers and landed in Jimmy White country.
Son 1 was found unresponsive on a London bus in 1974, presumably due to whatever substances he had been imbibing. He was in his 20s. The conductor thought he was asleep at the terminus and tried to wake him up. He was dead.
Son 2 fared a bit better and in his professional life flew around the world working for a major Japanese electronics corporation which sponsored a cycling team in the 1980s. He was married to a Japanese lady (it could have been a South African lady now that I think of it) but that didn’t work out and he got a massive heart attack and died in 1984.
Son 3 was a musician and very good one. He even worked with the lads who used to do the Tottenham Hotspur FA Cup final records but he was much more accomplished beyond that and there are even YouTube videos of him playing on the telly. But he liked the dhrink, and he died of cirrhosis of the liver in his 40s in the early 1990s.
The daughter is still alive and I met her at a funeral about eight years ago and found her a lovely charming woman apart from her caricatured support for Brexit. But she’s in a nursing home now.
Fairytale of New York.
Every now and again you realise just how brilliant it is - even when you hear it for the millionth time.
Based on the play 'Kings of the Kilburn High Road afaik. Tom knew his stuff.
I togged out for drumshanbo for a match as a kid. Dessie something, school principal, had me play when i was sent up for a few weeks!
That would have been the absolute gent that is Dessie Doyle. The very essence of an alright sort. The term was made for him.
I might have played against you,I loved playing on that pitch.One of the few dry ones in Leitrim at the time
I used know a fella who’d lead with ‘would you like to be buried with me people’. Not dissimilar
The mad uncle ive posted about before was talking about this recently. He remembers the aunt coming back from london, coming to limerick and news had travelled ahead she was coming with her (asian) husband.
The family had a house on careys road in Limerick city, spitting distance from the railway station and the mad uncle was eldest boy of the family. He said he recalls the absolute excitement surrounding this exotic occasion and every kid and their mother lined up outside the wall of my grandparents house awaiting the arrival of the “chinaman”.
He laughs of the innocence of it. No one had seen a “chinaman” in the flesh, only the grown men whod travelled. So all these mothers and their little kids lined up on the garden wall bursting with anticipation awaiting his arrival!
Gas to think about but its only gas cos of the leaps forward we’ve made.
Read that book about 2 years ago, amazing book.
@flattythehurdler is one from this parish…
You can, I’d imagine, add his pal Mattie to the plus column as well. 
Yourself, @Chancer and @Alphakrul1 have some great auld stories. Ye should do a weekly podcast together.