You did the right thing. You wouldn’t want anyone thinking you were miserly, that sort of thing sticks to a family through the generations. Shur look at you now, 25 years on, still wondering if that fella was mean.
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I can never understand tight bastards. Thankfully it is not in my nature but surely the few bob you may save from being such a way doesn’t make up for the terrible way in which you are viewed by your peers.
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Next lads born in the 1990s will be telling lads born in the 1970s they are weird for not having mobile phones til they were in their mid twenties
I haven’t hit late 30s yet but I would think this quite a stretch.
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£5 was good money in 94 to be fair, in a time when few enough had money
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You’re a city boy. It should be all non city folk and he wouldn’t be far off.
The git was a teacher in my school. He had loads of it.
I served mass once for one of the most notorious paedos that was going. There was a mass held on an old church site out on the hook head that was on the land of my family and back at the house after, Fortune, the absolute prick, was asking my mother why I wasnt in serving mass yet. She said I was too young, you’d generally only start after making your communion and I hadnt done so at that time. My granny then was going on about how I should go and trying to cajole my mother to do so. It was only after that I queried why he didnt go asking the other cousins why they werent serving. Anyway, the following Sunday, I went down to mass and into the refectory and there was about 6 serving at the time. Did the mass and my mother was back at the door to collect me before we’d even got back in.
I asked her years later why she was so apprehensive, because she obviously wouldnt have let me anywhere near the prick if she knew what the cunt was at. She said she just hated him and got an awful vibe off him. Really controlling and manipulative. A real control freak who wanted things done his way and that he expected respect rather than gained it. The manner in which he embarrassed my mother in front of her in laws and when my father was out of the room to force me into serving the mass.
It’s weird, something you couldnt think about more, but I am very much glad I wasnt 5 or 6 years older at the time because the amount of lads around he fucked up is unreal. A huge amount of suicides of that generation and many more emigrated to America or Australia once they finished secondary school. I still dont know was he just being another control freak or was he grooming or what. Really doesnt bare thinking about.
Years later, at the start of all the revelations coming out, he turned up at our door. I answered it and just stood there and said hello and shouted to my mother that there was someone here to see her. She was drying up some dishes and as she came around the corner and saw him, she dropped a mug and it smashed as she held her hands up and said “oh shit”. Then said sorry and started talking to him. He stayed at the door for a couple of minutes, just making idle chit chat and left. She didnt ask him in and she was too polite to just tell him to fuck off, so it was just awkward. It was fucking odd. I asked her what was he at and the only thing she could make sense of was he was trying to gauge the reaction to him around. We’d be one of the first homes coming in from one direction in the parish so I doubt he ventured too much further in and went to a couple of the outskirts. The fucking coward killed himself then before it got to court 3 years or so later.
A year or 2 after the serving incident, he was gone. The replacement priest was a brother of the original Hopper McGrath and is a lovely man, still going in New Ross. I served mass for a few years after that but it was only in hindsight that the realisation was he was sent in to try mop up the chaos that had preceded him. It was a horrible thing. He went about building a new parish house and some people complained that there was one there already, but he couldnt bring himself to stay in it after what had gone on.
Anyway, getting back to the few pound you’d get, weddings were the big deal. Only be 2 of ye serving and get a decent pay out. £20 was the usual fare, I remember one wedding the best man gave an envelope to the pair of us serving and it was £20 between us as he thought there would only be one serving. It was grand, happy enough with it, but in fairness to Fr McGrath, he took £20 out of the few bob given to him and gave it to the other chap and told us it was only fair to get £20 each.
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It’s not often that something would shock me… But the latest entries to this thread has rocked me to my core.
Fatherhood has turned you into an even bigger snowflake?
I’m sorry I bumped the pretend thread now, some of these lads appear to be serious 
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you were lucky, some weren’t
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that is scary shit
Its in the ha’penny place of what lads a few years older than me went through. I was lucky I was too young to have been a in a position of potential abuse. I was just born when he came to the parish and was 6 or thereabouts when he left. That short period fucked up a lot of people and left a long legacy that is still felt there today.
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Only the one chap in our class was an altar boy. The rest of us were urban desperados who wouldn’t be caught dead in the white vestments. The altar boy chap was a bit of a pansy and we all made certain assumptions about him, but he became happily married and fathered a number of fine children who are “real hurling men”. He was also became notable as being the first lad in the class “to make a success of himself” and was noted as the first lad in the class to drive his own Mercedes. Go figure.
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I wonder did parents of victims have the same inkling as your mother?
My own mother wouldn’t have left me near a priest.
I dont know. A lot of people didnt like him, but it wasnt for knowledge of the abuse, rather that he was a fucking dickhead control freak who wanted every committee in the parish the be at his beck and call. There is a second church in the parish, out closer to the hook, but generally all communions happen collectively in the Poulfur church. But for a few years whilst he was there, smaller groups of families requested the communion be held by the other priest at the other church as they didnt want Fortune to be doing it.
He wanted to be the chairman of all groups in the parish. GAA, youth clubs, running clubs, any sort of social activity he wanted to be in. The GAA club had little church involvement and didnt want him part of it, so thankfully he didnt get any say there. There is a local community hall that wasnt part of the church, but he got over that and started changing things and diverting money and people were upset over that. He was a really brash and loudspoken person, like I mentioned earlier, he expected respect rather than earning it. He felt like he was the boss of everything that went on. I would imagine for most people, that was what they knew of him and disliked him for that. I would hope that if people did indeed either have knowledge or an inkling that he was abusing children, they would have done more about it. And I dont even know if parents of abused boys knew or what they did with that knowledge or if it was reported or when it was reported. There was such a huge cover up by Commiskey in the aftermath of it all and what with being so young at the time anyway as well as the cover up, its hard to know what exactly went on and what did get reported.
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One of the brave ones, I always wonder why so many parents were so willing to put their kids at risk. Even today the cap doffing is strong in Ireland.
At the time I’m not sure many or any would have seen it as putting them at risk. Different times to now
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