That’s a great story. Life was brutal for some people.
Was the sister ok? Did she speak of her life at all?
That’s the first story that brought tears to my eyes in a long time.
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Yep so many like that. So sad.
I think she ended up in America and had had a happy life.
Life was brutal alright. I said before on here but my mother’s family there were 8 of them who lived. One of them stayed local. One became a nun. My mother went to London. The rest went to America. At the time (60s) she said London was viewed as much tougher than America and her parents would have preferred her to go to America.
The first four children my grandparents had died in infancy.
As an aside, it’s why the 1980 Connolly All Ireland speech is so powerful, a Connemara man speaking as Gaeilge playing an East Galway game taking about people crying in America and England - emigration ripped Galway apart , pulled people away (often to a much better life ) from their homes.
I grew up with lots of American cousins and aunts and uncles visiting. It was great for a young lad. My aunt married an American whose four brothers fought in WW2 - he was too young. He said it was no big deal to be in the war as everybody that age was and nobody really discussed it. He remembers sleeping near the oven to keep him warm they were so poor in 30s America.
He told me his best friend was an Indian chief (I was obsessed with cowboy movies) who had a horse with two tails so the cowboys would not know what way he was going. I adored him as a kid. He never had kids himself. Nowadays that story would be off the reservation so to speak.
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All ye young people now take my advice
Before crossing the ocean you’d better think twice
Cause you can’t live without love, without love alone
The proof is round London in the nobody zone
Where the summer is fine, but the winter’s a fridge
Wrapped up in old cardboard under Charing Cross Bridge
And I’ll never go home now because of the shame
Of misfit’s reflection in a shop window pane.
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I saw an interview once with, I think, Ridley Scott. His family emigrated from some grim northern town to America when he was a kid, and he says it was like his life was suddenly in colour for the first time.
It’s a shame, America seems a less stable society now, though that’s probably just a misperception on my part.
England is swathes of a dump with some nice bits. It’s been good to me, but I long for the day I get out and get the kids out.
Australia would be highly tempting were it not for climate change.
It’s Ireland for me. (the second planning application is in)
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England is a beautiful country in the main. There may be some grim towns in the North and midlands but even in these areas there are beautiful markets towns everywhere
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The M62 corridor is grim as you like.
In the main, England is many things, but beautiful isn’t one of them.
I was living in Bondi for a few years in the early 90s. Myself and Mrs Barnes were on the bus out to Bondi from the city one sweltering hot Sunday. We had bought an ironing board and some other household stuff. I was sitting with the ironing board between my knees. A man in his 70s in a worn tweed suit, brown tie and a big red Irish head on him got on and sat in the seat opposite us. After a few minutes staring at me he leaned forward and asked me in a thick West of Ireland accent “Do you do much of the aul surfing”?
We chatted to him for a while. From Leenane. He had been in Sydney since the 50s. Worked on the buildings. Never married. Never been home. He was on his way back from mass.
When he got off the bus we did too. We gave him a few thumps and stole his wallet.
Just kidding about the last part! He was a really nice, gentle old man but you could sense the lonlieness off him. Emigration can be a tough station.
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The Estuary Recycling Centre. It’s a god send of a place. I took a notion to hack back a load of elder in the garden at the weekend and was left looking at a heap of dead foliage wondering what to do next. Then it came to me and I loaded it all up into a skip bag and headed off to Estuary and got rid of it all for 4€
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Will there be such a thing as those lads from my generation? Fellas who emigrated in the 90s or 00s and lived that kind of life. I don’t think I know any of them anyway but I suppose they’d be hardly advertising it on social media
Certainly plenty who went over in the 80s
There certainly is lads in their thirties and forties who fit that bill in Canada, and I know of them in London. Heavy drinkers and users of other substances in general. Not really mass goers. Would possibly be happier at home but don’t see any point in coming back, but the years are flying by abroad without any end goal in sight. You have to have a plan or purpose I guess.
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A man who spends time in a yoga pose roaring out mantras on Clapham common isn’t doing anything wrong
Yeah true. Doubt they’d have the same sense of loneliness or isolation from home though. Probably still come home more often and at least put on a brave face more than the older generation.
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Back in the 80’s, pre Ryan air, it was basically 24 hours travel and the guts of a week’s wages going to London. Similar to Sidney nowadays. Add to that the lack of communication bar standing in a queue with a handful of ten pences waiting for a few minutes on a public phone, and the absolute lack of any work to flit home to, and the perceived shame of having “failed” if you did go home, and it was a far more brutal experience.
There was no applying for jobs online, or finding a accommodation before you went. You stood out at the side of the road, or haunted the Irish bars hoping for a start, and went with a few phone numbers hoping for a place to sleep.
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Have you seen the play “The Kings of the Kilburn High Road” by Jimmy Murphy?
It describes a scatter of Paddies recounting their times around and about Kilburn.
Wonderfully written, loaded with pathos, angst and endless hardship. Young lads today don’t know how well they have it. Some, of course, fared differently and thrived to the extent they grace this forum with their august presence.
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That’s a great play. Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy explores similar themes and is v good also
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Read a book recently of interviews with west limerick auld stock. The emmigration was the big thing I took from it. More than one person interviewed said they were the only one from a large family that stayed in Ireland.
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I have a wee book that I bought years ago called McAlpines Men by a bloke called Ultan Cowley who specialises in that era and theme. There’s an accompanying CD which is the old stagers themselves recounting tales from their heydays. Tell you the truth, their stories and memories are heart-wrenching but captivating reading and listening simultaneously.
I think the package cost €25 with the proceeds going to the Forgotten Irish Campaign.
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