The ‘dear little Swiss' meet ghosts of Brexit Britain as they debate relations with EU
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Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Irish Times
My son is clearing out his childhood things – but these items he knew I'd want to keep
My younger son , who finished the Leaving Cert a few weeks ago, has been going through his room setting aside childish things. I see that his purge is overdue; there were games and toys that were almost already outgrown when we moved from England five years ago. We should probably have been even more ruthless in packing, but as we understood the difference between the space we could afford in the English midlands and the space we could afford in Dublin , my husband and I discarded more than half our own possessions. (I acknowledge our good fortune in being able to afford any space at all in Dublin.) We couldn't bear to ask the same of the children. My son is thoughtful and knows that I think more nostalgically of his childhood than he does, full now of the joys of new adulthood. He set aside things he thought I'd want to keep. He was, of course, mostly right; our children know us well. There was some furniture from the dolls' house my grandfather had made for me 45 years ago. The house itself long gone to other lives, but a hand-carved wooden cradle to hold a baby the size of a grape endures, carried as a talisman of my grandfather's love across decades and seas and borders. READ MORE There was a family of plastic squirrels with fluffy tails that will probably be on the planet centuries after humans have blown each other to oblivion. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought them for his third birthday, except that my son would like them. He did, carried them in dimpled fists and small pockets around the park and the shops, handed them to me for safekeeping while he climbed at the playground and fed the ducks. They are so small, surely no harm to keep them though they are neither useful nor beautiful, though space is tight and shipping costly. Take a photo, I tell myself, let them go, but the idea of them lying in a bin – not even recyclable, not desirable second-hand – is too much. And then – I know from the smell before I come to them – there is a box of 64 wax crayons, all more or less used, the pinks, purples and oranges more than the others, the greys and browns hardly at all. They've survived the years because they lived at my grandparents' house, and my grandparents clove to order and neatness, stored things tidily arranged in their original packaging. [ There's a clear difference between those who grew up taking photos of themselves and those of us who didn't Opens in new window ] My brother and I had art supplies at home, in abundance, in constant use. There was a yellow plastic tub that had once held two litres of Neapolitan ice-cream, divided like a flag into thirds of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, for years after holding handfuls of pencil crayons of different lengths and thicknesses and hardness, the leads broken and ends chewed. 'The crayon box is one of vanishingly few objects I can touch now that I touched in early childhood.' Photograph: Getty Images It was practical enough. We drew daily, which was the point. In adult life I tend much more towards such contained chaos than towards my grandparents' neatness, and my own kids' crafting supplies lived in biscuit tins and shoeboxes. The tidiness was appealing because we loved our grandparents and that was how they were. But because the crayons remained a set, remained in order, separate, they passed from me to my sons. Because I'd taken care of the box, they did, and so here it is, one of vanishingly few objects I can touch now that I touched in early childhood. I look through them, read the names on the labels, the precursors of my adult fascination with the names of paint colours, with words for light. The colours are disordered, juxtaposed in ways I find ugly and I start to rearrange them, rediscover that the crayons I loved most of all are the least used because I saved them for best, for later, for special occasions that never came. I still delight in rose pink and sunset orange and violet, glowing colours that I was taught 'didn't go' and couldn't be worn together. I wear them now, on confident days. I glance down at my lined adult hands, at the scars on the fingers from cooking and rock-climbing and I see the rings that replace the beloved engagement ring I lost last year. The stones I wear constantly now are purple, yellow, crimson and orange, my childhood self still almost in touching distance as my children's childhoods fade.
Irish Post
2 days ago
- Irish Post
A phrasebook of Irishness abroad
WHAT time is it there? That was the first one that seemed to confuse them. This was around the time that I'd first moved away from home and was, again for the first time, mixing with English people. I remember it distinctly. I was sitting in the living room which led on to the kitchen and simply asked, there being a clock in the kitchen, what time is it there? The time here, came the reply? The time here? Well, the time here is exactly the same as it is there. I honestly didn't get what the joke was. Now, I have a Birmingham accent, even after more than twenty-five years back here in Ireland. Accents form early and even though they change over the years it seems as if the basic architecture is built wherever you spend your formative years. What I did have though, I suppose, was certain Irish phrases or certain Irish ways of saying things that I wasn't even aware of. Who's yer man, was probably the next one. That seemed to cause some confusion too as I remember. Yer one I don't remember saying but I can only imagine the guffaws that would have been met with. Ah, sure. What's that yoke? Suddenly I was in a new world of being conscious of things I said. Irish words with a Brummie accent. To be fair it must have been confusing for them. I do remember one time saying where's me geansaí but by that time I'm fairly sure I'd become so self conscious that I might have been putting it on. My speech pattern was fairly banjaxed by then, you see. Wisht, I said once calling for silence, something my Granny Murphy never stopped saying, and just got funny looks. Of course, there was the craic. I think the English have taken this one up now, even though they still don't know what it really means, but back then, I'm talking about the 1980s, early 90s here, it was still just ours. I remember distinctly not even telling them about the craic but showing them it instead. I took a few English people at different times to Irish social clubs and pubs in Birmingham and always said I'm guaranteeing that you have never seen anything like this. What that actually was it was harder to define but I'd learnt enough to know one thing without doubt. An Irish social club in inner city England, bursting at the seams, the music and the drink and the talk and the smoke and I knew these English people had never seen anything like it. And they hadn't. As for what the craic is or was I couldn't say even now. I just knew that we had it and they didn't. If I had to choose a favourite though it would always be one that still makes me smile now whenever I hear it. 'I will, yeh' must be one of the greatest and most underrated Irish phrases ever. It has that soft sarcasm that seems uniquely Irish. I've always loved the idea of explaining it to an English person and I remember using it and getting very quizzical looks. I remember using it once with an English person and when it caused confusion revelling in explaining that, when I say 'I will, yeh' in what sounds like a very affirmative way what I actually mean is completely the opposite. I mean, in fact, that I will not under any circumstances, ever. Apologies, I thought that was clear. Grand, good luck said on departure, sound. All these I think might have been co-opted by the English now and have lost their distinctively Irish flavour and that's okay because that's how language works. We steal from here and there and they steal from there and here. I'm not saying any of these phrases either with any sense of superiority, all the places I lived in in England, had their own sayings and phrases too, I'm just doing it out of a memory of distinctiveness. I'm sure, you see, that the sayings and phrases I grew up with will eventually fade away. After all, I'm struck that one of the Birmingham phrases I picked up along the way was what we called the many wastelands we played on as children. We called them bomb pecks, which only much later I realised, probably meant that they were left over bomb sites from the Second World War. Only an Irish person, though, or even more specifically a Cork person would realise how I never stopped smiling back then whenever I heard the name of the German golfer, Bernhard Langer. Joe Horgan posts on X at @JoeHorganwriter
Irish Independent
2 days ago
- Irish Independent
The ‘dear little Swiss' meet ghosts of Brexit Britain as they debate relations with EU
Some French cynics, especially those who live close to the Swiss border, mockingly refer to their rich neighbours as 'Les chers petits Suisses'. The pun, enhanced by the coincidence that it is also the name of a type of sweet cake, also works in English: 'The dear little Swiss.'
