By Kathy Ryder

Television was a rare commodity in the Ireland of the 1950s. A small percentage of the population on the East coast could receive the UK’s BBC1 and ITV, due to spillover from Northern Ireland, Wales, and the West of England.

In the West of the country, we lit the lamp, brought turf in for the night and got all our jobs finished before it got too dark. We worked at our homework which often got the ‘sleight of hand’ if our head was developing a more fun idea. My mother would sit at the kitchen table writing letters to her sisters in America and England, or to my father in Dublin.

Like many other fathers in the West of Ireland he worked away from home, which meant we only saw him at Christmas, Easter, and two weeks in August.
Neighbours, and relatives of my mother visited over the winter months; sometimes they were people home on holidays from England or America. They sat around the kitchen fire and chatted, and we loved listening to their conversation. My mother always had ‘something nice’, to have with their tea, she made the best apple pies.

The ladies all had a glass of sherry and a biscuit to soak it up, amid protestations of it going to their head. Yet, they all travelled by the light of the moon or a bad flashlamp and I never remember hearing that any of them fell off their bicycle.

Often over the winter there was a play or concert in the parish hall, and it was from this that we developed some of our ideas. In the time between finishing homework and going to bed, or during school holidays we sometimes wrote plays, got costumed up and performed them on the kitchen table.

We might have a concert beforehand too, when we would sing a song or recite a short poem for Mam’s entertainment, we thought. We often had to remind her to clap when we were at the end, nevertheless she was always kind and told us we were great. We loved playing ‘shop’ and imitated every move the old shop boy in our local shop made, particularly his habit of licking a puce pencil as he made out the docket.

Our creative imagination never rested, I remember playing bus conductor using our mother’s box brownie camera as the ticket machine, our kitchen chairs became the bus seats, we sounded our own vroom, vroom, as we journeyed along. I remember playing at ‘saying Mass’ too, the old Latin Mass was quite mysterious and dramatic.

When we played Dallóga (blind man’s buff) our granny would sit in the corner saying things like “you’re getting warm”, or “spread your wings”, or “tighten up’, when the person wearing the Dallóga – blindfold, was closing in on a tight corner or getting close to catching someone. Keeping completely quiet was part of that.
There were always accusations of ‘peeking’ – looking out from above or below the Dallóga. We sometimes played cards, games like Old Maid, Strip Jack Naked, Sevens or snap, we graduated to learning ‘25’ later.

When my older sisters were teenagers, their friends often visited. They moved the kitchen table to one side and practised their dancing up and down the kitchen floor. Apparently, one had to be able to dance back then or no one would ask you to dance. The best dancers were always the first on the floor – that was considered an honour.

Years later when I was old enough to join the fray, I remember spending a lot of time practising my jiving with the towel roll on the back of the kitchen door. My mother went between playing the melodeon for my sisters and their friends and her getting up to put them right in their steps, while I, too young to dance, got the job of humming a suitable tune. Tunes that stick in my mind from those days and of which I remember every word are Wooden Heart by Elvis Presley, and Putting on the Style by Lonnie Donegan for quicksteps. Songs like The Stone Outside Dan Murphys Door and A Mother’s Love’s a Blessing were perfect for waltzes.

We always had a radio, so Radio Luxemburg on 208 meters medium wave – the station of the stars – was a great attraction for me. I always loved music, so wanted to latch on to all the latest songs, often frantically writing down songwords when I should have been doing my homework. I have fond memories of Irish requests on Saturday night, when they always played Bridie Gallagher. The top twenty from eleven until twelve on Sunday night was also compulsive listening.

There was little or no money to spare but I fondly remember the sense of family and community both within our home, and in the wider parish.

Read Just A Memory every week in Ireland’s Own