In 1974, at the grand old age of 9, I took my first solo flight – first flight of any kind in fact – in order to spend a summer with my grandparents in Ireland.It was a long time ago and the reader shouldn’t expect a day-by-day account of the trip by any means, but it remains one of those life experiences, one of those adventures that you never forget. Indeed, it is a trip that seems to get better and better with each passing year as some memories fade and some come back even stronger.
I flew from Birmingham International Airport – on a small island like Britain, if you cannot add the epithet ‘International’ to the name of your airport, you’re going wrong somewhere – with Aer Lingus. I do remember thinking that the aeroplane was not in the first flush of youth, unlike my good self, and indeed that its interior sported that faded yellow and green colour scheme that you find in old caravans.
I remember sitting at the very front of the aisle on the right-hand-side of the plane and managing to work out how the seat-belt worked by myself. The man sitting next to me said ‘You’ve done that before’, and I nodded, even though I hadn’t. I also remember the air hostess making a fuss of me, but, generally treating me as if I was much more grown up than I was.
I also remember distinctly the plane circling around Dublin on a right-handed turn which enabled me to look down on the whole city from above and thinking how amazing it looked from the air – that must have been the hour, in the week in which it stopped raining in 1974 in Dublin then.
I don’t remember being met at the other end, but that must have been successful, unless I’ve been living a lie all these subsequent years; nor the journey back to Lucan with Grandma and Grandad I do vaguely remember the house as having steps at the front and two flights of stairs, a big kitchen and steps down out of that room to a back garden that was long and thin and had a gate at the bottom of it, that let you out onto the banks of the River Liffey.
It is possible that my imagination has filled in some of those details, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I remember being quite self-sufficient at that age: I was obsessed with football and played ‘finger football’ endlessly using a former motorcycle rider (toy) who, without motorbike had the stance of a goalkeeper diving for a shot, and with ‘footballs’ that were made out of rolled-up silver foil – wrappers of some sweet I think. I remember grandma commenting on finding these ‘footballs’ all over the house!
I did go down to the river with granddad a few times, but didn’t spend all that much time there – I’m guessing that a substantial, fast-flowing river was not seen as the best playground for a 9-year-old by the grandparents. I remember being fed cooked breakfasts and omelettes and that HP sauce was a constant feature (although family folk-lore has almost certainly reinforced this memory). I also remember taking a bath in the kitchen, in a tin bath that was filled with hot water produced in the washing machine and then piped or siphoned into the bath.
When I wasn’t playing finger football, I spent most of the time drawing birds – pictures that Grandma made a great fuss over and put on display around the house. One particular image of a puffin sticks in my mind to this day and it, and the bird itself, always remind me of her and that trip.
I also remember Christopher (my uncle Christo) who was living in Dublin at that time. I’m not sure he was staying at that house all the time that I was there, but I remember him bringing me some really special colouring pens to help with my drawing. I remember treating them as if they were the most precious tools in the world and being stingy with some colouring in so as not to waste them.
Christo earned some extra money as a security guard in the evenings – his job being to visit, on foot, a number of factory buildings locally to check that they had not been broken into. He took me with him on a couple of occasions and we had a great time just chatting and enjoying each other’s company for a few hours on his rounds.
I remember in a couple of the buildings there were tannoy systems and Christo ‘scaring’ me by leaving me in the factory space while he ‘went to check’ things and then made announcements, to me, over the tannoy. It wasn’t really scary, just fun and I got to speak into the microphones too, which was brill!
He carried me on his shoulders on the way home, for what seemed like miles.
They must have had a television at the house in Lucan because I remember watching show-jumping when I was there, nothing else, just show-jumping! But that led to a minor conflict when Grandad and I had a disagreement: he told me that Irish horses were the best in the world and I said that I thought that some Arabian horses were also very good. He didn’t speak to me for three days after that!
I also remember that there was some sort of system for Grandad going fishing and leaving a note in the house so that grandma wouldn’t lock him out. I think that if she locked the door at the back when he went out via the gate, he couldn’t get back in and would have to walk quite a long way up to the bridge and round to the front of the house in order to get back in. I vaguely recall this occurrence happening when I was there and it causing some ructions!
Grandad and I travelled to Easkey on what was, I gather, his annual fishing trip and clearly a highlight of his year. We went on a train from Dublin to Sligo and whilst I had been on trains before, this was the longest journey I had done by train and I remember it feeling like a lifetime to get from one side of the country to the other. I also distinctly remember watching the raindrops on the train windows running down the pane, joining up with others and following their journeys down the window. I know that sounds really dull, but it’s what I remember, very vividly about that journey and seeing raindrops running down windows, joining others and continuing on their way, always reminds me of being on that train with my Grandad even today.
Anyway, it being such a grey day in the Irish midlands, there was probably little of greater interest outside the window in any case!
Again, the journey from Sligo to Ballina and then to Easkey is not one that I recall in any great detail, but I do remember staying in a hotel room with Grandad and that there were two beds in the room. I also remember him telling me loads of stories about great fishing adventures including the one in which he lost his spectacles when he was playing a huge pike in one of the loughs when he was a younger man.
When he finally landed the pike after almost a day of playing it up and down the lough and the sheer strength of the great fish nearly capsizing the boat and drowning him: ‘sure wasn’t the pike wearing me glasses when I hauled him into the boat!’
I think we must have stayed in Ballina on the way out when this took place because I remember arriving in Easkey, by bus, in the morning time. I don’t know how long we were in Easkey, but memory tells me that it must have been ten days or a couple of weeks. We stayed in a caravan and Grandad fed me on weetabix – family legend has it that this is all I had for the entire duration of the trip but I remember eating in the pub a few times and having omelettes on a regular basis too!
We went fishing for salmon almost every day on the river, certainly before I’d met up with any of the ‘natives’. I don’t recall there being any kind of management or license required but I wouldn’t have known about that anyway, but we fished alongside quite a few others – I was the youngest by miles, among a group that must have included a lot of Grandad’s mates.
I fished with a spinner, which meant casting the line out as far as I could and then winding it in at a decent pace to make the spinner spin in the water to attract the fish.
This meant that I was constantly doing something (casting or reeling in), which meant that I wasn’t bored (the thought of other forms of fishing, particularly with a float, puts me to sleep – just the thought, not even doing it!). I recall that the hooks were forever getting snagged on the rocks on the bottom of the river if I didn’t reel in the line quickly enough. This meant having to let the line go loose and walking up and down the river trying to pull the hook free of the rocks from different angles.
I probably spent most of my time doing this if I’m honest, but memory has kind of patched over that part of the trip.
I remember catching an eel, which, when I pulled him in was struggling and curing up in a grotesque way and wrapped itself round my line and the line of a man fishing next to me. In the end we had to cut both lines to untangle the eel, which I was embarrassed about, but the man was very nice about it.
They used to throw the eels behind the bank and I remember them being quite big and very slippery (I can tell that the reader is amazed by that revelation). If you grasped them just behind the head and squeezed, they shot out of your hand like some kind of manic hosepipe filling with water.
I remember catching a small sea trout, one of two that Grandad and I caught between us, early one morning, and taking them back to the caravan to have for breakfast. That meal remains, to this day, the best fish I have ever eaten.
I think that I was stationed a little way away from the main body of fishermen after the eel incident and was probably lost in my own world for a lot of the time thereafter, but on one occasion when I was walking up and down the bank, trying to un-snag my hooks from the rocky bottom of the river and feeling as though the hook was particularly firmly snagged, a salmon suddenly leapt out of the water, on the end of my line!
I must have let out some kind of howl or scream or shout, because I recall that most of the other fishermen seemed to down tools and come along the bank to offer me advice at this point. Grandad was no exception and I think he was itching to take over the fish, but something or someone stopped him. I remember someone saying ‘let the lad take the fish man’.
To be honest playing and landing that fish is all a bit of a blur these days – he wasn’t wearing spectacles when I got him out of the water, but you get the idea about how memory has softened in terms of focus. But I did get him in and he was quite a big fish – I’m thinking easily this long, as measured by the one-armed fisherman (holding out my left arm to illustrate for you). It was about 20 inches long and quite heavy, perhaps 9lbs? I’m not sure; he certainly wasn’t a ‘kids fish’ but a proper salmon.
The men predictably made a bit of a fuss of me that day and we went to the pub later to celebrate. With another omelette no doubt!
I obviously wasn’t fishing all day every day later on in the visit though because I made some firm friends amongst the local kids of my age. I remember playing football with a group of maybe ten kids on some local grassland, which must have been some sort of park and becoming part of their gang as time went by. One of them was the son of the family that ran the post office in Easkey – I’ve often wondered what became of those kids.
While I was in Easkey, it was also the sharp end of the 1974 football world cup finals in Germany and, it being the only place for miles around with a colour television, we all watched some of the games in the pub. When we played in the park we were Germany or Holland – they were the days of Johann Cruyff and Neeskins; Gerd Muller and Gunter Netzer and goalkeepers (I was a goalkeeper) Jongbloed and Sep Maier.
I remember watching the 1974 world cup final in the pub in Easkey with my new mates – granddad was there obviously, but I was with my own crowd by then, sort of accepted by his fishing pals, having caught that fish, and also by the local kids. It was a great feeling and one I still remember now. I wanted Holland to win – they scored a penalty in the first minute of the match, but ended up losing 2-1 when Muller scored the winner for Germany.
Funny, but I don’t remember the return trip across Ireland (I was probably asleep for most of it) and nor indeed any of the journey back home to England. Some of the above is probably in the wrong order, but that’s how I remember it.
I have been back to Easkey a couple of times since, with Anne, when we came across for the family reunion in 1990 (ish) and later with our kids in 2007. It seems a much bigger place than I recall, with several pubs (I thought there was only one) and quite a sprawling layout in comparison to my memory of the place. It is not an affluent place, I’m sure it wasn’t back in 1974 either, but it is in a wonderful location not far from the sea and will always be special for me.
The river is the same though, and so is the derelict fort that is on the horizon towards the sea and the bridge over the river. It is not the same place I visited in that magical summer of 1974, but it is in the same place that I left it. Maybe it’s me that has changed?
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