The Apple in the Garden of Eden.

In 1949 I attended my first educational establishment. It was called Stanhope Street Convent, which I christened Hopeless St. When I was in first babies, at the heady age of four, I took a bite out of the teacher’s apple, when she was out of the room. The teacher’s name was Miss (‘Missed the Boat’) Lowry and the apple had been presented to here by the class pet Martin. He was Mr. Perfect and was probably the only one who had ever given ‘Missed the Boat’ anything in her empty life, and I had violated her gift.
It turned into a major incident and there was a top-level investigation. I had walked up to the top of the class and taken a bite of her apple, and went back to my place. I was ‘grassed up’ by a class of four year olds and was now public enemy number one. Little did I know at the time that this had happened before? The perpetrators were Adam and Eve and the foul deed happened somewhere in the Garden of Eden. Look what happened to them and the problems it caused for the rest of us.
My sister Maria was a student in the senior school and she was interrogated, and was very upset about the incident, as her squeaky clean reputation had been tarnished due to her unfortunate connection with me. She was the sort that wasn’t noticed and had always kept a low profile until that fateful day. She was now connected to the Omen. ©

The Slopman

We had an unusual visitor to our street a few times a week. None of the neighbours knew his name, but everyone called him the Slopman, as he’d collect slop for his pigs from the residents.
He was a big muscular man and rode a small bicycle with his slop bucket hanging from the handlebars. He always wore a blueish-grey shop coat and black Wellington boots. Because of his size his knees would almost stick out at right angles to the bike. He had oily, black hair and a big, manly face, which was red and purple in colour.
Mister Slopman constantly swore and cursed, as he cycled along. His cursing curses are unprintable, but it was an education in bad language for any six year old. When he’d arrive on the street the mothers used run out of their houses and collect their siblings and take them home, so they could not be contaminated by the foul language that was spilling out of his mouth. It seemed to me that he was fighting with himself for some unknown reason, or maybe he got angry and agitated when he visited our street, because many of the families had no waste food to give him. ©

Neighbours on the North Circular Road

There were two interesting neighbours living opposite my house. One of them was the Lyons family. Jimmy Lyons had fought in the Somme as an infantryman with the Dublin Fusiliers during The Great War. ‘The War to end all Wars’. He was always neat and tidy, and on Remembrance Day he would leave his house wearing his medals to attend the ceremonies. He looked a very determined man, about 5’ 9” in height, with a red face. He had a fixed, robotic stare and ignored everything around him. For Jimmy the war would never be over – he was a nowhere man with nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to fear – nothing can be taken from him, because there’s nothing there. He doesn’t even have dreams, because he isn’t really at home. Jimmy had died a long time ago as a young man in the stinking, rat infested trenches of the far off Somme, killing an enemy he didn’t even know or understand. What was left was an empty shell, ‘Dead Man Walking’. He never spoke or socialised with anyone and walked to work daily at precisely the same time.

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It's true that Dublin changin' since the Pillar was blown down

By the winds of violence that are buggerin' up the town

We used to solve our differences with a diggin' match and a jar

But now they're all playin Bang Bang, they're goin' to bleedin'

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The Dorans lived next door to the Lyons. They had 14 children and Mr Doran was a bus conductor. He was a busy man and we used to refer to Mrs Doran as the woman ‘who lived in a shoe’. Ironically their eldest son Stan was a ‘died in the wool’ member of the official IRA. My parents used to talk about him and they said it was very sad. He had been in the ‘Fianna Boy Scouts’ as a child and had been brain washed. He was a real gentleman, well mannered and polite and would always salute my parents. They said he never went to school, but he was very bright and he probably met the scholars coming out. Stan was a serious looking man, committed, dedicated, determined. An idealistic type – a man with a mission.
In the mid 1950’s after a raid on Omagh Barracks in Northern Ireland he was arrested with the legendary Sean South of Garryowen, which became a famous ballad later. *
Their normal ‘party piece’ was blowing up monuments of British admirals and generals and the biggest one was Nelson Pillar in the centre of Dublin. This happened in March 1966 and the pillar was about 40 metres high. It was a shame, as it was part of my Dublin, and besides you can’t bury your history by blowing it up.
Doran’s court case was on the front page of the evening paper and he had made a speech from the dock:“I refuse to recognise this Court, which was set up by a British Act of Parliament…”. My parents couldn’t believe that he could make such a speech considering he had little schooling. He was interned in the Curragh Camp, County Kildare, and when he was released he joined a Monastery as a Brother. My mother said it was the only way he could escape from the IRA, as the only other option was a wooden box. ©

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