My mother & the church
In 1955 we moved to another area on a different side of the Park beside Blackhorse Ave, which turned out to be a very different playground.
My Sundays consisted of going to church and making an escape at sometime during the service, followed by a three hour tour of Glasnevin Cemetery - the largest graveyard in Dublin - which was madly exciting looking at the class system in death with very large headstones for important people and small and cheap for the less well-off, and topping off the day’s entertainment with an evening visit to the same church for the forty hour ceremony.
This was the icing on the cake and my mother in all her glory, would grab the attention of the packed church, singing the loudest in her trained soprano voice, or at least that’s what she told us, and drowning out the opposition – being her usual self. She had a powerful presence and charisma, and was very good looking, and considered herself to be the best of the best, the best singer, the best actress, the best tennis player, the best everything and to cap it all ‘The Mother of all Mothers’. No one else came close. The rest of us weren’t quite sure about this, as we’d no experience of another mother, and my father tried to hide in order to avoid this unwelcome attention, as the rows of people in front of us turned around to see who was making all the noise.
The evenings comedy seemed a lot longer than forty hours with this actress hitting the highest notes and cracking the plaster work on the ceiling leaving Maria Callas and Pavarotti and the rest of them for dead.
Look what they done to my song, Ma
Look what they done to my song.
Well it’s the only thing
That I could do half right
And it’s turning out all wrong, Ma
Look what they done to my song...*
This was my Sunday torture and I spent lots of time working out ways to escape from this nightmare, and got my own back by going into the church, when it was empty, and standing up on the pulpit, and saying nasty and horrible things to God and the Pope using foul language. I also joined the Legion of Mary voluntary in order to sell religious newspapers outside the church, and kept a large percentage of the takings, in order to enrich my lifestyle and fund my hobbies and habits. ©
*What Have They Done To My Song, Ma - Melanie Safka
for cortez_i_pizarro from Gazeta Wyborcza
My Sundays consisted of going to church and making an escape at sometime during the service, followed by a three hour tour of Glasnevin Cemetery - the largest graveyard in Dublin - which was madly exciting looking at the class system in death with very large headstones for important people and small and cheap for the less well-off, and topping off the day’s entertainment with an evening visit to the same church for the forty hour ceremony.
This was the icing on the cake and my mother in all her glory, would grab the attention of the packed church, singing the loudest in her trained soprano voice, or at least that’s what she told us, and drowning out the opposition – being her usual self. She had a powerful presence and charisma, and was very good looking, and considered herself to be the best of the best, the best singer, the best actress, the best tennis player, the best everything and to cap it all ‘The Mother of all Mothers’. No one else came close. The rest of us weren’t quite sure about this, as we’d no experience of another mother, and my father tried to hide in order to avoid this unwelcome attention, as the rows of people in front of us turned around to see who was making all the noise.
The evenings comedy seemed a lot longer than forty hours with this actress hitting the highest notes and cracking the plaster work on the ceiling leaving Maria Callas and Pavarotti and the rest of them for dead.
Look what they done to my song, Ma
Look what they done to my song.
Well it’s the only thing
That I could do half right
And it’s turning out all wrong, Ma
Look what they done to my song...*
This was my Sunday torture and I spent lots of time working out ways to escape from this nightmare, and got my own back by going into the church, when it was empty, and standing up on the pulpit, and saying nasty and horrible things to God and the Pope using foul language. I also joined the Legion of Mary voluntary in order to sell religious newspapers outside the church, and kept a large percentage of the takings, in order to enrich my lifestyle and fund my hobbies and habits. ©
*What Have They Done To My Song, Ma - Melanie Safka
for cortez_i_pizarro from Gazeta Wyborcza
posted by Roger The Blogger | 2:54 am
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