Through Rose-Tinted Specs

Memories of Balbriggan in the 50s
Copyright 2005 By Roger Turner
Part 7: Where The Sun Always Shines...

If you ask the old ones, they will tell tales of long hot summers lasting from Easter right through to the middle of October. Ask the weatherman and he'll tell you that the good weather comes all the way from South America via the Gulf Stream that flows up the Irish Sea and laps gently on the coast around Balbriggan.
But are they having their memories clouded by time?
Yes, we did have some wonderful summers back in the fifties, but we also had some truly awful ones.
I can remember one year in the early 50s, we set sail from Liverpool into the teeth of a force 10 gale. It wasn't too bad in the shelter of the dock, but once we slipped out of the lock and into the torrent of the Mersey, then the gale and current combined to throw the boat about.
Progress against the storm was slow and the boat swayed violently from side to side, throwing passengers about like rag dolls and sending plates flying over the restaurants. Drinkers deserted the bars as glasses and bottles became dangerous weapons. Everyone was sea-sick, including the crew, but not including little old me. I was my normal energetic self and spent all night running about annoying anyone I could.
I suppose it was the stench that remains most vivid in my mind, for there is nothing worse than the smell of vomit.
When the boat finally arrived in Dublin, many hours late, our Pat, never a good sailor at best, was well past it.
Customs became a formality and out on the North Wall rain was lashing down so much that Mother paid a porter to put our bags in a taxi to take us to the bus station where we had a long wait for the next bus.
When we finally arrived in Balbriggan the rain was still as bad and our walk to Craoibhin Park was most unpleasant. Oh happy days!
Not content with giving us a wet reception the rain had become settled into a pattern and for the next few weeks rained off and on most of the time.

It was during that summer that Duffy's Circus came to town.
Now I loved circuses back then for they formed the highlight of our childhood experiences, but Duffy's Circus has become the one that both our Pat and I remember the most.
Why?
Well, I can't remember the animals, nor who walked the tightrope, neither can I remember the clowns. But I can remember that Mother and Auntie Eileen dressed us kids up in our rain clothes and walked us through the town to where the circus had pitched its tent.
It was one of those days when Mother Nature was undecided as to the volume of rain to deposit on Balbriggan, and it was during the performance that a passing cloud (not the smoking type) decided that circuses looked good fun and paid us a visit; straight down onto the tent.
Whoosh! The tent poles became waterfalls as the rain cascaded down them.
Whoosh! The wind drove the rain through every seam in the canvas.
It was as if the tide had suddenly come in, for the circus ring became lake while performers did there best to keep the show going. If ever a troop of performers earned their money it on that summers day in Balbriggan when the rain even washed the smile from the clowns face.
Even nowadays, when we get a cloudburst and the rain attacks us sideways, we can't help calling it Duffy's Circus weather.

Now I can't ever remembered being bored whilst in Balbriggan, that is apart from that year, for most of the time the rain prevented us from going out. No days out on the sand! No walks to the Bower! No picnics in some farmers field!

"Mam..mee. Can we go out to play?"
"Hush child and read your book."
"But Mam..mee, I'm bored with reading. Why can't we go out and play? It's not raining too much now."
"You'll catch your death of cold if you play out in the rain."

Mothers had loads of silly sayings like that. It never mattered what you wanted to do, they always had a saying ready at hand to stop you enjoying yourself.

If we were lucky then a message would be run, even in the rain, if the grown ups were cooking and needed some vital ingredient.
But were we bored when we were forced to stay indoors?
Maybe sometimes we were, but there were always ways of improvising on the games we played outside and our mothers were well practised in the fine art of amusing bored children.
Take a simple game of hide-and-seek: Outside one kid would hide and the rest would chase about looking for you. But inside, well that wouldn't work, so an adult would hide something like a big shiny penny, or maybe a lucky-bag (tuppence from Tolans) somewhere in the house and we would set off to find the hiding place. That could keep us going for hours for you would be amazed at the devious hiding places our mothers and fathers could use. My Guardian Angel tells me that her dad would hide things in the shoes he was wearing. He even hid unwrapped sweets in his slippers and they would come out covered in fluff and he would laugh at how devious he had been.
Hide the sweets was another favourite game and if we wanted a clue to the hiding place we were told 'Hot' or 'Cold' or just 'Warm'. Eventually the sweets or coins were found and some other game was devised.

'O'Grady says, stand on one leg.' So we would all stand on one leg until O'Grady told us otherwise, by which time we would have lost our balance and ended up laughing in a heap on the floor. Great fun!
Another adaptation of an outdoor game was Cowboys and Indians: Upstairs the bedroom became the Wild West with the iron bedstead becoming a stagecoach for the cowboys (boys) and brush tied to a chair and covered in a blanket to serve as a wigwam for the Indian squaws (girls).
We boys always managed to capture the Indians and tie them up, which didn't always meet with parental approval. Still, it all turned out well in the end.

If we were well behaved then when our mothers went to the shops (they could go out in the rain), comics would be brought back. Beano, Dandy, Topper and Beezer, were all favoured by us boys, as were Judy, Bunty and Mandy for the girls. Mind you, I bet you can remember lots more. Comics were swapped round and it was at times like this that annuals came out yet again.
And it wasn't just the books and comics that came out, so did box games and the like. Every home hade a compendium of games that included; Snakes & Ladders, Ludo, Tiddlywinks are the games that come immediately to mind, but could have also included Card games, Dominoes, Draughts and Chess, and of course the ubiquitous Monopoly set passed many wet hours being mishandled by us kids.

One year, my Mother broke her leg a few weeks before we were due to visit Balbriggan. But rather than cancel our holiday, she loaded the cases on a big dolls pram and our Pat and me pushed it all the way over whilst Mother was on crutches. Once here, that pram became Rita's pride and joy.
Yes the girls always had their dolls to play with when the rains came. Mind you, they were terrified of all them Daddy-Long-Legs that came in the house for shelter and got stuck on the ugly flypaper that hung down from the light fitting. Flies, Moths, Flying ants, you name it and that sticky strip of fly paper did for them all.

Now, hands up if you remember Mr Potato Head? I can partially remember it. You begged a potato from your ma, then had to throw a dice to build up the face. Lips, Nose, Ears, Eyes and the Hat.

Great fun, as was building a house out of Bayko, or a car from your Meccano kit.

Clever kids built planes and boats out of an Arfix kit, but alas I was too ham-fisted to do anything like that, and usually got glue over the table cloth, my clothes and the cat, resulting in the model being taken away until I was bigger. I never did grow up.

When kids nowadays have to stay indoors they sit in front of a TV screen killing aliens on some computer generated game machine costing hundreds of pounds.
We didn't even have TV's back then, unless you were really posh. But we did have the radio, or the wireless set as it was known back then.

Radio Eireann was so refreshing to listen to, with its happy songs and quirky adverts. Even now I can't hear the Mexican Hat Dance without thinking of 'Donnolly's sausages for tea!'
But in Balbriggan you could hear the BBC coming free from the north, and at "A Quarter to Two" we would all sit and "Listen With Mother".
At tea time the adventures of Larry the Lamb and his friends in Toy-Town, would keep us enthralled.
Another way of keeping children entertained in those days was a trip to the cinema.
I suppose the late fifties and early sixties were the high days of the cinema, for most homes didn't have a TV set, so a trip to see a film was the highlight of the week.
We all had our favourites back then; Norman Wisdom was the big star of the British films and favourite with us children, for he dressed in ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes, not unlike many of us, and was always being picked on by his elders and betters. But here were many other film stars that we children liked such as The 3 Stooges (Curly, Larry and Mo) and Laurel and Hardy. Cartoons were also popular as were cowboy films. We never got the very latest film in Balbriggan, I suppose they went to the plush venues in Dublin, but all the same we enjoyed them and cheered when the good guys beat the bad guys.
But my favourite films were musicals. My mother loved musicals so did Nan Calow and when ever one was being shown in town we headed to the first showing. Most, if not all, of these musicals came from America and showed us very a different way of life. Even though many films were still in black and white and made in the thirties and forties, they were truly enjoyable.
Colour on the other hand, was marvellous and suited musicals down to earth. Not only were sets and costumes spectacular, the songs were all memorable. As children some of the storylines went over our heads, but the music! Wow! Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote some fantastic musicals and some of the individual songs are still as fresh today as they were 50 years ago.
There was one song in Oklahoma that has always stuck in my mind; called "people will say we're in love". It was one of many good songs that will live forever and is all about feelings. Many of the songs were about people who were in love with someone else. Maybe the intended recipient to the overture of love was too shy, too embarrassed or just too pig-headed to admit their feelings, of perhaps their families were antagonistic toward the affair. I suppose that's what made them popular. Ordinary people could identify with the characters for it was true reflection on their own lives. We have all held a childhood crush on someone who didn't even know we existed.
Don't try and tell me it never happed to you, for I don't believe you. Even I had a real crush on... But that would be telling.

Films back in the fifties were important to us kids, and we nagged our mothers to let us go to the pictures on a regular basis. Back in Sheffield we had about 60 cinemas scattered around the city, all within a half-hour tram ride. In Balbriggan we only had one cinema... Or did we?

On Balbriggan.net is picture taken of the square circa 1940's and on the left is a building that clearly says 'Cinema'. I have asked our Pat and me dad if they could remember it but alas they couldn't.
On special occasions we were taken by the train to Dublin on shopping trips and our reward for being dragged round the shops was visit to a strange cinema, opposite the railway station. Now what was it called? You know the one I mean? I will have to ask my Guardian Angel. It was on, er.. Talbot Street, I think... or maybe... Come on brain; don't let me down now!
I recall it was under some railway arches and the film jumped when a train passed overhead.
That reminds me of a film about that time called 'The Smallest Show on Earth' staring Bill Travers, Viginia McKenna and Peter Sellers. Or am I getting the two things mixed up. I'll check it out with my Guardian Angel and see if she can fill in the blanks for me.
Oh, wait a minute, what was that? The New Electric? Now that rings a bell. Hang on, you're not my usual Guardian Angel. Oh, just a holiday relief whilst she is in Spain. Didn't know that Angels had holidays. (I can't imagine them topless on a beach supping Sangria).

Right, let's get back to matters in hand and the wet weekday in Balbriggan.
So, we would set off despite the rain to make a visit to the cinema where we would sit there steaming as our clothes dried out during the film.
When the film was over we would then have to walk home again in the rain.
But it was well worth it.
Sometimes the rain would ease off and we would be allowed out to play, on the promise that we came back in as soon as the rain returned.
In those houses in Craoibhin Park there was a hot press next to the fireplace, and when we returned wet and steaming; our clothes would be hung in there to dry, if the fire was lit.
And if the fire was lit, then we could have real toast for tea. Out came the toasting fork, and we were allowed to toast our own.
Oh, that smell! And if the fire was a turf fire then the smell was even sweeter.
But you know the use of a toasting fork on an open fire was a skill to be learnt and in the learning process many burnt offerings were the norm.
'It will make your hair curl.' Another of our mothers' sayings. She had one for all occasions. They all did. Sometimes I can hear her words when talking to my own children.
Do you know I could never get my children to eat bread and jam? And the thought of dipping a slice of bread into the hot fat that had cooked the breakfast, sends dieticians into a mad frenzy nowadays.
We enjoyed real butter, milk with thick yellow cream on the top and meat covered in fat, and, do you know, we were so skinny you could count all our ribs. So what does that tell you? It tells you that we 50s kids ate real food with no additives or E numbers, and spent all our waking hours outside playing and burning off our excess energy.
But I digress for I should be talking about the rain that was keeping us in.
No wonder Ireland is green country for often when the rain arrives it comes from nowhere and never knows when to go away.

Even in a cloudless sky some invisible storm was waiting out at sea to send sodden children scurrying from the sand, seeking shelter in one of the changing buildings or cramming into the tunnel under the railway.

But the good thing about Balbriggan was that no matter where you lived, you were never more that a few minutes run from the strand.
Most summers we would spend many wonderful days on the sands, but you could go to bed at night after a sunny day building sandcastles, only to be woken by the wail of Rockabill heralding yet more stormy rain

In my life I have seen some spectacular storms at sea.
I loved to stand on the Bower with waves crashing upwards spaying foamy sea over the wild plants that cling to crevices for their lives. Watching the sea birds doing battle with the wind to gain shelter before the storm attacks the headland. Seeing fishing boats running before the storm heading for the safety of Balbriggan harbour, their outlines illuminated by the flashes of lightning that lit up the darkening sky, will always remain with me.
But storms at sea can spell disaster for those who ply their trades on the waters. Fishermen have lost their lives farming the sea to bring food to our tables. And how many sailors have lost their lives bringing much needed goods to our shores?
One incident is still so vivid in my memory that it seems like only yesterday.
A ship had founded on the rocks, spilling oil over the heaving sea. This oil-slick contaminated thousands of sea birds and they were being washed up in the strand. The call went out and soon hundreds of people gathered on the beach to help rescue them.
We were given charge of a puffin and took instruction how to clean the black sticky oil from its feathers.
Several hours, a whole bottle of washing up liquid, many ruined dish cloths and tea towels later, and us sporting cuts and pecks, the ungrateful bird was transported to a distant shoreline to be realised back in the wild. I wonder how long it took our mothers to remove the rings of oil from round the baths and sinks.
I never knew just how many birds were saved on that day by the good people of Balbriggan, but for years when I saw a puffin I wondered if it was ours.

So, have I really been looking at Balbriggan Through Rose Tinted Specs? No, I don't thing I have.
There were some wonderful times when the sun did shine all day everyday and others that were unsettled, overcast and dull. But that only reflects life. But remembering that song from Carousel; 'When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high...' Every storm will finally come to an end and sun will come out again. In the meantime, this rain is starting to get me down, so I'm off to sit on the stairs to play my mouth organ!
I do hope it stops raining in the morning for I fancy a day down to the canal doing a spot of fishing...

To Be Continued....