Grannymar

I keep saying it – Where would we be without our commenter’s?

A ‘Strange but True’ themed day was suggested by Steph, so get your thinking caps on while you read this and then share your story.

One bright September morning when I was aged four, mammy dressed me up and put a large bow on my hair. We were taking my older brother to school. At the time I didn’t realise that she wanted to enrol me for the following September. The school was run by an order of nuns and Sister Patrick the Principal, announced to my mother that she would take then and there that day! I had no time to prepare and Mammy left in shock without (at that time) her only daughter!

My teacher for the first couple of years was called Miss Kierce. Naturally when I came home I talked non stop about her. Daddy said to me that in his part of the country (Co Clare) she would be called Kearse and that I was to tell her. I think it was the first thing I said to her the next day. The banter went backward and forward through me, and we discovered that she was from Ennis in Co Clare, not many miles from Kildysart where my father was born.

Miss Kierce asked if daddy ever went down to Clare and precocious little me said “Of course he did, he went to see Granny Kildysart!” So the message came home: “Daddy Miss Kierce says; next time you are going to Kildysart will you drop her off in Ennis!”

Weeks passed and eventually daddy was arranging to go to Clare, so I again brought messages back and forth. Times and dates were sorted and on the day teacher came home from school with me and she and daddy set off on the journey. Driving from Dublin to Ennis at the mouth of the Shannon in the days before motorways, gave plenty of time for questions to be asked and answers given. Daddy’s first question to all young women was usually “Did I know your mother?” Daddy did not know her mother but discovered that he knew her Godfather!

Miss Kierce’s Godfather was daddy’s Uncle Jim! The same Uncle Jim who came to our house for lunch every Tuesday and stayed all day!

Grand Uncle Jim

When I married Jack back in 1977, I wanted a simple wedding with no fuss. My friends were all well married and at 30 I was considered a very late bride (thankfully that silly talk has vanished)! I settled on a two piece outfit with crochet top and linen skirt in Ecru. It was right for me with my deep auburn hair. Jack as I have said before was older and walked with a slight limp due to injuries he sustained in Burma during WW11. Jack always referred to the injured leg as ‘the wooden leg’! He was a widower when I met him.

Walking up the aisle with Daddy who was ill.

Now we are married!

Several years later my brother was researching our family history. On a visit to Co Clare he spent several hours looking at the archives of the Clare Champion, a local weekly newspaper. He sent me a copy of a cutting. It was a description of a wedding. The date was 30 Jan 1900 and the Groom a widower, was marrying a woman much younger than he was. She had auburn hair. The description of the bride’s outfit told us it was the same colour as mine. The Groom did have a wooden leg. How do I know? The bridal couple were my paternal grandparents. The bride was Granny Kildysart!

Now you must have a strange but true story to share with us. I’m off to buy a horse, I’ll talk to you much later!

My birthday is past and Christmas is a long time away so what am I wishing for?

I am wishing for time…. not my time, but yours!

Now I know you are busy and time means money and the song tells us -

Yes, money makes the world go around, the world go around etc.

But what good is money if you kill yourself working?

What good is money if you have no one to share it with?

Alice at My Wintersong pulled up at a stoplight, it was a reminder that we all need to pause and see real life or smell the roses. Then I came to my Toyboy Rowan with a similar message. It made me think…

There was nobody more hard working than my Jack. He was busy from the minute he opened his eyes in the morning until he lay down in bed at night. I had to talk to him! He was retired. It was time to take things a little easier and enjoy life. I didn’t want to look across the table some day and wonder who the strange man was. I wanted to spend time with him afterall that was why we had married. We made changes, we had a day out each week, sometimes it was walking on a seashore or in woodland, chatting away to each other or at other times walking hand-in-hand enclosed in companionable silence.

I no longer have my man across the table or to hold my hand, but I do have wonderful loving memories of the time we spent TOGETHER!

I am glad we made that effort.

If you love someone, give them the most precious gift you have - TIME

As a friend of mine says ‘None of us are promised tomorrow!’ So start sharing now.

In memory of Jack who died April 1998 (not today)

I was on a daily visit over with Chrisb at Ms Cellania the other day, she always has something to amuse me, when I found a little something to play with.

Now I am no Imelda Marcos, but in my time I have been known to have a pair of shoes or five! You know how it is; you need black shoes for this outfit and navy ones for that, and there is no way, you can wear either with brown trousers, now can you?

Shopping for shoes is not easy. The shops have such a selection and it is so hard to decide, you want to buy half a dozen pairs… Well I do need some pleasure in my life

The question asked: What Kind of Shoe Are You?

So naturally I had to try this little game and see for myself…

You Are Clogs

You are a solid and down to earth person. You seek – and almost always achieve – a really sound balance in your life.You are stylish yet comfortable. Mellow but driven. Excited yet calm. You are the perfect mesh of contradictions.No matter what happens, you have the ability to stay well grounded in your life. People know that they can truly depend on you.You should live: In Europe You should work: At a company dedicated to helping the world

What Kind of Shoe Are You?

Go on you know you want to give it a try!

Reading Happiness is… by Ms Cellania late this afternoon, I was inspired to write a blog post (I was at the desperate stage today for ideas, so went outside to work out my frustration on the path at the side of my bungalow and the patio. Please don’t tell Elly or I will have to endure another lecture about overdoing things). Ms Cellania wrote about purchasing a handbag (purse as my American friends say) for her mother.

I always liked bags; they came for me only in second place to shoes. During the 60’s on any spring day walking down Grafton Street in Dublin, passing by Fitzpatrick’s Shoe Shop was as difficult for me as an alcoholic passing the open door of a pub. In my early working days the turn of a season was the opportunity to buy a new pair of shoes with a bag and gloves to match.

I am sure I mentioned before about my experiences of going for job interviews. We were expected to turn up not alone punctual, but clean, tidy and sporting a neat suit, hat with matching bag, shoes and gloves!

To this day I have a selection of bags in different colours, shapes and sizes. A couple of the more dressy bags for evening use were produced by my own fair hands.

Nowadays, unless I am expecting to be out for a full day it is more usual to see me sporting trousers with several pockets. Skirts leave the legs cold and they seldom have pockets. I now like pockets because they carry all the necessities I must have about me wherever I go.

In my left hand pocket I keep my GTN spray – it gives me the puff to chase Toyboys, mobile phone for emergency calls so Elly can keep track of where I go, and because it contains ICE numbers. In the other ones I keep tissues, a list of medical information that includes my name & address, contact details for my next-of-kin, doctor and details of the medication I must take and those to which I am allergic.

Finally I have this:

It is a small purse with two pockets. The smaller one is for coins while the larger pocket contains various cards and bank notes. On one corner I have punched a hole to attach a ring and have added to it all the necessary keys that I need to carry.

With all these items spread among my pockets I keep my hands free and am ready for anything. I don’t need to carry the kitchen sink with me everywhere I go and I no longer suffer back and neck ache from a heavy bag over my shoulder.

To add a little colour this is one of the bags I made from scraps:

Now at sixty I have watched fashion come and go over five decades. The first 10 years do not count as I was a child for most of it and wore the clothes my mother provided and told me to wear. Unlike nowadays we were not given a choice and indeed wore items for several consecutive days.

I love to sit with a coffee or a drink and ‘People Watch’. On a fine day it is something I can do for hours. The world is a wonderland of colour shape and diverse styles. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but fashion is certainly in the mind of the wearer! Nowadays we live in a world where ‘Anything goes’ seems to be the mantra. It is not something I am comfortable with. To quote a line from The Mountains of Mourne, a Percy French song – “You could not in truth say if they were bound for a ball or a bath” When this song was written it referred to the ladies in London, nowadays it might refer to either sex of any age, in any place.

I suppose I would divide people into the following groups:

• Those who drag themselves out of bed in the morning and clamber into the creased bundle they dropped on the floor the previous night.

• Those who dress because they have to, but with no interest of how they look or if colours clash.

• Those who take pride in how they look.

• Those who dress to draw attention to themselves.

For a moment compare it to two presents on a table. One roughly wrapped in wrinkled newsprint and the other carefully wrapped in gift-wrap finished with a nice bow. If you were given a choice which one would you choose?

Men have no problem is showing interest in how ladies look as they walk along the street. They show appreciation in wolf whistles, smiles and long lingering looks. In fact on occasions they have been known to bump into a tree, lamppost or someone walking towards them because they have become so enthralled or distracted by a vision of desire walking past them.

Over the years I have watched from the sidelines:

• The women who slavishly follow fashion whether or not it suits them. They are prepared to spend a fortune on this season’s look, even when it makes them look, bigger, fatter and older or like mutton dressed as lamb.
• Those ‘larger’ women who think that anything black and unstructured makes them look thinner, when a tailored outfit would cut the pounds in seconds.
• Those who spend some time in dressing, doing make-up etc., forgetting to give the back view a glance. If you get a split down the back of your hair while sleeping, it will NOT go away until you wash your hair!
• The women, who have found their own style, are comfortable and stick with it, always looking well, whether they are thirty or eighty.
• The women who think that showing off all they have is sexy, when in fact it is actually a turn off.

Now that I have joined the Third Age it does not mean I have lost interest in how men look. Like women’s fashions men’s have changed beyond all recognition from when I was growing up. In my young days men wore a suit, shirt and tie. I know because I grew up in a household with five men and washed, starched and ironed plenty of shirts. The suits in those days were all dark and the majority of shirts were white.

I still think a nicely fitting, well pressed suit looks sexy. But please remember to polish those shoes, the heel as well as the toes. Casual slacks and a sports jacket with an open necked shirt, looks good too. But please, please make sure the trousers are the correct length and not full of concertina folds where they meet your shoes, that just kills the whole effort.

Now I have a major gripe! If you are a well fed guy and show signs of a liking for the beer, avoid at all costs the long- shorts or cut-offs, you know the ones, they reach below the knees, worn with a tee-shirt pulled down over them. These are the fastest turn off ever! They do not hide the paunch only emphasise it. I have even seen them worn with shoes and socks!!!! And these men expect us to find personality behind that lot, forget it guys. It is a major No-no.

My final point is about fashion for pre and pubescent young girls. I know that the fashion industry and peer pressure weigh heavily on what they wear. While in a shop attached to a busy petrol station one day towards the end of term, I saw a young school girl with her uniform skirt hitched up to within inches of modesty. Her mother was in the queue to pay for petrol and sent the young lady to pick up some items from the far end of the shop. This young girl nicely formed and a beauty in the making was completely unaware of the effect she was having on several men in the queue. One of the men was obviously mentally undressing her and taking pleasure in the exercise. I thought for a brief moment of saying something to the mother, I decided against it as I might be considered as an interfering old woman and a prude, and if she became aggressive it might draw even more attention to her daughter.