Drink up your Oul Tea

1970

I was a martyr to sore throats and coughs and would know I was about to start wheezing when my chin started to itch.

“The child is itching her chin again, get the stuff”

The stuff was my Grandmothers antique inhaler, a contraption made of rubber and smoked glass which delivered a puff of medicine and dust after much assembly and tomfoolery. When, at one point, I had been itching and wheezing for a number of days, I was brought to the New Doctor at the bottom of the street, who diagnosed Asthma and prescribed the small blue inhalers I carry still. Between wheezing and hocking around the place, I was admitted to hospital after recurrent bouts of sore throats so bad I could barely swallow and spent days staring dejectedly out of the nets at the people coming and going across the square. I was scheduled for a T & A (Tonsillectomy and Adenoidectomy) and was bought new nighties and a pink toweling dressing gown with a baby sewed into the pocket.

The New Doctor had sent me to the Old Hospital which was a massive building like a workhouse at the bottom of a hill. It was run by Nuns, who never left hot water dripping or a sheet unturned but left a lot to be desired in their bedside manner. The ward sister took my details and watched as Little Thomasina and Siobhan foostered and fretted, placing  crinkly cellophane bottles of Lucozade and soft jellies  in my locker  and then she summarily dismissed them so she could resume her reign of terror unchecked .  I was stripped and hoyed into the small metal bed as quick as Johnny wrote the note.

The ward was an afterthought to the main one beside it and there was a partition wall made of bubbled glass with windows that opened at the very top. I lay very small and quiet in the high bed taking in my surroundings and trying not to screech  to go home. The starched sister rustled over to my bed and produced a small chamber pot from behind her back.

“Make Water” says she.

I drew a blank.

“MAKE  Water!” says she again louder as if it is my hearing that is suspect and not the command. and indicates the pot which she had placed in the middle of the floor, in full view of all the other beds, whose occupants alternately ignored or stared  at me. 

 I was beside myself with frustration and self pity and began to bawl. She sighed and hung a Nil by Mouth sign over my bed and walked away. I squirmed down into the creaking interior with the rubber sheet and stared around at my fellow inmates. One blonde child was sitting up colouring in page after page of a jotter and directly facing me was a bed with blue and white screens around it, bags of blood and fluids on stands beside it. This was the bed of the bold little girl who had been knocked down and driven over after walking out behind the Bingo Bus without looking. I never saw what was behind those screens which in many ways was worse, and became the stuff of nightmares for many years. I would get a glimpse of a swollen bloodied head, and a lot of bandages before the screens would be adjusted after the Doctors departure. Her visitors used to sing “And only say that you’ll be mine” which I could never listen to again without thinking of her. At night, I could hear her humming the chorus.

Down by the banks …….

The seams in the corridor clicked rhythmicially as the metal trolley wheeled me down to theatre, a porter at my head and feet, pushing  through the swing doors and into the tiled room with the bright lights that smelt of medicine and paint. There is a ring of masked heads upside down above mine and all is business. I am wearing a small paper gown and hat and was shocked to think people might see me in my nudiness. There are rows and rows of metal things laid out on trays. The Anaethetist is fiddling with the pressure gauge on the huge  metal  cylinder and they try to put the big black mask over my face.

I fought like a mule.

In the end they held my hands and shoulders down and placed  the mask across my nose and mouth  and I tried and tried so hard to twist my head, to not breathe, to not think of the gas tap on the wall at home, to not think of home and with a last bursting lungful, I was under.

I woke vomiting blood and with the thirst of death on me and proceeded to drain the first of the lucozade bottles. When the bed was awash with blood and lumps, they made me get out and stand by the side while it was re-made, and removed any and all liquids from the locker. I instantly made friends with the blonde child, who was still colouring in, and she gave me a half bottle of hers that the fizz was gone out of. When the bed was in the same state again, the sheets were stripped and I was left lying on the rubber sheet.

Hours later, when the tea trolley had passed me by and the bell rang for the visitors, I finally cried when I saw Siobhan and Little Thomasina coming in through the glass doors. Little Thomasina had the most amazing book under his arms. It was called “A Childs Compendium of Stories” about the size of a 1000 piece jigsaw, green, with beautiful illustrations, and perfect shiny pages, and I ran my fingers across it in delightful anticipation of all the wonderful reading I would do, and how I would have a new story to read every night to Nicola, as she was surely getting bored of “Ukulele and her New Doll” by now.  Siobhan was aghast at the state of me.

“Why is the child lying on a rubber mattress?” she enquired of the Sister.

By the time the bell rang again, and I had been  forcefully unwrapped  from  my Mothers neck, that book had been removed from me ,  placed on top of a high wardrobe, and I never saw it again.

Sesame Street started on TV the very day I was discharged from the hospital and I lay in solitary splendour, being petted and minded , and calling for things by the new time and on the minute.

“heh hoo, heh hoo, oh me throat” I croaked as I hammed it up. I loved the singing and dancing and all the letters, today’s show was brought to you by the letter B and the number 7.

Who knew?

 Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird, Sunffleupagus, The Count, were all living the easy  life down on Sesame Street.  There were also 2 delightful males in the form of Ernie & Bert who like their English counterparts, Eric & Ernie, slept in the one bed.

The only Gay we had in Ireland was Byrne.

“Shut that door” the women would screech , bending their wrists affectedly.

Les Dawson was in drag talking out the side of his mouth about his unmentionables to Ada. Love thy Neighbour  featured  a scathing Alf Garnet slagging off his neighbour as a coon and not good enough for his daughter to marry. Steptoe and Son were trickacting around the streets of London with their horse and trap, Leonard Rossittor was trying to screw his tenants, seduce Miss Jones and deal with Rising Damp. On Rte, we had a programme about some demented craythurs who lived in a flying caravan that held a talking crow who popped out of a clock to tell people things,  as well as a man who wore enough coats for an entire street. In the States Cannon could hardly get out of an armchair, McCloud was riding down 5^th Avenue on horseback with a Stetson,  Macmillan and Wife were crime busting and flirting despite the fact he would die of the AIDS , Columbo was gesticulating in a  dirty Mac and Caligula was disemboweling pregnant mothers in a bacchanalian orgy of blood letting.

Then my Dad turned over to The Riordains in Leestown . John Cowley was saying Grand Cake  Nora and teasing Minnie about her hair. Benjy was having a breakdown by a broke down Tractor and promising strangers he would buy them a packet of mints, and Little Thomasina  was up and down like a fiddlers elbow  changing the channel manually,  as it would be another decade before a remote was invented, and even then they  came on a plastic flex. Nobody had a video recorder in their house and instead went to a local store to hire both the film and the equipment to play it on. It cost a king’s ransom and meant half the street came in to watch “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” or “A clockwork Orange. 

Between lepping up and down turning off any reference to kissing or canoodling, Dad would be casting a jaunciced eye over proceedings, opening the other to say “I’m watching that” if one of us dared to make a move.  There was a modesty about their generation, a respect for privacy, and the human body that has been flailed wide open in our so called information age. Now there are no barriers, literally. Children these days can access a world of information and misinformation at their finger tips in seconds, unlike those of us who had to actually read, learn, and remember it.  

 I was also at this stage having been volunteered for every club and choir from here to Mallin Head and was in the Wexford  Childrens Choir where Michael Londra was practicing his scales and how to flash the baby blues, while wearing a  trench coat. I was still being dressed in what appears to have been a series  of knobbly hand me downs, smocks, red trousers, and a side parting with a DA. I was also in the Girl Guides wearing a stiff uniform with no badges, playing Concentration and Scrub the Decks in the Friary Hall , pushing Edel Reck up Georges Street  at full stretch  in the Patricks Day Parade. We went on day trips and hikes with the scouts to Carrig River where I fell hopelessly in love with Doc Corish and anyone else who looked crooked at me. In the guides, our picnic in The Rocks got rained off and we repaired to Trish O Leary’s house in Maudlintown for tea and buttered brack over the fire while we steamed our dresses dry. At Carrig river I scrambled with the best of them and we listened to “Hit me with your Rhythm Stick” by Ian Dury, singing it all afternoon and late into the evening as we actually hit each other with lumps of trees and skelps of sticks. It was a time when if you liked a boy you got hurled in his general direction as we could not actually touch for any reason, unlike the airkissing and hugging that is done by the Tweeters and Tweens  everytime they go to the toilet , but spent the time actually  poking each other, and getting as red as a rose if he looked at you, or more importantly, back at you. 

The smock with the D.A.

Due to my sparkling evereffescent personality I was picked to play one of the babes in the eponymous woods in the Pantomime of same and could hear Barty crying from the balcony when the wicked witch caught us  and had the priveledge of dousing the male leads with a balloon full of water during one act. Fill it up hun, says one of them.  I have a head on me tonight that would kill a bull after that session last night. I was complicit with the audience, gurning into the dark, sighing and blowing my fringe and at an eventful matinee , handing back the plastic leaves that were supposed to be strewn over the sleeping babes, to a distraught child who had run out of hers and was miming the throwing of them. When the final curtain call came down on the last night the entire cast and chorus and choreographer came out on stage to take their bows. I waited for Hansel to come from the opposite wing and pausing longer than a Kardashian at a mirror, milked it until we could run out on stage hand in hand to roars from the crowd. 

They gave us bouquets. Lots.

And chocolates, a box the size of an average dinner table, each.

One of the elderly ladies from the chorus, whom I knew from the Bride Street Choir, was almost unrecognizable to me without her pale blue turban and pearls, now in a full face of Max Factor Pan Stick with the 2 red dots on the corners of her eyes to open them up – she stopped me on the stage to give me a kiss, and in an altruistic move that I would instantly regret I gave her the chocolates, and stood to one side as she was photographed by Denis O’Connor for the Papal Peeper holding them and beaming. The canteen in the parish hall smelt of egg and onion sandwiches and stewed tea and was packed to the rafters at the interval, where I liked to wander around as if I was looking for someone,  wearing my make -up and costume to show off.

Pssst says the Principal Dame Packo Sheehan  from the stage door. Come back in here and don’t break the spell for them. Due to nervous tension and adrenaline by the time it was all over  - rehearsals, shows and parties  -  I would be as wrung out as a dishcloth, and would have to repair to the bed with a stye the size of a gobstopper on my left eye. I felt like a sponge left out on a windowsill in torrential rain and would be soaked and useless and curling up at the edges. An hour later I would be mooching around the kitchen with a cold tea bag held to the offending eye, rooting in the fridge to see what I could reward myself with.

 My proximity to the aforementioned tea was not to be sniffed at, as I was engaged in a ceaseless conflict  with Little Thomasina over my refusal to consume any of same.

It became a battle of wills.

“You are not getting down from this table till you drink it” he would say, opening the paper.

“No way” I responded.

Long after everyone else had gone I was still sitting sulkily at the table plotting murderously to ring the cruelty man and tell on them. There could not have been a worse treated child in all of Ireland to my mind, and I stared at the cold milky tea in loathing.

“Did you put butter on this radio?” says Little Thomasina in disbelief as he wiped the dial that said Hilversum, Prague, Budapest,  and Luxembourg.

No, I said incredulously ….as if and widened my eyes.

Of course I had put butter on the radio. The dial looked so shiny I thought it should be oiled, and had spent the minutes waiting for the shepherds pie to be dished up drawing circles in it.

“Drink a sup of it, hun” Siobhan would whisper. “You need a hot drink for your chest.”

My chest was progressing admirably thank you very much,  as following the operation I had gone from teeny to hefty almost overnight. This was as a direct result of the lack of infections and sore throats and itching chins and wheezing that had preceeded , which saw Siobhan the night before my Communion kneel down with a measuring tape to fix my dress AGAIN.

“That one is no bigger than a God’s cow” she mumbled through the pins.

I was well used to standing or being turned or pulled this way and that and no amount of huffing and sighing was going to stop Siobhan’s dressmaking and her entering me into Make & Model competitions where I wore primrose yellow cotton dresses with a ring of daisys on the collar and armholes. It speaks to the character of both my parents that they went to the Fancy Dress Ball when they were engaged, dressed as Miss Wexford and Billy Bunter.

Little Thomasina won first prize as Miss Wexford.

On that night he was supposed to be calling the bingo in the C.Y.M.S. but had let them know he was not well. News filtered back via a passing reveler, and one of the lads announced that the compere was after winning Miss Wexford in the Parish Hall Fancy Dress to hooting and cheering

I was sent to the same Fancy Dress Competition  in a black plastic bag as Article 42.

Of course it was won by an angelic Shirley Temple lookalike with sausage ringlets and a cloud of netting and lace who had a hand written sign around her neck saying I’m forever blowing bubbles”.   She had a bubble kit and dispenser too which she used to charm the crowd and the judges, blowing a soft ring of multicoloured bubbles all over the table. Me and my black plastic crinkled our way away and hid up the back. All of the women were wearing damp coats inside, Poplin Mac’s, Gaberdines, Tweeds, and all topped off with a headscarf to preserve either their set or their modesty.

I look like I was dragged through a hedge backwards says one to another as she tied and re-tied the knot.

I’m a holy show, I’m like the wreck of the Hesperus without a screed of make-up on me says another.

“They’re giving it to lash tonight” says her friend comfortably folding her plump arms contentedly in anticipation of a night beside the fire watching a pitcher with a woman in it.

“Oh, Lort hun, I couldn’t watch a pitcher without a woman in it”.

After sitting in mutiny at the table for hours  while everyone else was in Whites Lounge (which I had christened the front room ) making myself cry and looking in the mirror to see how sad I looked, I was allowed to get down from the seat.

I have not drunk tea OR milk from that day to this. 

Babe in a wood

M.D.M. 19th April 2014