Summer Children (Paperback) | Released: 09 Aug 2013

This book is a memoir of long summer holidays the author spent in Claregalway with her mother's family from 1944 to the mid 1950's. Living in an inner city area in Dublin this annual holiday was like another world where she, and her two siblings, ran free and wild ignoring edicts to keep away from the river, stay out of field with the bull in it, not to eat or drink anything from Bina Lenihan's kitchen and not to annoy the neighbours. Lying about these activities was enough to ensure that she, and her co-conspirators, had sufficient sins to make a weekly confession worthwhile. As self-centered children they were not aware of the struggles and sacrifices of their hardworking family who farmed the land and slaned the turf in the townlands of Gortcloonmore, Gortadooey, Montiagh, Cregboy and Cloonbiggen, the latter hamlet in the townland of Claregalway, all, within the Parish of Claregalway. Today the old Claregalway townlands are little more than names on a map vying for space with new housing estates, and a simple way of life has long gone. Local characters are remembered by fewer and fewer people but for those who do remember them they are recalled with great affection.In an era when people stopped for the angelus bell and when money only changed hands on Fair and Quarter Days neighbour harvested with neighbour, divided butchered meat and Hughes Shop put weekly necessities 'on the ledger' until customers had the where-with-all to settle the account. Living as we do now in money and possession driven times a look back on a simpler life is a salutary experience. As her Dublin Gran was wont to say 'You don't know where you're going unless you know where you've been' so as this memoir unravels the tricks of memory and fable, it records both sad and happy times. There is mischief aplenty, music galore, waking the dead, tales of Canon Moran and family skeletons.
About the Author: The Author writes; ' I was born and bread and buttered in Summerhill a hard living area in Dublin. Being north of the Liffey we were 'real Dubliners'. By the mid 40's our Georgian and Regency terraces were advancing into decaying tenements but our wide streets were relatively traffic free and provided us children with an enviable freedom. They also provided hard-pressed Mammy's with hours of peace and quiet because apart from feeding any open beak that darkened the doorway the only time they saw their offspring was when they did a head count at bedtime. Even then it was not uncommon to find a cuckoo in the nest and one of your brood being scrubbed clean by a neighbour! By my 18th year I knew that I was part of a generation whose future would be on a foreign shore. Ireland, an impoverished country with a dismal economic environment and De Valera's deeply conservative theocratic government would not be able to meet either our aspirations or expectations in the furtherance of a career. Our exodus was rationalized by many families as a temporary expedient until things improved at home but I was realistic enough to know that my exile would be a long one. Early in the New Year of 1957 I 'took the boat' to start my nurse training in London's East End. Half a century later, after a long career in Public Health Nursing, and despite having Gypsy feet I have settled into retirement there'.