Memory

Yesterday someone commented on one of my old posts I don’t often look at old posts too much has happened between the writing and now.  One of the things that’s happened is the way I write has been so abused for so long I almost apologise for writing at all and that’s wrong.

I read the post with a kind of pleasure and pain it was what I had hoped and intended to write when I started blogging. I didn’t expect m/any readers indeed I recall expressing stunned astonishment on Twitter when someone visited my blog.  I don’t know if they read anything or if they did read if they understood what I was saying, somehow I doubt it understanding is very much a one way street for that mixed up first visitor.

I regret the loss of that time and the loss of the feeling that I could say what I liked no one would look or care.

If only that had been true.

Depressing thought but then for some the past is a blood red desert.

Here is a copy of that old post:

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Do places and memories grow rosy across the years? Perhaps.

Quinns Buildings, Popham Street, Islington, London doesn't exist any more but for me its a place of happy memories. Islington was a great area for the Irish to settle, on the edge of the City and West End so there was always plenty of work for those prepared to get their hands dirty.

After the war my family moved to England, not enmasse, in dribs and drabs over several years. one would arrive tell the others and they would save up the fare. Some of my Mothers family had settled in Islington. I remember visiting my grandmother, two aunts, two uncles and six cousins, they all had their own families in separate flats in Quinns Buildings. I would stay for a week or two for a holiday.

I must have been, oh seven or eight years old and I thought those flats were amazing! completely enclosed and full of interesting, friendly people. You stepped through the big arch into a long courtyard and immediately everyone knew everyone. The flats were four or five storeys high in a long wide oblong, once inside the arch each block of flats had a separate entrance.

My Grandmother had a friend, an English woman with three children and no husband. In her flat there were gas lights there were two of them above the mantel piece. The local shop which was a converted flat in one of the blocks, still sold those flaky, gauzy covers that you put over the flame to light the room. You would turn the old fashioned key thingy holding the match close, but not too close because the covers were fragile and cost money! The women made tea and told stories, such stories! and all the while the lights would flicker and the gas would hiss.

There were two toilets on each landing and they could be used by as many as four families and yet, as I remember, they were always spotlessly clean and smelled not of urine but of bleach. Each landing looked after their own toilets, the families cleaning them every day sometimes a couple of times a day. In those days climbing the stairs was easy, which is just as well because lifts had not reached Quinns Buildings I don't think they ever did.

There were several quite large families in the flats. To accommodate a larger family all the landlord did was knock the wall down between two flats. Four of my cousins lived in one such and I thought it was a grand place. I remember sitting on the roof with them on hot summer days. As far as I knew those flats were the only ones where you could do that they were definitely the only ones where I could do that.

It must have been hard for them, leaving all the heavy belongings behind: all the treasured furniture, linen and so on. or it would have been if they had owned such luxuries. In most cases all people had were the clothes they stood up in and, if they were lucky, one change. Oh how they all loved Ireland but the truth was Ireland was not just an absence of opportunity it was an absence of hope.

Most of my family would say the days in Quinns Buildings were the happiest days. It was a real community, mostly English and Irish but there were others I particularly remember an Italian family their daughter was one of my friends. It actually made no difference, we were all in the same boat, and believe it or not happy to be there. It was better than where we came from. Our families were on the ladder and climbing and that was something they would never have been allowed to do in Ireland.