Blog
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Protected: STONES ON THE LINOLEUM
GLENGARRIFF ROAD
1
LAMBY SAMMY
The sun is shiny today. The shiny lines are coming through the netty curtains and into the room. There’s loads of dooney little white things floating around in the shiny lines. The shiny lines are on the stones on the lino too. I knows that the stones aren’t real but they looks real now and I’m trying to pick them up. If I could pick them up I could play gobs with them.
I found a classy small white stone out in the back the other day and Mam said it was like a gob. She said that, when she was small like me, her and her friends used to play gobs with small white stones like that. She said I should keep looking around for some more stones like that and if I get some more she will show me how to play gobs. I looked all around the back yard but I didn’t find any more ones like that yet, only brown and black ones with muck on them. I will look around out the front tomorrow, out by the gate and around the bars by Sheila’s path. I won’t go out by the shore on the road though. There’s loads of different stones out there but Mam said that there’s sorage out there too and to stay away from sorage and shores cos that’s how people gets sick, like the fellas with the the shiny iron bars on to their hoppy legs going down Fair Hill. Mam said they got the polio when they were small and it was probably from playing around by the shores with the sorage and the muck and the dog’s dirt.
The stones on the lino are like real stones and some of them looks like big gobs.
I knows that they’re really only pictures of stones but I’m trying to pick them up anyway.
I was awake early again. Breda and Teresa are still asleep. When I waked up first I thought that they were gone out to school but then I saw them in the other bed. I tried to go back to sleep but the birds were whistling outside the window and I could hear dogs barking over across the road. I got up out of bed and came in to the other bedroom. Anita lives in the cot in this room with Mam. Dad is in here sometimes too. I came in to look at Anita. She’s the baby and she lives in the pink cot here and in the pram downstairs. She can’t walk properly but she stands up sometimes and kinda falls and wobbles. She’s my baby sister and I’m her big brother.
I used to be the baby and Breda used to mind me sometimes if Mam went out to work or down to town for messages.
One day when Mam was making the porridge and Breda was holding me on the chair she left me fall down off the chair and on to the ground. I got knocked out and stopped breathing and Mam got me into a man’s car to take me to the North Infirmary. When the car was going down Fair Hill it went over a bump and Mam said I started breathing again. She said it was a miracle.
Sometimes Mam takes me with her and we goes down Fair Hill to Nan’s house. Mam puts the baby in the pram and squeezes the blanket around her so that she won’t get cold or fall out going down the hill. Mam and me has to hold on very tight to the pram or else it will roll down the hill and the baby will get hurted.
Anita is going to have a birthday. Mam said it last night. Anita is going to be one year old. I didn’t think that babies could be one year old and still be real babies. Maybe when they gets to be one year old they will be able to walk properly and they will be able to sit up at the table in the kitchen for their dinner. Yesterday Anita couldn’t sit up at the table for her dinner and she was wobbling all over the place when she tried to walk. Maybe she will be bigger today and be able to run around like me.
I’m looking into the cot. Anita is asleep with the doodoo in her mouth. I’m putting my hand through the bars of the cot and pulling down the blanket. She still looks the same size as yesterday. Her legs are all kind of curled up. No, she still wouldn’t be able to run around with me yet. Maybe it’s not really her birthday at all today. Maybe it’s tomorrow.
Mam is waking up now and she calls me over to the bed. “What are you doing up so early” she says. Mam looks different when she’s lying down in the bed. Her hair is all tossed and her face is smiley and softy. She pulls down the covers of the bed. “Come in here” she says. I climbs up onto the bed and snuggles in next to her. We’re nice and warm, but I can’t go to sleep. The shiny lines coming through the window are like the lights from heaven in the picture in Breda’s prayer book and the stones on the lino look like they could move if I pushes them.
I gets back out of the bed and sit on the floor by the window, I’m trying to pick up the white shiny stones again.
Mam sits up in the bed and then she fixes the blanket on Anita. She gets her magazine off the locker with the pictures of oranges on the side and the curtain on the front. Shestarts writing on one of the pages. It’s called a cross word, I thinks, but she never really gets cross when she’s writing it, only if I’m bold and kicking Breda or Teresa or something like that.
I gets a fright when the door opens and the big man comes in out of the dark hall.
But then I see that it’s Dad and he is smiling at me. He lifts me up and gives me a big hug and then he put me back down again. He smells like Uncle Mickey when Uncle Mickey does be in the front room with his bottles downstairs. But Dad don’t have the really rrreally ed smiley face that he has sometimes when he smells like Uncle Mickey and Mam says he’s a dirty maggot. Mam is smiling too. She don’t be smiling when Dad has the really really red smiley face and is the maggot.
I’m happy that Dad comed home.
Mam and Dad are talking about Anita.
Anita is awake now and she sits up in the cot and she is laughing up at Dad. Dad takes a parcel out of his pocket and he opens it up. There’s a shiny pink lamb inside it, with a red ribbon around his neck. Dad gives the lamb to Anita. It’s her birthday present. She squeezes the lamb and it makes a noise, “baaaa”.
We’re all laughing and Dad sits on the bed next to Mam.
“His name is “Lamby Sammy” he says to Anita.
Then the door opens again and Breda and Teresa comes running in. They jumps up on the bed and they starts hugging Dad and he gives them loads of kisses. We all sits on the bed talking and laughing and watching Anita squeezing Lamby Sammy and making him say “baaa”
Mam says it’s grand to see the sun shining in February thanks be to God.
The sun is shining and it’s a grand day for Baby Anita’s birthday.
2
COTS ARE FOR BABIES
I loves chocolate biscuits. I got a chocolate biscuit off Mam last week and it was really good. I got some more of them today. Mam went out for the messages and when she came back she brought a big packet of chocolate biscuits. Maybe she got some money from Dad in England.
Sometimes Dad works in England and he gets money from his work and he’s able to buy loads of pints of porter and when he comes home from the pub sometimes Mam says he’s a maggot with the money all gone but sometimes he has some money left and we can get things like sausages and sometimes even chocolate when Mam goes out and gets the messages.
I eats two of the biscuits and Mam is going to give me another one but I don’t want it. I have a pain in my stomach and I’m crying.
I don’t want to be crying like a girl but my stomach is very sore and my face is after getting very hot and my legs are very cold.
I’m lying on the sofa and I can’t see the door properly, but it’s opening and Doctor Powell is coming in. Someone is carrying me out of the house and they putS me on Mam’s lap inside in Doctor Powell’s car. I can see the back of Doctor Powell’s head and I can see out the front window of the car. It must be getting nighttime because everything is getting very dark and there’s dooney little white lights up in the air. I’m getting very sleepy.
I’m waking up but I can’t move my legs or my arms. My stomach feels funny but the pain is gone now. My mouth feels funny too. I’m still very tired and very sleepy.
Maybe I fell asleep again but now I’m awake.
The bars of the cot are blue. They’re higher up than the pink bars in Anita’s cot.
I’m crying again, just like a girl.
I don’t want to be in a cot.
Cots are only for babies.
I sleeps in a bed now at home. It’s not a big bed like Breda’s and Teresa’s but it’s not a cot like baby Anita’s one.
The nurse has a white dress and a big huge watch on the front of it. She gives me a cup with a straw in it, like the ones that babies have.
I don’t want a baby’s cup but I’m very thirsty.
It tastes like sugary water.
Mam is standing by the cot. Breda is with her too.
Mam says that I was very sick and the doctor had to take out a thing call my appendix, because it got all twisted. I don’t know what an appendix is but Mam said it was inside in my stomach. Maybe when it got twisted it slipped down a bit though because the doctor had to take it out through a hole he made at the top of my leg.
Mam says that I was just getting better when my blood got poisoned and that’s why I’m in the cot all the time. She says that now I’m going to get better again but I will have to stay in the hospital for a while. I don’t want to stay in the hospital and I tellS Mam that I want to go home. I startS crying and I can’t stop. The nurse with the big white hat comes over and she said that Mam and Breda must go away home now.
The nurse says that I shouldn’t be crying. She says Mam will be back again tomorrow. She says that Mam has to go home to look after the rest of the family but I can see Mam looking through the shiny glass in the door. Breda is still there too. I think Mam is crying too and it makes me cry more.
Agnes says that she was very sick but she’s getting better now. She gets an injection every day and then the nurse gives her the empty bottle from the injection. She has a big bag with all the bottles in it and she’s going to bring them home to play shop with.
Agnes is like my sister Teresa and she always comes over to the cot to talk to me.
Agnes didn’t come over to me today to show me the new bottles in her bag. I waked up last night and I heard Agnes crying. The nurses were running in and out and then they all went out the door and I couldn’t hear Agnes any more. Now she’s not in the bed over in the corner.
I hope she comes back again.
Mam says that it’s going to be Christmas soon and that I will be going home for Christmas. I got loads of Christmas presents already. Mam says that everybody is giving me presents, even the people living on our road who we don’t know well. She says that’s because I was very sick. But I’m getting better now. She says that my appendix got busted and before the doctors took it out my blood got poisoned. She says that’s why I have the stitches on my stomach and I have a sore on top or my head where the poison came out.
I got so many toys for presents and the nurse puts them all in a big cardboard box and puts the box under the cot. She says I might be going home tomorrow and now I can’t go to sleep because I’m thinking about going home. I falls asleep then but when I wakes up in the morning the cot is all wet and so are all the toys in the box.
There’s targets with funny pictures on them for the cork gun. They are on top of the box and they’re made out of cardboard. They got all wet so the nurse throws them in the bin. I don’t want her to throw them in the bin but she says that they are all smelly and soggy and anyway I have loads of other toys.
Mam comes for me and we goes home in a classy car called a taxi. When we gets to tour house I tries to walk down the steps to the front door, but my legs are very sore and Mam has to pick me up and carry me.
Nana says that there’s not a pick on me and I might blow away in the wind and I must eat loads of poppies to get fat.
I wants to see Dad but he isn’t at home. Maybe he’s in England getting more money for pints and sausages. Maybe he will come home soon and not be a maggot and still have the smiley face.
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