The ‘Seven Bridges’ – The Decline of the Outdoor Childhood

As with many places, we have a lot of new Immigrants in our town.  One thing in particular strikes me when I look at them.  Their children are having the childhood that I had, whereas my own children are not.

These Immigrant children are there, morning until dusk, playing football, exploring the woods at the bottom of the field, sitting around on the pavement kicking dust.  They are living the Outdoor Childhood just like we used to do back in the Sixties and the Seventies.

My kids are getting bigger now and I find it is a source of some regret to me that they have not know the joys of the Outdoor Childhood.  They’ve been 'out' of course – regularly and often – but they haven’t known the experience of waving goodbye to Mum early of a Summer’s morning, heading out and knowing you would not be returning until hunger, pitch darkness, or physical damage drives you back in.

This is no fault of my kids, of course.  I think it’s even too simple to say it’s my fault.  As parents, we all seemed to stop dispatching our kids to the outdoors at around the same time.  How could I have sent my guys off out into the world when there was  nobody else out there to play with?  (The Immigrants came a few years too late for my fellas.).

I realise what I am saying is not true-of-everywhere.  When I go to other places in town I see everybody’s kids out in their neighbourhood, adventuring, socialising and generally having a ball.

The way I see it, there are a couple of elements at work here.  I reckon that my compatriots and I were ran outdoors because there wasn’t enough in the house to amuse us back then. No daytime TV, video games, social networks.  We were bored and under our parents feet and out we went.  These days our kids can amuse themselves quite well within the confines of the home and something is suffering as a result.

The other element is Community.  So many families have both parents working (or trying to work) now.  In my day, the Mum’s all seemed to be at home.  They watched us surreptitiously from behind their net curtains and made sure we were largely all right.  The places in town where there are groups of parents at home are invariably the less-advantaged places – they haven’t got the cash for Playstations and Sky TV and, yes, the kids are there, on the streets, living the Outdoor Childhood.

I’m not complaining.  I’m just sad that my guys, who have had a brilliant childhood, have still not had the extraordinary childhood that I was gifted with.

I was lucky though. As a kid, I lived in an extraordinary place, where the council houses looked out upon a beautiful wide river and where deep mysterious woods were only footsteps away.

We used to issue challenges to each other.  “I bet you couldn’t jump off that,” or “I bet your couldn’t hang out of that for longer than me.”  We called these regular events ‘Connies’ which I reckon must have been short for ‘Contests’.  I go back there now and I look disbelievingly at some the things we used to do.  The older boys would challenge themselves to feats of power and endurance that still, to this day, seem impossible to me.

We built rafts from timber pallets made buoyant and wonderfully unstable by barrels tied beneath.  We used to ride them down the falls at the weir.  We couldn’t swim.

We played football on the street, the entrance to our houses being the goal posts but, because the river was on one side of the street, the goals were both on the same side.  As a result, a winning goal-scoring technique would be to nurse the ball along the garden walls, fending off all attackers until you reached the opposition’s goal.  The best times were when the ball went in the river and had to be coaxed back to land with stones and other projectiles.

And what of the Seven Bridges back there in the title?  That was, perhaps, our most memorable adventure.  In the woods above our houses there was a path with two bridges spanning inlets from the wide river.  We heard a rumour that there were more bridges, lost and abandoned, deeper in the woods where the path had long been lost.  With sticks and thick jumpers, we cut our way through those deeper woods and found five more lost bridges further up the river than we had ever ventured before.  It felt like an epic adventure and the scratches, scrapes, fights, soakings we met along the way will not easily be forgotten.

That path is all opened up again today.  Some of the bridges are gone as inlets were filled in.  It’s a nice clear walk now but still a long one. Long enough that when I look at it today and imagine it totally overgrown and inaccessible, I can still see that our then-epic adventure would still be a bit epic, even today.

It’s too late for my guys. They are happy and know-no-better.  But if you have young kids, and your home place is conducive, take my advice and run them out of the house from time-to-time.  There’s still a world of adventure out there, a world of sweet memories to be made.

Memories of Eldest

I’ve written here before about my current view of this blog as a sort of a ‘Pensieve’ where my memories and thoughts can be chucked in and hauled out in silvery snot-like threads at some later date.  One might say, “why not stick it in a notebook?”  Good idea but it’s not me.  Although fewer and fewer people read this stuff, I tend to need at least the possibility of an audience in order to do something with the appropriate level of care.

So here I am.

Today I’m looking at my Eldest Son, who will be fifteen next week and who, to my delight, is now considerably taller than I am.  My memories of him, from now, will be of this clever, gentle, considered guy rather then the bump, baby and toddler who came before and who filled our lives so completely.

Perhaps it’s time, then, to chuck something into the Pensieve, lest it get lost along the way.  Perhaps when I am old and my mind has gone, someone might read this page out to me and I might smile a moment, imagining these things really happened.

Three memories of J:

When he was a toddler, we had a date every evening, after work and before bedtime.  We used to wrestle.  We’d meet up on our bed and square up to each other.  Toddler would employ sophisticated Half-Nelson techniques and invariably dad would be chucked off the bed and onto the floor.  Three falls were sufficient to win the battle and toddler never conceded a single fall in all the time that this violent and giggle-ridden rendezvous was kept.

Every evening, once tucked in, a book was read aloud by me to him.  We read very little every night, perhaps only a page.  In this way, we read all the Harry Potter books (except that last one which he was old enough to read himself), all of Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, Watership Down, Swallows and Amazons, Witch and the Wardrobe… it is truly amazing how much can be read, one page a night, over the steady trickle of a childhood.

Finally, almost Benjamin Button-like, we sneak back to the earliest moments.  The tiny baby.  At weekends, I used to take the night feed.  I would watch half of some video movie and leave the second half for the middle of the Friday night.  There, in the insular twilight of the living room, Dad and bottle-suckling infant, lay on the couch, wrapped themselves up in a patchwork quilt and watched Candyman together.

I couldn’t ever forget that, could I?

Just in case I do, perhaps it’ll be here.

Always a Mother to Me

It’s surprising that it’s five years this week since Mum died.  I’m always out by a year, I thought it was only four.

Inevitably it’s a time of year for remembrance and a little sadness.  Although my mate Luce said it well a few weeks ago.  She doesn’t see why Anniversaries should necessarily be a time of sadness, how much better to remember - and celebrate - the person’s life rather than their death.  How true.

That’s what I like to do.  I like to think of the good times and how many of them there were.  At least, I like to try.

So, today, I had resolved to write a happy sort of blog post about Mum and how great a person she was in her own right, not just as a Mum but as a strong, smart, lovely human being.

 

And here I am, having hit a bit of a brick wall with this.

You see, I know lots of stuff about Mum, lots of stories and adventures and great moments and fun… I could share some of those with you and that would be nice, I’m sure.  But they’re not my stories of her – they are other people’s stories.

All my stories of her are as a Mum.  My Mum.

Does that even make sense?

My Mum was funny and tough and strong.  She was quite short and she had remarkably small feet.  She was always singing around the house and she would never sing in public.  She baked cakes and sent them off around the world at Christmas Time.  She loved Bingo, never went to the pub, was religious.  She made me feel safe and insulated and she always took my side when I needed her to.

These are all things – true things – but they’re not about Betty the Person, what she wanted, how she felt.  They’re all about my perception of her as my Mother.

I seem to be able only to define her as that and nothing else.

Which is a bit sad.

Or is it?

Maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be, for me at least.  My Mum was a great Mum and I’ll always remember her as that.  Perhaps I was also more a Son to her than a person, I don’t know.  I have no doubt that a relationship could have been forged, in later life, where we knew each other more as people than as close family.  Unfortunately, I was gone from home by seventeen and Mum was not permitted to enjoy those later years where such a thing might have grown.

C’est La Vie, eh?

I can be regretful but I can be happy too.  I guess I was never destined to know Mum as much more than Mum.   I was damn lucky to have her as that.

So, (tips forehead to the skies)  thinking of you Mum.

Thanks for everything, I appreciate it.

'You know?

The Biggest Movie of My Life 2 - Cross Country Viewing

(This is a companion-piece to the first post I did on Jaws some time ago.  You can see that here.)

In the book, ‘Fever Pitch’, Nick Hornby tells how key moments in his life have been defined by soccer matches he had seen.

It’s much the same for me with films.  I have very precise memories of almost every film I have seen – which cinema, who was with me, events that happened on that day.

How odd then that, after such enormous anticipation, I remember so very little about the first time that I ever saw ‘Jaws’.  Almost anything I might say about that first viewing would be largely imagined or made-up because I really don’t remember.


However, I remember loads about the second time I saw it.  It was exactly one week after the first time I saw it.  I was going again with my friend and his sister, neither of whom had seen it yet.

My mother was annoyed that I was spending good money to see the same film twice, she thought it was a bad idea.  But I went anyway – this is as close to rebellion as I ever came.  I since found out that my Dad went to see ‘The African Queen’ on seven consecutive nights in the local cinema so maybe Mum didn’t mind me going quite as much as I thought she did.

In that second viewing, I actually felt that I owned the film.  It was mine now and I was showing it off proudly to my friends.  ‘Look what I did just there, aren’t I great?’

This second time around, I was able to look around and watch the astonishing audience reaction when Ben Gardner slipped out of that hole in the boat.  It was the oddest thing – everybody jumped.  And I really mean jumped, they didn’t cower under their loved ones elbow or throw their hands up to their faces to hide.  They jumped and screamed in complete unison… and then they laughed in relief.

One thing I do remember about my first viewing is that I didn’t jump.

I think I might have been the only one.

    *    *    *    *

In September 1980, Jaws turned up on television in Ireland for the very first time.

It might be hard to believe now, but this was a bit of an event too.  VCRs were only just starting to tentatively appear in the more well-off homes and the concept of the video as home entertainment was still a few years away from being cemented.  As a result, the film had dropped from view after a long cinema run and had not been seen much for nearly five years.  The prospect, therefore, of reliving the experience in your own living room was an interesting and, yes, an exciting one.

This Sunday night TV premiere spawned one of the most lasting and emotional memories of ‘Jaws’ for me.  Perhaps it goes some way to explain why that silly old film still means so much to me.

You see, Sunday night was no good for me.  I couldn’t get to see it.  On Sunday night, at Six O’clock, I got the bus back to college in Dublin.  I had just turned seventeen, was only two weeks into College and Dublin, had never been away from home before, and was physically and desperately homesick.  I didn’t want to be in Dublin, I wanted to be in my own house watching the film, just like everyone else would be.

But I had to go and so I didn’t get to see the film that night.

Except… I did.

I watched the film through every living room window I passed, from eight o’clock to ten, as my bus rolled across the country.  My eyes riveted to the bus window, I saw snapshot after snapshot of ‘Jaws’ beam out to me.  There was lots of houses, lots of windows and everyone was watching. 

I know, I saw them.

And the abiding memory of that snatched cross-country viewing?  Easy.  The colour blue.  The azure sea…  I can’t explain it but it tugs at me to write it even now. 

That blue became a link to home.

Strangely enough, it still is.

The Biggest Movie of My Life – The Beginning

It all started when my eldest brother got sick one day. It was 1974 and he wasn’t really all that terribly sick, just a bit under the weather.

“Your brother is feeling a bit under the weather,” my mother whispered, “run to the shop and buy him a book to read.” This may seem a little odd but my brother and I have always shared this little trait – we are both comforted and cosseted by books. It’s strange but true.




Photo by: 'somewhere on an island'

So I ran to the shop – I was eleven years old and I ran pretty fast back then.

I didn’t run to the bookshop though, that would have been too easy. Instead, I ran to a little grocery shop on the other side of the river. It was a long way around via the bridge but I knew it was the place to go.

There was a book there, you see, up behind the counter and for weeks it had been staring out at me every day when I dropped in for a post-school treat. I couldn’t see much of it because it was quite a long way back but I knew from my distant view of the cover that it would be one that my brother would like.

It was about vampires, you see, and my brother liked vampires.

Well… I thought it was about vampires.

All that I could really see of the cover, from my vantage point in front of the counter, was the large mouth drooping downwards, the pointed savage teeth, the pale face, the black eyes and the title.

When I handed in my money and the book was brought down from its perch and delivered out to me, I finally saw that it wasn’t a vampire at all on the cover.

It was a fish.

* * * *

My brother finished ‘Jaws’ in record time, recovered fully and went off to play football on the street. Then it was my turn.

I had been waiting anxiously to have a go at it. The Daily Express review on the back cover was highly memorable, I can still quote it pretty much verbatim:

“Pick up ‘Jaws before midnight, read the first five pages, and I guarantee you'll be putting it down breathless and stunned, as dawn is breaking the next day”

Remember I was just eleven years old. There were things in ‘Jaws’ which I probably shouldn’t have been reading at that age. There was a lesbian in there, for instance. I didn’t really know what a 'lesbian' was but I soon figured it out. I had some help, I already had ‘The Dice Man’ under my belt… but that’s a whole other blog post.

Lesbians aside, the book grabbed me and shook me and would not let me go. I finished it, put it down and I remember saying to myself, ‘That is going to make one hell of a film.’

And so the long wait began…

There will never be another movie event like ‘Jaws’ simply because the world has now changed so much. When ‘The Dark Knight’ came out this summer, it was all over the world within days of its World Premiere. ‘Jaws’ took ages to even get to Ireland after it was released. But, much more importantly, it took additional ages to get to my home town after it was released in Dublin.

People were taking the train to the Capital just to queue around the block, see the film and then come home again. My best friend Martin was brought to Dublin by his Dad and so he got to see it months before me. I could have cheerfully strangled him and his old Dad – one neck in each hand.

One evening, weeks before it arrived, I saw a short clip on the telly. This was quite unusual in those days. I had one overriding impression of that short clip:

The movie looked so incredibly ‘Blue’...

With your indulgence, I might return to this subject in a later post, to set down what happened when I finally got to see the most-anticipated movie of my life.