Aren’t Dads great
Posted on November 14, 2006
Filed Under characters, children, family, happiness, history, pub, relationships | Comments Off
(in-joke) Hopefully Felicity will forgive my liberty but this is roughly a stream of consciousness post…
Aren’t Dads great? I meet my father roughly once a week for a pint. It has to be a pint because he’s old skool. By old skool, I mean, he doesn’t do emotions/feelings or cups of tea and a chat unless he’s got a pint in front of him. Then he can impart his feelings by way of a famous soccer player or yer man from d’office. Ultimately, he can deny everything because he was having a pint. He’s not an alcoholic or anything even approaching that. He’s just an Irish male. Even worse from a macho point of view, he doesn’t even breech the medical guidelines of 21 units a week (10.5 pints).
He’s reached a stage in his life where he’s comfortable. He can afford to buy a few drinks for himself and he chooses to go to two pubs where ‘everybody knows your name‘. One pub is for after work on Fridays and the other is when he meets me (or d’brother) during the week. Service and comfort are important to him. When I meet him in the pub, he really, really gets a thrill by signalling the barman and gesturing ‘same again‘. And they know it’s him and they know it’s two Guinness. I guess it makes him feel ‘known’ and important.
Nowadays, most people don’t remember the poverty of Ireland in the… I was going to say the ’70′s, when I was born. But, realistically, Ireland was dog poor until very recently. My father had to live through that poverty and I think it marked him. He was one of the first people in his village to pass the Leaving Cert (UK A-levels, USA G.E.D.) and he never forgot that. With the money he earned as a (summer job) barman on the Isle of Wright, he even rented* the first black and white TV on his street for his parents. Now that’s hard core.
When he bought his first house with my mother, he basically had to squat in it for a few weeks until it was secure. Someone else could have ‘taken’ the house unless he protected it. And he had a full time job at the same time. He had to save for carpet…for the cooker…for the beds…for our clothes. Nowadays, people don’t remember that. Nowadays, people don’t remember that credit cards were only invented in the ’80′s. Nowadays, people pay Arnotts etc €4k to ‘fit-out’ their apartment.
All his life, he’s had to not spend save for other people (i.e., me and his family) and now he doesn’t. Perversely, we encourage him to drink more and, no, we’re not looking for an early inheritance! Rather, we want him to enjoy himself and, due to his save, save mentality, he’s never really enjoyed the benefits of foreign food (i.e. the Chinese takeaway!) or travel, or Irish restaurants, or nice clothes etc. To be honest, ‘ceol agus craic’ (music and fun) is what’s he’s after. With a good pint of Guinness, of course.
He worries about me. He genuinely does! And I’m thirty-mumble.
Do I have enough money? Do I need a loan? Can I afford the round?
Pause…
Are you sure?
My brother and I have ‘career plans’ in that we have no real loyalty to our employers and fully expect to move jobs every couple of years. This is totally anaethama to him. In fact, it freaks him out. ‘What about the pension‘, he worries?
This post may not make total sense but, like I said, I’ve been for a pint with my dad. And, aren’t Dads great!
Random trivia: Brian, the last cobbler on Moore Street, is potentially moving to the RTV shop on North Earl Street. The RTV shop was the last place in Dublin, to my knowledge, where you can rent televisions.
