Continuing the unexpurgated diaries from Ballina in the late 1960s
Tuesday, October 25th, 1966
Mother was all starry-eyed last night on her return from the Estoria, where she and Father had gone to see Stephen Boyd and Joan Collins in Island in the Sun. I made tea for the two of them and overheard the following conversation. Mother: That was such a beautiful film. It was so true to life! Father: What? It was a grubby story about a right couple of chancers.
Mother: It was a love story! It reminded me of us! Father: Excuse me. It was a sordid tale of politics and general immoral carry-on.
Mother: Arrah you have no imagination.
I sometimes wonder how my parents ever got together. Father hardly ever goes to the pictures, while Mother goes all the time.
At any rate I feel sure that Father agreed to go and see last night's film only because the supporting feature was an episode of Old Mother Reilly (Old Mother Reilly Joins Up, apparently), a great favourite of his.
I think I can see the attraction for Father. Stuck as he is in a dull and dead-end job at the Mayco toy factory, where his brain is slowly turned to mush by capitalism, a wildly anarchic figure such as Old Mother Reilly, subject to no economic or social constraints, must hold great unconscious appeal for him.
Wednesday, October 26th
I noticed a few weeks back in the Western People that Duffy's Bakery was looking for a principal dough maker ("with thorough knowledge of fermentation"), for which it was offering a basic salary of £20 weekly.
Now I discover the job has fallen to my former girlfriend Maureen. In other words this young woman (16) who dropped out of secondary school after informing the nuns that it was "a waste of shaggin' time" has been proved correct, at least in monetary terms (which it pains me to say are the only ones she deals in).
Maureen now makes almost twice what I earn in the library: for the people of Ballina, the production of Knuttycrust Bread obviously rates higher than the provision of mental sustenance. It is a sad commentary on our society and times.
J.P. Duffy himself told me that Maureen's bulldozer approach to work has already put the fear of God into her co-workers: "She careers round the place like a ghost tank, covered from head to toe in white flour, and Jaysus help anyone who gets in her way."
Thursday, October 27th
Mary - "my married daughter" - as Mother refers in company to my elder sister (to emphasise Noeleen's inferior single state) dropped in yesterday evening to show off baby Antoinette and complain to Mother about the price of things, her ruined figure and her husband.
When I pulled out a packet of Pankies (because I am suffering from a head cold) she straightaway asked me what I paid for them.
"Sixpence," I told her, to be then informed that I could have got three packets for a shilling in Egan's.
"Yes," I told her "and butter is now four-and-seven-pence a pound, I believe."
To this she nodded gloomily. Mary is devoid of a sense of irony. She went on to bemoan the price of Farley's rusks, and Lincoln Creams, to which her husband Korky is apparently addicted. It is sad to see a person reduced to such a state, her intellectual horizons marked out in the price of Pankies.
When she started moaning to Mother about her sagging figure, I tried to encourage her up by reading out an advertisement from the Western People for the latest Joycet foundation garments: "Every belt in the range features the exclusive Joycet elastic panel at the base, which ensures a tucked-in fit and eliminates riding-up."
Her response was to say it was none of my business, whereupon she then burst into tears.
I was only trying to help. My conclusion is that while women are impossible to understand, wives become even more incomprehensible, and mothers are the most unfathomable creatures of all.
Friday, October 28th
While we were discussing the subject of women in Jordan's pub the other night, Walter announced to me there was no woman in the life of Gen Humbert (his hero) or the slightest indication that he took any interest in sex - no more than Walter does.
Did this help make Gen Humbert a good soldier, I find myself wondering, in the way that Noeleen's Jerome appears to substitute mechanical and numerical skills for the expression of sexuality? And if I were not so obsessed by sex, could I too become an accountant? I will have to get back to reading Jung and Freud. It is hideously frustrating not knowing the real truth about oneself.
I think, however, I would prefer to have sex at least once than to be a fully qualified but entirely chaste accountant. Some choices are easily enough made.
bglacken@irish-times.ie