Nowhere better than home, boy
IWAS born a long time ago, and it wouldn’t do me any good to draw attention to the distance between then and now. In fact, if I was left to my own devices I would stop keeping track of it completely, it seems to bring nothing only fear and depression with every additional digit, it might be handy for the government, but I don’t find it useful at all.
I rarely feel as old as I am, and even if I only imagine three years off my age, I feel better about myself, perhaps because its mention is an intrusion on the age I feel. Anyone that I’ve ever known who kept tabs on their age with full fervor, ended up dying on time; it’s foolish behavior.
I grew up by the sea, it lived across the road from us on the Quay, upstairs in the sitting room with a blazing fire at my back, I often peeked past the curtains at its commotion.
It spat up massive wooden sleepers like matchsticks, and threatened to cross over the road to us. By the fire, my Mother knitting, me Da still in his blue overalls from the factory, taking the occasional gawp over the newspaper at the television, his ill fitting spectacles stopping short of outsize ears. To his side, a sofa full of sisters, maybe a boarder or a brother or two.
For me though, the drama of the sea far outdid anything that the television had to offer. There we sat in the sanctuary of our home, with the waves bashing the bridge and the wind building on each reproach, a rattling can, and then a mysterious bang!
Some kind of cadence before the next shuddering crescendo. Oddly enough, this wild cacophony only served to increase our comfort and security, as we sat beside the fire in that solid house by the sea.
We lived at number 2 Commercial Quay, an old merchant’s house surrounded by coal yards, auctioneers, furniture showrooms and lumber yards.
From my bedroom on the third floor I awakened to the yelps of seagulls announcing the dawn as they circled the Dutch coal boats in pursuit of the morning slop. After a breakfast of Kelly’s bread and Wexford cheese, I would run up through the meandering lanes and church yards to the Christian Brothers School, back home for lunch and back up the hill again, all the while slapping myself on the bum, as would a cowboy on his horse.
I also sang boy soprano at midnight Mass for Christmas and Easter, after which we were given boiled sweets and lemonade as a reward. Then, flushed with the excitement of being allowed into the sacristy, and the giddiness of being out at that hour, I ran myself home in the dark, panicking through the shadowed side streets, and thankful that I had my horse.
Wexford is a seafaring town, long before tattoos were fashionable, I knew men with blue anchored arms, emblems from drunken dreams in exotic places, but their endless regret left me fearful of that permanent ornamentation.
After they had been all over the world, they warned of the great temptations of this green orb, and that, in the end, ‘Nowhere is better than home boy!’
They would pull me to one side and advise, ‘Nowhere is better than home boy, nowhere is better boy, I can tell you ‘cos I’ve been there, you’ll end up with no one at all. You’ll end up coming back boy, just don’t leave it too long, this is where you belong, nowhere is better than home, boy’.
After a breakfast of Kelly’s bread and Wexford cheese, I would run up through the meandering lanes and church yards to the Christian Brothers School