The 5.25 to Dublin

- ‘Tom, they’re calling this evening!’

- ‘Who is calling this evening Sinead?’ - ‘Tommy O’Dea and his wife from Australia!’

- ‘Who are they?’

Tommy was a friend of my mother and father. It was my father who drove Tommy to Limerick Junction to get the 5.25 to Dublin. - ‘What do you mean by the 5.25?’ Everyone knew in those days that the 5.25 from the Junction only meant one thing, that one was catching the emigrant boat to England – which Tommy did in the late sixties.

Tommy was in his late teens and was recovering from the sorrow of his mother’s passing away. My father knew Tommy would do well in London because he was a very good worker, as my father knew well from the year that Tommy worked for him. And even though my father offered him way above the going pay for that time to stay with him, he said ‘No, I have made my mind up’.

So he went to England and was getting on very well working in the buildings. He saw an advert in the newspaper – the Australian Government was subsidising a ticket to Australia for £10 to go and work there for a minimum of two years. So he headed for Australia with his ten-pound ticket and a dream in his mind, and as expected he got on well with the work and the people.

Before long it was 1970; the two years had gone to three and in his mind he could hear his native Knocklong, County Limerick calling – where are you Tommy?

A FINAL GOODBYE?

So he headed once more for his native village – this time to decide; to say hello or goodbye was the question on his mind – to the village and the people that he loved, so he talked it out with his heart. What was the best for him to say?

And on another day, sad in a way, he said goodbye to Knocklong and the people that he loved from childhood and was back on the 5.25 from the Junction – the start of the long journey back to where he would now call home.

It would be many years before Tommy and his Australian wife came back to visit Knocklong. He came back this time with the reality that time had passed – a lot of time since Sinead’s father had driven him to the 5.25 from the Junction.

Even now time has faded, and the relevance of the 5.25. Airports now are the new 5.25 from the Junction!

So, it’s 2013 once again and Tommy is back this time to say a final farewell to the brothers and sisters that are still alive, as he feels that time may not let him come back again. So let’s hope that such a fine decent man with a beard like Ned Kelly is wrong and will be back!