The nuns who taught my Mum over in Ireland spent more time drumming the Catechism into her than on the reading and writing business. So it was little wonder that in her adult life she often got things wrong. The shopping lists she wrote out were always full of spelling errors, much to the mirth of us kids. And she would say things like "giraffical maps" or "TV serious", again much to our mirth. The thing is, though, that we would be laughing with her and never at her. One day during the summer holidays, round about teatime, I was hanging about at the open back door with a pal from just along the road. The pal’s father was a rep who wore a suit to work and drove a company car and who thought he, his wife and their two children were a cut above the rest of us. My siblings, all five of them, were in the kitchen at that time, sitting round the big table and, as ever, making a hell of a racket. My Mum must have swept into the kitchen from elsewhere in the house, because my pal and I heard her shouting, “Get off the table, your tea’s not ready yet!” I knew she meant “Get away from the table”, of course, but my pal burst out in a fit of laughing at the vision of a chimps’ tea-party that my Mum’s Irishism had conjured up. I knew also that at the first opportunity he would be relating the incident to anyone who would listen, the story of the Gisby monkeys. He wasn’t my friend any more. And don’t you be worrying, Mum, spelling errors or not, Irishisms or not, you did us all proud.
2 Comments
Brenda Walsh
6/8/2018 03:48:07 pm
Lovely wee read
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