Continuing the unexpurgated diaries from Ballina in the late 1960s . . .
Wednesday, August 28th, 1966
I have a half-day, and mother has decided I need some new clothes to go with my new job. I agree, though I hardly thought the sartorial standards of our local library would be very demanding. Expecting Miss Cartwright to look like a frump, as librarians tend to do, and never having taken much notice of her around town before, I have been rather taken aback at her bright and fashionable appearance. I mentioned this to mother, but she merely made a disparaging remark about "mutton dressed as lamb".
Anyway, I have begun to feel rather self-conscious about my own regular outfit of frayed jeans and baggy jumper. The trouble is that my pay packets are so miserable that I still have to depend on my mother for funds. Worse, she insists on accompanying me to the shops to make sure I am not cheated:
"They'll know who they're dealing with when they see me." I, presumably, am the invisible man.
First stop is Ted Kingham's where the eponymous Ted observes loudly and with feigned amazement that I have grown into a fine lad - "the Lord save us, look at the size of him, what in the name of God are you feeding him on at all at all, Peg?"
I am tempted to reply: the raw flesh of young Columbine monkeys, vast mounds of papaya roots boiled in snake-oil, salads of rubber-tree saplings from the banks of the Amazon, and the treat of an occasional deep-fried king rat from the Malaysian forests. But I already know that nothing can embarrass Ted Kingham.
Mother, meanwhile, soaks up more of this ludicrous flattery and since I draw the line at buying a suit, we end up purchasing a grey sports jacket for four pounds twelve and sixpence - which I must say looks rather well on me - and two pairs of black flannel trousers ("the best quality you would dream of, and for half nothing, you wouldn't get better value if you went up to Clerys of O'Connell Street in Dublin itself").
Over at the tail-end of Moran Bros' summer sale we next pick up three striped button-down shirts, a couple of rather sober ties and some cut-price underwear. Mother is outraged to see trousers identical to those sold to us by Ted Kingham at two shillings and six pence less per pair. "Bloody old plamaser," she says. I hold my counsel. When she calms down she tells me that I will have to wait until father gets paid at the end of September before I can get new shoes.
I express my confidence that by the end of the month I should, for the first time, be able to afford my own footwear. This cheers mother up so much that she insists on treating me to a bowl of banana ice-cream in the Bolero. As I am well aware this is her own favourite treat, I indulge her.
IT has not been the worst Wednesday, I muse. My mother's eyes shine like those of a demented child as she digs a wafer into her metal bowl of ice-cream. A young woman passes by our table. "That's the girl that'll come into the money one day,' " says mother, nudging me conspiratorially. "Judy Corcoran, an only child, and the parents rolling in it, the chemist's, the Bolero and five or six other properties. You could do worse, Michael."
It dawns on me that this is the sort of painful prodding I will continue to suffer from my mother until the day I enter the marital state (God forbid). I resolve to put my foot down now.
"Mother," I say, "do not get your hopes up. I am a humble library assistant, newly started, grade one. As you have seen, I am unable as yet to even buy my own trousers. I aspire to a new pair of shoes, but not for a further month. At this rate of progress, I may well possess a complete wardrobe within a year and a half."
Mother nods enthusiastically as I continue: "But even were I able to recite the Dewey Decimal System in my sleep, my prospects in the Mayo library service would remain severely limited. Were I to stay there all my life, I should probably retire on an annual pension less than Johnny Armstrong currently makes each week by illegally snaring salmon on the Moy."
My mother is still nodding happily in agreement. Baffled, I carry on: "Miss Corcoran, on the other hand, will soon finish her pharmaceutical studies in Trinity College, join her father's practice and one day inherit it, no doubt along with many hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash and property. Do you think then she is likely to ever do more than perhaps throw me a disgusted glance when she fills my prescription for an evil-smelling cream meant to alleviate the symptoms of beriberi, or flutter those pretty eyelashes at me while fondly packaging my haemorrhoid suppositories?"
It seems a long walk home, but of course Ardnaree is uphill all the way. However, we arrive in time for mother's favourite TV programme, The Man from UNCLE.
bglacken@irish-times.ie