The new volume from the Central Statistics Office That was then, This is Now: Change in Ireland 19491999, deserves to be a bestseller. It is published to mark the 50th anniversary of the Office and without reading a word of the text, you can get an amusing idea of that half-century by flicking through the advertisements that cleverly tell us so much. Lovely little round-cheeked kids chanting "Now we'll have wool to make Peek-a-Boo socks / For good little children like me", and, signs of things to come, the AB cooker: "Hot baths for the whole family from the same fire that cooks the meals," and a blonde woman flourishing her towel as she makes for the bathroom, followed by the husband. Another day we'll look more seriously at the book, but a friend made the point that, for him, probably the most obvious change in Dublin life anyway, is that our parents walked and walked and walked, where we motor. They walked not primarily for health, but because it was the normal way to get around as they saw it. There were buses and trams, a good service, but whether you had a car or not, in the 1949 days and for some time after, the normal way to go visiting was to walk.
It wasn't, probably a conscious matter of health, but now, to get exercise you apparently go to a gym. Walking isn't enough. Though cardiologists tell you it's one of the best things you can do. And children were early introduced to the walk. There is a family photograph of children on the ruins of what was John Philpot Curran's house up there on the other side of the road from St Enda's. Now built up. These children, from about eight down to three had walked nearly two miles to get there - and the same back home. Two friends used to make a regular circuit at night from Rathfarnham village up the hills to Kilmashogue Bridge, then right to Rockbrook and down again to their original starting point, about five miles, just to be walking and chatting, short stop for one drink on the way. Even to walk across the city was not unusual - from Ranelagh to Clontarf to visit friends. Not money-saving but just joy in the freedom of movement. You may have known it was doing you good - clearing your mind as well as exercising your limbs, but then it was simply natural.
In those days, night workers walking home at four o'clock in the morning was normal. At that time - and sometimes later, a posse of Irish Press men (a journalist, a printer, a reader, i.e., a corrector of the proofs), used to walk home together, one dropping off at Portobello, two others going on to Rathgar. The oldest of the group, the reader, was a regular swimmer at the Forty Foot. Y