Innocent times!

Jean's Journal with Jean Farrell

A worried mother sent a letter to an agony aunt in a newspaper, recently. She wrote that her ten-year-old daughter wanted a fridge for her bedroom. Intrigued, I read on. The fridge was needed by the pre-teen to store her Korean sheet masks in. These are ‘face masks soaked in serums, vitamins, antioxidants and minerals which, when applied, hydrate the skin. They must be kept in a fridge and are part of a facial routine.’ (I’m not making this up!)

A few things struck me. When I was ten, in 1961, no-one I knew had a bedroom of their own and no-one I knew had a fridge! Korea was somewhere we read about in ‘The Far East.’ Sheets (made in Gentex) were for beds, not for faces. Minerals were bottles of orange or lemonade (that a fella might buy you in The Crescent!) The words antioxidant and serums hadn’t arrived in Ireland yet. ‘Dear Frankie’ was the only agony aunt we knew. She read out problems, on the wireless, as we ate our fish on Fridays. Back then, our young faces were hydrated by the rain, as we cycled into it. Who knew what ‘a facial routine’ was? My mother washed her face in toilet soap and then applied Astral cream, every day. Was that her ‘facial routine?’

I’ve never watched The Kardashians. However, the rest of the world has. I read that ‘The annual spend on toiletries and cosmetics by teens and preteens reached €828 million in 2020. Youngsters must follow a ten-step routine, as showcased by Kim Kardashian’s daughter.’ Mad!

I’m been thinking of what we did when we were ten years old. Local lads discovered ways of making money. Young boys collected jam jars full of worms. They sold these to the visiting English fisherman for bait. Another way of making money was picking carrots in Clonown. Men my age have great memories of this work. I wrote about it in a previous article.

Maybe I wrote about the following too, but if you have a memory like mine you’ve probably forgotten it. Angela McNamara was another agony aunt of old. As I teenager, I learnt ‘The Facts of Life’ (remember those) from her letter page in The Sunday Press. One particular query stands out in my mind. “Is it a sin to wear a bikini?” a reader asked her.

Angela McNamara replied saying that it depends on the way you wear the bikini! She said that even a polo neck could be ‘an occasion of sin’ if a girl wore it in an immodest fashion. Well, in my great innocence, I had no idea what she meant. By the standards of those times, nearly everything nowadays would be regarded as ‘an occasion of sin.’

How very different our childhood was! Instead of pestering my very busy mother to buy me a fridge, I was doing my Legion of Mary work.

Do you think that when I am standing at the pearly gates of Heaven, Saint Peter will remember the good little child I was?

I’ve told you about visiting old folk, as part of our Legion of Mary work. We also ‘trimmed stamps.’ This involved sitting around a table in the Pongo room of St Peter’s Hall. A nun would throw a huge pile of stamps, torn from envelopes, onto the table. We were informed that these were for The Foreign Missions. However, they needed to be trimmed neatly before The Foreign Mission would have them. So, with scissors in hand, we cut all the surplus paper off the stamps.

Will Saint Peter remember the other Legion of Mary work I did? We scrapped the wax off the candle sticks in St Peter’s Church, using a blunt knife. This was hard work. I used to gaze at the three lovely big chairs inside the altar rails. These were covered in red velvet and looked so soft. The biggest one was for the Bishop. I can’t ever remember anyone sitting on them. Remember High Mass? This, as well as Benediction, met our need for drama and pageantry!

We loved our comics. I read every page in my Bunty many times and got hours of fun from the paper clothes and dolls. These were on the back cover. Such innocent times!

I had the pleasure of receiving a lovely hand written letter from a reader, in his 90s. He enjoyed my article about O’Riains and past times. He wrote, “On such boys’ papers as Hotspur, Rover, Wizard, Adventure and Champion I honed my reading skills.” He went on to say that, “Unlike modern picture comics they were all prose.”

I heard someone refer to ‘Pound-a -week shops.’ These were hire-purchase establishments. Sloans, in Connaught St, was one such place.

The most exciting shop near us, when I was small, was Grenham’s Travel Agency. On my way up to Brodericks to buy bread, I’d stop and gaze at big posters in their window. I’d gaze at beautiful people skiing down mountains in Switzerland. I’d gaze at glamourous folk on huge ships, sailing on the deep blue sea. (The words ‘cruise-liners’ wasn’t yet in our vocabulary.) And I’d gaze at gorgeous girls, lying on beaches, in bikinis, in sunny Spain.

It was a glance into a totally different world. It was so removed from my life that I might as well have been gazing into Heaven!

Marie Grenham was in my class in school. Marie has been running this very successful travel agency for many years. I wish her a very happy well-earned retirement.