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Molly's Boy
Down The Long Road
I liked my own company
Excerpt 3
As I said, a lot of Irish worked in Lyons and quite a number had risen to be supervisors On the whole I found them difficult to work for they were rude, fitful and arrogant. They felt that they had to shove you around to get their commands obeyed. I was happier working for the English or foreign foreman for they treated people with respect and had manners. On reflection there was a lot of anger in me towards Ireland and having escaped from the authority at home I was again running into it here. Fred, a Swiss foreman, asked me if I would be interested in helping to serve the iced coffee, which Lyons made, at a Buckingham Palace garden party and I was over the moon. My moment of social acknowledgment had arrived and I was looking forward to playing host to the royal family. But at the last moment he withdrew his request and I was back down with the lower classes feeling saddened. When I was leaving Lyons I had this notion to decorate the head and shoulders of a particularly obnoxious Cork foreman with a large iced cake. But when the day came I chickened out for he was a fiery bit of stuff and we were on the fourth floor. And besides these cakes were expensive and I would have got a large bill and probably a black eye.
During my time in London I did not find any overt racism against the Irish. I found that people treated you as you treated them and as I was pretty easy going and was interested in people I got on fine. If anything I felt superior to the average Londoner for I still felt that I had strong roots at home and I was fit and reasonably intelligent and was learning to deal with life's problems as they arose. I liked my own company and was quite happy be on my own if the occasion arose. If there was a problem it was with the Irish I met in authority in London. There was the occasional good egg but generally they had no style or skill in dealing with people and relied on a thickheadedness and even brutality to get their wishes obeyed. I suppose there was an inferiority in the Irish and they were sensitive to any challenge and resorted with venom if challenged.
I did not wear my Irishness on my sleeve. My accent was not a strong Irish one but still very definitely Dublin. I learnt to think like a Londoner, fast and on your feet for there was a pace to living in this busy capital. I was not political and even though I was very keen to see a united Ireland I desired more to be on good terms with my fellow man and there were plenty of these in London. So I concentrated on those. I liked the attitude of the ordinary Londoner as they did not shove their opinions down your throat on religion or politics or anything else. If they wanted to convince you about anything they were into reasoned argument and on the whole they were generally interested in Ireland and its people. I think that they often saw the Irish in two groups. The highly intellectual or the downright stupid. Some of the labouring men from the small Irish farms and villages would have been at sea in Dublin or any large Irish town and here they were in London with very little confidence and really unable to express themselves. They were not stupid just in many cases overwhelmed and afraid and cowering.
The Irish often congregated in selected areas like Kilburn and Hammersmith and Paddington and Camden and indeed no matter where I went to in London there were large numbers of Irish. The pub was often the main social point and various hostelries in Irish areas became very popular and some were the centres for a lively traditional music scene like the Black Cap in Camden , now changed into a gay bar and night club, and the White Hart in Fulham. I preferred to keep way from the heavy Irish scene for this in a way was what I was fleeing from. I wanted to be anonymous and merge into the hubbub of London life and give myself a breather from the intensity of my Irish Catholic nationalist background. It never crossed my mind to go to church even though this was a big draw to many Irish to keep links with home and on occasions get help with jobs and problems from the clergy and support workers.
I was way from all the hell and damnation bit and the Christian Brothers admonition of think of the worse pain you have ever had, multiply it by a thousand, and you are not even near the pain of that eternal fire was largely forgotten. Just a couple of nasty thoughts or one sinful deed and you were there, being toasted to a frizzle. Not exactly he most cheerful scenario for a balanced self esteem. These heathen English who I had been bred to believe were the devil incarnate, the causes of all or most of the suffering in Ireland, who believed in nothing and passed their time in licentious and wicked behaviour were really not all that bad. In fact they were pretty human, if anything more moral than the Irish and treated you as a person not whether you were obeying some set of archaic rules which few people understood.
All texts are ©1999
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