Skip to main content

Things That Happen 8: Feckin' Nuns

Image


FECKIN' NUNS

Nuns! Feckin' nuns... they were everywhere when we were kids.

You went into 'town' with your mother... feckin' nuns on the bus in, nuns in the park, nuns at school ... and waltzing around the streets when you got there in their long black and white flowing frocks like swans. Their necks primed and up straight, listening and waiting to prey upon us.
Stephen's Green and Trinity College... oh... they liked walking around the big snazzy places.
***
I was three before I found out I didn't live in feckin' Rome or the Vatican. I was convinced me dad wasn't me da and I was a religious love-child of some sort.
It wasn't the Garda we were afraid of in the streets in Dublin City... it was the nuns!

ON A HOT DAY IN DUBLIN
"Ma... can we get an ice cream? I'm hungry and hot."
"Jesus, Holy Mary and Joseph... will you keep your voice down, child!"
"Why?"
"Did you not see two nuns walking in front of us? What will they think of us."
"That we're hungry and want ice cream?"
"Ah... Jesus, child... no. Just that we're., ye know ... a bit above our station and... like nice sweet things.... without appreciation and that sort of stuff without an act of contrition."
"I still want an ice cream and a stick of contrition if it's made of chocolate."
"I'll get you a fuckin' frozen Gollywog ice cream when we get off the bus on the way home."
"Is Da not picking us up from town today?"
"No, not today."

***

A while later...

"I want a Chocolate Sundae from the American Connection Bar!"
"What! That's a communion treat and only for good boys who make their proper communion. You have two years to wait, yet"
"Dad brought me in for one a few weeks ago when we went into Hector Greys. and I got me racy cars."
"Oh... he did, did he?"
I got me Gollywog when we got off the bus.
A year later I discovered three of me ma's relations were all nuns. They came to visit our house. We all sat in silence. A sort of homage to history and the past. There was no ice cream. Me da was very quiet that day. I had a tantrum and pissed me pants.

TEN YEARS LATER ON A JET PLANE
"You alright, Mam?"
"Yeh."
"You sure?"
"Feckin' nuns!"
"What?"
"Feckin' nuns... Jesus, you can't escape anywhere.... the two of them... together on the right side."
"No ice cream so, when we get to New York?"
"Oh... don't you worry, my son... there'll be fuckin' loads of ice cream and Chocolate Sundaes."
"Thanks, Mam."
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

POPULAR POSTS

THE VANISHING OF MARY BOYLE

Mary Boyle (born 14 June 1970) was a six-year-old Irish girl who disappeared on the County Donegal-County Fermanagh border on 18th March 1977. To date, her disappearance is the longest missing child case in the Republic of Ireland. The investigation into her disappearance has been beset by allegations of political intervention and police incompetence. While arrests were made over many years, nobody has ever been charged in connection with her disappearance. Mary Boyle was last seen at 3:30 pm on 18 March 1977 near her grandparents' rural farm in Cashelard, near Ballyshannon, County Donegal. The family, including Mary's mother Ann, father Charlie, older brother Paddy, and twin sister Ann, had gone to Mary's maternal grandparents' house on St Patrick's Day from their home in Kincasslagh in The Rosses, further up the coast. They stayed at the grandparents home overnight into the day of her disappearance. In total, there were eleven people at the household gathering, si...
Post a Comment
Read more

JO JO DULLARD CASE UPDATE: Recent Arrest & Searches

On the morning of November 11th, 2024, Gardai case investigators served an arrest warrant on a man aged 55 under suspicion of the murder of Jo Jo Dullard who disappeared 29 years ago. The man was detained for questioning at Kildare Garda Station under the provisions of section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984. No charges have yet been brought forward and he is the first suspect to be arrested in the case. The Dullard family were made aware of the arrest shortly after 7 am this morning. (He was later released without charge the following day and a file is being prepared for the Irish DPP). Currently gardai are executing two separate search warrants on properties and land located at Ballyhook over the Kildare/Wicklow border. Early Tuesday afternoon, the 55-year-old-man, from a prominent Wicklow political family was released without charge. Gardai believe he was the last person to see Jo Jo Dullard alive and from very early on in the case investigation he was a person-of-interest befor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Scissor Sisters: The Murder of Farah Swaleh Noor

Farah Swaleh Noor was 40 years old at the time of his death. He arrived in Ireland in December 1996, claiming to be a Somali called "Sheilila Salim" whose family had been killed in Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War. Subsequent investigations revealed that he was in fact a Kenyan. He was granted Irish citizenship in March 1999 because he had become the father of an Irish-born child. Noor had four previous convictions for offences including intoxication, threatening and abusive behaviour and assault. Noor had faced eight charges of disorder and assault, one involving a sexual assault in which a knife was found at the scene by gardaí. He was convicted on three occasions but never served time in jail. Noor lived in a number of areas in Dublin, including Dún Laoghaire and Firhouse, as well as the inner city before moving in with his then partner Kathleen Mulhall. Gardaí described him as being particularly violent towards women. On the 20th March, 2005 sisters Linda and Charl...
Post a Comment
Read more