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Memories of Being Short

August 11, 2020 by Simon Robinson 1 Comment

RTSP

I remember a schoolbook from when I was eight and nine. Reading To Some Purpose, always abbreviated by our teachers to RTSP. I understood that RTSP was easier to say but if you were reading to some purpose why would you abbreviate it? And why only RTSP? Why wasn’t there a WTSP? Weren’t we also being taught to write to some purpose such as expressing ourselves?

Which reminds me of catechism. The teaching style of the era involved learning by rote and one of the things to be learned was catechism. We had to learn the rules of being catholic from a green book of rules.

This Morning’s Walk in Dún Laoghaire.
Foggier than yesterday.
[Read more…] about Memories of Being Short

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: catechism, Covid-19, irish times, photos, school

On Persistent Ambiguity

July 7, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

I was excited though not surprised when President Éamon de Valera walked down the aisle towards my grandfather’s coffin. Grandfathers can be hugely important and mysterious figures to kids so why wouldn’t the President of our country be showing his respect to my grandfather? The bar had been set quite high the week before with the TV coverage for Winston Churchill’s funeral. I had no other model for my first funeral, so to speak.

I was only ten and knew nothing much of the world beyond my family. Indeed, I wasn’t completely sure of that much within my family. Family gatherings, particularly those agnate, were generally fuelled by drink and thrived on stories of death by various mis-adventures. An oral tradition, the drinking and the storytelling both. The rituals often involved stormy nights under the flickering light of the damnable smokey coal fires of the era. The elaborations depended on the storyteller. ‘It was a late summer evening’ might become ‘One spring morning’ and we accepted such ambiguity because the outcome was assured.

The opening of the town hall in July 1880 photographed by the architect, John Loftus Robinson.
How it looked to a great-grandson 128 years later.
[Read more…] about On Persistent Ambiguity

Filed Under: Anchoritism, Fake Memoir Tagged With: architects, booklink, colum mccann, Covid-19, death, éamon de valera, family, golf, history, jlr, school, the elders

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