The people of that plainly built farming town led simple lives and were proud of the hardship and forfeiture that rural existence assumed of them. They knew their place in that world and – as is customary in such surroundings – they conducted themselves with the same sheltered constancy as so many of their forebears had abided for generations earlier. In the summer months, they worked on the bog, cutting and footing peat as the midges ate at their faces and the sun reddened their necks. In autumn, they collected the dried sod in sacks and shifted the load onto rented wagons for bringing home. They burned the dried turf for fuel during the winter and prayed to the mother, the father, and the Holy Spirit in heaven that it would be a short cold this year and that spring would not be long in coming.
The men earned their living as laborers on the farms. Some were employed as tradesmen and others did spot work around the town when it was on offer and if they were able for it. A few of them brewed poitín in makeshift pot stills built behind locked shed doors and sold the cheap spirit to their trusted neighbours who understood that such a transaction was to be of no concern to the law. They were solid men and not given to preoccupying themselves with things they had no need to understand
As soon as they were able, the women mothered children and continued doing so until their exhausted bodies could no longer endure the ruining drudgery of incubation. These women took every care as was afforded to them for their young, and, when required, they would even help the men on the land. Their children wore clothes that were ten years too old and five sizes too big. They all dressed like this, with childish jealousy never to be found in this parish. In school the children studied their sums and some read the writers of the ancient world. When their parents thought them old enough, and they were not looking to go on further, they finished with school and learned all about bailing hay and handling livestock. Sometimes little more. On Sundays, they packed the churches and twice passed around the collection plate for the unfortunate. They understood austerity as an instinct and for what they lacked they did without. With no knowledge of an alternative, they trudged quietly through obscure lives, uninterrupted and without question. Nobody, least of all the people of that town, could possibly have foreseen the changes that have taken place in this country over the last half century. With expectation replacing contentment, the young no longer anchor their interests to the sturdy honesty of rural life. Low on the patient regard for life that their parents had embraced so unbegrudgingly, they move away as soon as they’re able, leaving the old and the unambitious to take care of themselves.
I cannot properly recall what possessed me to settle there besides needing to save money before I was to run away to London and it being cheaper to rent than a larger town or city. 
Living alone in a modest flat above a musical instrument repair store on a narrow terrace a short jump from the town centre, I was making a desperate wage as a short-order cook in a local canteen. It was a conservative neighbourhood, housed mostly by the retired and the widowed, but not without its own sedentary charm. Nothing was a matter of urgency in that town and brevity was an article in short reserve; the rain fell at a pace of its own accord and the sun only made an appearance when it felt up to the task. I remember my washing machine breaking down and having to wait over a month before my landlord found someone to come around and look at the thing. For weeks, I had to scrub the guts and gravy stains from my whites in my shallow kitchen sink. I could have used the launderette on main street, but the lady who ran the place had the habit of only opening in the late afternoon and closing early evening.
My building was two doors down from a cantankerous and semi-retired merchant who doubled his front living room as his business headquarters and who I’ll never forget. As straight backed as his stoutly posture would allow, he faced the world with the reticence and certainty of an old praetorian sentry. Cigarette in hand and stood on his porch step, this superintendent of the quotidian would spend hours watching as the business of everyday life unfolded on the street before him. He knew everyone and was known to have an idea on just about everything happening in town at any one time with a keenness of interest only enjoyed by old country sorts. If there was nobody on the road to humor him, he would talk to the dogs, the birds, sky, the moon, anything. I still cannot be sure if it was that he was crazy, a coy but rambling drunkard, or the most straightforward person I have yet met. Being from the old stock, he was not one short of words and we never struggled to find conversation. In the hotter months, I would catch him at his front doorway as I made my way home from work.
“What do you think about that then?” He would always open, offering no indication as to what we were discussing.
“Not much, now, not much.” This is what country people understand as the fittest response to such a line of inquiry.
He told me about his years in Italy and the restaurants that he had once owned. The biggest venue he operated had been in this very town. It was a grand restaurant, he told me, but a little too fancy for the sort around here. This old man was, as I am sure you can imagine, not an easy man to impress. He had seen all there was to see and knew all that was needed to be known. He paid little service to what I had to say on any matter relating to life and, like so many with such a belief, it was incredibly difficult to excite even the slightest interest within him. To a man who believes he has seen everything the world has to offer, no one can persuade him differently. He has his own silent idea of what matters, but not the will to share the meat of his findings with anyone else. Nevertheless, I liked him and always felt as if I had achieved something in talking with him.
“You’re young and fit,” he would laugh as he sauntered from his post in search of a cup of tea and a sit down. “You don’t want to be stuck here. Here is for the old and the unambitious.”
When I wasn’t working, I was drinking. Everyone in that town was a drinker for the clear and simple reason that there was little else to do of a weekend. It would be a real task to walk to market square at any time in the evening and find even a single man who didn’t empty most of what he earned into the bar. The guy in the flat directly beside my place drank himself stupid every night, and a more shambolic and sour a drunk you would never find yourself in want to encounter. I only ever talked with him once, but I could hear him arguing and crashing around in there until all hours. He was a plasterer by trade but hadn’t enjoyed the pleasure of a decent contract in years. He never worked. One time, I heard him hit his woman in there. They weren’t alone. Enormous was the chaos that followed. The police took him away in handcuffs. He was back the next evening. Soon after, so was she.
I remember a couple of elderly brothers who lived together in the house across the street. They had both spent a fair number of years working across in England but were called home to attend their convalescent mother’s bedside in the time it was determined she should die. Neither man ever married and by now had between them cultivated a great host of physical and advanced mental impairments. The older lad, I know, was on the building sites of London for years. Tall and thin, he was a strong young bull, but an accident on a site had smacked his corned beef beyond all repair. Some concrete fell on him or he fell on some concrete, I’m not certain. But it had left the poor lad deaf, half blind and a quarter witted. I don’t know the whole story with the younger one, just that he was even more damaged upstairs than his brother. I may have been told dementia. He never left the house, but often it was that I would see the older lad shuffling down the street of an evening. He never wandered too far from home and had this curious habit of bunching up the lap of his trousers with his fists and kinda pulling them upward as he walked. Even with his rattled nerves, it was up to the older lad to take care of the two of them. They were not completely alone in this world, of course. The health service sent a care-worker to check in on them every few days. She brought food and made sure they were living as comfortably as possible. They were trusting men and well known around the town. You could ask anybody and they would tell you that those brothers were no harm to anybody. The older and more compassionate people I talked with believed that they had been touched by the hand of God. They rarely locked their front door.
Except for the brothers and the drunk next door, all the residents on my street were there alone. They had lived beside one another for a lifetime and, as they saw it, there was no longer any occasion requiring the adoption of artifice or empty graces. Every miscarriage and infidelity, every divorce and baptism, every death, ailment and indiscretion was out in the open and too well known. No matter the nature of the request, they did what they could to help. It was a place of trust and faith. The old women would bring me the leftovers from Sunday dinner and the widowers would spot me for a pint whenever they saw me in the pub. In return I helped them with what I could; cooking, lifting, cleaning – whatever they needed and whenever I was able. They told me about their children who had taken the first opportunity to get out of that town and gone to work in Canada and The United States. Sons and daughters who had fallen in love with the foreigners and would never be coming back. Who started families and settled in foreign suburbias with immigrant worker permits, happy hour, cable television, and backyard swimming pools. Who endeared themselves to their adoptive communities and joked that they were from the very far end of the middle of nowhere when asked about the strange and ever so lyrical way their accents sang to their neighbours. They worked comfortable jobs and could afford to dress their children well. Every few years, they visited home and were welcomed with open arms and thankful weeping. The cradle of small town existence had been outgrown and they had no interest in ever going back.
I spent a year of my life in that town. When I made enough money, I was soon on the way to London. The old women lit candles in church and told me to travel safe. I shook hands with the merchant and he told that I was right to be going. He says this town is only for the old and the unambitious now anyway.
I was in London a month when I read about the brothers. The memory of it stops me even now. Some drunken lunatic had let himself into their house in the middle of the night and battered the two of them to death with a slab of timber. The bodies were found by the care-worker the next morning, one in a downstairs bedroom and the other in the backyard. It was a brutal scene. Nothing was stolen, but the house was empty. The victims never knew the man who killed them and no motive for the attack was ever found. When the responsible man was caught, they said he had a history of psychiatric difficulty and placed him on an immediate suicide watch. The two of us are the same age. In the courtroom, the accused said he was sorry for what he had done and it only took the judge to read out the charges for his mother to collapse in weeping hysterics. Half the town attended the funeral. The priest said that they had been overshadowed by a darkness and the head of the state called it an act of savagery. The brothers were buried next to their mother.
It’s getting worse there every day. Last year, someone was shot and killed while filling his car at a petrol station on the outskirts of town. A few months later, there was a man chased down the high street by a gang of a dozen thugs. When they caught him, they beat him to the ground and kicked him senseless. He crawled into a local shop for safety, but in they followed and stabbed him in the stomach. All this while staff and customers looked on in horror. It was a Saturday afternoon. The security guard was too terrified to do anything other than just watch the whole thing happen. They had to close the shop for the day because there was such an amount of blood on the floor to be mopped.
When I’m home, I sometimes pass through that town to see what’s changed. The people are much the same, but now they mind to lock their front doors at night. There are fewer jobs and a lot of the bars have closed. That is not to say that there are less places to find a drink if you are after one. I always drink too much when I go back and my friends and I find ourselves talking about those brothers and these violent crimes. And it’s hard to get people to admit that something has gone wrong here. Or even that anything is any different to how it was before. It’s like looking at an oil painting of a beautiful landscape; green rolling hills; a transparent stream of crashing water; a flock of coastal birds outlined against the limits of a clear blue sky. But when you take a closer look, you find that something has been scratching away at the outer edges of the picture. And every time you return to the painting, another small section has been scraped or damaged – but barely enough to notice there has been much change. Soon you get used to these new scratches. But over time it gets even more damaged and eventually it’s impossible to remember what the picture looked like in the first place. However, the decline has been so gradual that you can never be really sure of what has changed. I’m not able to name the feeling I have for it now. It’s like a sadness at something come undone. And when it’s late and I’m tired and drunk and too sentimental, I imagine that everything was better years ago, but I know I must be wrong.
Excellent piece! Thank you.
It is easy to romanticize rural life and the simplicity of the past. But it was also a really hard life. This is an interesting post that I really enjoyed reading.
Wonderful, honest piece of writing. Thank you.
I liked the “Rural” story and I like your writing style. Good piece !!!!!
Very well done. When I went home after being gone for 35 years, I remember being so thankful that I had the good sense to leave.
I find this very sad. I live in the states and look at England, with eyes of longing, as a place of more civilized people. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not so naive as to believe that no crime exist there. But I imagined the rural countryside a more peaceful lifestyle, away from the crime that you might find in London. A well written post that sadly says volumes about our times. Your point of view honestly conveys that the loss of civility is not isolated to America alone.
Where in England is this based on? I grew up in a small English village near a small town and their main plague now is the ever-increasing amount of charity shops and local businesses closing. Physical violence is still comparatively rare. The photo looks more like Ireland. Ireland is in the UK, but not in England.
This story is Irish based and Ireland is not in the UK. I will be doing an essay on Ireland in the future, but you can find out about our beautiful country in history books or just google it .
Wow. This is an amazingly well crafted piece of writing. Your word choice, descriptions, and introspection, were beautiful and musical. Well done.
What a good piece. While my hometown was more urban than rural, going back to it when I do, I realize just how much of it’s change. It’s no longer anything like I remember of it. Reading this reminded me of those changes and how I still deny ever being from my home town because now — that reputation is that much worse.
What a beautiful portrait of the slide of the Irish countryside and all the sureties of its people. I had no idea you were Irish. To write without relying on colloquial speak or accent is a fine quality from where I’m sitting.
Nice to see you back. Your posts are always a treat. Hope you’re keeping good.
Worth waiting for. Perhaps it’s inevitable with time passing but more and more I find I’m “not able to name the feeling I have” for places and times from my past.
Beautiful post, honest. I can see many places I know in your description, many places I used to know and visited as a lad, or a young adult. In your town’s case, it was alcohol. In these places, it was drugs. Heroin wiped out a generation, the generation of my older brothers. It was so common, so widespread, that my mum used to tell me not to walk the dog in this or that park, along this or that stretch of road, for fear that the dogs’ paws got cut by the syringes discarded by the junkies.
I wanted to let you know that I’ve nominated you for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. All of your posts are beautifully crafted and address issues that really are important, and I really appreciate that. If you would like to accept the award, the details can be found here:
https://mylittlepieceofquiet.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/very-inspiring-blogger-award/
If not that’s completely fine, just know that I really enjoy your blog and look forward to your future posts.
Exelent piece !!
This is an incredible bit of writing. At first, the intrusion of actual people into the abstract seemed obscene; but of course they are the story itself. James Michener would have taken every bit of 200 pages to do what you have done here just as memorably. Thank you for such a spellbinding read.
Excellent essay, nice balanced perspective. Well done.
Beautiful prose. I’m following you on Twitter too.
Wow! I enjoyed the abundant description of the unfolding and declining events and ways of that little town that’s far away in the middle of nowhere.
Fvh
There’s something very sad in the description of a dying reality. I’m States-based, but I see the same but from a different angle. I’m a misfit in the bustling little country town I live in. I’m far more interested in museums, people watching, and food options. Not a snob since I do enjoy my neighbors, but it’s a jagged piece, too. There’s something missing being in a city with constant noise and life.
I grew up in a working class neighborhoods, never mind the domicile. From about 1 to 15, I lived in a trailer park and we had a community similar to what you’re writing about. The unlocked door, minding of each other’s lives, always gossiping but offering support. It’s a missing element to the big city life and I kind of miss that when I’ve got the bustling, constantly moving heartbeat around. I also lived in a blue collar area that used to be the end of the road…and a new road at that!
I can only speak on counties, really, but the one I grew up in seemed to shoot up in a decade. Suddenly, everyone was moving just outside the city for better house prices and smaller school districts. Districts shot up and the trailer park became the place for the elderly and poor as the young moved into the housing boom beginnings. Eventually, my dad and I moved out and into a “proper” house. Credit cleared and the chance came, so he took it. I still check on the place, bless the internet, and it seems to be restricted more. Right off a busy, local highway, but still isolated.
Beautiful, touching, raw and insightful. Thank you for the post.
Beautifully written, and caused me to reflect on my own very different story of urban dwelling, but returning ‘home’ after 37 years on my travels.
Thank you for sharing this description…the language is crisp, tight, and apt, the theme sad but truthful.
Fantastic writing, lump in the throat by the end.
I am not sure if you are wrong , things really have changed , you describe it well with the oil painting , many say we do not have the infra structure in place for the population especially since recession , I am not sure , it is sad to see our young off at Knock airport now; but who would want them to stay if their potential is not allowed to flourish , when my children are home the local pub does very well , after a week especially if the weather is not good I hear the silent questions , what do you do here all day ? ha ha. I love it now but there was a time I left often to travel or to study , sometimes I ask myself why am I so contented here lately , have I got lazy ha ha. I am trying to sort out a garden of sorts at the moment and it makes me very happy as long as I keep the picture going in my head , because at the moment it really does not look anything like the picture in my head. I enjoyed reading your article , I would love my dad to read it , he is 86 a bit like the guy in your story here in that nothing I say seems to stir him ha ha , he is an avid newspaper man and will read the paper from cover to cover , I will let you know if I can think of plan to get him to read it , I just know he would like it , you write so well always a pleasure to read your articles and now to go to your next one. Happy days to you and enjoy St. Patrick’s if your in London you probably had a Guinness today if your home you may now have a sore head , happy Days. Kathy.
When I speak of infrastructure ,I was referring to the small villages not the main towns in Ireland, because these actually do have wonderful infrastructure in place however for people living perhaps 30 or 40 miles away from these main towns it is not always easy to access that infrastructure. Arts centre, library, colleges , historic walks, thriving businesses , swimming pools, leisure centres and rich heritage can be found in these towns however as you say modernity has crept up perhaps unknowingly in many instances, the story related is both sad and accurate and unfortunately as people become more urbanised in any country town a lot of the neighbourly caring for each other is lost as people become busy with work and using the very infrastructures put in place for advancement often the finer things are left aside like talking to our neighbours and looking out for each other. I have great hope though that these elements will return as we hopefully get some of our youth back and perhaps help to run the country. Ireland is crying out for the return of its scholars and you and my own children hopefully will hear that call and return to help build something that the wild geese would be proud never to leave. I really wish you would write a daily article in one of the Irish newspapers it would be wonderful. Kathy.
Amazing story. I love the London Tower Bridge too.
I know the town. I know the dead brothers. I know the decline of which you speak and describe so beautifully in the last paragraph.
Thank you for electing to follow my posts. I enjoyed reading this post, you do have a way with words.
Gripping, especially for those like me who love to read of distant lands and peoples.
The post is rather intense. Pretty much sad and true – all of it. People keep moving ahead to better places leaving the old ones alone and forgotten.
Congrats on getting long-listed for the Ireland Blog Awards. So well-deserved. Good luck ahead.
Hi, Thank you very much. I’m very surprised to have made it on to the list. It is very flattering, I must say.
Recalling intrigued me! Is there more?
Fine writing. Fine perceptions. Looking forward to reading more. And hope, especially, that your luck keeps pace with your work and life.
What a great read, rings so true to me as well as a child who grew up in the 70’s of small town semi urban countryside just as these changes were creeping into the people, the town, the society, the psyche.
Whatever it was, it’s changed and for the most part not for the better, i don’t care how many extra millionaires we have living in the country, they haven’t made it a better place for anyone except themselves.
Wonderful piece this. I’m from India and just returned to the hustle of my Bombay city life from a reasonably long holiday in a remote countryside in Kerala, south of India. Your article was reminiscent to what I saw, heard and felt about the lives of the people I met in my trip. Almost like I wrote this. Thank you!
Amazing!
Excellent writing. Vivid, evocative, raw and very thought provoking. No question that once life was harder than what many experience today. But people knew how to make life beautiful, despite their poverty and pain. Now perhaps a greater percentage of people are less uncomfortable in life, but we have no idea how to make life beautiful so we race around like mice in a maze without an exit waiting to die. In every breath, there is a possibility for peace and beauty,but we never take it, because we are trying to get something done.
A
Good blog
Pointsoftwo.wordpress.com
Great
I’m so glad this was “Pressed” — your writing is stunning and I need to read more – and will. So beautiful, sad – I feel it in my gut.
Yay! Freshly pressed!
I’m more amazed than anyone!
好吧！
There it goes..beautiful
Absolutely gripping story! There are so many of these small towns across the world!
Reblogged this on ishal23.
Dur
fantastic read…. so glad I took the time to enjoy this masterpiece that recalls the memories of my homeplace
Rew douc bouiy
This is an absolutely beautiful read, perfectly capturing the way in which even in places where nothing seems to change, certain inevitable changes can still be felt with every subsequent generation. This essay made me stop and reminisce about the places I grew up and how each time I revisit them, I pick out so many changes in the yet still familiar environment. Most of the younger people I knew in my hometown also moved on hoping for something better but the older set remains. Many of those youth who left did end up returning however, but I have committed to not doing so as I am still hopeful the rest of the world, no matter how small my world may be, still holds opportunities I wasn’t afforded “back home.” Thank you so much for writing this piece. I know it is one I will be rereading at least a few more times to pick up any details or ideas I may have missed.
Thank you for you thoughtful comment. I have some other long articles and essays that you might also enjoy on this site.
🙂 I like a lot….
Not sure how I found this, but once I started reading I couldn’t stop!
Haven’t we all left something, at one time?
Or, at least all of us who didn’t stay behind…
So true
Everywhere is the same story. Grass looks greener on the other side but now its hard to find that other side. Its a saddening reality. Very impressive post written in an amusing style. Thanks for writing and giving my miserable day something to think about!
Reblogged this on vici60.
You took me back home. No matter how far I travel, no matter how long I’m gone … it will always be home.
May I ask the name of your town? I grew up in a town called Prosperous, Co. Kildare. I belive it has lived up to it’s name, being situated within Dublin’s commuter belt. In the 1970s the boys still had to leave the classroom to bring in turf for the class fire. In my memory, our 4 room school with open fires and tall windows seems idyllic. These days my children go to school in prefabs. I don’t have grandchildren yet but I don’t expect they will be schooled in Ireland. The whole country is in decline.
If the photo is of the town it looks familiar. I think I may have stopped there when I traveled there. Beautiful place, beautifully captured.
http://hamrinnews.net/a/66873.html
الصرخي الحسني …….خالف الاجماع لكونه لم ينبطح للمحتل واذنابه !!!!
Definitely something to think about! Loved the post.
good work.
Hmmm. Wonderfully written and so true. Miss those bygone times.
What ever happened to a time of hope and the building of communities real and in prose ?
A town looks very peaceful and rulely
جميلة جدا
Very beautiful.. until the guns and violence. How much of our world today does that describe?! I’ll look forward to reading more.
Reblogged this on wtcbank.
This was so beautifully written. Thank you for the best moment of my day so far.
As beautiful for its construction as its honesty.
So evocative. You could be writing about my home town of Edenderry in the middle of the Bog of Allen. Or any other town like it in Ireland for that matter. I’ve chosen other parts of the world, that still have some of the flavour of the Ireland of my youth.
In the present days of urbanisation, you have re- kindled the beauty of rural life.
A lovingly observed homage to a disappearing way of life and sense of community that, despite its undoubted flaws, was decent and sincere at its core.
I’m moved as I read this from a small town in Ireland. The locals here pretty much reminisce about the good and innocent days if long ago. Nice to read about a slice of old Irish life.
Good piece!!
Superb!
Hi
I enjoyed your honest candour and insights. Ireland is a changing canvas. Always liquid in its motions though it seems still. The only one thing that didn’t sit well was the pub picture. I used to work at the Auld Dubliner in Long Beach so I know the pub counter well. Am I right?
Reblogged this on CaliforniaIrishOC and commented:
Beautiful account of a village in a modern world.
Reblogged this on Marriage A Journey and A Dog and commented:
A pleasure to read.
Beautiful; but I think it would be possible to think of feasible ways to help such a community hold on to its best qualities, while also adapting to the present context.
Beautiful, but let’s figure ways to help village folks hold on their best qualities, yet also adapt
There is a movement to help small communities and neighborhoods preserve community, yet also adapt to modernity. One of the founders was Arthur E Morgan, first TVA Chairman, and author of “The Small Community– Foundation of Democratic Life” (1940).
Very much enjoyed this read as with the story I have a feeling this is a piece I will remember for some time…
Very well described. I would like to settle down there. I like this concept of idyllic countryside. Good old way of living.
“It’s like a sadness at something come undone.” Very well said. I love your style, you present a topic like this in such a humane and human way that it makes you wonder if this is happening everywhere. Recently I’ve learned that the same thing is, indeed, happening in my own country, a small one, far from yours. I’ve read that we (as a nation) share the same relative. Maybe it’s in our blood… but it’s far more likely that it is a global tendency. The technology and modernization, not to speak about globalization are, I believe, the main cause. I could say more, but for now this is just enough.
Great blog! Cheers!