a little story to add....
I can hardly remember anything about growing up, it’s like all my memories start at the age of 14. I can remember stuff from before then, but I have to try, and what I do remember is all reeking with stuff I’d rather forget.
Well, what’s all this got to do with motorcycling?
On a motorcycle there is nowhere to hide. Your head is stuck in a helmet; there is no radio, just you, the view, the sound of the wind, the vibration of the bike, the world passing by so quickly at your side and so slowly ahead. In these situations especially on open planes, thoughts and images come flooding back in an uncontrollable manner.
If you were in a car you could let down the window, change the radio station, put on a different CD, strike up a conversation with the person next to you, and maybe even make a phone call to a friend to change the radio frequency in your head. In a helmet there is nowhere to run, you have to deal with them as they torment, amuse and keep you company mile after mile.
“Through The Force, things you will see.
Other places. The future...the past…old friends long gone”
Yoda.
Sometimes a hilarious memory will arrive and you find yourself tearing down the road at 70mph roaring laughing. A memory of something that happened 27 years ago when I was 13 years old is a good example.
At the time Clondalkin, the village where I grew up had only a couple of shops which sold groceries. Was it Smiths, Murphy’s and Ledwidges? Something tells me not to try to think to hard about it.
Anyway, my mother had long since used up a line of credit in Smiths which back then was called “putting it on tick”. If you wanted a loaf of bread but didn’t have any money you would say to the grocer “Can I get that on tick?” which meant you’d pay him later. So Ledwidges was now the only place in the village where we could get something on tick.
I ****ing hated having to go into a shop and ask for stuff on tick, it was embarrassing. The person behind the counter would always give you a message to give to your mother to call in and pay back some of the money which was owed.
The fact that my mother owed money all over the village meant that she was couldn’t go out any more, although she didn’t mind sending up yours truly “the gobshite” to be the patsy.
On this particular day my mother was sending me up to Ledwidges with a shopping list.
We didn’t have a car so it involved walking about a mile up to the shop and a mile back, with the back-leg the worst as you’d be dragging down a half dozen plastic bags of messages. Messages, yep that’s what we called groceries back then, if you were gone to the shop for groceries you were gone for “messages”.
So as I stood in our back room reading through the list, if I got it wrong there would always be a right hand in the kisser waiting for me when I got back so I read it out to her to make sure I knew what I was getting myself in for. I scanned the list hoping to **** that there wouldn’t be a stone of spuds on the list. Carrying down a heap of messages which included a stone of potatoes would leave you feeling like an orangutan by the time you got home.
As I was reading it out ….bread, milk, sugar, butter, Napisan….
“Napisan, me ****in bollix, I’m not getting you ****in Napisan.”
I didn’t know what they were but I reckoned they must have been small nappies, so therefore must be women’s sanitary towels. We had so many names for them when we growing up, (Crash mats, Man hole covers, jam rags, maxi pads, and even cigars) I hadn’t heard the name Napisan before but was certain it must mean jam-rags, and it was bang out of order for me to be sent up for them, as that was “women’s business”; Napisan as it turns out is actually for starching shirt collars, something I was blissfully unaware of till I was in my mid-twenties. When I found out I nearly died from the bout of laughter which ensued.
My mother waved a fist at me in a threatening way at which point I skedaddled up the road before she followed through with her threat to “slit your throat in six places”.
There were two routes to the village from our house in Castle Park, one via watery lane and the other through Castle Park. I would always walk up via Castle Park and come back down the watery lane to avoid meeting anyone who’d see me dragging all the bags of shopping behind me.
I got to the Ledwidges still none the wiser that Napisan was for shirt collars and went about putting all the grocery items on the list in the basket, taking time to do several drive-through runs at the isle where the crash mats were stored. I was desperately hoping to see Napisan, and I was in my hole getting into a conversation with anyone who worked in the shop centered around “Scuse me, do you have Napisan”
With the basket full of everything but the Napisan I did my last run through the crash mat isle. Not seeing Napisan I picked up what I was certain must have been a good alternative, Vespre Ultra towels
I went up to the checkout and the girl helped me bag the items, taking care as they always did back then to put the man hole covers into a brown paper bag. The girl who put them into the bag looked at me with one of those looks which conveyed “What the **** is your Ma sending you up from Jam rags for?”
I burned home with the bags of messages, down the watery lane desperate not to meet any on the lads. If I’d been found with this particular payload I would have been teased about it till I was 52 years old. “Do ya remember Yozzer with the big ruck sack a gee pads!”
I got home, unpacked the bag onto the dining room table where my mother was sitting drinking a cup of tea. I unpacked the bags per the list, reading it out as I unpacked the bags to avoid a smack in the head. As the last item was retrieved I said…..
They had no Napisan so I got you these, handing her the big shiny yellow pack of gee pads.
I’ll never forget the look on her face.
I can hardly remember anything about growing up, it’s like all my memories start at the age of 14. I can remember stuff from before then, but I have to try, and what I do remember is all reeking with stuff I’d rather forget.
Well, what’s all this got to do with motorcycling?
On a motorcycle there is nowhere to hide. Your head is stuck in a helmet; there is no radio, just you, the view, the sound of the wind, the vibration of the bike, the world passing by so quickly at your side and so slowly ahead. In these situations especially on open planes, thoughts and images come flooding back in an uncontrollable manner.
If you were in a car you could let down the window, change the radio station, put on a different CD, strike up a conversation with the person next to you, and maybe even make a phone call to a friend to change the radio frequency in your head. In a helmet there is nowhere to run, you have to deal with them as they torment, amuse and keep you company mile after mile.
“Through The Force, things you will see.
Other places. The future...the past…old friends long gone”
Yoda.
Sometimes a hilarious memory will arrive and you find yourself tearing down the road at 70mph roaring laughing. A memory of something that happened 27 years ago when I was 13 years old is a good example.
At the time Clondalkin, the village where I grew up had only a couple of shops which sold groceries. Was it Smiths, Murphy’s and Ledwidges? Something tells me not to try to think to hard about it.
Anyway, my mother had long since used up a line of credit in Smiths which back then was called “putting it on tick”. If you wanted a loaf of bread but didn’t have any money you would say to the grocer “Can I get that on tick?” which meant you’d pay him later. So Ledwidges was now the only place in the village where we could get something on tick.
I ****ing hated having to go into a shop and ask for stuff on tick, it was embarrassing. The person behind the counter would always give you a message to give to your mother to call in and pay back some of the money which was owed.
The fact that my mother owed money all over the village meant that she was couldn’t go out any more, although she didn’t mind sending up yours truly “the gobshite” to be the patsy.
On this particular day my mother was sending me up to Ledwidges with a shopping list.
We didn’t have a car so it involved walking about a mile up to the shop and a mile back, with the back-leg the worst as you’d be dragging down a half dozen plastic bags of messages. Messages, yep that’s what we called groceries back then, if you were gone to the shop for groceries you were gone for “messages”.
So as I stood in our back room reading through the list, if I got it wrong there would always be a right hand in the kisser waiting for me when I got back so I read it out to her to make sure I knew what I was getting myself in for. I scanned the list hoping to **** that there wouldn’t be a stone of spuds on the list. Carrying down a heap of messages which included a stone of potatoes would leave you feeling like an orangutan by the time you got home.
As I was reading it out ….bread, milk, sugar, butter, Napisan….
“Napisan, me ****in bollix, I’m not getting you ****in Napisan.”
I didn’t know what they were but I reckoned they must have been small nappies, so therefore must be women’s sanitary towels. We had so many names for them when we growing up, (Crash mats, Man hole covers, jam rags, maxi pads, and even cigars) I hadn’t heard the name Napisan before but was certain it must mean jam-rags, and it was bang out of order for me to be sent up for them, as that was “women’s business”; Napisan as it turns out is actually for starching shirt collars, something I was blissfully unaware of till I was in my mid-twenties. When I found out I nearly died from the bout of laughter which ensued.
My mother waved a fist at me in a threatening way at which point I skedaddled up the road before she followed through with her threat to “slit your throat in six places”.
There were two routes to the village from our house in Castle Park, one via watery lane and the other through Castle Park. I would always walk up via Castle Park and come back down the watery lane to avoid meeting anyone who’d see me dragging all the bags of shopping behind me.
I got to the Ledwidges still none the wiser that Napisan was for shirt collars and went about putting all the grocery items on the list in the basket, taking time to do several drive-through runs at the isle where the crash mats were stored. I was desperately hoping to see Napisan, and I was in my hole getting into a conversation with anyone who worked in the shop centered around “Scuse me, do you have Napisan”
With the basket full of everything but the Napisan I did my last run through the crash mat isle. Not seeing Napisan I picked up what I was certain must have been a good alternative, Vespre Ultra towels
I went up to the checkout and the girl helped me bag the items, taking care as they always did back then to put the man hole covers into a brown paper bag. The girl who put them into the bag looked at me with one of those looks which conveyed “What the **** is your Ma sending you up from Jam rags for?”
I burned home with the bags of messages, down the watery lane desperate not to meet any on the lads. If I’d been found with this particular payload I would have been teased about it till I was 52 years old. “Do ya remember Yozzer with the big ruck sack a gee pads!”
I got home, unpacked the bag onto the dining room table where my mother was sitting drinking a cup of tea. I unpacked the bags per the list, reading it out as I unpacked the bags to avoid a smack in the head. As the last item was retrieved I said…..
They had no Napisan so I got you these, handing her the big shiny yellow pack of gee pads.
I’ll never forget the look on her face.
down your throat.
