Home

Our home  represented a sense of certainty ….unreasonable ones at that …my father commanded an unchallengeable knowledge of American and Irish political history ..what he did not  command was the wild antics of our house ..mother never twitched in surprise on the occassion s of chimney fires, feet appearing in the ceiling or the need for several buckets to exploit the internal weeping of the walls  she was even nonplussed when the special branch asked if we had a hostage in our antic and could they take leave to Sally forth to the eaves to confirm their suspicions….and so if or when our house ever happened to slide into the middle of the road, father’s first reaction was to exact blame on his opportunist offspring ,ignoring years of ever present subsidence ..unchallenged by the thought that six resourceless underlings might manage in their hours of free time …might actually  manage to raize the house, our home to the ground … In truth we had attempted it without success…on more than one occasion.

Advertisements