I AM PUTTING the daughters to bed. Lights out at 6.30pm. Barely has the switch been hit when the peculiar national anthem of this anarchic Republic of Toddler begins. “Storeeee? Storeeee? Storeeee . . .?” And then the peculiar part: “. . . Port-a- down!”
Maybe tonight, I think, Goldilocks and The Three Bears will suffice. A bit of Princess and the Pea, perhaps. A soupçon of Little Red Riding Hood. All good enough for me back in the day. Not for them. They want gritty realism, not fairytale fantasy. And I am getting mightily sick of it.
“Storeee . . . storeee? Port-a-down!” At first I did that thing the books say which is to ignore the anti-social behaviour. The cries grew more insistent and, frankly, annoying. “Storeeee . . . Port-a-down!”
When ignoring them didn’t work and resistance proved futile, as it often does, I used my powers of parental deduction to figure out and come to terms with the fact that what they wanted was a story based in or around the Portadown, Co Armagh vicinity where their father was born and bred and fed Mackles ice cream until the point where if you cut him, he would probably ooze the stuff.
Where to start with stories about Portadown? I tried telling them the one about the Orange Order and the Garvaghy Road and the hut on the hill, but they weren’t interested. I weaved a tale about Paisley and Trimble dancing in the streets. Nothing.
I told them about the Great Cake Mix-Up when the mother of a colleague of their dad’s went to the North and brought him back Sticky Jimmies instead of the Jammy Joeys he had requested. (The language of Nordy Traybakes is as confusing as the ECB and the IMF stuck together with cheap jam and tossed in mini-marshmallows.)
The girls weren’t buying any of it. After some trial but mostly error, it emerged that the story they actually wanted went something like this:
“Once upon a time there were two girls called Joya and Priya. They wanted to go to Portadown. Nanny Queenie said they could come. All their cousins were there. Kayla, India, Ethan, Rowan, Stefan and baby Sam. Suddenly, Nanny Queenie fed them chocolate buttons when she thought Mummy wasn’t looking. Then the children went upstairs to see Granda who was half asleep watching Jeremy Kyle. They all lived happily ever after. The end.”
Okay, so it’s not Banville, Joyce or even Ahern, but it does the trick. It is my parental penance to tell this story around 50 times between the hours of 6.30pm and 7pm when they doze off with thoughts of Portadown and its various inhabitants whizzing around their heads.
I couldn’t work out why mythologising Portadown as a comforting place that ensured sweet dreams was eating me up so much, apart from the fact that their father was a bit too delighted with this development for my liking. Then I realised I was jealous. It should be my hometown they were demanding to hear about before they shut their eyes.
I was also a bit sad because I knew this was never going to happen. Our family home in Sandymount was knocked down (cue violins) when my mother sold it and is now a cosmetic surgery. In the absence of a maternal ancestral home, the North has become the holy storytelling grail.
I am pondering all of this when I get a message from Bruno Borza, who owns what I suppose is my spiritual Sandymount home, the chipper on the Green. He wants me to come and pull the tickets for a raffle he is holding as part of his membership of the Irish Traditional Italian Chipper Association. I am delighted but can’t help thinking it must be because proper celebrity residents Claire Byrne and Dáithí Ó Sé aren’t available.
I put the girls into the car and decide this can be the start of the Sandymount mythologising. “We are going to Sandymount,” I tell them all the way in the car. “Sand-y-mand,” they parrot obligingly.
Bruno, his wife Angela and their children Georgina and Vincenzo pull out all the stops. The girls have their first Borza’s meal – chicken and chips – but also balloons, a sparkly wand and several teddy bears. I can tell they are impressed by the way they keep running around the chipper doing their victory dance. In the car on the way home they keep going on about “Sand-y-mand and Angela and Gina and Runo and Vinneee”.
That night I test them out to see how the myth of Sandymount and Borza’s has stuck. “Storeee?” they chant. “About Sandymount?” I inquire. “Port-a-down, Port-a-down!” they counter. Damn their loyalist genes.
So we’ve come to a compromise, a mix of fairytale and family. It’s now the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears (Who Go To Portadown to see Nanny Queenie etc etc).
The end.
THIS WEEKEND: Róisín will be remembering with fondness her Sandymount neighbour, the late Valdi MacMahon, an elegant, original and deeply generous soul. She was a class act.