FROM THE ARCHIVES:
A notable feature of the 1970s was the number of strikes affecting major services including electricity, transport, telephones and banks. In 1972 an unofficial strike by 800 shift workers in the ESB, who were seeking re-grading and pay increases, cut power supplies by 80 per cent, closed down virtually all industry, and reduced supplies to most users to three hours in 24. Mary Maher went looking for candles as the country went dark.
YOU MIGHT as well go chasing after moonbeams as try buying a penny candle in Dublin yesterday. In the beginning, when there was still light, I was self-righteous. “How much?” I asked the woman in the newsagents. “Fivepence”, she said, holding up a miserable little icicle of wax.
“I couldn’t”, I explained with the conviction of one who has principles, “pay five pence for that”. She put it away again calmly. “Ah, well, you know how it is”. I said pompously that I did indeed know and went out.
But in the next newsagents, and the one after that, there was no hope at all. “Oh no”, they said, smiling with commercial regret, they were afraid there were no candles left.
There was nothing for it but the hike into town. The girl in Woolworth’s was weary. “Sold out”, she replied, shortly. Sold out? “Hours ago”. I ran down the stairs and out into Grafton Street. The stores were all in semi-darkness now, saturated in the cheerful gloom of pubs at closing time at three in the afternoon. “How much?” I asked the girl in Switzer’s, missing the nostalgic clink of brown paper parcels. Nine pence was the cheapest, she told me.
I went around the corner to St Theresa’s of Clarendon Street. God knows I have done worse in my life, and anyway I owe so many aspirations from so many Spiritual Bouquets of earlier years that I face a stretch too staggering in Purgatory to worry about any longer. Whatever the penalty, perhaps I might be allowed to serve my sentences concurrently.
But would you believe that there would be 16 women in the one wing of St Theresa’s, and it not yet 3.30 in the afternoon? Were they all there with the same intent as myself, I wondered? They couldn’t all be waiting for the pubs to reopen. I focused then and saw that there are no more candles in the shrines, only tiny electric bulbs under glass.
So, I found myself in Market Ireland, where the fat candles embossed in Celtic design were prominently displayed in the front window and doorway.
There I saw the Kinsale nightlights at 12½p a box, and just two boxes left. They aren’t an inch high, but there are nine in the box and they promised to burn for eight hours, and how much light does anyone really need, once you’ve eliminated cooking and bathing in hot water and other little frivolities of high-powered living?
“I suppose you’ve been selling a lot of these? I asked, as she wrapped up my night lights.
“Oh we have, we have”, she answered with a low, and hastily assumed an expression more suitably civic-spirited. “I hope it doesn’t last long”.
On my way to the bus I went into Smyths of the Green, thinking of something alcoholic with which to while away the dim evening ahead. There was a queue in front of the Price’s candles, Ship Brand, 25p per pack for eight small household candles.
“Is that the usual price?” I sneered, grabbing two. The man behind the counter said he didn’t know because Smyths didn’t usually stock them, but they’d been going like a bomb all day. Or wildfire, I suggested. We smirked at each other.
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