A Summer Holiday Story

I’m sitting in my office listening to my clock ticking, and suddenly, I am back in my Aunt Kitty and Uncle Mick’s house in Bloomfield, Red Pat’s Cross, Tomnalossett (what a lovely address), my mother’s family home, and I am filled with good memories of sunny summer days.

This is where I went for my summer holidays from my first day out of school to the beginning of September when I reluctantly returned to Dublin.

One of my many chores was to fetch water in two big buckets from a spring well a couple of hundred yards up the road (back then, they did not have metres). Whichever measuring scale you use, it’s a long way for a small boy to carry two full buckets of water, which would spill on my legs and drip into my shoes.

Each morning, when I fill the kettle for breakfast, I am reminded of the great gift of clean drinking water coming out of a tap.

Back then, people did not need to be taught how to recycle. My aunt would get three uses out of the water firstly for drinking or to make tea. Not fully drunk glasses or cups of water would be emptied into another bucket and used for boiling potatoes and other vegetables.

That water was then put into a third bucket, which she called the slops bucket, and it would be added to the animal’s food or for general cleaning around the yard.

Back home in Dublin, the children of the family who lived beside us used to sell penny bundles of small sticks for fire lighting; they would cut up old bicycle tyres to be used as elastic bands for each bundle.

Back in the day, everything was recycled.

Do you remember glass bottles being delivered and collected from your doorstep?

In Ireland, we have been recycling glass bottles for some time and recently implemented a return system for products with the R symbol on the packaging.

There are currently many complaints about the collection system, which no doubt will be ironed out in time, and we will be better as a nation as we relearn how to recycle and reuse.