Making a young boy feel 10-feet tall

Fr Jason Murphy recalls in vivid detail a visit to the local post office as child.

A visit to the post office as a child was a most wondrous experience, a hallowed place full of wonder and awe only equalled by a visit alone to the sacred space of the chapel.

To enter in, one pushed with all of their might on the heavy brass handles of the large, glass-panelled doors that flung back so quickly when you let go of them, they announced your entrance with such a desperate clang that there was no need for a bell above the door.

The faces of women, all huddled like a knot in the line, turned at once to see who came through the door in the hope that, whoever it was, might contribute to the hoard of news, garnered in their rounds of the town. Familiar faces who each had business to attend to, whether it was buying a coupon towards the licence for their colour TV or collecting the pension in its various forms or indeed buying a first class stamp at 26p for a letter to send to a relation in Huyton telling of all the births, deaths and marriages in the townlands around in the hope of receiving a little sterling by return of post to spend below at Dinny O’Brien’s. The women continued chatting in muffled tones as the man in wellington boots and baling twine around his waist leaned right in across the counter, talking only in whispers, pulling from his pocket a bundle of twenty pound notes tied up in an elastic band; the proceeds of the sale of Freisen heifers, to put into his savings should there come a rainy day.

From a hiatus in the queue, I looked in wonder at the sight of the blue notes clenched in his fist, only three of which made up my great granny’s pension. On seeing his fortune, I looked down into the palm of my hand at the 5p coin that sat there, as important to me as all the blue notes he held in his. This coin was to buy a saving stamp to place into my little green book along with the others I had accumulated from half of my pocket money, the other half to be spent on penny sweets in Peggy Gillick’s shop, oh the thoughts of what I would spend my savings on when I had saved the whole of a pound. It was such a joy to stand there as a boy in my summer shorts, the legs bruised from all the falls and scrapes of the summer fun, taking in the aroma that filled the air, the scent from decades of old ledgers and logbooks and all kinds of ephemeral documents piled high, which told a tale of countless lives lived over the course of a century here in this border town.

The hunched figure of a woman in a pink wool overcoat stood in the telephone kiosk betwixt the counter and the doors. She was whispering into the handset of the heavy black pay phone, throwing one eye over her shoulder at the people in the queue who veered towards her as, all the tighter, she leaned into the phone asking a nurse above in St Felim’s after an old neighbour man without chick or child and thirty well-drained acres who the women supposed was very low.

“Make sure to tell him if he can still hear ya, that I sent me regards and that I’m just after getting the Canon to read for him an office.”

It was a phone I could never really navigate, losing several 10ps in an attempt to get through with its A and B button in those days before the endless free chatter rendered on mobile phones.

An older woman with a mack coat and a black handbag sat in a chair between the granite fireplace and the door of the post master’s office adding to the conversations as to what important business she had to see to, as she waited on the Post Master Lennie McGovern to come out from behind the frosted glass of his office door. One felt very grown up as a child queuing there with business to attend to as one neared the tall brown counter behind which sat these men, Messrs Minogue and Corrigan, who appeared to be most officious in their suits and ties, and their ledgers and books piled high behind.

“Ó Murchú, conas ata tú?” one of them called me forth from the queue as from behind the counter he looked down at me; I knew he took no prisoners especially as bearla so I chanced my arm as best I could, ‘Táim go maith, go raibh maith agat, Mr Minogue’.

Thoughts scurried across the front of my mind: Please let him not ask me anything further and please whatever you do … don’t ask me how I’m getting on the under tens gaelic team because I didn’t get my place.

And then it came... “Cén fadh nach raibh tú ag imirt peil on Sathairn seo cáite? Cá raibh tú Ó Murchú?”

“Ah Mr Minogue, tá sore leg agam,” was my excuse and indeed he seemed to fall for it.

“Ah ceart go leor, conas atá do Dhaidí?”

“Ta sé go maith Mr Minogue.”

“Ag imirt peil?”

“Sea, Mr Minogue.”

Though I breathed a sigh of relief having got off lightly, I knew he had spoken to me as if I were a man and treated me as his own equal though I was only nine years old and he took my 5p into his hand with the same respect as the bundle of twenties previously handed in by the farmer from Derryarmush.

He stuck in the stamp with the greatest of care and then heavily stamped my green savings book.

“Slan go foil, O’Murchu!”

“Slan Mr Minogue” and as I walked past the line of queuing adults. Despite the short inquisition, I left his company feeling ten feet tall and indeed all of five pence the richer, forever remembering a man who unbeknownst to himself was important forever more in the life of a boy.