A life less ordinary

Let the busy world be hushed

Fr Jason Murphy

They lived in a tin roofed house after they were married, my Granduncle Patsy and his wife Mairead, the woman he had met, having ran over her on a bicycle on his way to get a bag of chips at the Carnival in Teemore one night. The house had been the home where he had lived with his mother who moved into a little caravan in the garden when he brought Mairead to Derrycannon after an odious spraoi in his sister Maggie’s.

They hadn’t many luxuries, no light nor running water and the black and white telly that was covered in a teacloth for most of the day was run off a battery taken from the 35 tractor, come the evening, that stood without on the back street. This allowed him to watch the cowboy and western films he enjoyed in the Erne Cinema of old. Other than the telly their lives were lived simply but happily without much intrusion from the change that was afoot all around them.

We used to say he was full of notions but Mairead was quiet and put up with them like the time he fell off the ladder and he said it was an assassination attempt by the UVF even though Mairead tried to tell him it was just that he was far too heavy and had leant over too far in trying to paint the hayshed but in his mind the UVF had crept up on him and tried to kill him.

They lived from one incident to another like the night they were robbed and all that saved them from being murdered in their beds, he told, was a big blanket that they had over them of Pope John Paul II with his arms outstretched that turned the robbers from finishing them off and indeed the sight of which put pay to them ever having any children.

As the years rolled on and Mairead was growing older and getting somewhat feebler with a touch of dementia, the district nurse called one day and insisted that Patsy would have a bathroom extension put up, to replace the outside toilet and tap. This he did, wondering how people had got on the best without it in years past as the bath itself stood for a long time as an ornament as neither of them could throw their leg across, to get into it. However the indoor toilet, he used to tell after Mass, was shocking handy forebyes having to go out on to the back street in the middle of the night. Now that all was convenient for them he thought that it’d be shocking handy too if he emptied the coal into the bath that stood idle as opposed to having to cart it in from the shed every time the fire went down. So when the coal man landed one Friday afternoon to deliver the several hundred of coal from his lorry, despite his expressed reluctance, Patsy instructed him to unload the bags of coal into the pristine white enamelled bath. Of course the place was covered in coal dust and an odious mess was made but Patsy thought it was the best idea he ever had, saving him from having to cart it in from outside. Despite what he thought was the best idea ever the district nurse had a different opinion without enquiring as to the coal when she seen the state of the bathroom and insisted that Patsy remove the coal and buy white enamelled paint in Corry’s of Derrylin to redo the bath.

It was after Christmas and there was a sale on odd buckets of paint that had sat on the shelf for perhaps years on end and instead of looking for the enamelled paint, Patsy wondered why he should waste more money than he already had and decided to buy a couple of the buckets of paint that was on sale on the shelf without enquiring as to the colour or their use, sure wouldn’t they all do the same job?

When he brought home the tins of paint and opened them up, it turned out that they contained Royal Blue gloss paint but Patsy never flinched telling Mairead it was a great colour as it’d cover up all the dirt and so it did, tiles and all and when the Nurse returned she thought she had taken some kind of psychedelic turn when she looked around at the bath and the tiles, the sink and the toilet but Patsy showed off his new style to every ceilier that came about the house. Indeed he was so fond of the colour and with a half a tin left over he went up to the graveyard at the crossroads in Teemore where his father and mother was buried and painted their headstone with a coat of Royal blue as a beacon that stood out for all who passed by on their way to Enniskillen.

And so the headstone stands today, the Royal blue paint flaking off it and Patsy and Mairead buried beneath, it’s a testament to this man of notions who lived a life less ordinary in the midst of the everyday.