My CV Part 3

Am I qualified to do my job?

The following is part of a series entitled: 'My CV’. If you haven’t already, why not go back to Part One to see where this idea comes from. Part Two is also available and both are necessary to read in order to understand what the heck is going on in this part. Enjoy!

A Change

In the summer of 2000, my father took a new job. This meant that my family and I would be moving from our council estate in East Cork to Dublin. To say my heart was broken would be the understatement of the century. I had just achieved so much. I won two more awards for my football team and I had started hurling. I managed to get my head down in school and get an offer of a move to the higher class. I had my first girlfriend and we had kissed at least twice that summer! I was living the dream. My Dad tried to soften the blow by booking a trip.

Every few years, if there was money, all of us, or some of us would go visit family in Argentina. My father had realised that is was the same price to book a round the world trip. As we had family living in Hong Kong, Australia and Argentina, accommodation was free, so off we went for six weeks. As my father loved to say ‘We moved from Cork to Dublin, the long way round.’ We really did. We left Cork, getting the boat to London, flying to Hong Kong for two weeks, Australia for two and finally Argentina for two, before landing back, in what was to me- a soulless Dublin. All I had in my head was the memory of two girls from my Cork estate, walking into their home as we drove away for the last time. They were both in tears and I watched them get smaller in the distance while I gripped their hand written letters in my fist.

Hong Kong Island in 2000, we stayed with my Aunt right next to the peak.

I didn’t work much that summer. I had done a few days in the factory in Cork and some on the farm, but my priority was to spend the precious time I had left with my friends. The first few months in Dublin were brutal. The estate we moved into wasn’t what I was used to. No one played football outside, no one blasted ‘Rhythm is a Dancer’ out their bedroom windows. No one said hello. The first day of the new school I sat outside the Principal’s office from 9am until 11 waiting to be brought to new my class. She had forgotten about me. Eventually I went into 3 different class rooms to be told it was the wrong one and have all these giggling Dubs laughing at me. That year was hell, little did I know it was going to get a lot worse.

One of the joys that kept me going in those days came through my Uncle. I was able to earn some readies by working in the social club of the Irish National Teacher’s Organisation. Their social club on Parnell Square West in Dublin’s city centre was and has been ever since, a happy place for me. The Georgian building had a bar on the first floor, a black box theatre in the basement, and rooms upon rooms of people meeting. All sorts of meetings would happen. If it wasn’t the Baker’s Union on a Christmas knees up, it was Sinn Fein or the Goilin singers group (traditional Irish singers group-”bitta hush please”), or there was a lovely man who would help people sorting their visas out on the ground floor. There was a hall out the back for birthday parties and christenings, and if there is one thing my time there taught me, it’s that all these meetings require sandwiches.

Sandwich making was a my first job there. Brian was an elderly man in his 60’s who showed me the way. In the room behind the bar, we had four fold out tables and we would line them all up with white slice pan. If I buttered, Brian would follow with a ham or cheese slice. The giant packets of ham came from nearby Granby’s. They were hard not to eat until I noticed Brian lining up the ham on the bread while muttering to himself ‘One for me… and one for you’ and he’d fold a delicious slice and fill his mouth with it. By the time lunch time came the sweat was on to get the sandwiches out front. We’d cut batches of them into triangles with the electric carving knife, put them into their plastic containers and display them on the bar for 1pm. By 1:15pm they were all gone except the tuna ones, which I liked.

I had a two week stint in a cafe in Arnott’s which was quite frankly a disaster. I was the dishwasher, and a very bad one. When it was a busy Saturday I was overwhelmed with figuring out how to do it faster. The piles of dishes went from the floor to what felt like the ceiling and I couldn’t figure what I was doing wrong. They let me wait tables once. On this day I had managed to charm one lady and her mother, then lost all of their good will when I spilled milk all over the ladies coat. One woman from the church came to have her lunch and left me with a pound coin tip but I was embarrassed as I was terrible at my job, I wasn’t ready for waiting at 16 and I stopped going there, hoping for more calls from the Teacher’s Club.

I worked in the Teacher’s Club on and off from my mid teens to my early 20’s. Three years after moving to Dublin I dropped out of school. I was not well enough to carry on, that’s a story for another day. I started my full time working life at 17. I was completely lost in life, but the Teacher’s club was a safe place. I got to work and be respected. Once I was in the paper for scoring a point in a GAA schools final and the boss had the paper out on the bar reading it out to the staff when I arrived to do my shift.

Brian passed away a few years after I started but his memory was kept a live with all his quotes and lines. ‘You’re only an oul bollox’ he’d say to his colleague Tony, who would sit at the bar and recite all the work he had done that day, just to justify yet another cup of tea and yet another silk cut purple. A portrait of Brian hangs in his local in Dublin’s North inner city.

I had no idea that the Teacher’s Club was going to be such a pivotal place in my life in those days. My first performances as a musician and singer, my first play and my 18th party all happened there. The beginning of many adventures started there for me. But the best bit was serving pints to all the patrons young and old. There were nights we worked, and things that happened, that will live with me forever.

To be continued…