Christmas in Endsleigh

My father drove a Ford Cortina.   It was a dull red rust bucket of a car.  It could not cope with the Irish winters.  On particularly cold mornings, Dad would summon us from our beds with a roar up the stairs, "The car won't start." That was our cue to get up and push him around the green. Dad frantically pumped the accelerator, while Tommy, Stephen, Louise or I, with our hands on its frozen rusted arse, pushed and silently pleaded with it to start. The car did not give in easily. It bucked and lurched in fits and starts like an untamed beast, unwilling and unco-operative. By the time we circled the green the first time, Ken Long or one of the O'Hare boys would come running out to help.  It usually kicked into life coming into the third lap. The triumphant cries from the boys drowned out by Dad revving the engine and waking up the whole neighbourhood.  For a shy man he seemed to experience no embarrassment when it came to his car.  

Dad grew up on the Western Road and his local church as a child was St Francis behind the courthouse.  Even though we lived in Douglas with at least four churches closer to us, St Francis is where we went to mass every Sunday.   One frosty Christmas morning, after Tommy and Stephen pushed the car around the green a few times and eventually got the car going, all five children and Mum piled in. Driving along the deserted Douglas Road into town, Dad stopped at the red traffic light on the Cross Douglas Road.  As Dad gently pumped the accelerator to keep the engine idling over, we children sat in the back relieved that the car had started and excited about the treats yet to come. Then suddenly we heard a loud groaning sound.  We looked at each other in alarm.  Then came a tearing ripping sound like metal being torn in two.  The next thing we knew we found ourselves sitting on the road.     The Cortina crippled with rust and unable to cope with the unexpected burden of ferrying seven Christians to church, dumped us in the middle of the road.

The previous year, we were running late because the rust bucket took longer than usual to get going.   Being late for mass on Christmas day was a sin.  If you were late, or so we were told, you had to stay on for the next mass.  Keen to avoid this we crawled impatiently behind a Renault 4 for a half of a mile as it drove at 20 miles an hour with its right blinker on.  We had just passed the bend in the road by the entrance to Douglas Swimming baths when my Dad saw a clear road ahead.  Containing his frustration no longer, Dad pulled out right to overtake. But just as he drew level with the Renault, the elderly woman driver swerved right and crunched into the passenger door of our car.  We were late for mass. I can't remember if we stayed on for the next service, but Mum could only exit the car by scrambling over the clutch and through the driver side.   

There seems to be a pattern here; Christmas was a stressful time in our house. One Christmas Eve, I was seventeen which means Tommy was twenty. He was cleaning his teeth over the sink in the bathroom when I attempted to squeeze past him to retrieve something from the bathroom cabinet. Tommy annoyed at the intrusion pushed back to block my progress and in the ensuing scuffle the sink came away from the wall breaking the pipe. As the water spurted from the severed pipe, Dad clutched his forehead and cried, "Where are we going to get a plumber on Christmas Eve?"

The other unfortunate Christmas event involves my sister Louise who was six at the time. It was Christmas morning, the turkey had been roasting in the oven for four hours and it was ready to come out. The smell of cooked meat was divine. We children stood well back to watch my mother as she squatted down in front of the oven. Opening the door carefully, with a tea towel wrapped around each hand, she slowly eased out the roasting tin with the beautiful buttery brown-skinned turkey sitting in a sea of its own hot liquid fat. Still squatting, she rested the roasting tin on the flat oven door briefly before swivelling a full 180 degrees to set the turkey on the fire place to cool. For some reason, Louise chose this moment to pass behind Mum. As she straightened up, Mum accidentally knocked Louise onto the oven door. The blisters on Louise's legs swelled to the size of small water balloons. I presumed she screamed in pain. I just remember being fascinated by the speed at which the blisters grew and that they extended from her bottom down to the backs of her knees. Dad rushed her into the South Infirmary.

Speaking of the South Infirmary, my Mum's sister Maura was a doctor. On Maura's first day as a junior house officer in A&E in the South Infirmary, she was told that there are two families that are always in here: the Jones from Togher and the Blakes from Douglas.