Ten pence Daddy... A memory ♥️

Did you ever leave school in the early eighties as a underweight scratchy child with a school bag bigger than the bones carrying it and a hunger that meant you wished you hadn't given your only 5 pence to the poor black babies box coz you could have gone into Babs or Maureen or Phil in the Country Shop with your swollen belly and gotten free soda bread and butter or slipped into Flynns Bakery and played the victim so they'll give you a fresh bun or even gone on down to Michael Walsh and bought a packet of Bourbon biscuits, which are actually 10 pence but he's so kind he'll smile and pretend you handed him 10 pence. But you've left home this morning and you were warned to be good and honest so you cling to that 5 pence and you fall out the road to home and you pray you won't die from starvation, and you pretend you don't recognise the other children walking fast in front of you, bloody family. Is it you ignoring them or they denying you. A question I've never dared to ponder.

And suddenly you're at Kennys avantly (hey it's what I called it) and you know if you make it around the corner then you'll see the block factory and there lies the paradise you've longed for.

There lies your Daddy, leaning against the little office counter, a ring of cigarette smoke writing lines in the ceiling, his fingers browning below his nails. He smiles and nods at me, nodding at the bloody family as well but they don't matter. I've walked 500 miles and I'm safe and pretty soon he'll nod again soon at one of the lorry drivers and I'll be lifted up into a truck that's 1000 feet off the ground and I'll be bound for home.

It could be Oliver or Paudgin or Hugo or John or any of the kind block builders thats driving and you don't care coz they're so kind and it's a bloody lorry. You're swanning over Toome bridge and you might not make it, it's so high up and maybe you'll die then you don't and you're safe and your underweight ass sits on the stoop waiting for daddy to stub out his fag, lock his office and arrive home only for daddy to pull you off the stoop and demand to know why you haven't been helping Mammy

I swear to god when I grow up I'll not sit and the stoop any more. I'll not, and then he can't shout at me.....

But suddenly I'm grown up and the stoop is a memory and the block factory is gone and Daddy is gone and I can't help Mammy like he asked coz she's gone, and the Country Shop, flynns bakery and Michael Walshs is gone and if I had 10 pence now I'd hold it so tight and make a wish to have a stoop to sit on while watching the world I loved stroll by... maybe if I had two 10 pences if be able to watch the world stroll by from the front of a lorry......

Maybe that extra 10 pence will get me an extra wish to get a hug from Daddy and Mammy one more time.....

Valerie Masters