More Than an Ordinary Life

By Eddie Doody

Can you imagine being left as a single parent of nine children?

Eddie Doody’s mother died when he was just nine years-old. She left a family of nine children aged between two and sixteen years, and abroken-hearted husband.

Eddie tells how his dad was determined that the family would stay together, even when soc

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edmund Doody
• Release date: Jul 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780993483356

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More Than an Ordinary Life

Eddie Doody

Published in 2019 by Edmund Doody

Copyright © Eddie Doody 2019

Eddie Doody has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

ISBN Paperback: 978-0-9934833-4-9

Ebook: 978-0-9934833-5-6

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue copy of this book can be

found in the British Library.

Published with the help of Indie Authors World

www.indieauthorsworld.com

To those we loved and lost

Acknowledgements

Thank you Anne for being by my side for the past fifty years and encouraging me to write. Without the help of Kim and Sinclair of Indie Authors World this book would not have been possible. And a big thanks to Tom for supplying some of the photographs you see in this book

Introduction

Where does anyone begin to tell their life in words? Do you start at your earliest memory or do you start at the present and work backwards? Do you keep it in chronological order? Or do you just tell it as it comes back to you?

Not only that, but where do you stop, what do you include, or leave out. There are so many things to tell, that I will have to be selective.

I suppose each teller uses the style that suits them. I believe the writer should do what is comfortable for them, whether the reader likes it or not … after all it is your life, so do what suits yourself. You just hope it is readable, amusing and not just a jumble of words jumping from one period in time to another. But then isn’t that the way most people remember things?

I can only tell this from my point of view, as I am not privy to all that went on in my family’s lives.

So, forgive me if some details are different to other’s memories.

Chapter One

I was born in 1948 in a small village in Scotland. It was mostly a mining village; it also had a brick-works. The nearby town had steel works. There was work for all the men in the village, and the women too.

Many women worked in the brick-works. I think that was where my Dad met my Mum. They got married in July 1939, Maureen came along almost 1yr later. They got married in a double wedding along with my Mum’s niece Margaret. Her husband’s name was Charles Brannigan. They too had a big family I was never sure how many of them there was, but it was double figures, ten, I think.

This is all nine of us. From the oldest to the youngest, Maureen, Rita, Lena, Tony, Frank, Pat, Eddie, Tom, Joe. I’m the third from last. There is roughly 18mths between us in ages.

Growing up with 4 older sisters, 2 older brothers and 2 younger brothers has its advantages. [In case your math is bad, that makes 9] Your big sisters looked after you and your 2 older brothers fought your battles for you; plus, you got their clothes as hand-me-downs. You got your brothers clothes, ‘not your sisters’. As we all grew up, we had hand-me-downs.

My Dad took a size 6 in a shoe. As we got to his size, we wore his shoes, until our feet got too big. He was glad to get a chance to wear out his own shoes without us beating him to it. The 2 youngest had new stuff, since by the time the clothes got to them; they were worn and washed out.

We were all given family names; after all there was a lot to choose from, except me. I was named after my Dads best friend. I was never sure whether Frank was called after my uncle Frank, or after my Dad’s best friend’s son Frank. I think I’ve left it a bit late to check that one out.

We lived in a 3-bedroom house, Mum and Dad in one room, the 4 girls in another and, go on, guess, yep 5 boys in the other.

I wasn’t born in that house, we moved there when I was only a baby. Our house at that time was a ground floor flat, one of those 4 in a block types.

I have no memory of that house, only old photos of all of us taken in the back garden.

There was a large stair leading up to the back door, with a coal cellar under the stairs.

My grandparents, on my Dads side lived across the street from us, on a side street. This was a dead end. They now call them a cul-de-sac. Didn’t know that then. To me it was just a dead end.

We moved to our new house around 1949.

My Dad liked to take photos with his box-brownie. Dad used to take his films into Glasgow to Gratispool, which was just off George Square, to get them developed. They gave you a spool back to use for the next time as well as the photos, which were all black and white then.

Later on, Dad got paints to hand colour his own photos. Turned out not too bad. All of the old photos are now split up among all of us, some I haven’t seen in years. The earliest photo at our new house was one where all of us kids were out at the front door on the path.

This house was a mid-terrace, with an up and down stair. Because I was the youngest, our Maureen was the one holding me, and true to form as to what was to come, I am pulling her hair.

I don’t know if our new house was bigger than our old one, but we had an upstairs where all the bedrooms were. In our room there were two double beds, so three in one top-to- toe and two in the other. I wouldn’t say it was cozy, as the two oldest kept pulling the blankets off me. One thing is for sure, you were never alone.

Big families seemed to be the norm. Nothing to do with being catholic, they were all that way. Maybe it was because nobody had a television. I always joked it was because my Mum was deaf in one ear.

Dad would say to her at night, Lena, would you like to go to sleep, or what? And she would reply, What?

Actually, she wasn’t deaf. No matter, nine kids were what they had.

It was the kind of village where everyone knew everyone else.

If you were caught doing something wrong, you got a skelp round the ear and taken home. Then your Dad gave you another skelp.

Try that now and you would get sued or jailed for assault.

Even the local Bobby cuffed you round the ear.

The village was about 3 miles from the nearest town. We had two primary schools [one for Catholics and one for Protestants]. Two churches [ditto] and two pubs, but only one bookies. The village was surrounded by fields and farms. One of the farms was owned by one of my cousins [ May Morgan nee, McGiff] who married the farmer. There were four farms, all within easy walking distance.

The closest farm was a cattle farm where we were sent to get milk when we ran out, which happened quite a lot. The next farm along raised Clydesdale Horses.

Boy were they huge!! You would have needed a ladder to climb on their backs. I did try once, but the horse wasn’t having it and I fell into a pile of horse shit. I think most of the boys I grew up with tried at one time or another. None of us ever made it. Now pit ponies, they were something else.

Wild wee bastards.

Then on the way to the pit, where lots of the men worked, there was Blacks farm.

Most of the kids went there when it was tattie picking time. They got paid and you got to take tatties home with them at the end of the day.

Living in the country was something I would not change for anything.

We had a ball.

You went out in the morning with a bottle of water and two pieces with jam on them.

We didn’t go home till it got dark o’clock.

Life was good, maybe because we knew no other lifestyles

Then my world went upside down.

And not for the last time.

One day Dad and Mum took some of us on a day trip, doon the water, as it was called, on the paddle steamer called The Waverley. It sailed from Glasgow down the Clyde to the Isle of Bute. {Rothesay}.

That day Mum took not well. We were met at the dock by an ambulance that took us all to the local Cottage Hospital. We saw very little of Rothesay. We had to go home without Mum. I assume she was taken to Glasgow Royal soon after. As a kid I wasn’t told what was wrong with her. She was in and out of hospital.

Dad put their bed down into the living room for Mum as she was so poorly and needed looking after when they let her out of hospital. As kids we all did what we could to help her, cheering her up or getting her some tea etc.