My grandfather was full of stories. And jokes. He loved a joke, or a cod as he used to say. But I only realised a lot of his stories were jokes when I was older because they were all very specific to Derry, its characters and places of business. There were tales about Andy McGarvey’s barbers, Mickey Quigley’s fishmongers (he was known as ‘Mickey Fish’), and a guy they called ‘Shoot The Donkey’, who once – you guessed it – mistakenly shot a donkey. The jokes would start with a line that went something like, “Tommy Duffy from Laburnum Terrace went into McLaughlin’s shop one day and…” It was difficult to know when he was telling the truth and when he was just codding.
When my mother was 5 or 6 she proudly told her friends at school that her father lit the torch at the top of the Statue of Liberty. Who knows how or why he dreamt that one up but she swallowed it whole.
Another story that regularly did the rounds when I was young was about how Granda and Granny met. He was visiting Dunfanaghy with his brother, and Granny had seen him cycling past her house. She enlisted the help of her sister and put tacks on the road in front of the house so the next time he passed he’d get a puncture and have to stop.
This kind of folklore wouldn’t hang around these days what with the internet and the endless digital records we have of our lives. There is an empty baby book sitting in my office at home. We got it when Méabh was a week old and I was excited to fill it out. Only I never did. So it just sits there mocking me. Every time I think, “I should at least make a note of her ‘firsts’ before I forget when they happened,” I then immediately think, “It’s fine, I can always scroll through WhatsApp to find the date I sent the photo or video to my mum.” I can’t help thinking it would be easier if that wasn’t an option.
Sometimes I am wistful for the simpler times of my grandparent’s glory days or even just of my youth. No internet. No mobile phones. No trail of digital photos and videos and electronic communication. Modern life feels like an assault sometimes. In those moments I often think back to one of my grandfather’s jokes. Gentle and silly and of a different time. And it soothes me.
“Did you hear about Mickey Fish? He put his backside in the window for a cod.”
