Let the busy world be hushed: Fáilte isteach to granny’s kitchen for a special visitor
One of my warmest memories from childhood is sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s kitchen playing with my plastic toy soldiers on Saturday nights those years ago.
These evenings I can remember with such clarity - the curtains drawn, the room darkened as if in a cinema hall awaiting the feature show of a box office hit.
There was no light in the room except for the warm glow of the red embers in the grate of an old jubilee range, its heavy enamelled door left ajar sending the light of the settling embers reflecting across the polished patterns of the brown, orange and white diamonds of the cinder scorched kitchen lino.
The sounds ring clear in my mind; the kettle intermittently whistling, the tap rhythmically dripping, the clock ticking, the fridge humming and rattling every so often as it awoke from its slumbers and gave itself a recharge of power.
The tea would have been made, the soda bread and jam eaten, the white cups with faded gold rims and distant yellow roses, saucers and side plates returned to the glass presses of the green drop-down sideboard. The table was wiped down of its crumbs and spilled tea and all was given a clean bill of health, all readied and tidied so that we wouldn’t have to stir, so that we could give our fullest attention to a special visitor who called our way each and every Saturday night and never looked for tea.For in that darkened room in which we sat silently waiting for our visitor to call, the only other light apart from the glow of the cosy red embers that lit up the battlefields of France across the kitchen floor was the light from the bulb in a Bakelite Marconi Wireless set that slowly came to life on the dresser as the valve warmed up and the signal came its way. For when nine o’ clock came and Charles Mitchell had finished reading the news, the weather for the days ahead and the shipping forecast for Malin, Mizen and the Irish Sea had been given out... the tap would have tighten itself up, the kettle moved off the boil once the hot water bottles had been filled, the fridge would have to return to its slumbers and a truce called, as the sounds of gunfire ceased and the troops returned to their trenches below on the floor, for nothing; no sound, no noise, no whisper could disturb those few precious moments that were awaited so anxiously by an old woman and a little boy.
For twenty past nine was sacred time, Donnacha time, time, week upon week for Donnacha O Dulaing to call our way and for those not familiar with him, he presented a radio show each and every Saturday night on RTE Radio a h-aon .... and if anyone, for my granny, was next to God or the then P.P. it was surely Donnacha.
It was the type of show where he played all kinds of Irish music and requests for everybody and everyone of Irish descent spread across the four corners of the wide expanse of the globe. The show was called Fáilte Isteach and every Saturday you were indeed welcomed into Donnacha’s imaginary kitchen above in RTE, though my granny could never be convinced that his kitchen wasn’t real as she sat there, Rosary in hand and I lay a stretched on the warm kitchen lino trying to coax my soldiers from their trenches to fight quietly as we were transported from this small kitchen to his, so real did the images wafting from the Marconi radio seem to us.And there in his kitchen was Gowlan the Gander, the dog and the cat sitting on the mat, Daisy the cow with her head perched in over the half door... and for that half hour or so on those Saturday nights, he gave a hearty welcome, a failte isteach i mo chistin to aunty Bridgie in Boston, Peggy Sue in Sydney, Harry in Hertfordshire and poor auld Hetty in Huyton, all names that are probably now long gone to God to that great kitchen, that great parlour of dreams.
As the years past and my granny left behind her kitchen and, in her turn, passed to God, I thought of Donnacha’s kitchen and his parlour of dreams and prayed that God, like Donnacha, made her welcome, in the familiarity of the clock ticking, the tap dripping, the kettle whistling and the light of the range spreading its warm glow across the cinder scared lino of the kitchen floor.
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