WORDSMITH: A bench, a tree, a street
There’s a winning French Eurovision song called ‘Une banc, une arbre, une rue.’ It translates as: A bench, a tree, a street. It’s a classic French chanson with lyrics focussing on the loss of childhood dreams. The chorus goes, “We all have a bench, a tree, a street, where we cherished our dreams and a childhood that’s been too short.”
I was thinking of the song as I walked down my old street on a gloriously warm and sunny afternoon last Sunday. Jubilee Terrace, where my childhood dreams still swirl and soar. I had childhood notions of being a filmmaker, and as I stopped to look up at my boyhood bedroom window, I recalled the first Oscar acceptance speech I wrote when I was twelve: “And above all I’d like to thank my parent’s for encouraging my dreams…”
When I wasn’t writing speeches, I’d paint pictures and dream of them hanging in the world’s most renowned art galleries (those teenage paintings were exhibited in the Bank of Ireland on main street, a dream realised, somewhat).
A warm melancholy moved me on. I left my childhood street behind and stepped onto Breffni Terrace. Midway up that street, I spotted a bench outside a boarded up house. I took a seat, looked at the sky and felt the warmth of early March sun on my face. Fumbling through my pocket, I took out a pen and a dog-eared block of post it notes – I scribbled the opening paragraph of this column.
Turning to look up the street, I put my rose tinted glasses on and looked back. Through them I saw a girl walking towards me with a smile on her face; I was sixteen, painfully shy and self-conscious. As she neared she winked at me, “Well Gerard, you’re turning into a fine-thing so you are!” I blushed, then bounded up the street with a spring in my step and a question to myself, “Me, a fine thing? Never!”
Sitting on the bench, that encounter returned to me as vividly as the moment itself. Back then the boost it gave me was like a shot of serotonin, which catapulted me towards a semblance of confidence that made me feel I might live the teenage dream (I kind of did, but that’s one for the book).
Leaving the bench, I sauntered up the street, feeling buoyed by the good times bouncing round my mind. Then I arrived at the steps up to St Brigid’s Terrace – and slumped. I took off the rose-tints and looked at the reality. Numbers one to eight St Brigid’s are no more; replaced by a red-bricked apartment complex that looks down on the remaining houses, reminding them of what they may become, who knows?
I paused at a familiar flight of stone steps; and the voices of past residents came back to me like one of those nostalgic flash back scenes from a film. All the decent people, their salt of the earth sounds surrounded me; some would say there were a few peppercorn people, too. But, when you have the salt, you need a little pepper to spice up the life of a street.
My relatives and friends: lived, loved, laughed, and cried on St Brigid’s. Families were raised, fights were fought, feuds were settled; dreams were realised, some shattered. I know all the names of each and every household, but it’s not for me to name them. However, special mention must go to ‘Connolly’s Steps’ and ‘Egan’s Entry', rites of passage for many.
Yesterday, I took a walk back up to St Brigid’s Terrace. The bull-dozers and diggers are encroaching; I nodded and smiled to the men doing their jobs that have to be done. Time moves on, town planners have to plan. And I suppose writers and artists have their job to do; to write, record and reflect – keeping people and place alive for posterity.
As I walked away, the song with which I opened this column became fully realised when in one garden I saw a tree, uprooted. The sight of it was a poignant reminder: although progress and planning are an essential part of life, in the process, lives are uprooted; and we must honour them.
St Brigid’s Terrace: when bricks and mortar are no more, the memories will live forever – I’ll sing to that.
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