At school our teacher asked about our ambitions.
Our answers were predictable, if unrealistic. Then someone turned the question on our teacher
‘Me? I’d be happy doing what I’m doing – teaching – on two thousand a year.’
Wow!
£2000 a year was big money, too big to work out how much a week it was, in my head.
At home…
Dad summoned his oldest boys to the living room.
‘Gerard, David, Michael… come here!’
I almost bumped into Mam in the doorway as she hurried from the room with the little ones. Strange, I thought. At eight o’clock on a midweek evening Dad was usually getting ready to go to the pub. Something was up, but what?
‘Sit down and watch this,’ said Dad, pointing at the telly. ‘You’re better off seeing it here than seeing it when Toby pokes his head out from under your shirt one morning.’
Dad didn’t hang around once he’d got his message across. Leaving me and my brothers to watch a documentary on syphilis, he got changed and went for his pint.
Toby? We’d never heard it called that before, either.
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