Image via WikipediaMy aunt Margaret (Maggie to us) worked in Belfast as a seamstress. She never married and delighted in treating us to days out. Once I remember going by bus to the Zoo at Belfast. We also enjoyed the days down by the Moyola river that ran near the grandparents home in Anahorish picnicked on lemonade and biscuits. As this was in the summer the water in the river was not very deep in most places except in the bends where the slower stream was usually deeper. We stayed in the shallow parts. The summers seemed to be hotter and longer in the 50's.
At weekends we would see fishermen coming up from Belfast to fish in the Moyola river. I can remember on their return with their catch giving eels to the shop next door. I can still remember those eels jumping around on the frying pan even after being chopped up.
Image via Wikipedia
During the 6 years I spent at the Rainey School I don't think I ever gave much consideration as to what I would do after I left the protected cloisters. I had passed the 11 Plus to get there and it was easy enough but I was not fully aware that that was just the beginning. I did not get into a higher gear. Most classes were split approx 50/50 girls and boys and when exams came around girls usually came at the top. There was one exception to this. We had an English teacher called Mr Schofield, if I remember correctly he was tall and walked around the school wearing his university graduation gown, quite a few teachers did this at the Rainey. Mr Schofield (his brother was a top Shakespearian actor during the 20th centutry) had set us an English literature paper for an end of term exam. It appears that a copy of the exam paper was left within easy access of one of my classmates, who passed on details of the questions to a few selected pals, about 5 or 6, some of whom would normally have been lucky to get 40% in the exam.
I remember the evening before the exam being in Anahorish with my poetry book going over the poems which would be on the paper. This made revision easy. No long list of poems to remember. To shorten the story when the results came out at a later date I achieved around 80% in the English Litt exam and a few others also exceeded expectations. Some of the girls who would have been expected to get the top marks were surprised but there was no proof of wrongdoing and the episode was soon forgotten.
It seemed a remarkable coincidence that while I was revising my condensed poetry list that a few fields away Seamus Heaney was expanding his horizons in the field of poetry with a much longer term vision. In other words he had got into the higher gear necessary to achieve a positive outcome. Why things turn out this way is the mystery.
Image via WikipediaMy aunt Margaret (Maggie to us) worked in Belfast as a seamstress. She never married and delighted in treating us to days out. Once I remember going by bus to the Zoo at Belfast. We also enjoyed the days down by the Moyola river that ran near the grandparents home in Anahorish picnicked on lemonade and biscuits. As this was in the summer the water in the river was not very deep in most places except in the bends where the slower stream was usually deeper. We stayed in the shallow parts. The summers seemed to be hotter and longer in the 50's.
