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tendency to break if waved too vigorously and were completely useless for poking your companion in the sides. The flags had been ceremoniously issued by the nuns, with the strict instruction that they had to be returned the next day.
    We waited for hours by the roadside and the tension mounted with every passing minute as the afternoon wore on. It seemed to get hotter and hotter, with the road dust blowing up around our knees with every gust of wind. The nuns patrolled up and down the lines getting us to recite the rosary, and repeated over and over the same instructions: as soon as He arrived we were all to bless ourselves, frantically wave our flags and cheer, and all at once.
    False alarms were frequent and usually started by some gurrier shouting, ‘Jesus, he’s coming, he’s bleeding coming, look.’ Which had us blessing ourselves, flag-waving and screaming our heads off until the nuns, arms flapping and running wildly up and down the road, shouted at us to ‘shut up this minute’. The Reverend Mother would then hold a meeting with all of her flock to see if they could identify the offender.
    We had almost given up any hope of him coming, and sheer boredom had beset the children to the point that the nuns let us sit down on the curb of the footpath before half of us collapsed from fatigue. Suddenly, without any warning, two police motor bikes roared past and, before the nuns could galvanise us into the blessing-ourselves, flag-waving and cheering mode, a very large, jet-black car zoomed past. We could barely make out the vague silhouette of some fellow dressed in white, waving and making the sign of the cross at us, but it had the nuns throwing themselves to their knees and blessing themselves as if it was the end of the world. And that was that; at the rate the car was moving, the Pope must have been in a hell of a dash to visit all of Dublin in the quickest time possible. It was many years later (after a discussion in a pub involving the whole of that night’s clientele) that I finally had to accept that it was only the Pope’s second-in-command, the Papal Nuncio, who had visited Ireland at that time.
    During that year, the father traded in the moped motor bike, which been our family’s mode of transport, and invested in a brand new Ford Popular motor car, duck-egg blue in colour, at a cost of £500. This made us the envy of the roadway, as we were one of the few families on the street to possess a car. It also had the effect of elevating the mother to the role of chief mechanic and back-seat driver; she never allowed the father to drive over 35 miles an hour. After every 50 miles or so, she insisted on stopping at a pub to allow the engine to cool down. These were the worst parts of any journey, as children were not allowed into pubs then and I had to wait in the car, sometimes for hours on end, while the car rested.
    Having the car opened up a completely new lifestyle for us, as relatives could be visited, both on my mother and father’s side, instead of waiting for them to come to us first. Also, the father joined Newlands Golf Club at Newlands Cross, and he often frequented Wang’s restaurant on the Naas road on his way back from golfing. My grandmother could now be deposited with ease for visits to her two sisters in Carrick-on-Suir, especially important because my grandfather had just recently died. A fact I hadn’t been aware of at all, since my mother insisted that young children had no business being introduced to funerals at too early an age.

Chapter 3 – Golden Bridge verses Hector

    One of the advantages of going to Golden Bridge School was that it gave me the opportunity to meet other children of my own age. However, any potential new friend of mine was closely vetted by my mother. She posed questions to the new playmate in a manner that would have pleased even the most staunch Gestapo officer, and always followed the same format. ‘Where do you