The author, Frank McCourt (no relation) has died of cancer. His obituary mentioned his book, Angela’s Ashes, a story of growing up in poverty in Limerick, Ireland, in the 1930s. It quoted an excerpt from it, which said: “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood. Worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.”

It reminded me of what my Dad said when the film came out. He was born in Limerick in 1949. His mother, my Nan, was born and lived in Limerick in the mid-1920s and 1930s. Dad had asked Nan if growing up in an Irish Catholic household in that time period was really as bad as it was made out to be in Angela’s Ashes. Nan said that, no, it was exaggerated. She too grew up in a poor household with many siblings, and whilst it was difficult, it wasn’t that terrible.

Nan related a story of an incident when she was a child. Her father, who, like many Irish labourers, liked his drink, would on occasion hide money from her mother, so that he could use it at a later date for alcohol. He assumed that his wife wouldn’t notice, but wives can be sharp like that. This of course frustrated her no end, but he was the breadwinner of the family. Then one day whilst he was out at work, she found his stash of money, which was a not-insubstantial amount. She immediately took it and used it to buy sensible things - food and clothing. When her husband got home, he of course found his stash missing. I’m sure he noticed the food and clothing, but because he’d deliberately hidden it, there was no way he could say anything to his wife. I can just imagine my great-grandmother’s satisfaction at her husband’s inability to do anything about it. I got the impression the men were tough, and the women even tougher in those days.

Beautiful blue sky day today, which had me walking to and from the cinema to see 12 Rounds. The lack of clouds got me thinking about them, and in particular about a teacher at school.

Mr Dail was my class teacher at primary school in 1984/85. He was an American ex-pat who was a rather unconventional teacher. To me, as a 9 year old, he seemed like an older guy, but I doubt if he was any more than his late 40s. Mr Dail didn’t stick to the standard syllabus for a class of 9 year olds. Amongst other things, he taught us the names of cloud formations, introduced us to slow worms, showed us how to make butter, brought his beautiful rough collies, Ola and Tubby, into class and let us walk them on the school field (a reward for finishing work), and, perhaps most interesting of all, gave out US Air Force rank pins for academic achievement. Where he got this ready supply from, I don’t know, but I was immensely proud when I was awarded a Staff Sergeant pin with 4 stripes. Only a few students in the class had a rank this high, so I was really very pleased with myself, in the way only a nerdy little kid can be.

One day in early summer, as we were heading back to class after a PE lesson, one of my classmates tripped on a slightly raised paving stone. Down she went, and it was immediately obvious that she’d broken her arm. Whilst an ambulance was called for her, the rest of us were herded into class. The following week she returned with her arm in a cast, and Mr Dail made a big show of awarding her with a 6 stripe Master Sergeant pin for bravery. I remember being immensely jealous at the time, thinking to myself that I’d studied really hard to get my Staff Sergeant pin, and all she’d done was break her arm.

I still have my Staff Sergeant pin knocking around somewhere, boxed up with a load of stuff in the loft, if I remember right. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but I’m tempted to go looking for it.

Travelling the same tram route at the same time every Monday-Friday, you get to know many faces. There’s the conductors, of course, several of whom recognise me well enough to comment if they see me on the tram late at night, when I ’should be at home’! There’s the people who work at HSBC, lots of them with their name tags clipped to their waistbands - the short, dark haired one who reminds me of a primary school teacher I had, the younger girl with her hair always tied back impeccably, the tall, thin and freckled girl, the lad who looks five years too young for a suit and tie, and so on. I don’t know any of their names, and they don’t know mine, but we take the same journey every day, and have done for years.

I rarely get an insight into their personality. They’ll often chatter amongst themselves, but not about anything of significance. They could be married, single, with kids or without, still living at home, interested in football or tennis, secret alcoholics, party animals, dog lovers… you never know. Just occasionally, though, once in a while, I’ll pick something up. Sarah’s wedding is next weekend, Tom and Cath’s baby is a boy, Deb’s lost 10lbs on her diet. Little day to day things. And sometimes, very, very rarely, I see or hear something that really stands out.

Last night, one of the HSBC women took a seat next to me. She doesn’t tend to chat with the main group. Perhaps she doesn’t work in the same department as them. She’s always impeccably dressed, and wears the kind of high heels that would have me crippled within ten steps of the front door. She favours skirts rather than trousers, and her hair is never out of place. She also comes across as rather serious; straight faced, perhaps even a little aloof.

As we passed out of the city centre, her mobile phone bleeped. Incoming text message. The screen lit up as she opened the message, and out of the corner of my eye I saw, ‘I want to peel your clothes off‘. I immediately looked out of the window, fascinated by something, anything else. I managed to keep my eyes away until she’d stopped reading the message - only to find when I looked back that she’d started typing one of her own in reply, ‘You’re really getting me going‘. Oh yeah. Fascinating thing outside again. I wish I could have seen her face, but given she was sitting next to me, I couldn’t tell. I watched her carefully as she got off the tram. She has a fantastic poker face, but I bet she couldn’t wait to get home.

In the queue at McDonalds (yes, I know, junk food - hush), three men stood in front of me. They looked to be in their mid to late 30s. One of them looked like your typical stocky, beer-bellied, football-watching bloke, dressed in a pink striped polo shirt and jeans. The second man was thinner, with a sort of young Johnny Depp hollow-cheeked look. He wore black, a baseball cap, and had a barbell piercing in his left eyebrow.

The third guy was by far the most interesting. He had sandy hair and a beard, and looked to be the same type of guy as Pink Polo Shirt, with less weight on him. His eyebrow was pierced with a 3/4 hoop. What I first took to be a cut on each side of the bridge of his nose turned out on closer inspection to be another piercing, with tiny little red clam shells instead of the silver barbells commonly associated with facial piercings. On his left and right hand knuckles, the words ‘TRUE’ and ‘LOVE’ were tattooed in blue ink. Finally, and most bizarrely, he wore pristine false nails, painted black with a silver shooting star motif on each of them.

I was fascinated.
When they took their meal away and sat down, I sat down at a table in sight of them. I watched as they ate, trying to pluck up the courage to go and ask him about them, running through what I would possibly say in my mind.

“Hi, ’scuse me, what’s with the nails?”
“It’s gonna kill me if I don’t ask about the nails..”
“Mind if I bother you for a sec?”
“You can tell me to piss off if you want, but I had to ask..”
“That’s so unusual… I’m trying to figure out if you’re gay, or straight, or lost a bet, or a transvestite..”

I thought about the camera in my bag, and wondered how it would go down if I asked to photograph his hands.

Alas, in the end, my courage failed me. I finished eating, and headed out to the tram stop. A minute or two later, I saw them come out of McDonalds. False Nail Guy pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one, putting it to his lips with manicured fingers. I watched them walk up Fargate, and out of sight.

On the tram this evening, I sat next to a teenager who was busy texting on his mobile phone. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him type the following message:

lo gorjes wot u up 2? fort u wor cummin sat?

Honestly, I could weep.

From November 1997 to June 1998, I lived in a dive of a place in Roath, Cardiff. I moved in as a result of having to move out of a previous place suddenly (which is a story in itself), and I took the first place I could get. The house was already occupied by three guys, all in their late 20s / early 30s, the names of two which I’ve long since forgotten. The third was Fraser, a redheaded Scotsman.

I saw very little of the guys. I’d come back from work, and they’d be out at the pub, or in one of the bedrooms, chatting or playing games. A couple of months after I moved in, I got a phone call from the landlord on a Friday night. He asked me if I was planning on staying in the house when the guys left that weekend. This was news to me. I had no idea they were even thinking of moving. I told the landlord I would be staying, and that I’d move into the biggest bedroom when they went. The next day, the guys left with few words. I was on my own in the house for several months. It was actually quite nice. Save for the place being a dive, I had peace and quiet, I could invite friends round, and I had the television to myself.

A month or so before Easter, the landlord gave me a call to say he’d found someone to move into one of the spare bedrooms. That someone was Welsh Gavin, and he was like a ghost. I saw him only two or three times in the next couple of weeks. The landlord called me at Easter, and asked to speak to Gavin. I said that he wasn’t there, and the landlord hmmed and asked me to try Gavin’s bedroom door. It opened, and to my surprise the room was completely bare. The furniture that had been in the room - bed, wardrobe, drawers - had all gone. The landlord wasn’t at all surprised when I relayed this to him. Apparently, the cheque Gavin gave him as bond and first month’s rent had bounced. He’d been trying to get hold of him since then. Two weeks later, the phone bill arrived. As well as the cost of my calls, and internet access, there were around £40 worth of calls to South America. Not only had Welsh Gavin jumped rent, he’d skipped out on the cost of calls to Chile.

Alas for poor Gavin, I had a trick up my sleeve. His surname was unusual, and he had mentioned once where he came from. With a little investigation, I got hold of his parents’ phone number. Calling them, it turned out that Gavin was actually there. I got him to send me a cheque for the cost of calls, which amazingly didn’t bounce, and then I passed his contact details on to the landlord.
I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt.

Since I went to University, I’ve lived in various shared houses, either as a tenant with housemates or, as in my current place, as a homeowner with a lodger. By my count, not including the times I lived in university residential halls, I’ve shared with 25 people.

In my second year at university in 1994/95, I lived in a three storey house with five other people (four guys and one girl), my largest house share. I was in one of the three bedrooms on the top floor. There were another three bedrooms on the ground floor, and the kitchen, living room, and bathrooms were in the converted basement. I didn’t know any of the others there before I moved in, and I never spoke to any of them after moving out. On the first night in the house, one of the housemates - let’s call him M - was sick on the carpet in the hall. That pretty much set the standard for the next year.

SS and SP were both rugby lads. They loved sport, they loved being lewd, and they loved their alcohol. When drunk, which was quite often, they would come back home making as much noise as possible. SS would slam the door, bang on the walls with his fists, and yell. I’d be woken in the small hours of the morning to, “Grr-aaaarrgh!” *thump thump*. One night, he came home when I was still up. When he came downstairs to the living room, I saw he had a gash across the bridge of his nose, which was bleeding profusely. I grabbed a wet cloth, and told him to press it to the gash whilst I went to find a plaster. By the time I’d been upstairs and realised I didn’t have one, he’d thrown the blood stained cloth on the kitchen counter and left the house again, presumably to drink more.
SP wasn’t quite so noisy. However, his drunken behaviour mainly consisted of spitting - on the carpet, the walls, or the kitchen floor.
I never went barefoot in that house.

I was on the tram this evening, around 11pm, coming back home after seeing Saw III at the cinema (gory, gory, gory - ugh). It’s only 2 stops, so the journey doesn’t take very long. Tonight though, the tram stopped unexpectedly halfway between my stop and the one before. The driver called the conductor up to the cab at the front, and they both got off the tram and started walking back down it. Several mystifying minutes passed before they appeared again, heavily supporting a 20-something bloke who had his fly unbuttoned and could barely stand. I guess he must have been wandering on the tracks, and the driver had luckily seen him. The driver got back in her cab and opened the doors beside me, and the conductor, who had his arms pretty much around the guy’s waist, helped him fall into the tram. He propped the guy up against the other door, and told him to stay put. The tram got moving again, and it only took around 45 seconds to get to my stop, but all that time I was staring at the guy, who stared back at me with a goofy grin. I don’t know whether he was drunk, high or stoned.

I went into Starbucks this evening on my way home from work, and sat down with a mug of hot chocolate. At a table opposite me, a red-headed woman smiled at me. I smiled back politely, and pulled out my camera to have a look at some shots I’d taken. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the woman looking in my direction a few more times. I started to wonder if I knew her from somewhere.

She got up after a bit, asking if I could watch her bag for a moment. No problem, I agreed. She was back within a minute or two, and gave me another friendly smile. I racked my brains as to where I might know her from, unsuccessfully.

I finished up my drink, and got up to go.

“You’re off, then,” she piped up.
“Yeah,” I nodded, “off home.”
“So what have you been taking photos of?” she asked me.
“Winter Gardens, round and about,” I shrugged.

I didn’t want to be rude in case I did know her from the University or somewhere; it’d be an embarrassing nightmare if I forgot someone I have contact with now and then at work.

“So what do you like doing, then?” she asked.
“What… hobbies? Well… photography..?” I said lamely.
“Oh, is that what you do, then?” she smiled.
“Um, well, not as a job,” I replied. “Just for fun. For my website.”
“Oh, you have a website?” she beamed. “How nice, is it like a diary?”
“Well, I post my photos on there…” I said awkwardly.

I was getting steadily more confused. If I didn’t know her from work, did I know her from anywhere? I hefted my bag a bit on my shoulder.

“Oh, I bet you can take some lovely photos,” she said.
“Yeah…” I replied vaguely. “Um. Well. I better take advantage of the light before it’s gone,” I nodded out the window.
She smiled again. “Bye, then.”

I scarpered. I have absolutely no idea who she was, or if I know her.

In the Union shop this afternoon, as I moved up to the till, one of the older shop assistants was talking to a student assistant about Ivor the Engine, a 1970s cartoon.

“You don’t remember Ivor?” he asked. “Welsh train, you know?”
“Chitty-koom,” I said with a grin.
“Exactly!” the older shop assistant said.

The student looked completely blank.
“Never seen it in my life,” he said.

It’s at times like that when I realise that by the time he was born, Ivor the Engine had rolled into the train shed for the last time over 10 years previously.

“God,” I said, “that makes me feel really old.”
“Yeah,” he laughed.

I paid up and slunk off arthritically.