ACTUALISING ANGELA'S ASHES

MANY of us have stories to tell but how many are able to tell them so well that they do not look like washing dirty linen in public? Memoirs that are detailed at the right places and punctuated with candour and wit are a breath of fresh
air.
W. Somerset Maugham once said that “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” Somewhere after “make a million dollars, have a make-over”, “stop p r o c r a st i n at i n g ”, and “be on time”, “read more” is one of the top goals that many people set for themselves.

The first step is to get a good book.

This can be hugely satisfying. It shows things beyond daily horizons, and characters are so vivid you feel as if you really know them. The reader and the writer may be separated from each other in time and space, yet there are links common enough to ignite the faintest connections as we recognise that we have been there and done that. The settings may be different but human folly and wisdom cut across boundaries.
The next step is to embark on a walking tour. Walking tours are good for the soul, whether leisurely or purposeful and help us truly appreciate historic neighbourhoods, buildings, and culture. They allow the unraveling of both facts and juicy bits on the side, giving them the personable touch.

Compare this with a bus tour where the driver speaks into a microphone and you use the headphones which promise to explain the necessary in a number of languages of your choice, that is, when they are not faulty. You may see a variety of sites but yet never really see what is revealed in just an hour or two as you walk the same paths as someone else did decades and centuries before you.

Historic neighbourhoods scream of sufferings, trappings and troubles as stoic determination results in ambitions realised and hopes fulfilled.
Indeed it is difficult to think about things the same way after you have beaten the same streets as real people have walked. It is like dessert after a meal. Pleasurable.

So I called Noel Curtin and enquired whether we could take a walk.

Not any ordinary walk, but a walk through the late Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, the Pulitzer Prizewinning book. I was not disappointed.
Noel fixed a Saturday where I could join ten other tourists to meander through the once squalid roads of Limerick, Ireland.

I quickly re-read the book so I would not miss out all the details that set the pulse of the memoirs and waited anxiously for Saturday to arrive only to find that the ten other tourists had made other plans. Undaunted, Noel assured me that the walk was still on.

Much to my delight, what had started out as a group walking tour became a personalised tour .

It had drizzled earlier in the morning.

As I contemplated taking an umbrella, I abandoned the idea once I realised that the rain would only make the streets of Limerick more endearing and authentic. Pervading through the book was the smell of the damp cold climate of Ireland where each child once had only one set of ragged clothes, patched shoes, and lacked a coat. Someone once said that Angela’s Ashes probably got its title from the Irish oral tradition of telling stories while stoking the ashes of the fireplace.

Noel painstakingly stopped at strategic locations featured in Angela’s Ashes: the post office where the author worked as a telegram delivery boy, Leamy school where he studied and the churches that played significant roles in his life. Even as I scribbled interesting notes, images of McCourt and his brother picking up coal dropped along Dock road vividly played in my mind.
McCourt wrote, “Mam is in a terrible state at home. There isn’t enough coal to cook the dinner, the water isn’t boiling anymore and she says she’s demented with worry.

We ’ll have to go down the Dock Road again to see if there’s any coal or turf lying around from the lorries. Surely we ’ll find something on the road this day of all days. Even the poorest of the poor don’t go out on Christmas Day picking coal off the road. There’s no use asking Dad to go because he will never stoop that low … .” It was once again life in Ireland, specifically life in Limerick city during the 1930s and 1940s in all its grittiness and grinding poverty. Going through the city streets and lanes helped relive the memoirs and I felt like a privileged intruder into another’s private world.

RELIVING FLEET-ING MOMENTS

COMICS are a source of fun. I know that because I was an avid reader of Beano and my favourite characters were Dennis the Menace, Roger the Dodger, Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids. I often wondered why after having read the 100th copy of Beano, the Bash Street Kids still remained in Class 2B and the teacher had not aged one bit.
Nothing is more powerful than the memories created by a child's experiences. Childhood is when life is uncomplicated, meaningful and straightforward when compared to adulthood where society in the persons of significant adults, model that life has meaning only when we limit ourselves to the labels of productivity, effectiveness and success.

Time has a way of breaking up our memory into little jigsaw pieces and through time we try to capture and preserve them within the confines of our mind.

So I made a bucket list of all the things I would like to do. Interspersed among the common things like travelling to exotic lands or feasting at grand hotels, there are a number of small things which are delightful to me.
One of them is standing in front of 185 Fleet Street, London with a Beano in my hand.

Just as one would associate the blue door with the famed Notting Hill movie, this particular address was where Beano was first published. While others dreamt of seeing the Eiffel Tower or Statue of Liberty, I knew I had to walk along Fleet Street.

Somehow to a child, every page of the comic running through the printing machine promised more laughter, more antics and more fun. I also imagined the rumbling machinery of the printing press, starting off slow then gathering momentum and emitting hot steam, not unlike a steam engine train.

Although Fleet Street is now associated with matters of the law, it was once synonymous with the written word. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s when it headed east to Canary Wharf and Wapping.

I could well imagine the scandals, the gossips and the exciting news exchange between journalists of that time. I could not resist trying the sticky toffee pudding that famous journalists rooted for and then entering a British red telephone box not to emerge as my alter ego (like Superman ) but to try to call my friends at the press.

If rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous is important to reach one's station in life, being physically close to where the famous journalist, the poor playwright or the humble novelist of the past is important to fulfil one's sense of personal achievement. Thus, I sauntered into Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which true to its name, had a gloomy charm.

Charles Dickens, who frequented the tavern, even alluded to it in A Tale of Two Cities where the character Charles Darnay had "a good plain dinner and wine at a tavern on Fleet Street".

I chose a chair just next to where Charles Dickens would have sat. There was a plaque bearing his name, thus reassuring me that I was at the correct seat.

It has often been said that we live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect. Perfect conditions may not happen and life has a way of accelerating as we get older.

I have seen so many senior people, despite having weak knees and bad feet, still actively climbing up and down tourist destinations. They seem to tell me that the best way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as a magnificent adventure.

I gaze at the remaining eight items on my bucket list and I could not agree more.