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My big memory is of coming to Fermoy to do the Christmas shopping.

By Joan Ensko

‘Christmas comes but once a year, but when it comes it does not come here’, was a refrain that an uncle of ours used to sing at Christmas time. So our mother used to tell us, but that same young man did not see many a Christmas.

He died at the young age of twenty-one years. We thought the saying funny, but what we young children missed was that my mother was remembering happy times with him around the Christmas table, in fact, the same table at which we sat.

Christmas is a time for remembering. Good and bad memories surface, but it is better to remember the good ones. My big memory is of coming to Fermoy to do the Christmas shopping, with parents and siblings, as many as would fit in the pony and trap.

I hate to think how long ago that was, but Fermoy was a very different but pleasant place. While we lived equidistant from Mallow, Mitchelstown and Fermoy, the latter was always our favourite town.

The pony and trap would be left in Jones’ yard, where our new woollen rug was replaced with a thread worn one, or in The Grand Hotel yard, nearer to the shops.

Shopping with us children traipsing after her, was not easy for our mother. We would visit Lombard’s grocery shop for tea. Mr Lombard was married to a cousin of my father. Family connections had to be honoured and one’s custom had to be spread around. One did not spend all their money in one shop.

In Lombard’s shop was a contraption - they also had one in Walsh’s Hardware shop, around the corner from The Royal Hotel - which fascinated us. The money for the item bought was placed in a wooden cup-like container, screwed into a holder on a steel pulley, which with the pull of a cord, went spinning to the other side of the shop over our heads to a lady whose job it was to take the money and return the change in the same manner. We could have watched this all day, but there was shopping to be done!

Next port of call was Quinlan’s drapery shop (now Joe Murphy’s). I can still picture the long counter, the shelves to ceiling height, where delicate and feminine articles of under-garments were stored, never on display. On requesting an item, the girl climbed the ladder and brought down the cardboard box, lifted the tissue paper for the customer’s approval, and if it did not please, the box was closed and another brought down in the same way. Nothing escaped our eager eyes.

In the meanwhile, Mr Quinlan, formally dressed in ’morning dress’, would offer my mother, with great courtesy, a high bentwood chair to sit on. She would smile at him, but she never sat on it.

Neither did any of us, children then were seen not heard. Well not quite, we did annoy our mother and demanded a present. She would remind us that Santa was bringing us something, ‘but that was Santa’s present’ was our grumble. She would relent and we would pass the corner of the Munster and Leinster Bank, under the sideways glance of the ‘lady’ in Casey and O’Reilly’s window, to our mecca, O’Connell’s toy shop - now Jim Birmingham’s I think.

Our mother was flush with the money from the sale of her turkeys, we knew. She loved Christmas, and when she had money she spent it. Of course we each got a toy, a simple one by today’s standards.

Tea might be taken in a tea shop down Kent St or a drink in Mrs Daly’s, another cousin - now The Avondhu Bar - or at May’s, around the corner from The Royal Hotel, a very elegant grocery and wine and spirit shop.

I have a memory of being there with my father, who, when I was out with him, used to buy me a glass of port to keep out the cold, and the old gentleman saying to him, ‘You shouldn’t buy her port’, thinking that my drinking days were over. He said ‘Buy her a sherry. It’s better for her’. Imagine that happening today!

Different times, but the trip to Fermoy to buy the ingredients that went to make our Christmas - nothing pre-packed or prepared - was a high point. People made the cake, the pudding, the turkey (or the goose), was stuffed with homemade stuffing, the trifle made from sponge and Bird’s custard - we still do that - all that made up Christmas.

The long red candle was brought home - usually got free of charge from the grocer - the box of Jacob’s biscuits and the bottle of Claret, that had to last over Christmas to make us hot punch.

Happy, happy memories. Let’s make lots of them for those around us.

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