Una Lyons: Oliver Plunkett Street, Cinemas, English Market

Una Lyons: Oliver Plunkett Street, Cinemas, English Market

Life History:

Una (born 1960) grew up in a guesthouse, a Georgian building on Oliver Plunkett Street. She had two siblings. Her parents had an unusually cosmopolitan outlook. Her father was an engineer with CIE trains. The street was quite residential but she also recalls a number of named businesses, including Cold Storage, which sold ices. Most of the guesthouse guests were lorry drivers from Dublin. She recalls an African man who called for lodging having been refused elsewhere in Cork. Una remembers seven cinemas in Cork; her mother left her at The Savoy for an afternoon at a time. She recalls the English Market when it specialised in meat. She describes the different shops and businesses in the city centre.

24 October 2012

CFP_SR00425_lyons_2012

Cork, Ireland, 1950s-2000s

Cork Folklore Project Audio Archive

Cork Folklore Project

English

Sound

1 .wav File

68min 47sec

Togher, Cork

.wav

24bit / 48kHz

The following is a short extract from the interview transcript, copyright of the Cork Folklore Project. If you wish to access further archival material for this interview or other interviews please contact CFP, folklorearchive@gmail.com

UL: But the people who stayed at the house, the Bed and Breakfast that my mother ran, were mostly what she called Dublin drivers, they were men coming out of Dublin, driving these huge lorries with goods from televisions to chocolates to signage to lots of different things. And they were the people mostly who stayed in the house, the drivers.

TD: They were bringing goods down to Cork and then going or were they just transporting stuff back and forth or?

UL: Yeah, they’d come down on deliveries so we, I remember we had Bush television and the man was called Barry from Bush television and I remember he had a bald head and big bushy hair at the side [laughs] I thought that was why he was working for Bush television and we had Gaelite signs they stayed with us and we had a man from Nestle chocolates and at that time there was a lovely confectioners called Milroy, Milroy sweets, they used to do Macaroon bars and Calypso bars and they used to give us bags of sweets so you’d be very popular with the other kids. And my mother with her sense of humour, used to call them after the company so she’d say Oh Mr Bush and Mr, we’d Lamb’s jams, Oh Mr Lamb, you know for the craic. And the man who drove from Milroy’s sweets, she used call Mr Milroy and he really enjoyed that.

TD: That’s very funny if, it was just her particular way of making them feel at home, I suppose.

UL: Yeah and having a bit of a craic with them but the joke was while the other lads all knew that it was a joke this man was delighted to be called Mr Milroy. [laughs] He was all delighted with himself. And he had a young lad with him in the van called Andy and Andy was only a young boy at the time but we stayed very good friends with him and when he got married he came to Cork for his honeymoon and they stayed in the house which was lovely. And then years later, we had our first dog and we were trying to come up with a name for the dog and he happened to be in Cork and he called in to see us and we were reminiscing about the old days and Mr Milroy, we liked to think that Milroy lifted his head up at that point and Andy said what about calling him ‘Milroy’ so we had this famous dog called Milroy as well named after the old days.

Yeah. And there was, could I tell you another point about it, I was just telling a friend yesterday that there was another guest house up the road from us, it was a hairdresser with a guest house as well and where the drivers would get one rasher, one sausage, one egg, my mother would give them three rashers, three sausages, two eggs [laughs] but we had an interesting experience happened one night, we, there was a knock on the door and I answered it as a small child and there was this African man standing there. And he said ‘can I, is your mum at home can I speak to her?’ and I said ‘Yes, of course’ so went and got my mother. She came out and she brought the man in and it turned out that he had, he was over from Africa, had lived, I think he was living in London and had come to Cork. And nobody in Cork would give him bed and breakfast. He did the whole length of Cork and no one would put him up. And he ended up with Fitzgerald’s and the woman said ‘well I won’t take you in but I know a woman who probably will’ and that was my mother. And not only was he brought in but he was brought in to the front room where the family were, a big blazing fire and Saturday dinner and sat down at the table and welcomed as a family member and.

TD: This was because she had lived in Africa, I presume, she’d have a broader understanding.

UL: Yeah, I mean she. Yeah, very cosmopolitan outlook. And my dad was the same, my dad was in the Merchant Navy during the war and they had all travelled and met different people. And completely different outlook from the very narrow-minded Irish view at that time. And I remember him sitting at the table with us and Daktari which was a programme at the time came on and he was explaining all about Africa and the Bush and the scorpions. He was just fascinating. So I think that’s a kind of poignant story in the sense it just shows you how much Ireland has moved on, has changed.