I have actually outgrown the Sugar Plum Fairy

I need to admit I was distressed just recently to check out the melancholic news that there’s a scarcity of ‘mná an tí’ in a few of our Gaeltacht locations this year). I expect I must advise those who never ever took pleasure in a summer season fortnight’s domestic course in our Irish-speaking locations, or who have actually forgotten any vestiges of their own Irish language education, that that’s the plural of ‘bean an tí'( or ‘house-boss’!).

And, returning my own stint at Coláiste Chonnacht, in Spiddal, in Connemara, precisely fifty years earlier in 1973, I remember that those ladies who opened their houses to children from the Pale, and beyond, were critical in the transformational experience of many pubertal teenagers in my day.

Paradoxically, possibly, it’s the cost-of-living crisis of 2023, integrated with the psychosocial injury of the pandemic lockdown– when the ladies’s typical seasonal earnings was lost for a number of years– that’s encouraged a 3rd of them to quit the work. I state this since comparable concerns were so widespread in 1972-1973, when hundreds were being eliminated in the northern ‘Difficulties’, numerous thousands were passing away in wars from Rhodesia to Vietnam, and advanced factions of every color (the Japanese Red Army, Black September group, or Baader-Meinhof Gang, and so on) were hectic massacring airline company guests and even Olympians, in Munich.

And after that naturally, came the 1973 ‘oil crisis’, when the cost of oil was weaponised in retaliation for American (and European) predisposition towards Israel throughout the continuous Israeli-Arab disputes after The second world war, and Arab oil manufacturers drastically cut production of the fuel, with substantial financial torment for the ‘West’, and particularly in Ireland, where inflation surpassed 11 percent.

However, naturally, like any regular 14-year-old, aside from a sense that the ‘grownups’ around me were constantly distressed and the nighttime television news brought limitless grim tidings from up North and from Vietnam, I was mainly unconcerned of the significance of all the different disputes.

My issues in late June 1973 were exclusively about the possibility of a number of weeks away in Connemara, finding out about the Irish language, tunes and culture naturally, however– more significantly– studying ladies, since the course in Coláiste Chonnacht was ‘co-ed’. I ‘d been to Irish summertime courses prior to (in Coláiste Phadraig, in Balbriggan) however, like my school, these were just for young boys, and while they were extremely satisfying and remarkably instructional– particularly for singing and soccer– I was starting to be exceptionally curious about the strange members of the only other gender that existed in those (far-off) days.

Now, it would be disingenuous to recommend I had just one thing on my mind (that came a little later), since ‘a summer season in the Gaeltacht’ in fact implied leaving house (momentarily, however for some, for the very first time), finding out to share a bed room, adjusting to the regional food (white bread, marmalade, cornflakes, 3 Counties cheese triangles, and so on), and– even prior to you got to the other gender/s– finding out to speak openly just ‘as Gaeilge’. And, naturally, there was a genuine danger of being sent out house if you were captured more than when interacting ‘as Bearla’, like the real jackeen you were thought of being.

A couple of children in fact desired this, as they came to grips with homesickness, however for the rest people, it was a mortifying possibility, since there was no refund for the valuable pounds invested by cash-strapped moms and dads on their offsprings’ cultural enhancement, and– worst of all– there was then the certainty that you would not make your launching ‘shift’ (as innocent a version of that, er, very first connection as one can think of in the procedure of engaging with the opposite sex).

Therefore, for the very first couple of days anyhow, I deported myself smartly, focused in the class, found out how to play the accordion, and engaged enthusiastically in the jigs, the reels, and the set-dancing.

The latter formed the basis for the routine, disorderly however enormously popular céilí dancing in the college halls and, to this day, I experience the very same visceral and gleeful foot-tapping response of many Irish individuals when I hear a nab of the Kesh Jig (à la the Bothy Band’s 1975 variation), Joe Cooley’s reel or Eradicate Misery (à la Gerry O’Connor on BBC Alba).

And it wasn’t simply the jumping about which I took pleasure in. It remained in Irish college that I fell for– and memorised– many tunes, like Dilín Ó Deamhas, Trasna na dTonnta, Báidín Fheilimí, and my younger celebration piece, Buachaill Ón Éirne (à la John Spillane’s variation).

On the other hand, back at the cottage, in bed in the evening, the day’s immersion in Irish concluded, my other tuition started, on Radio Luxembourg, on a small transistor which I ‘d stow away under my pillow and play as gently as it might be heard. And what lessons there were to be had in the dark.

I’m still encouraged that 1973 was the best pop-music year in my life time. That was the year when many classics were very first spoken with the similarity Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross, Elton John, Paul Simon, Jim Croce, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, The Eagles, Wings, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Rod Stewart, and Wizzard. And yes, they have actually all been going that long!

However a few of the tunes in the charts that fortnight in Spiddal stay as substantial to me as when I initially heard them, a little stifled on the medium wave frequency of 208 metres (1439 kHz). Therefore, my preferred Bowie tune stays Life on Mars? whose lyrics refer presciently to mass tourist in Ibiza and– possibly ominously– to John Lennon’s sluggish go back to approval in America after his questionable ‘We’re more popular than Jesus now’ quip in 1966 stired a spiritual reaction, which probably resulted in that Beatle’s assassination in 1980.

My then preferred least-understood Spiddal ’73 tune continues to be Lou Reeds’ Stroll on the Wild Side (produced by Bowie), which provided a remarkably ‘modern-day’ handle transgender problems, foreplay, drug-dealing and Andy Warhol’s drag queen pals, which the BBC likewise stopped working to understand at first– and therefore restriction as lots of anticipated.

And my preferred most-unforgettable tune about an older lady dispossessing a teenage young boy of his virginity has actually got to be Bobby Goldsboro’s Summer Season (The Very First Time), launched in June 1973.

The odd thing in hindsight is that I just poorly valued the genuine significance of these marvelous pop tunes initially and, similar to the other tunes I fell for that summertime in Connemara, like Stevie Marvel’s stunning You Are The Sunlight of My Life or Roberta Flack’s poignant Eliminating Me Gently with His Tune, it was everything about the ‘ambiance’ stimulated by the tune and the lyrics.

Unsurprisingly, as I reflect to those tunes using the radio on those warm mid-summer nights in 1973, I remember it as my ‘Summer season of Love’. And, yes, dear reader, I did get ‘the shift’! I nervously kissed that sweet lady, from Mount Sackville in Dublin, and we strolled hand in hand amongst the rocks, and along the beach to the pier in Spiddal, and back, innocently and consistently. And, later on, we even corresponded for a while prior to I discovered myself speeding headlong into my very first major teenager love.

However, “Jesus, Chris, your bad mom, and what she needed to tolerate!!”, was the typical remark I got in later years from pals and previous neighbours about the 2nd half of 1973, when I returned from Connemara, and suddenly changed into a crazily abundant and defiant youth, who discovered it difficult to think that his moms and dad might understand any of his ‘dreams’. After all, my ma was a much older single mom, ‘from a various period’, and her concept of an excellent night was to bring house an armful of library books to check out by the fire in our Edwardian-styled sitting space, and to warble periodically along to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, or Elgar’s The Imagine Gerontius

And in retrospection, I was ‘a problem’ (you understand, the sort of mute, long-haired young boy who disappears for days at a time, and so on).

However here’s a thing. I frequently provide talks to moms and dads about the genuine and pictured threats of teenage life, about which they constantly have much to ask.

They stress about what their kids are seeing online. Or what gangsta rap they’re listening to. So I advise them carefully: there’s no point in checking out the lyrics of the most recent Harry Styles tune (it’s the ambiance, keep in mind, not the real words).

And when it pertains to interacting with teens, I state: stop talking at them, and simply be there for them. Remember your own teenager days, smile, and let your child take pleasure in– and sustain– their own primary steps towards genuine self-reliance, be it in the Gaeltacht, if they’re fortunate, or at a celebration. And comprehend it’s constantly your behaviour, not your words, that in fact affects them in the long run, for much better or even worse. So moms and dads, act yourselves! And when it comes to Strolling on the Wild Side? I now choose the Elgar.