“Let’s go fishing for a dream
Let’s find some place new
Somewhere we can be ourselves
Some of the time”
Gale Paridjanian / Oliver Knights
Granda had a small farm in Dernaseill, three miles or so from Scotstown. We lived in Dundalk at the time and he would visit regularly, and as I was his first grandchild, he often took me with him to meet his old neighbours, friends and cousins. No one had lived on the farm in a very long time, certainly since before I was born. The farmhouse itself was a simple cottage with three rooms, a kitchen, which Granda referred to as the parlour, a small sitting room, and a large bedroom that at some point had been subdivided into two rooms with the addition of a wooden partition. There was a range in the kitchen and a fireplace in each of the other two rooms. There was no bathroom and no running water. There was a large barrel outside the backdoor which was always full of rainwater, fed by a drainpipe from the roof.
Granda and his brothers had built this cottage almost 100 years ago now for my great grandparents, and themselves, replacing the pre-Famine stone built cabins in the field behind that they’d all been born in.
The farm was small, less than 30 acres, and the land, although dearly loved, was poor. Potatoes were grown in the front field and cattle were raised on the rest. It couldn’t support a family, so Granda had become a factory mechanic and had moved wherever there was work. He had lived in Mullan Mills, where I later worked, in the late 40’s and early 50’s, in what is now Declan and Angela Forde’s house, before moving to Fivemiletown, where my Mum was born, to work in a linen mill, and ended up in Dundalk , working for Clarkes Shoes.
He would buy a few one year old bullocks each Spring and rear them over the Summer on the farm and sell that Winter. It wasn’t for income, it was just so that he was still connected to the family farm, and an excuse to drive to Monaghan each week and ‘ceili’ with his old neighbours.
I remember the little front hall with its red and once white tiles and the scraping sound the door made as we pushed it open. Granda would fill an old kettle from the rain barrel and light the range and boil water for our tea. While he was doing this I’d go outside along the hedge and gather up fallen twigs and small branches which he would use to light a fire in the sitting room. There was a dusty abandoned smell, added to by the bags of meal for the cattle and sacks of 10-10-20 which were kept in the kitchen. But it was dry, and on the days of our visits was our den, just for us.
Granda would have an old Jacobs ‘USA assorted’ biscuit tin, used as a lunch box, that Granny would have made up for us with sandwiches , a Lucozade bottle full of milk, an egg cup full of sugar, and some biscuits. The tin itself was magical. In those days , when everything American was held up as admirable, naming the biscuit assortment as USA implied that this is what those rich Yankees, with their streets paved with gold, their pink Cadillacs, and movie stars themselves were eating. I think it even had the phrase ‘Fancy Biscuits’ printed on the side. The one I always wanted was the round shortbread one , completely covered in chocolate with a sugared cherry jelly on top. Granny usually kept them for me, and I have a vivid memory of sitting in the cottage sittingroom , inches from the little fire we had going, slurping on a very milky tea with at least three teaspoons of sugar , and eating around the jelly cherry, saving it until the end and then holding it in my mouth and swigging a large gulp of tea and letting it all melt slowly.
We would have tea as soon as we arrived and then we would go outside and wander the farm , checking up on the cows, and inspecting the hedges. We were armed with sticks that Granda had pulled from the hedge beside the Damson trees behind the house. He used his stick to lean on and I used mine to whack the heads of thistles, and lean on whenever Granda leaned on his. We never had to look terribly hard for the cattle, as they would come running to us when they heard the rattle of the back gate when we started on our inspection/wander/adventure, and then follow us around everywhere. They were like pets really…until they went on their ‘holidays’ in the Autumn.
We’d walk to the end of the second back field which was bordered by a small river. This was the only source of water on the farm , apart from the rain barrel, and this was where the cattle watered and where we spent most time checking that it was fenced properly , so that the cattle wouldn’t wander up or downstream to a neighbours farm. If it was a sunny day, we’d take our shoes and socks off and sit on the rocks and have a good think. Granda was a great man for a moment of silent contemplation, bookended on either side with a bajillion stories about every blade of grass or stone in a hedge that we’d pass.
Satisfied that everything was in order, we’d head back to the cottage and have another cup of tea before we headed off again.
In the kitchen , to the left of the range there was a wooden press built into the wall. The bottom cupboard was for flour, porridge, dry goods, or had been , it was almost always empty. The top press was where the mugs, cups, and plates , or ‘delf’ as Granda would call them, were kept. They were a motley assortment of cups, mugs, bowls and plates that had been assembled over the years from older sets in Dundalk or further afield. They were individually wrapped in yellowing old newspaper to keep the dust off in between visits. Granda always took them down and put them back as we needed them , as I was too small to reach the press.
On one particular day he put a chair against the press and told me to take down two mugs for our tea. I took the first one down, carrying it with great solemnity, embracing my new role of trust and responsibility, placed it on the table and unwrapped it, folding the newspaper, just like Granda would do. And then I climbed back up on the chair and reached up for the next newspaper clad mug. This one was heavier, I took extra care. When I placed it on the table and slowly unwrapped it I saw a little clay face looking at me. I almost dropped it. I unwrapped it very, very slowly and stood staring at it.
It was a terracotta Sphinx.
Granda looked around, following the sound of my silence.
“Where’d you get that ?” He asked , rubbing the top of my head.
“In the press.”
“Do you know what it is ?”
“A Sphinx ?”
“Clever boy, well done.”
“Who owns it ?”
“Do you like it ?”
“Yes !”
“Then you do.”
“Really ?”
“Yes. But promise you’ll take great care of it.”
“I will. I will.”
I was 5 years old. And I had a Sphinx.
I was thrilled with myself.
I marvelled that I held a Sphinx in my very own hands.
I took it home and put it on the windowsill in my room. I don’t even remember showing it to Mum or Dad, or any of my friends. I didn’t need to show it to anyone , it was a marvel enough to me.
Moving it one day , I again almost dropped it, and catching it suddenly in the air, I heard something rattle inside. I had always been aware that there was a small hole in the base, but had never heard anything rattle before. I tried pointing a torch inside to see what it was, and manoeuvred it every which way to see if it would come out, but couldn’t.
The next time Granda collected me I asked him about it.
“Do you know what’s inside the Sphinx Granda ?”
“Inside it ?”
“Yes, something rattles inside.”
“Really ?”
“Yes. What do you think it is ?”
“Oh, I know what it is.”
“What ???”
“It’s a mystery.”
“I know that, but what is it ?”
“If I tell you it won’t be a mystery.”
I went quiet. This logic had stumped me. I was 6.
Granda then asked me what I thought it was.
“I think it’s a key.”
“To what ?”
“Treasure !”
“I think you might be right. But we have a problem.”
“What Granda ?”
“Well when it was given to me I promised I’d look after it. And I did. And then when I gave it to you , you promised that you’d look after it.”
“So what’s the problem ?”
“How could you get the key out ?”
“You’d have to…”
“”Yes.”
We drove in silence until we got as far as shop near Hackballscross and we stopped for 99’s.
I started school so my adventures with Granda became more infrequent, and I was gradually replaced with my younger brother John and my cousin, also John. It was only years later , long after Granda went to his great ceili in the sky, that I wondered what a terracotta sphinx was doing in the press of an old cottage in Monaghan. Granda had only travelled out of Ireland once , to bring his brother Ownie home from London to live with Granny and him in Fr.Murray Park in 1967, and the impression I had was that that visit hadn’t allowed time for sight seeing or souvenir collecting. The Sphinx itself seems to have once been painted black, there are little remnants of paint between it’s paws and tail. But no one else in the family has any recollection of being shown it, or aware of it.
I’ve tried reverse searching images for it, looked up catalogues of exhibitions of Tutankhamun, and not found anything like it.
I wrote a story for the kids years ago where Elliott and Robyn broke it, by accident, and there was indeed a little golden key and a map to Ezekiel’s treasure. And I have thought of stories in which what’s hidden in it is sought by various mysterious forces.
It’s my McGuffin.
For those of you unaware, a McGuffin is a plot device in a movie to cause all of the action. In Raider’s of The Lost Ark, the McGuffin is the Ark of The Covenant, but in reality it doesn’t really appear, and it’s the adventure we love. Similarly in Star Wars, the McGuffin is the plans for the Death Star, that’s what everyone is chasing, but we’re consumed by the adventure.
My favourite Alfred Hitchcock story is when he explains what a McGuffin is :
It might be a Scottish name, taken from a story about two men on a train. One man says, “What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?” And the other answers, “Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.” The first one asks, “What’s a MacGuffin?” “Well,” the other man says, “it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.” The first man says, “But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,” and the other one answers, “Well then, that’s no MacGuffin!” So you see that a MacGuffin is actually nothing at all.
But my McGuffin is very real. It’s in the press in our kitchen. It sometimes catches my eye, and I’ll go and pick it up and run my fingers over it’s smooth back, and then I’ll shake it gently , hear the dull reassuring rattle, and place it back.
I’ll think of Dernaseill and Granda, and I’m back there…for a moment in the red and white roll neck jumper Mam knitted for me, my Ladybird shorts and the crepe soled sandals Dad made in Clarkes. And I’ll smile.
My McGuffin also does time travel.
Have a great day Wunder Monkees !
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. Thanks for reading this is for you , the Ezra Collective from Glastonbury.
P.P.S. I can’t watch Raiders Of The Lost Ark anymore , it having been ruined when someone pointed out that everyone would have been much safer and better off , and the Ark wouldn’t have been found, if Indiana Jones had just stayed in class , lecturing. And after everything it’s simply hidden again.
