What kind of childhood did you have?

Latchy

When I saw the thread title it reminded me of that quote by Frank McCourt '' Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. '':pac:

Now while I could not say my childhood was miserable ,there there are some points in that quote that am sure a lot of Irish people ( post celtic tiger days ) can relate and pick the bones out of that quote .:pac:

I tend to have a romantic view of my childhood growing up in Dublin if only because it's easier on the head and memory to remember the good bits as opposed to the not so good and below would be a quick look back at moine from 5 to about 15 years of age

watching our regular window cleaner who hail rain or shine, never missed a saturday in years , lying in bed listening to church bells ringing out on sunday morning, dreading going to school on wet monday mornings for fear of not having homework '' eccer '' done correctly ,pompous priests and christain brothers , the English and the terrible things they did to us for eight hundred long years, collecting blackberrys on summer afternoons along country fields in south county Dublin ( before disappearing to be replaced by housing estates ) finding grasshoppers and climbing the wellington monument in the Phoenix park , swimming up in the 7th lock canal up near Clondalkin , discovering girls /spin the bottle , day trips up to Newry with school , visting famly friends in co Wicklow and grandparents on their isolated cottage near Mitchelstown co Cork and the smells senses and taste of their food ( butter , bread , milk , eggs ) which was all home produced , Camping and sometimes sleeping in hay barns down in Enniskerry ,visting Kilmainham jail , the museam , art gallery and the zoo ...to name a few places ( for the upteenth time ) pinching apples from orchards , day trips out to Seapoint , Blackrock baths , Portmarnock and Malahide , radio .... discovering the joys of music and the many varietys there were out there ( folk and ballad sessions were popular pastimes at birthdays ) reading for pleasure as opposed to a chore ,discovering later than most kids that '' you weren't to bad at the ol football '' meeting Dubliner Luke Kelly , rejecting somebody who was really lovely .....being rejected ( having to go through pain of one to understand the other ) mums home cooking ( ahhh that smell still lingers ) feeling loved , being told off for some misdemeanor, going to first football match at dalymount park and thinking it was Wembley ( to a small kid it looked like ) discovering at an early age that you could read people /other kids and their auras quite well ( and sometimes they you ) being at one with oneself surroundings and nature ( my romantic spiritual view but also true ) trying to please adults as best I could so as to be excepted more ( only to find no matter what , not all adults are nice and excepting ....wake up call :pac:) building a tree house in a friends back garden which was still there for years afterwards , brothers and sisters ,their likes and dislikes and hearing '' come and get it when the eldest cooked a family meal .....could add much more am sure

barbarians

Colt Rapid Statute wrote: »

Not the way you tell it anyway!.

Domestic problems.
Mum and Dad separated.Mum and Dad divorced.Dad started going out with former babysitter.Dad got babysitter pregnant.

The drama isn't finished yet either.

prinz

The kind of childhood that has made me look back in the years since and wonder how my parents managed it. Raise a glass to them I say.

ascanbe

Jumpers for goalposts, isn't it?

Ghost Estate

In my day, we didnt even have scratch!