Strange Stories in English Books in the 80s

Quite a bump on this thread - but I have a related question please!

Buddy of mine was asking about a story which he thinks was in the Exploring English Inter Cert book, or another school text book from the 1970s. Can't remember the title or the author, but the gist of the story is as follows:

A lad goes to Dublin Castle (or similar) for a job. When he arrives, he's told to sit in a room and wait for someone to come for him. He waits all day, but nobody comes.
He goes back the following day, this time he's prepared and brings his newspaper and sandwiches. But still nobody came.
At the end of the first week, he's sitting in the room when someone finally comes in....and hands him a wage packet!
The days pass into weeks, weeks into months......
....and he retired today, still sitting in the room!

Does it ring any bells for anyone? (sounds like a Frank O Connor, but that's just a wild guess on my part!).

Thanks!

I've been racking my brains since yesterday trying to remember the name of my readers some of those same stories came up but I was in primary school until 1994.

I had the silver lining in 5th class and the golden sunset in 6th class.
The first confession story was in one of these books. There was also another story set in dublin about a girl and her doll came to life and ran across one of the bridges along the quays they had a photo of Ormond Quay (I think) as one of pictures that accompanied the story.

Between 1st and 4th class I had the witches broom and the magic pencil. I remember that fairy ring story as well (I'm not sure if it was also in one of these books)! There was also a story about a man who kidnapped bad children and put then in a sack on his back! very strange.

My 1st class book was 'away to fairyland' there was a poem or song in the book (one of the first that i learned in school) which is the way to fairyland to fairyland I want to go to fairyland to dance by the light of the moon (we were made sing this on repetition nearly all year)

gipi wrote: »

A lad goes to Dublin Castle (or similar) for a job. When he arrives, he's told to sit in a room and wait for someone to come for him. He waits all day, but nobody comes.
He goes back the following day, this time he's prepared and brings his newspaper and sandwiches. But still nobody came.
At the end of the first week, he's sitting in the room when someone finally comes in....and hands him a wage packet!
The days pass into weeks, weeks into months......
....and he retired today, still sitting in the room!

Does it ring any bells for anyone? (sounds like a Frank O Connor, but that's just a wild guess on my part!).

Thanks!

There was a short film of that, presumably based on that story (which I haven't read). The short film, maybe only 5-10 minutes in length, is the same as above, but it's set just after Independence when the civil service is transferring to the Irish Free State, and in all the confusion, the guy gets a pay packet at the end of the week by a guy who thinks that the office he is waiting in is the interviewee's office. And then it shows him years later in the same office.

Firetrap wrote: »

Back on topic: The strangest story I came across in an English book was Trouble in the Mountains. There were two kids in it - a boy and a girl - whose dad got sent to prison for stealing sheep. It turned out that the sheep in the area were being stolen in an ambulance - after all, who would stop an ambulance to check what was inside? For a while, I suffered from the delusion that Headford in Galway (where the story was set) was a shortish distance from Dublin - in the book the two kids cycle to Aras an Uachtarain to get their dad's name cleared.

I vaguely remember something like this, though it would have been the 90s when I read it.

DublinWriter wrote: »

We also had a copy of Edin Bylton's 'Three Little Sambos' in our school library.

Our school still had Bylton's Golliwog books (this was the late 1990s). Strange thing is in my innocence I never actually realised what the Golliwogs were meant to represent, I always assumed they were just some generic fantasy creature like leprechauns or fairies.

Rainbow_brite wrote: »

Between 1st and 4th class I had the witches broom and the magic pencil. I remember that fairy ring story as well (I'm not sure if it was also in one of these books)! There was also a story about a man who kidnapped bad children and put then in a sack on his back! very strange.

IIRC The Magic Pencil was 3rd class and The Witch's Broom 4th Class. The former contained a Flat Stanley story, I found the illustrations for this story very creepy for some reason (it was the same style as those for the Irish Siúl Liom, Rith Liom, etc, series).

The great thing about school books back then was that the stories were actually entertaining, the cynical part of me imagines that today's books are full of over-PC'd drivel. Maybe I'm wrong though.

I remember a story in one book called Mr Bagman, who brought kids home to his wife to cook.

I remember The Confirmation Suit story, I think.
Had the suit "buttons the size of saucers" in the boys opinion?
His mother died later that year and he wore the hated suit to the funeral, tears streamibg down his face.

The HG Wells one about the diamonds was read in our national school. This guy perfected a way to make artificial dismonds, but needed to keep a roaring coal fire goung fir a long period to replicate the volcano like conditions necessary.
He sold everything he owned to keep buying coal, but died as the process was just sbout completed.