Sometime in the fifties,when I was quite a young child, my father decided that as a family we were spending more than he was earning, and he took the step of taking us all to one side, there were seven of us, ranging in age from about fourteen to me, at five, and announced that we were going to have to go on an economy drive.
I remember clearly feeling quite excited, convinced that this drive, given the portentous method it was being delivered, would be rather more exciting than a Sunday afternoon drive.
When it was explained that this particular drive was not a pleasure trip I then succeeded (in a particularly pious, and uncharicteristic, moment of insufferable priggishness) in endearing my self to my father by offering to take a 50% drop in pocket money, that is go from a shilling to six pence, to help in the same drive.
History doesn’t tell whether the offer was accepted or not, but my father always remembered and would recall it fondly in his cups.
It marked, I have no doubt, a high point in our relationship.
Another moment of childhood miscomprehension happened at much the same time in Cork.
We lived in a house up over the Lee and over the main road to Dublin and the East known as the Lower Glanmire Road, this was where we took our constitutional walks.
The future arrived in Cork in the fifties and it was decided that this main artery should be upgraded.
They decided to make a dual carriageway of the first few miles of its length out of Cork. That this was a moment of much importance was obvious by the way the grown ups bandied the new term around knowledgeably.
I of course completely misunderstood.
I remember being very disappointed the first time we were brought down the new road.
I then realised that a Dual Carriageway just meant a road with a hedge down the middle and not a glorious road strewn with emeralds and rubies which was what I had imagined a Jewel Carriageway to be.