Ex-pat’s autobiography talks of tough upbringing – and terrifying Galway mum
Former standup comedian and sociology lecturer PJ McKeown has written the first volume of his autobiography about growing up In Manchester with a terrifying Galway mother in the most multicultural square mile in all of Europe.
‘My Generation: The Memoirs of a Second-Generation Irish Wimpy Kid’ is certainly not a memoir told through rose-tinted glasses.
“When it comes up in conversation about my roots, I nearly always hear the same irritating stuff. ‘Galway – oh, that is a beautiful place.’
“Well, Galway is Ireland’s second largest county, and the part of east Galway that my mum comes from is far from a scenic beauty spot. It is a run-of-the-mill agricultural location. It’s a nice enough place that I had great holidays in, visiting my relatives, but most of my relatives emigrated out of there.
“Why? Because it’s a quiet rural unemployment blackspot, not the desolate beauty of the hills rolling towards the windswept west coast,” he writes.
His mother Mary White emigrated like all six of her siblings from Windfield, near Moylough in East Galway. Her maternal grandfather was Patrick White and grandmother Bridgette Dempsey, who used to regularly send him £1 notes in Manchester.
“I thought that summers in Galway were great. We learned to make haystacks, collect eggs from the henhouse, milk cows, snag turnips. One day, I caused a stir by disappearing on the farm and Ellen found me fast asleep on top of a haystack.”
Those trips were a welcome respite from a turbulent home in Cheetham where the matriarch ruled the roost by a very violent hand.
“She had a fiery temper and would beat lumps out of us when we were kids for the smallest of things (and in my case, some pretty big things). She battered teenage daughters, teenage sons, and grown sons-in-laws and annoying neighbours. She was a powder keg. You learned at an early stage to curl up in a ball,” he writes.
Caption: PJ McKeown.
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