Room to roam – but not necessarily to improve

Despite the fact that we grew up in what qualified by any standards as a fairly small house, we had two rooms in our home that we rarely went into.

We had a sitting room that might have failed to Descriptions Act because we rarely got to sit in it – and we had a rubbish room, which was perfectly named as it just stored all the stuff we no longer wanted or needed.

In the meantime, we crowded into the kitchen where there were two armchairs – not for children – and a kitchen table.

The actual kitchen was the size of two telephone boxes side by side, into which was packed a sink, shelving and cooker. The fridge didn’t fit so it stood in the hallway under the stairs.

So we – two adults and three children – effectively occupied one half of the available space in the downstairs of our family home. Because we needed one room for rubbish and the other in case anyone important should come to call.

The notion of a parlour is an age-old Irish tradition – and one, quite frankly, that makes absolutely no sense.

Why would you close off the best room in your house, elevating – or in reality, relegating – it to special occasions?

We effectively had a kitchen/diner before that became the buzz phrase for auctioneers everywhere – only ours was more henhouse than farmhouse because you couldn’t swing a cat in it.

We weren’t unique, but you wonder now where we all fitted – particularly in the summer time when relations descended on us as thought we lived in a small hotel.

Then the three bedrooms took on the appearance of a sardine can with various children topping and tailing to make sure there wasn’t an inch of space going spare in the bed.

When one turned, everyone turned – and you only hoped that the one on the outside hit the wall instead of the floor in this nocturnal equivalent of the Mexican wave.

It wasn’t just that we never felt deprived by all of this – because we weren’t – but I was passing our old house last week and I wondered what possessed my parents to further reduce out footprint in this compact semi-dee by closing off half of the downstairs to everyone but the very important or, in the case of the rubbish room, the not important at all.

Of course part of the reason it wasn’t a problem was that we were outdoors more often than inside.

We couldn’t sit around watching television all day, for two reasons – we weren’t allowed, but even if we were, RTE didn’t start until the evening, so you’d have been looking at the test card until your eyes went square.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.