Beautiful Affair

Reserved cooking water (see above)

1 Preheat the oven to 170°C/150°C fan/gas 3.

2 Put the sugars and eggs into a food processor, or use a bowl with a hand-held blender, and slowly blitz to a smooth paste.

3 Add the orange pieces and blitz.

4 Add the almonds and baking powder, and blitz again.

5 Pour into a 26cm cake tin lined with baking parchment and bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Check with a skewer to ensure it’s cooked in the middle (the skewer will come out clean).

6 Meanwhile make the syrup. Stir to dissolve the caster sugar in the cooking water and boil for approximately 20 minutes.

7 Pour the syrup over the cooling cake while still in the tin. Allow to soak in and cool before turning it out onto a plate.

For a cake with more moisture:

Zest and juice a third orange and add to the cooking water with the 150g of sugar. Boil for 20 minutes or so, until you have a syrup, and drizzle this on top sparingly (save some of the boiled zest for decoration). Simply dry the zest on kitchen paper and sprinkle on top once the cake has cooled.

THE SCULLERY AND THE STAGE

Our kitchen, the scullery, was a tiny room barely ten by eight feet that housed a sink, table top and stock cupboards. All hot food was cooked on the range in the living room. After a few years Mum somehow added a hob into that tiny spot. Historically, the scullery was a room in the depths of the great mansions that was used for washing dishes and the landlord’s dirty clothes. My mum somehow managed to feed a small nation from that room. A curtain divided the scullery from a living room, the hub of many Hanrahan activities. There we drank early-morning milky egg whips, and ate breakfast, lunch and tea around a large adjustable table. Saturday dining was flexible but Sunday was the full show, a roast followed by a dessert of homemade jelly with ripple ice cream or Mum’s delicious trifle.

In the evenings after tea, a light meal, we had a group huddle around the Philips valve radio, which soon gave way to the Bush television. That room also hosted the All-Star Hanrahan Family Revue, a concert performance for visiting relatives and friends, with each of us lined up for curtain call to perform our party piece. We all played an instrument or danced, so every available space in the house was taken for practice for our many musical endeavours. Mam and Dad were very much associated with Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, an organisation founded in the 1950s to preserve Irish culture and music. They attended local meetings and assisted at all local fleadhs, with my mother and her friends making hundreds of sandwiches, and Dad along with his mates preparing and cleaning halls and rooms for performance or competition. I sang and played tin whistle with my brothers Joe, Kieran, Ger and a couple of other neighbours in the St Michael’s Céilí Band, performing at charity and village variety concerts. My sisters Gay and Jean along with other neighbours provided the dancing spectacle. Once a week we had music lessons with the great Frank Custy at the national school in Toonagh, where I won my first and only Fleadh Cheoil medal for singing the ballad ‘Kevin Barry’. I must have been only eleven or twelve. One summer, the carnival came to town and we all entered the talent contest. One by one they went to the podium, belting out reels, jigs and hornpipes at a very high standard. I went up and blurted out a rickety version of ‘Lily the Pink’ and took the crown – well, a shilling, but it was as good as any crown to me. My very talented brothers and friends were not at all amused.

PRAY FOR US

The living room was also a central room of prayer under the watchful eyes of the Sacred Heart, the child of Prague, the mother of Perpetual Succour and the Lord himself staring down from his crucifix. Every night we knelt to recite the longest Rosary in the history of the Catholic Church, with Hail Mary, Holy Mary, Hail Mary, Holy Mary, followed by the Glory Be into a litany of add-ons that included Prayers for the Faithful, blessings for the departed, those suffering sickness or hospitalised, relatives starting new jobs, sitting exams or heading off to foreign shores. We counted down the various mysteries on our fingers, keeping our eyes tightly shut to avoid any sibling contact for fear of the giggles and Dad’s severe reprimand. The Angelus bells were respected twice a day, everything stopped as we recited a special Angelus prayer, and we always did the First Friday, a devotion that required you to attend Mass and receive Communion on nine consecutive First Fridays of the month. Miss one, and you had to start it all over again. Rewards included a ticket to eternal life, a peaceful home, comfort in affliction, mercy and a guarantee of grace, glory and sanctity in death. It was a heavenly-brownie-point feast day. I served as an altar boy for the Franciscan Friary and the Poor Clares, an enclosed monastery of beautifully serene, pious and, frankly, adorable nuns. They lived their lives behind mesh walls tending their little farm and they showered us with their love, smiles and, after every Christmas and Easter midnight Mass, with sweets and chocolate. My favourite religious service was evening benediction with its Latin prayers, beautiful hymns and the swinging of the thurible with its sweet scent of incense and charcoal.

PORK CHOPS AND A CUPPA

Beneath the Sacred Heart of Jesus was our Stanley range, which was constantly on the go to produce the most amazing stews, roasts and Mum’s famous pork chops. I loved her pork chops. After a slow pan-fry, she added sliced onions and a cup of leaf tea and allowed them to simmer for a while. It was a recipe passed down from her own mother, who maintained that it added flavour, keeping the pork moist while creating its own very distinct gravy. It was succulent, tasty and legendary. I always thought it was a family dish, and when I suggested Mum’s method recently in reply to a recipe query on Twitter, the reaction was overwhelming. Turns out there’s an ancient tradition of tea-brining, with a definite historic link to Ireland and Scotland.

DAD

Firefighter won’t you come and take my pain away,

Firefighter bring me water, dampen down the flame.

– ‘Firefighter’, What You Know (2002)

My dad, Jackie Hanrahan, was a powerful influence on my life, his great strengths being his solid character, great sense of humour and unyielding commitment to his wife and family. My parents shared a very deep love that certainly bound us all together as a family. I have often wondered how they remained intact through all the difficulties and pressures of raising eight children. I cannot recall ever hearing my mother and father argue or show disrespect to each other. If they did, it occurred in the dead of night, far away from our young eyes and ears.

He worked for the Clare County Council, initially in the supply stores and then as manager of the Ennis swimming pool, which was a great addition to the town and to our lives. We practically grew up in the water and came to be known to some as ‘the Cousteaus’. Our instructor was Dad’s great friend Tom Finnegan, who was the size of four very large men. To pass through the grades in water safety, you had to rescue him from the deep end of the pool. As you approached, he splashed, reached out his long arm, grabbed your tiny head in his hand and held you firmly underwater for seconds, raised you aloft and pronounced ‘Failed!’ before sending you back for another attempt. This went on until he was convinced that you had conquered the fear of approach, could swim round him and grab him from behind. He was a superb teacher who helped many of us to become very capable swimmers.

My father smoked a lot but never drank. At sixteen he was caught drinking at a neighbour’s house party and a horrible uncle force-fed him beer slops until his face turned green. Some uncle! Dad never drank again, although in his last few months he confided that he sometimes regretted not going for a few pints with his family.

Dad was a home bird, and especially loved the garden, and most of all his shed. His shed housed everything imaginable for DIY, and was a great source of peace and fulfilment for him. One year, he made nine Christmas stables, one for each of the family, with hazel sticks collected from the crag at the back of our house. He painstakingly cut hundreds of sticks to size, fixed them side by side to form three walls, made a roof and thatched it. Each stable measured two feet by one foot with straw scattered on a flat sheeted floor, peopled with a set of religious figurines. A coloured bulb was pushed through the back wall with a lead and plug hidden from view. They were works of incredible patience, and without doubt the most beautiful Christmas gift I have ever received – and I a very lapsed Catholic.

When I was a kid, he helped my brother Kieran and friend Vinny McMahon to build a wooden table soccer game. As kids we often called to Carmel Healey’s games room in town, and as Kieran had become quite the champion, he had taken the notion to build his own for home practice. Dad built the wooden stadium from a sheet of plywood, measured to perfection, with two goalkeepers and twenty outfielders all made from half-inch heavy black tubing, fixed firmly to wooden rods fed through holes perfectly measured on the table walls. Two goal mouths completed the scene. A box of table tennis balls gave the neighbourhood many great days of entertainment, and the very enterprising Kieran and Vinnie made a small fortune by charging everyone a penny a game.

I spent a lot of time in the garden with Dad, growing spuds, cabbages, carrots, rhubarb, lettuce and spring onions, forever planning for the following year. I read a gardening magazine piece on how to grow the perfect carrot by sifting all pebbles from the ground to allow the carrot free passage to grow to perfection, so I suggested it to Dad. I knew by the ‘Oh holy God’ look on his face what he really thought, but he replied, ‘Whatever you think yourself, away with you a stór (a beautiful Clare term of endearment). I’ll get the screed, and you can start sifting away.’

I dug the appointed plot and painstakingly sifted about a square metre area free of all pebbles and rocks. I was exhausted, but I think Dad was even more exhausted looking at me. However, my efforts were rewarded with perfectly straight carrots – which tasted exactly the same as regular ones. I think I missed the rugged shape of the old carrots, so the following year we reverted to the traditional method, stones and all. I have come to really appreciate and understand his attitude, and what stayed with me from my life with him was his constant encouragement to follow an idea or a dream. He never saw any harm in attempting the impossible, even if it meant spending needless hours and hours sifting pebbles from a patch of ground. It was all about making the effort and doing your best.

At twelve I started playing my brother Ger’s nylon-strung guitar. A young Franciscan priest, Pat Coogan, had recently arrived in Ennis and was playing soccer with our local team, St Michael’s FC. He played guitar and gave me my first lesson. One day, I sat down on my bed and heard a crack: I’d shattered my guitar. To the day he died, Dad was convinced that I did it on purpose to get myself a better instrument. I denied it at the time, but in hindsight he may have been right because I’d had my eye on an Egmond steel-string guitar in Tierney’s music shop. I eventually bought the guitar, along with my first Leonard Cohen album and book of songs. I was besotted with Cohen and started teaching myself his guitar technique from a system included in the songbook. Every day after that I flew through homework to get to my bedroom to sing his songs. After about six songs, Dad would shout up, ‘Have you learned that song yet, Mikie?’ Yeah, Dad, thanks … You just don’t understand.

Despite the monotony, his encouragement never waned, and I even heard him reassure a mother distraught to hear that her son wanted to become a professional musician: ‘Sure, Mary, as long as he has a guitar on his back, he won’t go hungry.’

STRAUSS AND THE TULLA CÉILÍ BAND

When we were very young Dad bought a Philips record player and the most curious, eclectic collection of records imaginable. There was Strauss with the shimmering strings of ‘The Blue Danube’, the Tulla Céilí Band, the Dubliners with ‘Waxie’s Dargle’, Larry Cunningham, Donal Donnelly, Tom Jones, Doris Day, the Kilfenora Céilí Band and the Beatles. Our first record player was a turquoise blue, portable foldaway that looked like a suitcase. It had a turntable, a three-way speed switch for singles, albums and old 78s, two buttons, one for on/off and the other for volume, but that little box created the most incredible sounds that filled the entire house. I can still hear ‘Take me back to the Black Hills, the Black Hills of Dakota’ from Doris Day, with my mum’s beautiful soft voice singing along. Later, Dad bought a very fancy console-style stereo all in one, with radio, turntable, storage racks and speakers encased in a beautiful mahogany cabinet. Our record players were hardly ever silent and our record collection grew every week.

THE SUMMER JOBS

As soon as we reached our teenage years, we found gainful part-time employment at various shops in the town. I worked at Morgan McInerney’s hardware store in the market square, which sold everything from teapots to bags of cement. I was entitled to a staff discount, so all birthday and Christmas gifts carried a hardware theme. Mum’s were usually kitchen gadgets: a four-egg poaching pan complete with lid; a fancy cheese grater; a tomato slicer that required extra-special skills to avoid slicing fingers; and Dad’s favourite kitchen mate, the potato chipper, which he used every Saturday for our eagerly anticipated special treat. He loved that chipper, and we devoured each and every equally-sized chip it cut, the smell rising from the sizzling basket of Mazola oil, chips drained and sprinkled with salt, soaked in malt vinegar and served up with a good dollop of ketchup. Now that’s a food memory that’s hard to beat – unless you add a soft-fried egg.

Going to work at an early age was good for us, and my mum was delighted with the extra few bob. We worked all summer, Christmas, Easter and every Saturday during school terms. My brothers Joe and Adrian also worked at the hardware store, and Ger and Kieran worked in a shoe shop, which made runners the thing for Christmas morning. My poor sisters Gay and Jean were confined to barracks-cleaning and sweeping the homestead.

Work was not at all taxing as I recall. I spent much of my time tidying the many stores of cement, timber, paint and plumbing pipes. On Saturdays I had to polish and shine the proprietor Jack Daly’s silver Jaguar, and to this day I still want to own my own Jag. The rest of the day was spent serving behind the counter, or running errands for the staff, which took me to various locations around the town. One day I was taken by Mr Daly to see Joe Leyden, who had called in sick. Joe was a simple man who did odd jobs around the shop and spent the rest of his days sitting at the Daniel O’Connell monument in the middle of the town, watching the world go by. As we entered his house on Parnell Street a darkness like no other engulfed us. Mr Daly threw open the curtains and as my eyes readjusted, I reeled at the sight: hundreds of old newspapers piled high on an earthen cottage floor, a table in the corner with books, empty bottles, teacups and a vase of faded flowers. The kitchen was full of unwashed dishes and yet more newspapers and magazines. An open door led us to a bedroom where Joe lay moaning in pain. He was later moved to hospital and recovered to live another day.

Years later that visit was the inspiration for ‘Indians and Aliens’, a song about a very misunderstood young man who read accounts of the Trail of Tears march of American-Indian tribespeople across rough terrain that left many dead along the way, and of the massacre of the Lakota at Wounded Knee by the US Army. In a rage, he returned to his schoolhouse, a metaphor for those who instilled in him a deep-seated prejudice against the Indian nations. He burned it to the ground, and society, rather than seek to understand his troubled mind, shunned him and forced him into an institution. Joe, like the character in the song, was very misunderstood, and bore the brunt of many jibes from locals, young and old. I often wondered what went on in his mind as he sat on the monument looking down on the town. Many of us can relate to a degree; I was also that boy burning down the schoolhouse by the river. Mine had controlled my world through religious doctrine and fervour.

He was a simple man who loved Star Wars and John Wayne,

Lived in a little house, a little down and out, but that was his way.

Nightmared on Geronimo and the Empires of Doom

All alone in a little town, all he ever knew

Was Indians and aliens, Indians and aliens, coming for me and you.

– ‘Indians and Aliens’, What You Know (2002)

ARE YOU RIGHT THERE, MICHAEL, ARE YOU RIGHT?

On Sundays we jumped on an early bus to seaside Lahinch, which lies between Ennistymon and the majestic Cliffs of Moher. These days its ferocious waves attract thousands of surfers who want to test their skills on tough Atlantic breakers all year long. When we were kids, the great attractions were an amusement park of chair-o-planes, high swings, bumper cars, carousels and an outdoor swimming pool with a diving board that reached way up into the sky. The beach stretched for miles, and we crept through myriad sand dunes to spy on kissing couples. We ate boiled periwinkles and dried sea grass served in little chip bags from the vendors on the promenade, or instead settled on burgers and ice creams at the entertainment and games centre across the street.

THE BALLROOM OF ROMANCE

At weekends my dad collected tickets at the local dance hall, Paddy Con’s, later the Jet Club. The hall now operates as Madden’s furniture shop, and Michele Madden and her daughters protect the history and heritage of the building with pride and dedication. Its balconies, stage and heavily sprung hardwood floor are still intact. The memories come flooding back every time I stroll from balcony to floor, feigning an avid interest in some nest of tables or chaise longue on display. As I climb the stairs to the stage, I inhale a welcome breath of nostalgia – but I never feel alone, as I’m well aware that some of Madden’s other customers are doing the very same, soaking up the energy that lingers from this once vibrant ballroom of romance. I often helped Dad sweep the floors, stack chairs or clear out the dressing rooms, and constantly badgered him to bring me along to meet the bands as they arrived for the evening show. I remember meeting Butch Moore the year after he represented Ireland at the Eurovision Song Contest singing ‘Walking the Streets in the Rain’. I met all the stars of the day, Larry Cunningham, Brendan Bowyer, Dickie Rock, Margo, the Clipper Carlton, Gerry and the High-Lows, the Drifters, the Miami, the Cadets, the Premier Aces and my favourite of all, the Cotton Mill Boys. Of all the people I saw perform there, fiddler Sean McGuire stands apart. I still remember his breathtaking versions of ‘Hungarian Gypsy Rhapsody’ and ‘The Mason’s Apron’. I met him many times in later years and realised a dream when we shared a stage and a few tunes at the Ulster Hall in Belfast.

reproduced with kind permission of the Clare Champion

All I ever wanted was to be up there on that high stage. Whenever I call in to check out the latest furniture deals, I close my eyes and see a crowded hall, a sparkling mirror-ball casting its glitter across a pulsating dance floor. I can still feel that sinking sensation when a beautiful girl refuses or ignores your invitation to dance, or worse, when your pal beats you to the chase. As a young teenager I would play that hall on many occasions in a rock band called Effigy, and those nights at Paddy Cons ignited a flame within me that still burns.

THE GARDEN OF ROSES