My Dad, Pat Dooner: fishing at Loch Owell, near Mullingar, Co. Westmeath. ROI.
He's the one in the mustard cardigan and knitted hat: this was taken around 1978 I'm guessing, just before he and Mom moved back to Ireland. Dad had worked for years as a school-caretaker at a 2000+ place site in Birmingham. When I decided to go into teaching he was able to offer me occasional jobs to cover absent cleaners and so on: it worked well during the vacations. Working for your Dad is a misery-he pushed me harder than any of his other colleagues, his cheery explanation was "I can't be seen to be going easy on yer." What he was doing for almost all of the time, was teaching, training and mentoring me. I was young and headstrong and didn't always appreciate the lessons.
As an Irish family we like many others, had a hard time of it as the IRA brought its campaign to the mainland. Dad took it in his stride: brushing aside the anger, mutterings and sharp words of others. Me? I decided to become over-sensitive and lay on with a vengeance anyone who insulted my Irish background. I should have known better. I'd been around enough to developed a thicker skin but had a tendency to leave it at home and put on a thinner one with narrower shoulders.
Dad used to tell me that you have to learn to "Work with people and they'll work with you," regretting his more hot-headed and "direct" approach of the past which had achieved little in achieving results and much in ensuring useless conflicts and pointless arguments. I know now that as admonished his past self he was showing me a different and better way. However, what you're shown and what you choose to see can be two different things and it was often this way.
One of the arrangements Dad came to was with the window cleaners: he'd sign off their work relatively early so that they could do their "private" rounds later in the day. It worked well, the accommodated Dad by arranging their visits to happen in the school holidays-better for everyone. They used to gather in the Boiler House, the size of the engine of a ship of fair displacement. Dad and I were about to enter the room when I heard the foreman state "Don't worry, the Duck Egg will sign us off early so we'll be all right.." This was a thin-skin/narrow shoulder day: I was white and tight lipped with rage and told my dad that I was going to " make this *&$£! eat his words," and with a restraining hand he said "Slow down you, I'll take care of this." My indignation was complete, calling Irish people Duck Eggs generally was an insult, to call my Dad one specifically was and outrage and he as far as I could tell, did nothing!
Three hours or so later he asked me to come with him to sign them off the job and I was licking my lips in anticipation. Now we would confront them and make it clear that we're not the sort of people about which you make any egg-related unconventional metaphor or simile: the Duck one particularly. But no. At the point at which they expected to be signed off to spend an afternoon privateering, my Dad pointed out that the Gym hadn't been done. So they did that and came back. He repeated the process with Science Block and the internal staircase (main). Only after the third episode and well into their additional income generation time did he sign off the job: he wrote "D.Egg" where his name should have been. Some window cleaners and a short-fused young man were taught, trained and mentored that day by a generous minded, sure footed, clear thinking expert. He died in 1999 and I miss my teacher, trainer, mentor-dad to this day
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