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< Expats 5 [Tony's story no.2/1] | Expats 7 [Tony's story no. 2/2] > Tony's story (part 2, page 1)
This is my school, Our Lady of Good Counsel, Mourne Road (or as it was fondly known, The Red Brick Slaughter House - it’s funny but Dublin people tend to give alternative names to places they are fond of). Other names I remember as a kid were such places as the Rats, aka the Star Cinema located in a place called Crumlin. The Leinster Cinema at Dolphins Barn was the fleapit and down the Back of the Pipes was somewhere you took your mott (a loving Dublin term for your girlfriend). As a boy I watched many western films with my young pals in cinemas like the Star and the Leinster - who can forget the Rialto Cinema, all are closed now? The Leinster and the Rialto were both situated near Dolphins Barn and I well remember the impression that Hop along Cassidy and the Lone Ranger made on me - I wanted to be one of my heroes and save the day. My favourite place to go as a boy was St. John’s Bosco Boys Club on Saturdays. Giovanni John Bosco was born in Turin around 1815 and would spend his life working with young people. He became a priest and the rest is history a great fresco of St. John Bosco still hangs in Mourne Rd. Church to this day, a saintly man indeed. Our school was the great red brick building where knowledge was dished out on a grand scale, I had many aspirations as boy at school I thought of doing great things like my boyhood heroes, men like Padraig Pearse, James Connolly and all the other brave men who fought and died so that Ireland could be free. I imagined that I would be some great Irish Explorer or be the first native Irishman to become Pope - heady days indeed.
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