Live Encounters Poetry & Writing August 2025
Same Time Tomorrow, story by Neil Brosnan.
My parents – whose home this was – could never have imagined how their bedroom would be just as warm on a January midnight as on a July afternoon. Although Dad was familiar with electricity from his workplace, Mam was highly suspicious of its arrival in her kitchen, a modern falderal that could kill you just as soon as it would boil an egg for your breakfast. With time, she became accepting of light bulbs: the fragile glass orbs could be lit or quenched at a safe distance by simply flicking an apparently innocuous switch on the wall. Grudgingly, she soon conceded that the new kettle could be safely filled and emptied once it had been unplugged, while the volume and waveband of the radio could be adjusted without having to remove the plug from the socket. The cooker, however, was a different matter, and remained the subject of extreme suspicion to the end of her days. In spite of Dad’s frequent reassurances, Mam steadfastly refused to turn her back on the appliance until whatever she was baking, boiling, frying or roasting was removed to the safety of the kitchen table, and then only after the big red switch on the wall was clicked to off.
As a pre-teen I thought her fear irrational; now, more than a half-century later, I can fully empathise: her dread of electricity was no different to my present day technophobia. While I regularly use a basic desktop computer for email and Internet, I am highly suspicious of any device with an inbuilt camera. I view smart phones, laptops, and tablets with deep misgiving; likewise, camera doorbells and CCTV systems, and the mere mention of this Alexa contraption sends a shiver scurrying up my spine. Recently, I find that I’m being increasingly discommoded by technology. Even a shopping trip to my old workplace can become a cause of utter frustration when my check-out queue is stalled by some gormless shopper’s failed attempt to effect a cashless payment with a smartphone store app. With my correct change coins pulsating in my clammy palm, I stifle an oath while the balls of my toes burrow into the insoles of my shoes. Perhaps I will mellow in time, as Mam did when embracing the magical immersion heater after Dad added the new kitchen and bathroom to their two-storey terraced home.
I now accept that it’s a generational thing. Undoubtedly, Mam’s parents would have gaped in awe at early horseless carriages, while their parents would have endured the horrors of the Irish Famine of the eighteen-forties. I have no doubt that today’s teenagers will one day be viewed with amused disbelief when they attempt to describe the Covid-19 pandemic to their descendants. Coronavirus will be to their grandchildren what tuberculosis and polio are to them, what Spanish ‘flu is to my generation, and what the Irish Famine was to our parents: just another old granny tale; and we all know that granny tales should always be taken with a pinch of salt.
All grannies are liars; they’ve been lying ever since they first became mothers – if not before – and their lies continue to make liars of subsequent generations. I became a liar at the age of five. It was the end of my first Christmas holidays; the Sunday when the priest announced the reopening of the parish’s schools. I returned from mass with Mam to find Gran drinking tea in the kitchen with her friend Mrs Lane.
“He loves it,” Gran instantly replied when Mrs Lane asked me if I liked school.
“Loves it…” Mam echoed, much to my annoyance. While I didn’t actually hate school, I can’t recall having ever claimed to like it – never mind love it!
“Aren’t you the great little scholar?” Mrs Lane smiled, handing me a red lollipop. In solidarity with Mam and Gran, I nodded, fully aware that not only was I accepting the reward under false pretences, but I had also added myself to a lengthening line of family liars – and all before my sixth birthday. Ever since, I’ve found myself questioning everything and everyone – even people whose reputations were universally accepted as being beyond reproach. Once the first seed of doubt had been sown, I found myself viewing everything from Christmas stockings and Easter eggs, to heads of cabbage and the tooth fairy through an increasingly jaundiced eye.
Whatever about the Famine and horseless carriages, the spectre of Spanish ‘flu had cast a long shadow over Gran’s life. Gran was widowed at the age of twenty-seven, when her husband succumbed to the pandemic within weeks of Mam’s birth, leaving her not only with a newborn but with seven other children under the age of ten. I can only imagine what those children’s bedtime stories were like in an era before radio and TV, at a time when books of any kind were scarce, and children’s books were as rare as hens’ teeth. If indeed there were bedtime stories, they would have been whispered through the foreboding gloom of a flickering candle, where every shadow, nook and cranny sheltered a myriad of unimaginable monsters lying in wait to wreak their havoc under the pitch-black cover of night. I wonder if those children had toys, even the familiar comfort of a grubby rag doll to cling to after the candle had been blown out. They certainly hadn’t lain awake – crammed together between flour-sack sheets, on mattresses of straw, beneath old army greatcoats – whinging and whining about cancelled playdates, forbidden smart phones, postponed First Communion parties, and deferred trips to Disneyland.
It would be many years before such words would enter the vocabulary of our street, but there were no restrictions on hugging in those days. I didn’t have to wait fifteen months to hug my granny; I could have hugged her every day – if I’d wanted to – because she lived with us. She was Mam’s mam, and when she came to live with us, Dad’s dad – whose house it actually was – had to share my bedroom. Granddad was born in the house and had attended the primary school just up the road; at the age of thirteen, joined his dad working in the tannery at the end of the street. Two further generations would find employment at that same address, albeit in vastly different occupations. After the tannery closed, the site became a preparation and storage depot for the poles required for the Electricity Supply Board’s rural electrification scheme, where Dad worked before becoming an electricity meter reader in his later years. Meanwhile, I was climbing the ranks within the supermarket chain I had joined on completing secondary school, ultimately attaining the position of assistant manager when the chain opened an outlet on the old tannery site. I’d initially intended my move back to my childhood home as an interim measure, but as Dad’s only child I felt duty-bound to remain with him after Mam’s sudden death soon after my appointment at the store.
That was when I really got to know Dad, and to like him all over again. I was surprised at how much we had in common and as I began to appreciate his wisdom, he increasingly became my main sounding board whenever a work-related issue would follow me home. I could see why some far-sighted project manager decided to promote him from tarring and creosoting seasoned poles to negotiating with landowners regarding the optimum placement of those very poles throughout the countryside.
With rural electrification finally up and running, the pole depot was shut down but instead of the dreaded form P45 received by many of his colleagues, Dad was given a ledger, a ballpoint pen, and a torch, and commenced his new career as an electricity meter reader. While the new job was cleaner and less demanding than its predecessors, it soon became clear that Dad was missing the camaraderie of his old gang. He was never been much of a pubgoer, but when I suggested he should drop into the local beside the former pole yard on a Friday evening, he readily agreed. It proved a success beyond my greatest expectations: not only was he meeting up with his old buddies but he was interacting with contemporaries from other walks of life, with a variety of interests and diverse points of view.
By the time he retired, Dad was established in a whole new social circle. It seemed that each outing brought new names and interests to our suppertime chats: a game of pitch and putt with Tom could lead to a day’s fishing with Dick or a trip to a race meeting with Harry. He was making full use of his free public travel pass, and despite my concerns for his safety, I accepted his reluctance to keep me abreast of his movements. After all, he was finally free having been in full-time employment from the age of sixteen until his retirement at sixty-six. For him, there were no gap years or travelling; for him, annual leave meant a fortnight working in his cousin’s bog to save enough turf to keep our household warm through another winter.
It wasn’t until I retired that I began to fully understand how he must have felt after he’d finally hung up his meter-reading torch. Already deprived of his daily consultations with pole-hosting landowners, the banter with his pole yard colleagues, and the sense of inclusion he had enjoyed ever since his schooldays, retirement also cost him the dignity of employment – so highly prized by his peer group. I’m sure retirement was as painful to Dad as it is pleasing to me. I see my former colleagues whenever I need a pint of milk or a loaf of bread, an avenue that was closed to Dad once the revamped electric company began to use outside contractors for network maintenance. Let sleeping dogs lie, was my motto, choosing to interpret his periods of silence as contentment, while I continued to enjoy the benefits of a live-in companion, cook and counsel.
After some years I began to notice that almost all of Dad’s social outings revolved around funerals and anniversaries. At about the same time he suggested moving into my box bedroom, allowing me to occupy the big back room where he had continued to sleep after Mam’s death. I thought it odd at the time, thinking that he might be more comfortable in the downstairs bedroom – originally the parlour – convenient to both kitchen and bathroom; thankfully, I kept my thoughts to myself. A year or two later, as the stairs became increasingly challenging, I did broach the subject of the spare room but he quickly put me in my place by telling me that he had no desire to spend his final days looking out at a weed-infested backyard.
The mention of his final days brought a smile, but the smile died one morning soon afterwards when he asked if he could accompany me to mass. I pointed out that it was Friday, that I was going to work, and then watched in horror as confusion clouded his steel-grey eyes.
“But, Daddy,” he whimpered, “your Sunday suit will get dirty at the tannery; what will Mammy say?”
At his wake, I was surprised to hear about his regular morning vigil at his box room window; the spot from where he’d seen his father walk to work, and later watched me follow the very path he himself had trodden, to both school and work, for almost seventy years, and I finally understood why he had chosen the only bedroom with a street-facing window. Most mornings, I sit here for a while after breakfast, returning the waves of giggling schoolchildren, the dutiful nods of former colleagues, and the bemused glances of passing strangers. I suppose I’ll sit here again at the same time tomorrow.
© Neil Brosnan
From Listowel, Ireland, Neil Brosnan’s short stories appear in print and electronic anthologies and magazines in Ireland, Britain, Europe, Australia, India, USA, Latin America, and Canada. A multiple Pushcart nominee, he has won The Bryan MacMahon, The Maurice Walsh, and Ireland’s Own awards, and has published two short story collections.
What an enjoyable walk down memory lane Neil, another great story. Well done!