The Thing About December

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MOTHER ALWAYS SAID January is a lovely month. Everything starts over again in the New Year. The visitors are all finished with and you won’t see sight nor hear sound of them until next Christmas with the help of God. Before you know it you’ll see a stretch in the evenings. The calving starts in January and as each new life wobbles into the slatted house your wealth grows a little bit. It’d want to — you have to try and claw back what was squandered in December on rubbish that no one really wanted. The bit of frost kills any lingering badness. That’s the thing about January: it makes the world fresh. That’s what Mother used to say anyway, back when she used to have a lot more to say for herself.

EUGENE PENROSE and his pals were sitting on the low wall in front of the IRA memorial again. Isn’t it a fright to God to say a man can’t walk home without being tormented by yahoos every single day? A few times lately Eugene had clipped Johnsey’s heel as he walked past them and he had stumbled and nearly fallen. How could they be always there anyway? The dole is great, Mother says. It allows thugs to live like little lords. How’s it he couldn’t be a proper man, besides creeping along like a red-faced child, afraid of his own shadow, with tears of shame stinging at his eyes? Daddy wouldn’t have put up with it, that’s for sure.

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