Tell Tale Townie: A Compilation of Short Stories

This collection of short stories presents a palette of tales and anecdotes drawn primarily from the author’s experiences while growing up in an Irish midland’s town during the 1950’s. Events and situations unfold wherein innocent everyday circumstances generate paradoxical twists of confusion in the struggles to understand the complexities of the world around him - while also enabling him to poke fun at the otherworld constraints of illogical dogmatic boundaries by which society operated. Other stories are based around episodes in the author’s later life while still evoking the inconsistencies and absurdities that surround us as viewed through the lens of his own imperfections.
Athlone is a thriving Irish Midlands Town that straddles the majestic River Shannon. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s, wherein a number of the happenings in these tales are engendered, the town like most of rural Ireland, despite what would now be viewed as poverty, was characterised by post war optimism paradoxically juxtaposed alongside an amalgam of subservience under hierarchical religious domination and a hangover of Victorian moral standards.
For parents, daytime supervision of the young was not considered a priority. Children were sent outside to play and were free to roam the streets at will. The only constraints on their activities were warnings to avoid getting into trouble with authority in the form of Clergy or an ‘An Garda Síochána’ and to be home at mealtimes. Summertime employment was an economic necessity for most teenagers while for others a summer job was perhaps a form of self-supporting
occupational therapy. Between these broad tramlines there was ample scope for activities that would perhaps leave both the parents of today and those of yesteryear wondering - ‘…could they really have done that?’