Not the location of my first kiss

2021

My TU Dublin fourth-year major project Not the location of my first kiss, is about memories, sometimes misremembering and mixing things up. For years I thought Andrew Skelton was the first boy to kiss me, one summer evening in the gap between the fields of Hand’s caravan park in Donabate. Recently it occurred to me that I’d had my first kiss at least three years earlier aged nine, also in a caravan park but this time in Portrane with a red-haired boy called George or Gerrard. We kissed behind a colourful striped cloth windbreaker between our caravan and the converted double-decker bus which belonged to the family of the girl that George or Gerrard went off with the following weekend.

I have concentrated on memories from the years before my first misremembered kiss. As the project is centred around childhood memories I wanted it to have a playful element. COVID-19 restrictions dictated the type of project I could attempt. The still life images were made at home in the spare bedroom and as I live in the same town I spent most of my childhood in I had access to most locations. To date most of my portraits have been very straight, I wanted these to be more constructed and have a performative element, my Mum stood in for everyone. Everything starts with a memory, from that a photograph is made and a piece of text written.

I am trying to remember what colour the roses in our front garden were, sometimes I think they were yellow, but then I’m not certain, they could have been red, or pink, maybe white, not orange.
I was in Green’s dining room and I don’t know what happened, if I laughed, or coughed, or sneezed, but a big snot came flying out of my nose and I had no hankie, I was mortified, I can’t remember what I did with it in the end!
I was six or seven when I found out about Santy, someone in the school yard must have told me, I asked my parents if it was true, my Mum was on the ladder going up into the attic and my Dad was on the landing. I got a Nookie Bear for Christmas that year.
Orla always bought cola bottles, Tanya and Susan took great delight in squishing marshmallow snowballs into each other’s hair, this usually happened after school outside Doyle’s sweet shop. Dad ate clove drops whenever he was trying to give up smoking. Mum wouldn’t let us eat Chewits in the car because of how they smelled. Granny Furlong brought us home Silvermints from her Thursday trips to Dublin on the bus. Chocolate toffee mice were my favourites.
My Gran & Grandad had an apple tree in their back garden and on special occasions, when we had dressed up, my Grandad took pictures of us under the tree.
Growing up we had some spider plants in our house and lots of cacti in the porch and a vine going up the stairs and a Mother in Law’s Tongue on the round table in the sitting room.
When I was young I wanted to be an astronaut, or maybe a vet, or a Charlie's Angel.
I remember my Granny making these fancy firelighters, but it was always my Mum that made them not my Granny at all.
There was a pub called The Travellers Rest across the road and around the corner from our house. One evening I went there with my Dad and his brother, my Uncle Brendan. Someone put Elvis’s Old Shep on the jukebox and I ran home crying, I was probably only four years old. My Mum nearly killed my Dad because I’d crossed a busy road on my own. The Mona Lisa was in the news that day too.
My Granny used to hold my hand until I fell asleep, sometimes I wouldn’t let go of her hand and she would have to sleep at the bottom of my bed.
When I was about three I was hospitalised with threatened appendicitis. I tried to leave the hospital so they put me in a straitjacket and tied me to the bed. A boy in my ward had a big bottle of Lucozade.
I had a recurring nightmare about crossing this bridge, it didn’t always look like this, sometimes it had no sides, sometimes it was very skinny, sometimes it was made of old stones. I was always on the way to school and I always woke up before I made it across to the other side.
Mum made the Christmas cake and puddings, everyone in the house had a stir of the mixture, I only liked the white icing. Dad put up the decorations, they consisted of the usual baubles, lights, and tinsel and the more unusual, two large inflatable pandas.
On the morning of my seventh birthday I opened the door to the sitting room and found a slide inside, it reached as high as the ceiling.
Someone, I can’t remember who it was, told me a horror story about a woman giving birth to kittens in the Yellow Steeple, it terrified me, I wouldn’t go near the place for years after.
A bitch is a dog, a dog is nature, nature is beautiful so thanks for the compliment. The first time someone called me a bitch was in Portrane in the house of the caravan park owner. I was friends with his daughter, she had lots of Sindy dolls and a Sindy house and jeep.