A Visual Narrative

Interview, record, gather, well I had no luck with getting anyone to sit and let me record them telling a story so reverted to emailing as many people as possible asking them for a story with the theme being early memory. So a few people wrote back both friends and family, what I found with most of the stories is that they were pretty short and thin. Here are a few of the responses I got.

A friends early memories

"I remember Gavin (her brother) stuck turf mould up his nose and had to go to the doctor!
Also one time I was out doing the grocery run round the country roads in dads old red volswagon van when I was about 3 and dad and gavin were discussing how the next old lady we were delivering to was really fusy. When she open the door I ran into her and said ur the fussy woman!!!!
Another time I was with the family out on the bog when I was a toddler and dad looked around to see me in the pram rolling down the slop of the hill towards a bog hole."

Another friends story

Well its one of the only childhood memories I have of living in England. I was messing with this angel ornament and i broke the head off....thought agh mums gonna kill me so I legged it into the garden to bury it!(smart thinking for a 4 yr old!) There was a boy angel ornament and girl angel, one for me and david(her twin brother).I actually think its still buried over there sumwhere and the other ornament is at home on da shelf!!

I quite liked these different stories but again thought they were a bit thin and got another story from an aunt of mine which I quite like and have heard it a thousand times and can just imagine the scene she's describing and how her and her brothers got on. It's from my dad's side of the family where there was nine of them altogether! So here's her story,

Dinner time at the Cuffes

As you know I'm the youngest of nine, six bros and two sisters and when we would have something nice for dinner (like sausage and chips) I would have to eat it quick or it would be gone, my brothers would punch me on the right arm and when I turned around to give out they would have my food gone from the plate on the left side (tramatic I know ha ha ), if they were walking past I would have to guard the plate, spread myself over the plate with my arms covering it.
Then when it was the usual dinner like spuds meat and veg (yuck) no one wanted to eat the veg so when Daddy wasnt looking I would lift some veg on my fork and flick it on to mums plate, we would keep our eye on dad the whole time our aim was great most of the time but mum was good at scraping the veg onto her plate quickly before dad saw it (derek used to do this too) mums veg would grow and grow and daddy never coped it ha ha thank god

So I'm going to run with this story, but again I feel there could be more added to it so since there was nine of them I emailed them all asking if they had anything to add?! So far so not good only one reply, from my dad (the oldest of them all)

He added:

Yea we would be saving our favourite part of our dinner till the last and sure as anything some one would snap of your fork as you were lifting it to your mouth. Pure savages.
Dad would always get the largest piece of meat and we could not understand why. Our logic was he had stopped growing and we were the ones that needed extra as we were still growing.

So from this I'm going to try and get old photographs of all nine of them I'd like to use the photographs and do some illustrations from them, struggling to get my hands on these so far, because I'm up here and the photographs are either in Galway or Westmeath but going home this weekend so fingers crossed. If all else fails I'll just make up my own illustration. And hopefully more of my aunts and uncles will reply to fill out the story a bit!