TD 1
CHRISTINA DEMPSEY Grafton Street “I thought it wa
s candid camera because I’m always getting stung. I was like ‘jaysus are they for real?’ when I realised what was going on. They put in a letter to the Council but I think they ignored it. I don’t care. I’m all me life in here. I’m talkin’ over 200 years my family go back. It went down from me great grandmother, to grandmother, me mother to me. And there’ll be fuckin’ no one who’ll take me out. They’ll have to shoot me in the street. I’ll keep coming back. I know nothin’ else. And how could you teach a 60-year-old dog how to chase a bone? That’s not gonna happen love, nah I swear, I’ll buy grenades and all. I’ll fuckin’ whack them out of it. Men that don’t even live here are comin’ in and tellin’ us how to fuckin’ live. How dare they even have an opinion. Doesn’t matter, rich or poor, no way. As long as there’s a bit of breath in me body, it’s not gonna happen. I met a lot of famous people. I was talking to this man, a gentleman, for a half an hour. He asked me if I was cold. I said ‘ah the bleedin’ weather’d do your head in. And I told him, there’s a fella over there after takin’ your photograph, but you wanna watch cuz he might have ya in the papers as selling flowers. He just laughed and said ‘would ya like a coffee.’ I said his coat was lovely, and he asked me if I wanted it, but I was only messin. Then a fella said to me do you not know who he is and I said ‘no, I know his face but I think he drinks in the pub I’m in.’ And he goes, ‘that’s Eric Clapton!’ I think it was about six months later he lost his boy. I lost a boy through suicide ten years ago. These people think they can get to me, they can never break me but I’ve gone kind of very different because of the death of him. It took me a long while to come back out. I do love it. Even if I’m ninety, I’ll still come down. People started sending me cards, telling me to come back and do me best. And I did eventually. It was horrible coming back. The death of him wasn’t nice, I’ll never get over him. Part of me is gone. But I have his little girl, she’s fourteen now. At least I have something of him. She stays with me on the weekends. She’s a lovely little kid. I used to bring all me kids down here, they used to sit in flower buckets behind me. We used to have big boxes that we’d have hay in, and they’d fall asleep in them. They’d wake up and you’d run up, feed them, bring them down, change them, sit back, they’d be grand. Kids used to just play all round the shops. Everyone knew them. Even the police used to bring them round the police car, because he used to love the sirens. I do love it. Even if I’m ninety, I’ll still come down. Because I think when you give ‘er up, that’s when all your complications start. It’s me life, it’s all I know.” ➝ 48