Public holidays. And remembering a local character.

My Spanish sister phoned yesterday. Her Spanish nephew (properly Spanish, child of her properly Spanish sister-in-law, not just Spanish by virtue os living there for forty-odd years),who has recently returned to Spain after several years working in the UK, had been complaining, she told me, because they don’t have Boxing Day in Spain. He had to go to work, whereas when he worked in England he had the day off.

My son-in-law has recently started a new job, working for Transport for Greater Manchester, and as one of the most recently appointed employees had not been able to book specific days off over the Christmas period. So he had to work on Boxing Day. Only until 4.00 in he afternoon, but still working on Boxing Day! He was also a little disgruntled, but was receiving extra payment for working anti-social hours.

The Spanish, of course, have lots of other feast days to compensate for not having Boxing Day. And then they have that habit of “making bridges” to extend the days off into the weekend if a feast day falls on a Thursday.

But I have often thought, both here and in Spain, about the people who work in bars and restaurants, as well as anything transport related, and have to work when the rest of us have days off! It always seems unfair.

Of course, for me the whole days off things is now immaterial, as all my days are days off. I do fill them up with self-imposed tasks, but that is a different matter altogether.

This morning, as most mornings, I got up and ran, this time around the village, stopping at the co-op store for milk and a couple of other items. En route I went past the local fish and chip shop, a place of some renown, as people enjoy their fish and chips. It’s a fine old building too, all black beams and whitewashed surfaces, possibly.dating back a couple of hundred years, certainly catering for shorter people than the present clientele judging by the height of the doorframe. A notice on the door said that chippy would be closed from Christmas Eve until January 4th. Jolly good for them, I thought, giving themselves a decent holiday.

Not long after I got home from my run, I received a text from my daughter, asking if I had heard that Mary from the chippy had died on  Christmas Day in the evening. Now, my daughter often gets all sorts of local news long before I do. I think she has an app on he phone, not just for national or regional news but for also local gossip. She knows when shops have been burgled and fancy cars stolen way before I do. I’m pretty sure she knows who is getting married or divorced as well.

She went on to fill me in with some background information about Mary from the Chippy, who was already an established figure in the village when we moved here in the mid 1970s. It seems that Mary was born somewhere in Ireland in 1945 and had been brought up in a Catholic orphanage. She was perhaps more fortunate, or at any rate less unfortunate, than some children in the same situation. She had musical talent, which was recognised. And so she learnt to play the violin, had singing lessons and while still of primary school age was selected to go to the United States with a group of Irish children who sang in various venues, including Carnegie Hall. She even appeared on the Ed Sullivan at the same time as a young Elvis Presley, by all accounts.

But fame and fortune were not to be her lot. By the time she was fifteen she had begged, borrowed or stolen a bicycle and run away from the orphanage. Somehow she made her way to Liverpool and then to Manchester, where she met a certain Graham. At sixteen she married him. In her late twenties they took over the chippy in Delph village and the rest in pretty much fish and chips all the way. Worse fates could have awaited her, I suppose, especially when you think of what could have been in store for a fifteen year old girl on the run.

When we moved to Delph, Mary was a slight, dark, rather fiery, gypsy-looking woman. A friend of mine once rather cruelly described her as the only woman she had ever come across who could wear designer clothes and make them look cheap. Certainly it seemed that the chippy was doing well enough to provide designer clothes. Her little daughter Grace was always immaculately turned out. And when, some fifteen years ago, Graham was diagnosed with cancer there was enough spare cash to buy him a brand VW Beetle, and again the next year, and the one after that. This was the car if his dreams and a dying man deserved to have his dreams cone true. Graham is still hanging on in there. He no longer drives a Beetle though.

Some time last year, out running, I stopped to chat with a young woman who was walking a young boxer dog. As my daughter once had a boxer I stopped to admire the dog. Boxers are very friendly and gently. The young lady commented that she had always had boxers, ever since her parents had one that lived with them above the chippy. This was Grace, all grown up, with young children at the primary school she had attended along a couple years behind mine and my rather cutting friend’s offspring. And the boxer dog from her childhood was, of course, Bruno, who used to wander the village - it was a lot quieter than and he did not run the risk of being run over as he would today. And so one of the village’s personalities has disappeared.

Will the chippy re-open on January 4th? Somehow I doubt it.