FURTHERMORE
By Gerry Moran
I loved being sick when I was young, when I was maybe 12 and in 6th class in Primary School. And I loved being sick for a three reasons: one, I didn’t have to go to school and school was tough. We had a Brother Grennan, known as ‘Jack’ because of his resemblance to the actor Jack Palance who was a tall, fierce-looking man. ‘Jack’ Grennan was equally as tall and as fierce, more fierce when he was wielding the leather, a constant occurrence (and you’ll understand that I wasn’t always as sick as I made myself out to be),
• Another reason why I liked being sick was because of the attention I got from my mother. The youngest of five the love was spread equally around but when confined to the sick bed you definitely got a lot more TLC. Egg-flips (a whipped raw egg in hot milk), beans on toast, scrambled eggs, bowls of chicken soup, mugs of sweet, hot tea were the staple diet. Comfort food at its best. Comfort food that I still resort to (except for the egg-flips. Yuch).
• The third reason why I liked being sick was because of the Reader’s Digest! On a bookshelf in the bedroom that I shared with my brother John (nine years older than me) was a row of Reader’s Digests and I liked nothing better while lolling in my sick bed than to browse through those periodicals.
• Indeed I’d say that I learned as much from those Reader’s Digests as I did at school. I learned about famous people in articles entitled: My Most Unforgettable Character, I learned about the human body in such articles as I Am John‘s Heart, I am John’s Liver etc. And I got a giggle, or two, out of: Laughter The Best Medicine. I even developed my vocabulary as I struggled with It Pays to Increase Your Word Power. .
• And so, dear readers, you will understand my affection for the Reader’s Digest. Indeed, all of our family dipped into its pages; furthermore, my oldest sister Frances, as a Christmas present, always got me a subscription to the Digest until it discontinued Irish subscriptions and I had the monthly copy put aside in the Book Centre.
• And it was in a copy of the Digest, some while back, that I saw they had a Poetry Page and were seeking submissions. I duly submitted a poem and was delighted to receive a reply that the Digest would publish my poem in the June 2024 issue and would pay £30. I was delighted: delighted above all because of my ‘emotional attachment’, so to speak, to the Digest.
• And so I waited patiently for the June issue of the Digest to appear in the Book Centre. June came and went and I duly asked the ever helpful Debbie about the delay. Debbie graciously googled and informed me that after 86 years (the first UK edition came out in 1938, the first American edition, where it originated, was in 1922) the Reader’s Digest had ceased publication! I could not believe it. I was shocked.
• Three months on and I am still in a state of disbelief. My favourite periodical, the periodical I grew up with, that educated me – gone to the wall. And my poem gone with it! I may well need therapy to get over this.
• In the meantime, here’s that poem which, like the
• Reader’s Digest, I have a huge ‘emotional attachment’ to, a framed copy of which graces the sitting room wall of my son‘s home in Wales, while another copy hangs in my youngest son’s apartment in Berlin.
• Lunch with my sons
• Students, the two of them
• Pale-faced, dishevelled
• Living on take-aways
• Tinned beans
• And God knows
• What junk.
• But not today.
• Today in a plush hotel
• We plunder the carvery:
• Slabs of rare roast beef
• Mounds of carrots
• Mountains of spuds
• And some coleslaw
• Just for good measure.
• We chew and chaw
• Munch and crunch
• Gulp minerals and beer
• We don’t say much
• Say little at all.
• Perfect.
