Nabila Chowdhury’s Reviews > Small Things Like These > Status Update

"The times were raw but Furlong felt all the more determined to carry on, to keep his head down and stay on the right side of people, and to keep providing for his girls and see them getting on and completing their education at St Margaret’s, the only good school for girls in the town."

"The Taoiseach had signed an agreement with Thatcher over The North, and the Unionists in Belfast were out marching with drums, protesting over Dublin having any say in their affairs."

"Other times, Furlong would hear a sharp, hot whistle and laughter, which made him tense. He imagined his girls getting big and growing up, going out into that world of men. Already he’d seen men’s eyes following his girls. But some part of his mind was often tense; he could not say why."

"He’d stand at the window then with the cup in his hand, looking down at the streets and what he could see of the river, at the little bits and pieces of goings on: stray dogs out foraging for scraps in the bins; chipper bags and empty cans being rolled and blown roughly about by the driving wind and rain; stragglers from the pubs, stumbling home. Sometimes these stumbling men sang a little."

"Sometimes Furlong, seeing the girls going through the small things which needed to be done – genuflecting in the chapel or thanking a shop-keeper for the change – felt a deep, private joy that these children were his own."

"The people, for the most part, unhappily endured the weather: shop-keepers & tradesmen, men & women in the post office & the dole queue, the mart, the coffee shop and supermarket, the bingo hall, the pubs and the chipper all commented, in their own ways, on the cold & what rain had fallen, asking what was in it – and could there be something in it – for who could believe that there, again, was another raw-cold day?"

‘The Irish Republic is entitled to & hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman & Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious & civil liberty, equal rights & equal opportunities to all its citizens, & declares its resolve to pursue the happiness & prosperity of the whole nation & of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally.’
Excerpt from ‘The Proclamation of the Irish Republic’, 1916