13 Childhood Memories That All Culchies Will Never Forget

There's a certain type of person that the country produces, they stand apart from townies. Though there is a bit of variation, most will share the same childhood memories.

1. Hopping across bales of silage

When the silage was wrapped in black plastic and formed into large barrel shaped bales they suddenly became the best obstacle course any young child could hope for. Eventually, disaster would strike and some poor child would fall down between them and be stuck there till an adult pulled them out.

2. Getting to ride on the bale trailer

Stacked high with hay, the bale trailer looked like a moving castle to your young eyes, few things beat the heady sensation of sitting on top of it. You felt like you were perched hundreds of feet in the air; in reality you were probably only about eight foot up.

3. Pet lambs

Pet lambs were a high point of the year, every spring there'd be a couple frolicking about. The little woolly creatures were a source of joy, they were every thing weren't; cute, playful, and vaguely interesting. A special treat was always to be allowed to feed them.

You'd bond with them, becoming fast friends. At least until the male lambs hit puberty, got aggressive, and head butted you into the dirt.

4. The trek into the nearest town was an odyssey

Your mates from town had it easy, they could simply roll out of town and shamble over to the shopping centre. You however had to arise at the crack of dawn, trudge what must have been 10 miles to the bus stop where you would then wait for hours for the bus. When it finally arrived (20 minutes late) it would take an age to finally get into town. All this could have been time spent hanging out by the food court in town.

5. Helping take the cattle in

There are two main techniques to taking the cattle in: 1) a proactive and efficient method where you assertively drive the cattle ahead of you.
2) A half-hearted arm wave as you stand there bored in your wellies, wondering how long it will be until you can go back inside and watch Neighbours.

6. The awful reception

Due to being deep in the styx any form of broadcast reception is a luxury.

Unless your parents decided to splash out on a Chorus box, you were cursed to having only the RTEs and, if you're lucky, TV3 to watch.

Mobile reception didn't fare much better, you'd be lucky if there was one room I'm your house that you could make a half decent call from.

Finally, many of you still don't have internet in the down-home.

7. You are or know someone who turned up in a cattle trailer to the debs

For rural schools there always seems to be a cadre of people willing to clamber in a (obviously cleaned out) cattle trailer and be hauled to their debs by a tractor.

Women in glamorous dresses, and ruddy-faced men with semi-tucked shirts disembarking from a hastily polished trailer is a sight to behold.

8. Not fully understanding public transport

Public transport is patchy at best in the country, there may be three busses a day and you WILL be on first name basis with the driver. When you finally get up to the big schmoke you'll be baffled by the trains, busses and Luas lines.

9. Slipping on cow pats

Cow pats are the only material known to man that completely nullify friction. Any sojourn across a field was a veritable minefield.

10. The long wait for your parents to finish talking to the parish outside after mass

For some reason outside after mass was the defacto parish meeting. Standing bored in the cold for upwards to 40 minutes while your parents talked about fields. You just wanted to get home and watch Freakazoid

11. Popping over to the neighbours sometimes often meant a 10 minute walk

Visiting the neighbours was no small feat. In town it was a simple as hopping a wall, but for the rural children it meant pulling on your walking shoes and embarking on a 10 minute trudge down some narrow country road.

12. Wellies

Wellies came into vogue with the festival craze, but countryside alumni knew the joy of knee-high rubber boots long before then. They were practically a necessity, a messy pile of wellies just inside the front door was a telltale sign of a truly cloche home.

13. The savagery of chickens

If you have a chicken coop around the back of your gaff then you know that chickens are composed entirely of feathers, nuggets, and fury.

You can routinely see chickens squabbling and pecking at each other, they seem to only have ire in their avian hearts. Sometimes, seemingly for fun, they gang up on a smaller chicken and peck it to shreds. The horror...