Four Fingers and Thirteen Toes by Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds

Author:Rosaleen Moriarty-Simmonds [Moriarty-Simmonds, Rosaleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Published: 2009-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

16.

A New Life

Here comes the Bride… and a proud Dad!

For better or worse, and things have got better and better.

Smiles all round. She’s off our hands at last!!

By 1988 the decade of the ’80s was fading away and with it memories of the scandal of the Thalidomide affair were fading also.

Writing about disabled children is an emotive subject and makes for what Fleet Street refers to as “good copy.” Writing about disabled adults is merely an unfortunate and embarrassing occurrence and, unless coupled with a newsworthy event, rarely surfaces in the media.

And by now we were all adults. The shock and horror that had greeted our appearance on the world stage had now been assuaged by the chequebook of Distillers. Blood money had exonerated them from any culpability of involvement that would, under different circumstances, have been construed as being criminally negligent. For not only were so many of us left to face a difficult existence, many others had failed to survive at all. It had been mass murder, legally condoned by government and big business.

Now the dues had been paid, justice had been seen to have been done in the eyes of the public and our stories were relegated to the minor pages, when they appeared at all. By now not only was I feeling my independence but I was busily involved in becoming even more so, for my bungalow was now available.

My truly independent life was just beginning.

I started to get the bungalow together and sorted out to meet my needs to live independently of my family. As you may imagine, it was a horrendously busy time for me. I had a full-time job and a very busy social life. One of my social activities was singing. I used to have quite a nice singing voice and would confidently sing in public. Quite often I would be asked to sing at family and friends weddings. I sang the ‘Ave Maria’ at my sister Debbie’s wedding when she married José. The irony there was that José used to tease me incessantly about my singing. (He teases everybody and anybody once he finds out what their Achilles’ heel is.) Deep down though I think he secretly enjoyed listening to me!

Usually a couple of times a week I would go to folk clubs with my good friends Mike and Tina Donovan. Mike and Gerry Nash would sing primarily, and I would do a little session at some stage during the night. Sometimes we would sing at St Peter’s social club with Frank Hennessy.

I met Mike and Tina through Mike’s sister Gail, who had been one of the helpers on the first Thalidomide Trust organised holiday that I went on. We hit it off immediately, and after the holiday, when she visited her family in Cardiff, we got together, and she introduced me to Mike and Tina, who have been firm friends since 1980. I was a bridesmaid at their wedding. I am godmother to their daughter Kerry, and Tina was one of my matrons of honour.

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