My Dad
Ann Traynor
© Copyright 2025 by Ann Traynor
My DadAnn Traynor © Copyright 2025 by Ann Traynor |
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My dad Tommy Traynor was a man full of fun and popular with everyone who knew him. During my childhood in Kilburn in London he seemed to know everyone in the large Irish population. It was impossible to walk along Kilburn High Road with him without being stopped for a chat by almost everyone and there were always plenty of invitations to come in for a drink in one of the many Irish pubs along the route. Years later his grandchildren had the same experience.
He wasn’t a tall man – maybe 5ft 9ins - but you couldn’t fail to notice him in a room full of people. His head of wild, wavy dark hair, his cheeky grin and twinkling blue eyes meant he stood out in a crowd without ever deliberately pushing himself forward. As he moved around a room previously subdued groups of people would be laughing and talking with him and each other. He was always good for the craic and could poke fun at all around him without ever offending or upsetting anyone. In old age the hair turned white but there was still a great shock of it – giving him an eccentric air that suited his personality well. He would dress smartly for occasions and for Sunday mass but the rest of the time it would be a shirt opened at the neck and often with sleeves rolled up and maybe a baggy cardigan in the winter. He saw no need to dress to impress and was just as likely to use a length of twine to hold his trousers up if this came to hand before a belt.
Tommy was born in the village of Shercock, County Cavan in 1918. “Wee Tommy Jo” was not even two years old when his father, also Thomas, died. My grandmother, Mary Anne, also had a barely three-year-old, Birdie, and was pregnant with her third child, Julia. Hence my dad was raised by his aunt and uncle with his 10 cousins at the family farm just outside the village. These were double first cousins as two brothers (Thomas and Frank Traynor) had married two sisters (Mary Anne and Julia Lennon). To my dad his cousins were like siblings. Farming was hard work in those days and Tommy grew up tending sheep, cattle and pigs and ploughing fields but the greatest love for all the Traynors was horses and that is still true in the family today. Tommy was just 17 when he left home. After a brief spell working in Dublin Birdie sent him the fare and he got the boat to England. At first he stayed with his sister in Leicester in the English Midlands .
He found work immediately in spite of the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was grueling and dangerous. He worked 60 or 65 hours a week for a very low wage. His job was tending and cleaning grease from huge machines in an engineering factory.
He recalled those times when in 1993 he was selected as an ideal person to contribute to a project on the theme of Irish Emigration to Britain. I will let him continue the story in his own words from a transcript of the recordings:
“I left there then and started working on the buildings, roaming around from one place to the other with Laings and Wimpeys and McAlpines (construction firms). I worked on the big tunnels where there was thousands and thousands of Irishmen there. Majority of them living rough as well. They all had nicknames, you see, whether it was army reasons or hopping from job to job. You were set. Anybody could work then. Nearly all Irish.”
“When I moved to London there was a big Irish population. A noted Irish spot was the Bamba dancehall in Kilburn. The dances continued all through the war though they had to be cancelled sometimes because of the air raids.”
His work was still mostly on the buildings and there were also private jobs. Carpentry, plastering. painting and decorating or gardening jobs. By now my dad had picked up many skills and would turn his hand to anything.
He was sometimes called to the home of famous British actor Peter Sellers to carry out handyman jobs.
Sadly Peter Sellers often fell prey to depression and low mood and my dad told me that he believed sometimes the actor would call him out although there seemed very little work to be done. I remember my dad saying: “Really he just needed cheering up.” It was hard for anyone to stay miserable with Tommy Traynor around.
He mostly stayed with Birdie and her husband Peter who lived just off Kilburn High Road until he married my Mum, Kathleen.
In the transcript he also told how they met:
“Then I got married to a Kerry girl from near Killorglin. I met her coming along the road with another girl I knew from the Bamba. Kathleen was only over, that was her first day she was over from Ireland. That was only the first day she landed, you see.”
My mum and dad went to the dance at the Bamba that night and went on to marry and have us three children - my brother, myself and my sister. There are now three grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
The marriage was a happy one. My mum had fallen for my dad because he never failed to make her laugh.
On one occasion she was lamenting the fact that her rose bush refused to bloom. My dad always had a solution … he found a stash of plastic roses and inserted them through the bush. These blooms stayed there for many years. Just as well because the real roses never appeared!
Raising his family in Kilburn also saw tough times. I was born in the one room they rented and they already had my brother, who was two years old. Accommodation was hard to come by for the Irish in the days when landladies put up notices saying: ‘No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs’.
By then Tommy was running his own decorating business but gave that up when he was given the chance to take a caretaking (janitor) job at the local Catholic school. The big attraction was that this job came with generous accommodation.
Although he hankered after self-employment, decent housing for his family was so important to him that he remained in this job until his retirement more than 30 years later and was a hugely popular figure with generations of children who passed through the school.
My dad’s handyman skills were sometimes useful in unexpected ways. During his years at the school he got on well with the fierce little nun who was the headmistress.
Like many Irishmen my dad liked a little flutter on the horses and one particular Saturday there was a big race and he was keen to get to the betting shop to place his bet.
However, the nun kept calling out from her office with “just one more little job, please Mr. Traynor”.
As the time came close for the start of the race my dad mischievously came up with a solution. Without her realizing he quietly tampered with the knob of her office door rendering it impossible to open from the inside.
Returning a little while later to her cries of “Mr. Traynor, help I am stuck in here.”
Moments later my dad had “rescued” her and for days afterwards she was telling everyone that he was her hero having rescued her from the locked office.
I do not recall whether Dad’s horse was a winner that day!
Both he and my mum were also stalwarts of the local Catholic church where they were very involved with the social club.
Ours was always a lively house and the parish priest would often send new arrivals from Ireland to us. My mum would always ensure they had a bed and food and soon my dad would find them work – usually on the buildings. Some stayed with us for years and others moved on or married.
For Tommy, Ireland was always “home”, yet it was some 22 years after he left before he returned.
In the transcript he says: “It was a long time before I went back to Ireland then, maybe 22 and a half years before I returned home again. My mother was still there like, you know.”
For us three children there were then many happy summer holiday trips “home”. The steam train from London to the port in Wales; the dreadful rough crossings across the Irish Sea but then a glorious two weeks of space and freedom in the Cavan countryside.
An old rowing boat on the lake at the farm; riding horses bareback on the hillsides; taking off down the country roads on borrowed bikes – a world away from our life in London.
But wherever we were it was sure to be fun with my dad. His sense of mischief and his humor meant that every day was an adventure.
As a child he had rebelled against school and refused to go to the Christian Brothers School along with his cousins so he had little education.
But he had an innate intelligence and wisdom and right through to his old age he had a magical childlike joy for life. He was always true to himself never feeling the need to impress or conform. This was coupled with an unassuming kindness and quietly looking out for and helping anyone who needed it.
He was like the Pied Piper and was usually the one making the most noise and causing the most chaos amongst the kids at family gatherings. He would chase them into the playhouse, get in the ball pond or paddling pool and generally cause mayhem and excitement. His devilish sense of humor meant he also had the knack of keeping the craic going amongst the adults.
Just as my generation grew up with this fun and laughter so too did his grandchildren.
When my daughter was about three years old I needed my dad to babysit for the day.
I delivered my little girl in a beautiful outfit – hand-knitted by my mother-in-law - long white socks and shiny shoes.
But my dad had prepared an adventure for her. All over his garden he had buried “treasure”. Secret stashes of shiny old jewels, tin foil “silver”, coins and other booty. My daughter spent happy hours gleefully digging for the hidden treasure.
By the time I picked her up she was covered in mud and the whole outfit was ruined. But she was so happy and excited as she showed me the treasures I could not really be cross with my dad for long.
On another occasion he took his granddaughters to London’s famous Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park where anyone can hold forth speaking on any subject – politics, religion or anything that takes their fancy. Tommy found an unattended platform and climbed up, then simply began loudly reciting children’s nursery rhymes with such enthusiasm that he soon had a large crowd though most of them were tourists who could not understand his Irish accent and had no idea what he was saying.
Our
part of the Traynor clan is not short of eccentrics and my dad was
certainly one of them.
| He
was a dreadful hoarder - a trait which I admit I have inherited.
Nothing would be thrown away – bits of string, newspapers,
nails and screws which might be useful – anything and
everything would be stockpiled in the garage and in any spare space
in the house. In his later years he moved with my sister, her husband and their two children to a London suburb around five miles from Kilburn. Still very active he rose early each morning to catch the bus back to Kilburn to the part-time handyman job he took on after his retirement. Sadly Tommy passed away on the 19th August 1995 and is still very much missed by all who knew and loved him. |
 Tommy Traynor is his later years. |