{"id":2339,"date":"2016-12-25T13:37:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-25T13:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jameslawless.net\/?p=2339"},"modified":"2016-12-25T13:37:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-25T13:37:55","slug":"a-christmas-story-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/?p=2339","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a kid I kept thinking the insurance man was my father. Not that I knew him mind (I only met him the once), but I heard him often enough. I can remember my mother\u2019s voice pleading with him. Was it over money? We weren\u2019t poor, although my father \u2013 my real father that is \u2013 was dead. He had been a diplomat, so he didn\u2019t exactly leave us destitute. But I got it into my head that my mother hadn\u2019t the money to pay the insurance man and he sought payment in other ways. I should say at this stage that my mother was an uncommonly beautiful woman. Everyone\u2019s mother is beautiful I know in the eyes of her offspring, but Mam\u2019s beauty was universally acknowledged. When in her prime, her bright blue eyes and svelte figure attracted many suitors which, apart from the insurance man, included medical students, members of the corps diplomatique and even an IRA man\u2026
\n\tI can recall now the first time I heard the insurance man remonstrating with my mother. It was late one Christmas Eve. I was six or seven at the time, waiting in bed for Santa, pressing tightly on my eyes, trying desperately to sleep for fear he would not leave me anything if he caught me awake. The song fading on the wireless below I remember had a relevant poignancy:
\n\t\t\t\t\u2018I feel sorry for the laddie;
\n\t\t\t\the hasn\u2019t got a daddy;
\n\t\t\t\the\u2019s the little boy that Santa Claus forgot.\u2019<\/p>\n

\tMr Counihan\u2019s querulous tone rose through waves of drowsiness and my mother\u2019s sobbing.
\n\tBut when I asked her about it the next day \u2013 Christmas Day \u2013 all she said was,
\n\t\u2018What a dreamer you are, Derek.\u2019<\/p>\n

From Peeling Oranges by James Lawless in paperback and Kindle<\/p>\n

\"peelingfront<\/a>
\nhttps:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Peeling-Oranges-James-Lawless\/dp\/1496007646\/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=<\/p>\n

Peeling Oranges tells the story of how Derek Foley, while sifting through his late father’s diaries and his mother’s correspondence with an IRA man, discovers that Patrick Foley, a diplomat in Franco’s Spain, was not really his father. Derek’s mother, who is ailing, is unwilling to discuss the past, forcing her son on a quest that will plunge him into the early history of Irish diplomacy, taking him to Spain and later to Northern Ireland, until he discovers who his real father was\u2014with tragic consequences. Peeling Oranges is a novel full of personal and political intrigue, fraught with ideology, as it intersects the histories of two emergent nations\u2014Ireland and Spain. It is also a beautiful and lyrically written love story of childhood sweethearts\u2014the apolitical Derek and the passionate nationalist, Sin\u00e9ad N\u00ed Sh\u00failleabh\u00e1in.
\n\u2018In the vast sea of fiction it is a true hidden gem.\u2019 A thrilling \u2605 \u2605 \u2605 \u2605 \u2605
\nReview by Malka in Contemporary Books<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a kid I kept thinking the insurance man was my father. Not that I knew him mind (I only met him the once), but I heard him often enough. I can remember my mother\u2019s voice pleading with him. Was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2340,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions\/2340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jameslawless.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}