Nollaig Rowan

I have clear memories from a very young age of my dad, his car, his workplace, his garden.

A particular fascination for me was where he worked, his own empire.

When you cross over the Grand Canal at Portobello Bridge in Dublin, heading for town, you come upon South Richmond Street, which in the 1960s was thriving with its string of businesses specialising in new and second-hand furniture, antiques and bric-a-brac.

The largest of these was Christy Bird, opened in 1945 at number 32.

But there were others, including my father's shop, Raymond P. Roan Furniture, opened in 1950 at number 30, beside O'Connell's Pub.

These shops sold all kinds of affordable furniture, along with quirky antiques, and their customers came from the flats nearby in Charlemont Street and Mount Pleasant buildings, as well as the bigger houses in Rathgar and Rathmines.

Each shop was a treasure trove in itself, and a paradise to wander through.

If you thought the ground floor held excitement, wait till you plunged into the darkness and dampness of the cellar or took the creaky stairs to the upper floors with their cobwebs, dirty windows and tiny skylight.

I had the pleasure of helping my dad run the shop when occasionally I had no school and he was tasked with minding me.

He would flick through the Indo, his daily newspaper, ostensibly ignoring customers, until one of them would say, Do you deliver?

Or, What can you do me for, for this one, Mr. Rowan?

Mid-morning we'd have our elevenses.

He made tea, loose leaves in two oversized mugs.

I learned to drink it black.

We shared a few ginger nuts and dunked them, a biscuit I still buy and dunk to this day.

He taught me the lingo of the shop, ottoman, antimacassar, divan, wingback, chippendale, queen anne.

I tried to tell the difference between mahogany, oak, beech and deal, but that was beyond my nine-year-old brain.

Many a table had a thick glass cover to protect its precious wood from scratches or the ever-present hot teapot in customers' homes.

I wrote pretend receipts using ink blue carbon paper in a little receipt book, tearing out perforated pages to give to make-believe customers, my dolls, who sat patiently on a low dresser.

My dad had a secret price code, which I never really worked out, but I know it consisted of the words faith, hope and charity, with certain letters representing specific numbers.