MUSINGS Making money in hard times

Jobless in The Emergency


Sonia Kelly on using your imagination to make a living in hard times

Musings
Sonia Kelly

It might be interesting in the current financial climate to point out that nothing is really new and that 50 years ago it was just as hard to survive. Our family managed to do so by means of a lot of imagination and by the use of what was available, rather than relying on some outside agency to provide jobs.
Our first foray into trade unsurprisingly involved fish, my husband having been an island fisherman.
He continued to catch fish, which I sold around the neighbourhood from a Ford car, which we had managed to acquire. It was not particularly lucrative, thought, as many of my customers preferred bartering to paying cash and we ended up possessing, among other things, a flock of guinea fowl.
As the country was then in the throes of ‘The Emergency’, not many people had cars, so I decided to apply for a taxi license, having had experience of driving in the British army. The Government was reluctant to issue one, however, and only gave in through sheer boredom from my persistence.
I operated the taxi for several years with the help of a friendly Public Service Vehicle inspector, until he retired and the new one refused to risk his life by even getting into the car.
After that we made socks on a little round machine, which churned them out like sausages and were sold by a commercial traveller, and also by me from the car.
We then got into handcrafts, my husband, Jay, being a wizard at carving things.
He made traditional cottages from soda of turf, miniature crucifixes and walking sticks from blackthorn, while I made leprechauns from pipe cleaners and also framed antique prints in tweed, making the centre cut-out pieces into patchwork covers for  little seats composed of cardboard cartons stuffed with newspaper.
Jay progressed from making small items to furniture. His tables, bookcases, etc, were soon being sold in Dublin and we also rented a shop in Westport.
By this time we had five children and had moved from Lilladangan, on the road to Louisburgh, to Cloona, and here a new business took shape: weaving. This was inspired by the Aran crios, which we had seen on our honeymoon in Aran. We figured out how they were made, modernised the process and eventually developed a unique material, which was exported to England and America in the form of scarves, hats and jumpers, which became quite famous.
Meanwhile, I had become a journalist and had written a book on the Connemara pony, published by Mercier Press. The book was seen by a breeder of piebald donkeys in Co Clare, who asked me to ghost a book on them, which I did,  entailing many trips to her home in Milton Malbay.
The troubles in the North curtailed many of our activities, so new ones had to be invented. One of these was dealing in antiques, which we sometimes salvaged from burnt, or abandoned houses. Eric Cross, who lived with us as the children’s tutor, proved to be adept at repairs and fixed everything from porcelain items to old masters. Once we found an oil painting under and ancient bed with a spike through it. We thought it was a Murillo and delivered it into Eric’s hands, he fixed it perfectly and sold it for £40. (It was by a pupil of the master.)
About then, some Tibetan contacts asked if I could set them up in some kind of self-supporting community and, as the weaving was still going and we had an old mill building on the premises, we thought they could live in it and do the weaving.
This was agreed by all concerned, except the Government, which refused the request for the issue of visas.
The Government was not for turning, so I decided to convert the mill into a health centre based on the Tibetan philosophy.
During the mill’s conversion Jay became ill, so I was on my own in the survival stakes. I started a B&B, did pony trekking (with the children’s pony and two elderly nags on loan from a vet), tried keeping bees (until I turned blue from stings), cultivated a watercress farm and bred snails in discarded freezers.
The health centre finally opened. I had done courses in yoga and massage and figured out the right diet, so was able to run it myself in the beginning.
Today, 30 years later, Cloona Health Centre is now run by one of my sons. The centre is as popular as it initially proved to be and is still booked out, providing the possibility of both surviving and thriving without the crutch of official jobs.