The Plate

I was born into a catholic family. I remember going to mass each Sunday as a child, having to keep still and quiet while the priest droned on in unintelligible Latin. All I could see was people's tall backs in front of me and I remember the overwhelming smell of damp heavy coats mixed with  incense from the ornate golden burners that were swung by the altar boys, and Brylcream plastered on men's heads giving the slicked back look of the sixties.

The highlight of the hour was when the collection time arrived; a plate passed round from person to person along the line of the pews, growing fuller and fuller with coins that magically appeared from  pockets and handbags.  Each coin dropped onto the plate with a reluctant chink. Money was tight in those days but no one would shame themselves by letting the plate pass by.

My mam told a story time and time again of the morning she had no spare money to put on the plate. She hurried to mass along the back lanes in the shadows of the shipyard cranes worrying what she would do when plate time came. It had rained the night before and there were pools of rainwater on the cobbled street. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a strange shimmering in the distance and as she approached a puddle she saw the most magnificent sight. A pile of coins lay in the puddle, just waiting to be picked up. Pennies, thruppeny bits and sixpences! She scooped up the wet coins and loaded them into her pockets, then, with a spring in her step she flew along the back lane to church. She proudly placed a sixpence on the plate, the only time she'd ever had that much to spare. She thought that the money must have appeared there as some sort of miracle, but her more rational explanation was that the money had fallen out of drunken men's pockets who had been fighting in the lane the night before. “Serves them right” she would say.