When I was growing up we went to visit my cousins in Rush every year on St Stephen’s Day. They had a modest bungalow with our four cousins, three boys and one girl. The boys shared a room and the sister had her own room.
The children would all have dinner together in the kitchen which could become a loud affair. This was also a modest space and not one of those mammoth kitchens we all enjoy now. In fact I reckon their kitchen could fit about three times over in my brother’s new fancy extended kitchen and it could fit into my admittedly even bigger one four times over. But we had a lot of fun there with the cousins.
The adults, my aunt and uncle, my parents and at least one other set of aunt and uncles had dinner in what was known as The Good Room. The Good Room was the promised land. It was the room for the civilised.
I believe in the 80s and 90s in Ireland every home, even the modest ones, had a Good Room. I remember playing board games with my best friend in her Good Room over the summer (also a modest bungalow with four children) and my friend across the road had a Good Room and they had five children.
These were not in my mind dining rooms, which is a more British idea. The dining room (which has also been eaten by the humongous modern kitchen complete with island) was used at least once a week, usually on a Sunday. The Good Room was used less frequently. Perhaps only two or three times a year, but I know it was certainly used on St Stephen’s Day in my cousins house.
The Good Room was an adult only space. There they had a fancy dinner with fancy plates and fancy wine glasses – Waterford crystal I assume. My cousins also had their beautiful Christmas tree in the Good Room. Children were not permitted in the Good Room. You had to earn your place there.
What did they all talk about there in the Good Room I wondered? My cousins could be a raucous bunch – think Katie Morgan when her big boys cousins came to visit. I doubt they ever made it to the Good Room. I did make it there – once. I had lunch there for my Confirmation as my uncle was my sponsor (I think) and it was very nice indeed. I had finally made it to the Promised Land.
These days houses, even houses twice the size of my cousin’s modest bungalow, do not have Good Rooms. Today the houses seem to have been taken over by the children. The only part that hasn’t been taken over is the wretched home office (yes I am in one right now). These days houses – even the big ones – can’t be doing with a dining room or good rooms or any adult only space.
Instead there are things called ‘playrooms.’ Can you imagine? Can you actually imagine what our elders would think of handing over an entire room to a bunch of toddlers? What absolute madness is this, I sense they would ask. Still I suppose it is a sign of progress that you can hand over an entire room to the toddlers and all their hideous plastic toys.
Personally, I never liked the playroom and we never had one. First, little ones do not want to be on their own playing, they want to be around you. And if this means their hideous plastic toys end up all over your ginormous kitchen with the kitchen island then so be it. The only way you are getting the toddler into the playroom to play on their own, is to put a TV in there. So now it’s really a TV room.
If the Good Room is not a playroom then you can bet your bottom dollar it is the Games Rooms, and by games I don’t mean billiards and black jack. The Games Room or Gaming Room is where an entire room has been handed over to some sulky teenager and his odious PlayStation so he can play Call of Duty or Whack Your Head Off 10 all the livelong day. Lord, save me.
So this is what happens. The playroom turns into a TV room and then once your delightful toddler becomes an angry teenager the play room is now a gaming room. I don’t think this is normal.
Even I can hear the shooting as I get the dinner ready in my massive kitchen. Parents do this, middle – class parents with law degrees (there are 4 law degrees in my house, 4), thinking it is a good idea. Little Seamus or Horatio must have a gaming room where he play Torture Your Mother 7 otherwise his ‘mental health’ will suffer and he will not be able to get into Oxford. I mean I’d settle for Durham and less Torture Your Mother 7 given the choice, but that’s just me.
That’s the modern family today. The massive kitchen with the iceberg island, one of those humongous (humongous I say) American fridges, a playroom that quickly turns into the gaming room, a home office that should in truth be a nursery or third bedroom for the third child no one has anymore, oh and a gym. How could I forget the gym?
The lawyers don’t have a Good Room where adults can come and have a civilised dinner away from the children but we absolutely must have a gym. Something to do with ‘building your core’. We couldn’t possibly be expected to go to a public gym with other people, that’s not good enough. We must have our own private gym where we can squat and grunt to our hearts content.
And once we have done that as we will be so exhausted from all our gym-ing (you could just go for a walk or a run) you must retire to the gaming room to play some Call of Duty 107.
My uncle and Aunt didn’t need a gym as they grew lettuce in the glass houses out the back. That was exercise enough.
So there we are. Is Ireland richer now? We sure are and I am grateful for that. But back in the day the play room was called the garden, the gym was called chores, the gaming room didn’t exist which left enough space for The Good Room.
In truth I like my offensively large kitchen and island and I do have a home office but I’ll be damned if I am going to hand over an entire room to the toddler as a playroom, or teenage gaming room. There will never be a gym room in our house as long as blood is pumping through my veins. I have a modest sitting room, which I try not to surrender completely to the children. It has my books, piano and the TV. Sure, if I had my way I’d just get rid of the TV and put more shelves in for my books but I suppose I must make compromises.
Ireland is richer but we no longer have The Good Room. The Good Room is not about wealth, it is about standards. To have a Good Room, you must have a certain state of mind. That state of mind is a civilised one, one that says adults should have a room of their own in which to dine and converse now and again but especially on the major Catholic feast days. That was old Ireland, which we are told was anything but civilised.
But I don’t know about you. When I look back to the Good Room and look today at the gaming room, the playroom and the gym, I know which group was more civilised.