Practising the Art of Smuggling

This story was collected and transcribed by Mark Jeffers with permission from the author. The author understands the terms and conditions.

You couldn’t get tights in Northern Ireland for love-nor-money so when we went to Ireland on the annual choir trip and we would buy tights.
I remember coming up one time from Dublin with my sweetheart and he had bought a blue shirt so I put it on and closed my coat up. But he was a taller person than I was and it was hanging well below my coat and I didn’t realise it. And I got up in the train to go to speak to somebody and he says “For heavens sake Peggy, sit down and don’t rise until the men are through, because that shirt is hanging about four inches below your coat!” So I was just stationary there until the men went through.

But these wee things allowed you to feel like you had achieved something by smuggling things through. I never really had anything taken off me. One time my husband and I were coming through and I had a wee nephew. He was about five and I was bringing a mouth organ home to him. It was only a cheap mouth organ and they were going to take it off me. It wasn’t an expensive thing; it wasn’t a good thing at all. And I said it was for a child and they charged us for bringing it in. I can’t remember how much it was but that went in their pockets I’m sure. They were making of it as much as us.

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