Author Description

‘Albert Walk’ Fado, Fado, when I was young one of the most exciting things about a day trip to Bray was walking from the train station down the laneway across the road and mingling with the crowds of other day trippers and being fascinated by the collection of amusement arcades, ice cream parlours, sweet and candy floss shops and an assortment of other attractions only found in a seaside town. Those days are of course now long gone and the attractions that fascinated us in those innocent days of our youth have no place in the modern world we live in now, consequently Albert Walks glory days are long gone and it is now just a nondescript and mostly ignored laneway to the left of the train station containing a few coffee shops and one amusement arcade where the old Roxy Cinema used be, and it is seldom if ever thronged with people making their way to the beach. It would be hard for anyone walking down the old laneway today to imagine how exciting it was to walk through Albert Walk in the fifties and sixties just as it is hard to imagine the change when we see an old picture of a young and beautiful film star and how that person looks today. In this collection of short stories I am attempting to pay my homage to Albert Walk for all the pleasure I got when passing through the lane all those years ago. I have tried to bring back a flavour of how it might have been when Albert Walk was in its prime and attempting to bring to life the characters who may have frequented and filled Albert Walk back in the days when a day trip to Bray was the high light of the summer for many a Dubliner and the sun always seemed to shine when we visited Bray.