Childhood cowboy and indian wallpaper now hangs in my study

My childhood bedroom, shared with my older brother in the 1950s, was decorated with “Western” wallpaper. It had it all. A cowboy in a white Stetson on his high stepping mount. A cowpoke and his gal doing tricks with a lasso. Indians sitting around the campfire outside their teepees. A cowhand tying up his horse outside the bunkhouse. An Indian chief preceded by a brave riding through. Grazing bison completed a tranquil scene of coexistence which made its way around all four walls.

However, in the lanes and fields behind our small north Ulster town, things were not quite so peaceful.

Cowboys, fully kitted out in frilled trousers, checked shirts with waistcoats and armed with colt 45s, refought the Indian wars. There were many tin-badged sheriffs, any amount of masked Lone Rangers and bare-chested Tontos. Indian braves, armed only with home-made bamboo bows and arrows. Countless rolls of red gun caps were discharged amid much hooting and hollering. Rain dances were performed around the campfire, close to the rear of the police barracks, often involving the real sheriff in the guise of RUC Sgt Mills to restore law and order.

Cinema sharpshooters

The cinema, it was joked showed so many Westerns that a hitching post was to be erected outside. On Boxing Day, a free matinee attracted every freshly tooled-up sharpshooter in town. Gunfights often erupted in the stalls forcing proprietor Charlie O’Neill and his faithful usherette Lizzy Judge to stop the film, turn up the lights and carry out some decommissioning. All to be reclaimed from the pay kiosk afterwards.

That bedroom eventually gave way to the enormous grey dormitories of boarding school and I returned from there in the summer of 1965 to find the room redecorated with a new swirly and slightly psychedelic-patterned wallpaper. I don’t remember being upset, it was obviously time to put aside childish things.

The house was sold in 1985, but prior to that, I rescued an unused roll of wallpaper from the attic and those characters still carry on with their timeless routine on the wall of my study in suburban south Dublin, albeit now in a framed A3 format. Their interpretation of an idyllic life on the range and my childhood memories of how I thought the West was won, have however been consigned to history.