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Cork

What will I be doing when I’m not working? A catalogue of indulgence

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Posted in: Boys, Cork, Daniel, Dublin, Family, Ireland, Michael, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Siblings, Work

I was talking to a friend about my year off, my sabbatical as I think of it and he asked would I be travelling. Not really. Doing a degree? Nope. Writing my novel? Again no. “What are you going to do then?” he asked. “A bit more around the house,” I said. “My husband does a lot of the domestic stuff because he’s around the house more; I’ll learn how to use the washing machine,” I said. “So you’re taking a year off to do more washing,” he said. I think I need to find less snarky friends.

Here are my thoughts on what I will be doing. Almost as an aide memoire to myself. If I get none of these things done, then so be it.

On matters domestic:

More organising, sorting handymen, getting things done around the house that have been put off because we just haven’t had time: sorting the shed; the utility room; getting the house painted; re-doing the floors; taking the children to appointments; more (though not all!) domestic admin including making arrangements for powers of attorney now that the Assisted Decision Making Capacity Act is finally being commenced (so worthy, you cry – we promised to do it when we were making our wills but were waiting for the Act, this is our chance); more gardening; finally getting the brass lacquered, the furniture repaired and the clocks fixed. I will go for those blood tests the GP is so keen on (not because I’m ill but because she wants to do a general check up – good idea, I suppose).

Recently when I was giving Daniel an emergency last minute lift to GAA practice because I had forgotten that he had training and come home late to make dinner and therefore he hadn’t time to cycle, I said, “When I take my break from working I will remember when all your training nights. I will be on top of all the detail.” “Mum,” he said, “are you sure you want to spend all your break acting like a glorified secretary?” Good point. I will need to watch out for that. Maybe I won’t know when he has training after all.

Community stuff:

I’ll keep up the school parents’ council and the church but I might have time to volunteer a bit more for the tasks being doled out rather than cravenly shirking them. I have not spent all this time learning Ukrainian on Duolingo to have it be completely useless although judging by my recent encounter in the lane with our new 9 year old Ukrainian neighbour who until 2 months ago spoke no English, it might be. Maybe I should learn basic Russian as well.

Immediate family:

More time with the boys; a chance to meet them after school; pick them up if it’s raining; hear about how their days are going; help them if they can face it. More days out with my husband. More weekends away with him. Finally learning to cook or to slightly enjoy cooking. Maybe more bread making? Maybe not. More trips to England to visit herself (though her suggestion that I might drive over to England, pick up all her stuff and then drive home alone again while she goes to the end of term ball and on to London found little favour with me when put forward and was subsequently revised).

Cork family:

Helping to sort out my parents house; seeing my elderly aunt; travelling with my sister (she has mentioned Iceland, I said no initially but now I think, why not?); bringing the boys to Cork a bit more; maybe just spend some time thinking about my parents and writing a bit about my mother’s life ( I wrote about my father for his funeral and I want to do something similar for my mother).

For fun:

I think I might try this sea swimming thing – my friend from Clontarf goes every day, is this crazy? June seems like a good time to start that. Gretchen Ruben visits the Met every day. In a small way I might do that myself, go into the National Gallery most days, finally cash in my membership gift card. I’ll possibly rejoin the tennis club. I will continue to lunch. If you are willing to go at odd hours and take your chances you can get really good meals from the TUD catering college (I think it’s now the BA in Culinary Arts). I’m keen to test it out.

I mean it all feels amazingly exciting and delightful. I am so lucky to be able to do this. I think it’s the absence of stress as well. Christmas and summer holidays will be better when there are no calls from work and when the weeks leading up to the break are not absolutely frantically busy.

Yesterday was my last day at work until October 2023. Oh yes. And though I was broken by the run up to it, I am pretty pleased now.

Let the good times roll.

Committed

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Posted in: Cork, Ireland

I was on the Cork – Dublin train recently and there was a Cork man sitting opposite me who was going to a concert in Dublin. He was about the same age as me and he confessed that the last time he was in Dublin was in the 1990s. I was amazed. He clarified that he had been regularly in a distant suburb of Dublin for work but had never bothered going into the centre again. He hadn’t thought much of it in 1995 and he clearly wasn’t going to give it another shot on the off chance it might have improved.

In many ways this is the quintessential Corkonian attitude to Dublin.

Moving

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Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Siblings

My sister and her partner are moving in to my parents’ house. She plans to buy out my brother and me. At the moment, in this transitional phase, my brother is still there and though the house is not tiny, accommodating three adults working from home will add a lot of … thrills to the Cork environment. I have been following my sister’s progress with interest.

I was at home a couple of weeks ago and even though I was sure that my old bedroom was empty, it turns out that we filled an enormous plastic box with my stuff so, actually, not empty. Then my sister and I moved a desk from my father’s room to my old room which is to become her partner’s working from home space. I felt pretty virtuous right until the moment we inadvertently knocked over one of my brother’s working from home monitors and broke it. Happily my sister had a spare monitor and set it up for him but still a bit awkward. I was not entirely delighted to hear, as my sister’s moving reached a crescendo, this week, that her partner doesn’t actually want that desk for his home office and has another desk in mind.

My father always said of my mother that she never realised that time was finite. My sister is exactly like that and that may be why she will be visiting Skellig Michael this weekend. She has to hand over the keys to her rental property on Monday so, in my view, this is not the ideal moment for this trip. “It will be fine,” she says. It’s a three hour round trip by car and a ferry ride from Cork so that’s today and tomorrow accounted for. I suppose it will all be alright on the night.

Updated to add: It was too rough to land on Skellig Michael but she did have a very choppy boat ride which made her ill. Alas.

Words are the Daughters of Earth, but Objects are the Sons of Heaven

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Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Siblings

I was in Cork over the weekend a couple of weeks ago. My brother announced that he had thrown out a couple of books from my parents’ house. “You shouldn’t have done that, I might have wanted them!” I cried. “Well,” he said, “You’ll just have to manage without Common Household Insects and Pests“.

My sister and I spent hours clearing out my mother’s wardrobe; you will recall that my mother died in June 2019 so this was overdue. It took a lot out of both of us.

The clothes were ok actually though why I thought that I would fit into a size 10 jacket – which I have now donated to herself – is beyond me. We found an enormous number of kid gloves in yellowish white all of which I have given to herself in the – possibly forlorn – hope that she will find these vintage items of interest.

There were furs which had belonged to both my grandmothers. In surprisingly good nick but, I don’t know, fashion may have moved on. Mr. Waffle believes there is something distinctly disturbing about the little paws on this scarf (intertwined dead rodents is how he describes the whole), hard to disagree. These were standard issue for everyone’s granny when I was a child but not so much anymore.

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Herself says her fellow students are always leaving unlikely things at nightclubs and posting distraught messages to social media saying things like “I lost my Great Aunt Edith’s pearls at Wild Nights, has anyone seen them? My parents are very cross.” I can’t help feeling that her great grandmothers’ furs are more unlikely lost items than most and she might enjoy having them.

The wardrobe also contained a mountain of papers, most of which we threw out: old theatre programmes; dinner menus; conference programmes; receipts; hand made cards; bafflingly, an entire Cork Examiner from December 1985 kept for no discernible reason; photographs; a letter from my father from London; chequebook stubs; and postcards.

I kept a description of the dying days of our cat written by my mother which was surprisingly emotional for a hard headed farmer’s daughter. I also kept her insurance book issued from when she went to Freiburg as a postgraduate student in the 50s.

There were some lovely photos of her time as an international student in Freiburg as well as some from her graduation and UCC balls. We kept all the photos, of course and also all of her out of date passports.

I wonder where the people in this photo are now? My mother is in the middle of the front row. If you know any international students who spent 1957/58 in Freiburg, get in touch!

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I kept three of her old cheque books from the 60s. Many of the stubs were not filled in – I regret to say an abiding failure of hers. There was one though for £600 to a garage in Farnborough and I think that must have been for her beloved mini cooper. I kept one of my homemade cards – there were many but I remembered the pain associated with creating this particularly elaborate one. There was a German calendar for 1958 and some unused postcards from Copenhagen, I kept those too.

There was what I can only assume was an unopened wedding present from 1967. We used them for breakfast the other morning. Good to see them getting a trip out after a wait of 54 and a half years.

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It’s funny how few things remain of a whole life time, a whole beloved person; and I am conscious, not necessarily the things she would have chosen to have kept or be remembered by. That’s how it goes, I guess.

Tempus Fugit


Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Work

I remember when I was an apprentice solicitor (neither today nor yesterday, my friends) one of my other apprentice friends met her master’s children when they were brought into the office for a thrilling look at the office machinery and to see where their Mum and Dad worked.

“Imagine,” said my friend to me, “they will just grow up with the fax, it will never seem strange or new to them.” We marvelled. It did not cross our minds that by the time those children were pushing 40 the fax would be a thing of the past. I remember one of the partners in my office had a computer on his desk and was gently mocked by the other partners for his dedication to this glorified typewriter which took up so much space on his desk and was clearly pointless.

But yet, the 90s doesn’t really seem very long ago at all. Related: have you noticed that the policemen really are getting younger?

Alas


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

My 92 year old aunt had a fall and is in hospital but she seems alright – nothing broken – but still, sub-optimal. I am gracing Cork with my presence today so that I can visit her in hospital. I am assured hospital visits are now allowed. If not, I will be very irate when I get there.

Updated to add: I got in. She was pleased to see me. She seemed pretty well. I left her with the Guardian and she was pleased.