Cork

Random Thoughts from the Aged

11 January, 2026
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Reading etc.

My father used to call those grey trousers he wore with a blazer his flannel bags. Does anybody say flannel bags anymore? I tried my children and they looked baffled.

When leaving the dinner table, the expression, “May I be excused?” was widespread in my youth. Has this too gone the way of the dodo?

At mass this morning, they said that the exit hymn is “God’s Spirit is in my Heart”. “What on earth is that?” I thought but once they started singing I found I knew all the words. I was sure, sure, sure that I hadn’t heard it since I was a teenager but the internet seems pretty firm that it first came out in 2002. I am baffled but maybe I did learn new hymns in my 30s? This seems very unlikely but who can say? Then Margaret Atwood was on Desert Island discs and she picked Beethoven’s pastoral symphony as one of her 8 discs. “Ho hum,” I thought, “I wonder what that is?” Yet another musical number Mrs. O’Shea taught the school choir, that’s what, though we learnt it with the following words which I feel Beethoven wouldn’t have approved of: Now winter is passing and soon it will be spring/with daffodils and tulips and birdies on the wing. I also recently heard for the first time in about 40 years “In an English Country Garden” – yet another number Mrs. O’Shea brought into our lives. It’s funny how these songs one learnt as a child can be really evocative.

I’ve been looking at slides from my childhood and although it is a pain to set everything up the images are so much better than the faded brown snaps from photo albums and I now respect my father’s commitment to slides though I was dubious for many years. When I see myself I recognise every single thing I am wearing and I know what feelings it evoked in me, what I loved, what I hated. I am fascinated by this as I am not very interested in clothes now. I wonder what happened to that youthful clothes lover.

I had lunch yesterday with my oldest friend, our parents were friends and as she is a year older than me (something she used to enjoy pointing out to me when we were little, but now, ah, how the tables have turned), I have known her since I was born. Anyway over Christmas she went to a 40th school reunion. “40, 40 years!” I screeched in horror. “That’ll be you this year,” she pointed out tartly. I am shocked. How did that happen? But also, perhaps it’s not as big a surprise as all that.

Old News from England

29 November, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Travel

Did I tell you about when Mr. Waffle and I went to Cambridge to visit herself earlier in the year? I did not. Well now, here’s something for you to look forward to. It was in March but look, we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here content wise (I can hear my father spinning in his grave at this terrible construction but here we are).

Friday, 14 March 2025

There was rugby in Rome the weekend we were travelling. At the airport Mr. Waffle and I ran into not one, not two, but three people we knew: one off to the rugby; one going to a party in Cornwall; and one, like us, going to London. This last was the son of my mother’s friend from college and he was always a bit charming and feckless. This may have been why he and his wife were on stand by for the flight they were taking with their two teenagers. It all worked out in the end. It always does for the charming but feckless in my experience.

Mr. Waffle and I traveled with laptops and had to do a bit of work when we arrived. Were we pleased? We were not.

There was a formal dinner arranged in the Princess’s college for Patrick’s day and I was filled with pride when she got up at the drinks at start of the evening and read – in Irish – the poem that begins “Anois Teacht an Earraigh”; it’s a poem I love and her grandmother loved it too. She explained to the audience about wandering bards and how this poem would have been recited all over Ireland and now, she said, it’s come to Cambridge. My mother would have been delighted.

Herself had become great buddies with a guy from Cork and on chatting to him I discovered that he had gone to the primary school where my cousin had been headmaster for many years. Rather charmingly when we established this link, he said in awe struck tones “You know Mr. K?”. He obviously felt unable, even at that distance, to bandy around Mr. K’s first name as I had been doing so recklessly.

Look at me filled with delight dining with my firstborn (I am wearing my sail – our hotel offered bikes for guests and they were handy but I did worry slightly that I might take flight on my way to dinner).

Saturday 15, March 2025

We went on a punt. It was shockingly expensive and the young woman powering the punt, though very strong given her willowy frame, was distressingly ignorant about the sights. We were able to get the gist from other guides on nearby punts but not as good somehow.

We went to Fitzbillies, a popular Cambridge tea room. Fine but nothing to write home about in my view. There is a really lovely cafe where I always went for breakfast with herself on my visits and we definitely graced that with our presence at some point but, sadly, if you were thinking of visiting yourself, I cannot now summon its name to mind.*

Herself knowing my love of a good cemetery took us to a lovely one.

One of the Edgeworths is buried there (a sister of the better known Maria). A long way from home.

We checked out the Princess’s room. She did a great job of decorating it notwithstanding some challenges, the most serious of which was the quantity of furniture (particularly tables) which the university authorities provided with the room and which could not be removed for complex and doubtless administratively understandable reasons.

Sunday 16 March, 2025

Herself took us to Mass. It was very long and enthusiastic. There was an excellent sermon on a papal encyclical sent to America in which, to quote from Wikipedia “the pope addressed a heresy that he called Americanism and expressed his concern that the Catholic Church in the United States should guard against American values of liberalism and pluralism undermining the doctrine of the Church”. I mean, some of us felt that the topic choice was a bit tactless given that next up was some innocent young American woman telling us about the church’s charity work but ok.

After lunch we walked to Grantchester. My mother-in-law used to enjoy quoting the last couplet from Rupert Brooke’s The Old Vicarage, Grantchester “Stands the Church clock at ten to three?/And is there honey still for tea?” When we got there the clock did indeed stand at ten to three which was very gratifying.

I only took a picture after our cup of tea and the clock stands at five past four and I seem to have included some large bins in shot. Somehow, life never is as romantic as poetry. I mean, look, apparently Jeffrey Archer lives in the old vicarage now. Incidentally, whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry on Jeffrey Archer really hates him.

We all had dinner together on Sunday night and then Mr. Waffle and I headed home on Monday morning. A good time had by all etc.

Tomorrow is November 30. Are we all heaving a sigh of relief?

*Updated to add: Mr Waffle made it his mission to find out the cafe’s name. He did. It was Cafe Foy apparently.

Anniversaries – November Thoughts

13 November, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

My father would have been 100 last March 25. Last March felt like a bit of a milestone as well because it was 5 years post the first Covid lock down. My father died on Christmas Day 2020 and those last nine months were made even grimmer by Covid. I think the very old and young people in education got the worst of Covid but it was no picnic for those in the middle either. It was pretty dreadful and I find few things more annoying than people who say, “Actually, I had a good Covid.” If it’s you, please stop it, but as Covid memories mercifully recede, it is something I am hearing more frequently and I don’t like it. Look, maybe you did have a good Covid (unlikely in my view, but I’ll allow it) but you must know lots of people didn’t and sharing this experience of yours is unlikely to make them feel better about that time. Anyway, here’s a thing about my father, he cycled all his life until he was well into his 80s – when cycling was unpopular and no grown ups cycled, he cycled, and now, partly inspired by his singular devotion to the convenience of the bicycle, I cycle every day too and I often think of him as I freewheel along.

My sister sent me flowers on our mother’s anniversary – what a nice thing. I think of my mother most days and what I really miss is her advice. Teenage me would be surprised. Also, she thought I was brilliant and was always on my side. And she was hilarious and practical and clever and I miss her very much.

Look, it’s almost the season (though I can 100% guarantee that picture was taken on Christmas Eve which was when our tree went up every year despite my pleas for an earlier date; as you can observe my pleas for a real tree were also in vain). And, speaking of practical, my mother made that dress I’m wearing though I am afraid I never liked it. Oh well.

Dispatches from a Bygone Age

10 November, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Family, Ireland

I was at a barbecue over the summer (lashing rain) and over a burnt sausage the conversation turned to the word char. Some of the group had never heard of the word as referring to a char lady (etymology is from chore in case you’re curious).

By way of providing some background one friend told us that when she was a little girl in the 1970s she was sent to the Protestant brownies as her mother (a family planning doctor) had fallen out with the Catholic hierarchy. I know it’s different in other countries and even Northern Ireland but in the south Protestants are firmly upper middle class.* My friend was talking about the woman who minded them when her mother went out to work and one of the other 6 year olds said, “You have a maid?” Before she could answer a third six year old cut in and said witheringly “She has a char.”

When told this anecdote another friend explained to me that her grandmother had a maid and a “woman for the rough” the latter being a daily visitor but the former live in and above cleaning floors and the like.

A man about ten years older than me who I met at a party told me that when he went to visit his cousins in Cork, they left their shoes outside the door overnight to be polished.

Due to my father’s job, until I was 12 or so we lived in a large house with lovely Cissie who lived in and whom I adored (though I do remember my mother saying that you could always tell when she was in a bad mood as she you would hear her throwing the cutlery into the drawer with force something I may have brought with me into adult life). She did lots of things but she certainly didn’t polish our shoes every day. Among her many virtues was that she always bought me a comic when she came back from her day off (I think my parents thought comics were slightly pernicious so they never got me any). I digress.

It all seems from a very, very different world but still lots of people have help at home it just looks a bit different, more diffuse and generally more dependent on immigrant labour. I suppose things are better?

*When I was an apprentice solicitor in the early 90s, I had quite an annoying though sometimes charming fellow apprentice who used to say wistfully, that if he had any children he would perhaps bring them up Protestant. He would, at the drop of a hat, tell anyone who cared to listen that he had three Protestant grandparents; however due to the operation of ne temere (there’s a lot on Wikipedia at the link but basically it meant in an Irish context that the children of a mixed marriage – i.e. one between a Catholic and a Protestant- should be brought up Catholic), he was a Catholic. Now, who among us can say what is in another’s heart but I would be pretty surprised if his desire to convert was related to a full assessment of the theological merits of the question.

Updated to add: Good podcast on detectives and “the servant problem, if you are so inclined: https://www.shedunnitshow.com/theservantproblem/

The Month of the Dead: Life is not Ended but Changed

2 November, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

The priest appeared on the altar today resplendent in gold. “What feast is it?” I wondered to myself. All souls, of course. We prayed for all the dead relatives of whom, at my age, I now have more than enough. And I thought about our gardener when I was a child, Michael Lyons, who didn’t have any family of his own (in retrospect, surely he must have had but he was unmarried and lived in quite spartan conditions in a small cottage with a Jack Russell) and was one of the kindest people I have ever known, very gentle and infinitely patient with young children running in the vegetable garden. As Terry Pratchett once put it succinctly doubtless inspired by others “Do you not know that a man is not dead as long as his name is still spoken?” This is a lovely piece from the Irish Times on that very subject by the theatre director Garry Hynes which I first read when it was published in 2017 and which has really stayed with me.

Democratic Duties

25 October, 2025
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Siblings, Travel, Twins, Youngest Child

I was in Cork yesterday for a work event which I signed up to blithely in the summer when I wasn’t as busy as I am now and when I thought I could make a weekend of it. Then, the presidential election was scheduled for yesterday; my sister’s partner’s mother was the subject of a conference on her lifetime’s literary labour (admirable) and my sister and her partner were away providing moral and other support for the conference subject; and I also inadvertently booked myself in for the Picasso exhibition guided tour at 9.15 this morning (more anon, possibly). All in all, I went to Cork on Thursday and came home yesterday evening about 9.30 which was not at all what I had been planning.

Due to my exhausting schedule (and 9.15 exhibition tour on Saturday morning), I went to bed early and missed Michael who was out late. This morning I was (deep regret) up with the lark and as I passed Michael’s bedroom, I saw that it was empty. I scuttled downstairs to get my phone: he would definitely have texted me if he had been going to stay out all night. No text. I began to feel extremely nervous. I zoomed to the kitchen where, to my enormous relief, Michael and his father were breakfasting together. Michael was in his pyjamas gloomily scooping cornflakes into his mouth. He had only got in at 2 in the morning and he was off to the RDS to act as a tallyman on the presidential election count starting at 9. He enjoyed it once he got there but he was definitely thinking hard about his choices at 8 in the morning.