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Cork

The Only Throw Away Generation


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

I have covered before how I am essentially regarded as some kind of weird changeling in my family as I am pretty tidy and my parents and siblings are less so. A key component of being tidy is getting rid of things – throwing them out, giving them away, eating them, if necessary. Apparently my father’s mother was pretty tidy and it is a source of lasting bitterness that she gave away some of his toys before he was quite ready to say goodbye (he is 94, I think we can call it lasting at this stage). In Cork, when something can’t be found, even something no sane person would ever throw out, the question is always, “Did Anne throw it out?” like, for example, “Anne, did you throw out a cheque for €500?” This is an example drawn from life.

My mother used to stymie my attempts to get rid of things and chastise me with the words, “I’m not part of the throw-away generation.” She would then carefully preserve whatever item I had been about to toss carelessly into the bin – a useful box, an exhausted tea towel which could be repurposed for shoe shining, a random screw – and put it away somewhere. She was a big fan of “a place for everything and everything in its place” in theory although the practice was slightly more haphazard.

And now, I find that my children are stopping me from throwing things out. Reduce, reuse, recycle is a household mantra. However worthy, it is quite tiring. Now, when I go to throw things in the bin, my hand is stayed by anxious teenagers who want to know whether it is going in the right bin and indeed whether we can reuse it. Also, Michael, the world’s most sentimental child, has retained all his childhood toys many of which have not been used in years. But given my grandmother’s example, I know that I can never get rid of them.

I suppose it’s only a question of time before I turn into my parents and start stockpiling things in the attic. I was in Cork recently and my father said to me, “Do you remember the stairs to the attic in [the house we moved out of when you were 12]?” I did. “Do you remember the sisal matting that was on the stairs?” More surprisingly, I did. “Well,” said he, “it is stored under the eaves in the attic. ” In response to my raised eyebrow, he added “Perfectly good carpet, it might be useful again someday.” The bane of my life, the potential usefulness of manifestly unuseful objects; proof – it has been sitting up there for nearly forty years. “Anyhow,” I wanted to say to you that your mother and I wrapped many valuables in it when we moved. ” He reminisced, “I think that the solid silver salver that Uncle Jack got when he retired (about 1950 I would guess) is in there.” I took myself to the attic. I found rolled up carpet under the eaves, having fought my way through an extraordinary array of material, and unrolled it gingerly (on top of a hideous coffee table that I recognised from my youth which was a present from my granny but which my mother, I have to say understandably, never liked) in the feeble light of the bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Nothing. Then I looked left and right and saw that the whole space under the eaves was filled up with rolled up carpets. I know when I am beaten. Uncle Jack’s silver salver and any other treasures will have to wait for the next generation to unearth.

Funeral Season


Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Siblings

My father’s first cousin died a couple of weeks ago. She was always very beautiful and quite exotic boasting a tan when everyone else in Ireland was ghostly white. She married a rich man and they seemed to lead extraordinarily glamorous lives even though they lived in Kerry which does not lend itself to glamour. My brother and sister dutifully went to the funeral and met lots of my father’s cousins and reminisced and brought back useful quantities of family gossip. It wasn’t a shock (in fact about a year ago, I had firmly and definitively told my aunt that this woman was dead despite her distinct – and, as it turns out, correct – doubts on that point, so, you know, definitely not a shock) but I do feel that I am certainly edging closer to the front of the church.

Miscellaneous Cultural Adventures


Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Ireland, Reading etc.

We went out on the town on Culture Night. It was only somewhat successful. We visited the Mansion House and the Royal Irish Academy which were both fine in their way – beautiful buildings with interesting contents – but as we’ve been to both of them before, we were resolutely underwhelmed. I dare say there are fresh things to see on every visit but we did not appreciate them as we ought.

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Probably a highlight of the evening was meeting a misfortunate teacher from the children’s school who was out with her fiancé and not entirely delighted to meet students and their parents in the wild. She left after a quick hello hauling her young man behind her at speed. Who would be a teacher?

It was also the theatre festival and the Dublin fringe festival. We went to see the comedian Alison Spittle in the Fringe. I was unamused but the venue was Dublin Castle chapel royal which was nice to be inside, so there was that.

We went with my in-laws and their friends from London to one of the worst plays I have seen in years. It was called “The Bluffer’s Guide to Suburbia” and the premise was musician who fails in London moves back to Dublin suburbia. Promising I felt. It resolutely failed to live up to the promise of the billing and although I fell asleep half way through and was spared some of the worst, I was quite mortified to have brought everyone there. The English visitors were very nice about it (there was no question but that it was dreadful

The following evening we had tickets for a play called “The Alternative”. The theatre festival is a cruel mistress. We were bringing the children and I was afraid. The premise of the play was that Ireland had never split from the UK and we were now having a present day independence referendum like the one they had in Scotland a couple of years ago. It was so good. We all loved it. It was clever and funny and inventive. The best thing I have seen in years. The children noticed the new deputy principal in the audience but we not to frighten another member of staff at a cultural event and nodded from a distance rather than approaching more closely.

In the visual arts, I forked out €15 to see the Sorolla exhibition in the National Gallery. I had never heard of him before; he’s a Spanish impressionist. I mean, fine, but I was not overly impressed, some nice interesting paintings but overall, I didn’t feel excited or delighted to have visited. In contrast the free Bauhaus exhibition in the print gallery upstairs is outstanding and well worth your time. I was also pretty impressed by the finalists in the National portrait competition which are on temporary exhibition at the moment. The Crawford in Cork is showing an exhibition about children called “Seen not Heard” around the theme of childhood and that’s pretty good. A smaller exhibition upstairs of the works that the Gibson bequest committee bought during the Emergency (known as World War II elsewhere) I found less impressive. One or two things I quite liked but overall, not the finest moment in Cork art collecting.

Herself meanwhile had been invited by a friend to hear Oscar Wilde’s grandson reading his poetry at the Abbey but had to turn down the invitation as she had too much homework. Alas.

Massing


Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Princess

I took my father to mass in Cork this morning. We went to the same church where my mother’s funeral was. I’ve been there lots of times since but it made me feel gloomy this morning for some reason. My parents would have been 52 years married on Friday so maybe that is part of it. The priest recited this slightly mawkish prayer (thanks Cardinal Newman) and I was a bit weepy whereas normally I am superior about the sentimentality – the parish priest in Cork is keen on it and recites it often and I think he may have done so at my mother’s funeral:

O Lord, support us all the day long,
until the shadows lengthen,
and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed,
and the fever of life is over,
and our work is done.

Then in your mercy,
grant us a safe lodging and a holy rest,
and peace at the last.

Amen.

My father was quite cheerful though, I have to say.

Great readings this morning anyhow: real crowd pleasers. The gospel was about the steward who gets fired for incompetence. A couple of the lines have survived in general conversation (at least in the house I grew up in): “Give me an account of your stewardship, for you may no longer be steward”; “Take your bond and write twenty”; “To dig, I am unable; to beg I am ashamed.”

All of these have been changed in the version we got this morning and not improved in my opinion. I mean “Dig? I am not strong enough. Go begging? I should be too ashamed.” Just not as good I submit.

The priest gave a big long sermon about stewardship of the earth and Laudato Si and how all the children who had been marching on Friday on climate change were terrific. I was quite sorry that herself wasn’t there as she had been dutifully marching and it’s not often that she is in a position to agree with a sermon on a Sunday.

How was your own weekend? I feel that most of mine was spent on trains.

A Paean to the Public Library


Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Ireland, Reading etc.

I cannot speak with enough enthusiasm about the library service. I never went to the library much as a child. This quote from CS Lewis has always spoken to me:

“I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books. My father bought all the books he read and never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study, books in the drawing room, books in the cloakroom, books (two deep) in the great bookcase on the landing, books in a bedroom, books piled as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic, books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents’ interest, books readable and unreadable, books suitable for a child and books most emphatically not. Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass.”

That said, although I similarly had access to all my parents’ books suitable and unsuitable, the library would have brought some welcome additional variety to the stock of children’s books available. My sister became a youthful aficionado of the library and was always going in to the book club run by the librarian. I looked upon her with disdain. Foolish me.

Mr. Waffle as a child was a regular at the local library so when our own children came along, we got into the habit of going to the library. The scales fell from my eyes. What a truly wonderful service.

I continue to marvel at the ability to go into a library anywhere in the country and take out a book and then return it in my local branch or vice versa. When my sister-in-law and her family were in Cork recently (a triumph, of course), they went to the library in the city (it’s a good one) and borrowed some books to return in Dublin.

I have not bought a book in ages; almost anything I read, I order from the library. I am at a bit of a loss to understand how, on this basis, our house continues to be absolutely falling down with books. A mystery.

I recently went to investigate the newly renovated city centre library in Kevin Street. It’s a delight. My photo is of the children’s library in an attempt to lure my sister-in-law and little niece there but the adult reading room is quite lovely like an old study.

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And the other day, when I was in the library, I noticed that they have a new digital borrowing service called Borrow Box where you can download ebooks and audio books. Just as I am setting off on my holidays. What is not to love?

Cork Geography


Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Mr. Waffle, Siblings

When I was last in Cork, I was in the car with my sister and she said that she wanted to drop in something to a friend who had just had an operation. “Oh,” I said as we drove up to the estate, “this is where my friend F from college grew up. Ask your friend if she knows F.” My sister went in to the house, I waited in the car. “Well,” I said, “does she know F?” “Yes,” said my sister, ” and not only that but F’s sister was her surgeon.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Waffle was talking about a colleague of his. “What’s his wife’s name, again?” he asked me. “You mean A who was in my class in college; whose father was a friend of my father’s; who was a neighbour of my friend F’s (yes, same F) growing up?” “Yes, I suppose, I do,” he said.