Over the summer, two rowers from west Cork won silver medals at the Olympics. The nation went crazy. I did not as I was on my summer holidays in Brittany and was not swept up in the madness.
I was on the phone to my sister who told me all about it.
Me (as the tale concluded): V. exciting. Do we know them at all as they are from Cork and we are honour bound to have a connection to all Cork people?
Her: Well, no, but their aunt is in my pilates class.
Some kind of point proved here, I feel.
I took a week off work in July and brought the children to Cork. This was largely successful although Herself came down with a cold which dogged her for the next fortnight. Happily she does not seem to have passed it on to any of her elderly relatives.
We did the usual things. We went to Charles Fort. It lashed rain on us. The walk out was very damp.
But happily, on arrival at the fort, the sun came out.
We had lunch in the Bulman.
We dropped round to see an old friend of mine and her family. She emigrated to America years ago. She and her husband bought a house in Kinsale and now visit regularly with their four American children. We don’t meet very often due to geography but it is delightful to see the children of friends growing up in leaps and bounds. We had dinner with them; found out about each others lives; reintroduced the children to each other and admired the beautiful view from their house.
We went to Shandon.
And rang the bells.
And visited the church (under some mild protest).
My sister and brother were very kind to them and doled out treats which they very much enjoyed. This, in part made up for the pain of having to visit the Crawford Gallery.
Herself was rather taken with this figure in Daniel Maclise’s “Francois 1 and Diane de Poitiers”. She feels it would make an excellent internet meme. Who am I to quibble with a digital native?
Probably a highlight for Herself was another raid on my parents’ attic. They are, of course, only too delighted to let her take stuff from there. As she had done an impressively massive root and branch clean out and re-organisation of her bedroom in Dublin, I could only concede that she now had room to accommodate a number of miscellaneous items which had taken her fancy. I rescued some things myself including a number of china jugs which had been wrapped in newspaper and, for reasons which are now lost in the mists of time, stored securely in an old wicker wastepaper basket.
On our return to Dublin, I ticked off the remaining item from our standard summer schedule and brought them to St Michan’s to see the crusader. You are no longer allowed to shake the mummified hand which, I suppose, is really for the best all things considered. The literature makes it seem like this was a 19th century thing but I know for a fact that it was standard practice in recent years, including last year. I said to the boys, “How exciting, you will be able to tell your grandchildren that you shook the mummy’s hand when you were 9 and when you came back the following year, you realised that that was the last opportunity ever!” They were not excited.
Finally, I might mention that I was rather taken with this junction box in Cork; alas, not an aspiration likely to be realised.
I was down in Cork at my parents’ house recently. The cistern in the upstairs bathroom has been delicate for a long time. Unless you put the handle at exactly the right angle, it continued filling indefinitely. When I went to the bathroom, I discovered that the arrangement no longer worked and to address the problem, pro tem, my brother had tied his belt around the ballcock and pulled it upwards by attaching his belt to the window catch. It worked but it was, frankly, sub-optimal.
Inevitably, I suppose, the day I was due to leave, while moving the belt to open the window, I managed to break the lid of the cistern. I apologised all round and ran out the door to get my train. I haven’t been back since and am afraid to ask whether cistern lids are a standard size or whether, even now, something special is being crafted for my parents in the armitage shanks workshop. Sigh.
A number of people sent me a link to this Kevin Barry piece in Granta about Cork.
It starts out as follows:
If cities are sexed, as Jan Morris believes, then Cork is a male place. Personified further, I would cast him as low-sized, disputatious and stoutly built, a hard-to-knock-over type. He has a haughty demeanour that’s perhaps not entirely earned but he can also, in a kinder light, seem princely. He is certainly melancholic. He is given to surreal flights and to an antic humour and he is blessed with pleasingly musical speech patterns. He is careful with money. He is in most leanings a liberal. He is fairly cool, usually quite relaxed, and head over heels in love with himself.
At the very least, the last of this is true: the city of Cork is besotted with itself, and it talks of little else.
It is a truly brilliant article; especially since the author is only a blow-in.
My father was 91 on Friday, March 25. Unfortunately, he celebrated his birthday in a hospital bed as he has broken his hip and then picked up the winter vomiting bug in both the hospital where he got the new hip and in the hospital he went to for rehabilitation (apparently you can get it multiple times, who knew?).
I went down to Cork on the Friday to see him – it was Good Friday as well which is, despite its name, a bit of a gloomy day for a birthday for a Catholic. He was pretty well, happily, and they may let him out on April 2 if all continues well; he is a pretty robust 91 year old (not, however, as robust as a neighbour’s 91 year old mother who we regularly see at mass although not on Easter Sunday as she was off in Lanzarote with the extended family). Keep your fingers crossed for my father’s safe escape and a more cheerful birthday lunch at home.
In other Cork news, my brother has used the opportunity of my father’s illness to tidy the parents’ house. This is a bit alarming as it consists of removing the accumulated debris of ages and stacking it on the floor. I have claimed for my own 1970s Monopoly, a dusty and ancient Othello set, many children’s books and a mysterious jigsaw map showing the “New County Boundaries in the United Kingdom and Ireland”. I say mysterious because on the cover there is a handwritten price label, clearly affixed at a jumble sale, saying €2. Who on earth would have bought this after 2002 and why? And most mysteriously of all, we made it over Easter and all of the pieces were there:
Hello, cruel world. A fortnight into the new job and I am absolutely flattened. I have gone from knowing everyone and everything to knowing no one and nothing. It’s very tiring. And I lost all my swipe cards on Friday night, so I may not even be able to get to my desk tomorrow. Quite the achievement.
So what news, I hear you ask. Well, the boys and I went to Cork. We went to Charles Fort and the Bulman for lunch. It didn’t rain on us. I call that a success. Then we saw a seal near the slip way beside the car park. Very exciting.
Nevertheless, probably the highlight was passing a shop selling holy statutes. Daniel looked dubiously at Padre Pio and asked, “Is that Obi Wan Kenobi?”
While the boys and I were in Cork, herself was in Rome for the week. Actually, Rome, Pompeii, Sorrento, Montecassino and Naples. Notwithstanding the exhausting programme, she had a wonderful time. She liked the Trevi fountain and the Map Room in the Vatican Museums the best.
Early on in proceedings, I got this email.
From: Herself
To: MeHave successfully ordered McDonald’s in Italian. Forgot to ask for ketchup and was thrown by the choice between mela and kiwi but all in all quite successful.
Clearly, the trip was not entirely about expanding culinary horizons.
The boys and Mr. Waffle featured briefly on Irish language television talking about house swapping. I was at work and the Princess was at school but the boys were off being minded by their father so they got to star. Actually every word they spoke was edited out so they were a bit crushed. Former colleagues of mine (husband and wife team) saw it and when they saw the photo albums (to show the TV people the houses we had stayed in), carefully labelled they said in unison “That is so typical of Anne.” My filing fame has spread and in the most positive way, I’m sure.
Last Monday night was a bit hideous. Daniel had GAA, Michael had scouts and herself was in a massive Dublin archdiocese concert. They were bringing 600 secondary school students together every night last week to sing a range of hymns. 2,000 years of liturgical music and the focus was very strongly on those pieces composed for saxophone and guitar. Sigh. Some of the pieces were composed for the event. I particularly enjoyed the combination of jazzy upbeat music and the very old testament type lyrics “If the just strike me down, it’s done out of kindness” and “Let all that stray from what is good, be thrown a rock of judgement”. I did not get any dinner but I did have a large packet of maltesers at the concert.
On Friday night, Daniel and herself had speaking parts at some ecumenical event. The service was “prepared by the Christian women of Cuba” and it was held at the local Protestant church. Michael refused point blank to attend saying that he was not going to Mass on Friday and Sunday. The booklet giving the details of readings etc. also featured a couple of prayers like our prayers of the faithful. This one caught my eye:
” We recognize that we did not lift up our voices sufficiently to denounce an injustice like the economic blockade that affected the Cuban people for more than 50 years. We recognize our responsibility in allowing walls to be built up which destroy community.”
In the end Michael had to go as I couldn’t and Mr. Waffle brought them all. Daniel and the Princess carried out their roles with aplomb but attendance was poor. Elderly local Protestants and Catholics turned out but not many of them. Mr. Waffle feels that the women of Cuba may have been expecting a different kind of congregation when they decided to put the butterfly hymn on the programme. Apparently, you haven’t lived until you have heard a group of elderly people singing: “If I were a wiggly worm I’d thank you Lord that I could squirm/ If I were a fuzzy, wuzzy bear /I’d thank you Lord for my fuzzy, wuzzy hair”.
Daniel got to deliver the immortal line: “We will now collect our butterflies and bring them to the Scared Prayer Space”.
I was, alas, not in attendance at the Cuban prayer gig, because on Tuesday morning, my poor father fell and broke his hip. My parents are now the proud possessors of four plastic hips. I went down to Cork to see him on Friday night. He was remarkably cheerful given that a) he had a newly inserted plastic hip b) he is nearly 91 c) he spent about 24 hours on a trolley in A&E, and d) he has acquired the winter vomiting bug while in the hospital. My sister and I left him with the paper which he read and my sister tells me he has started to eat again today. He is remarkably resilient.
Final news items. We had parent-teacher meetings for all three children. They are all fine. All of the secondary school teachers told us that herself makes regular announcements over the school intercom. They were more impressed by this achievement than any other as far as I can see. All to the good, I suppose. Also, unrelated, she has won a 1916 poetry competition.
That is all.
Updated to add: I forgot – the dishwasher is broken. A new pump is said to be coming but in the interim we are washing the dishes by hand. The novelty has worn off.
That really is all.
