Cork

Learning by Example

3 November, 2014
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland, Princess

I do not like to keep things in the attic. My parents’ attic is full of stuff. Mr. Waffle’s parents’ attic is full of stuff. He said that when he was growing up, broken things were put in the attic to “self-heal”. I know what he means. I have never been in the attic of my house and, as far as I know, it is entirely empty. And I’d like it to stay that way.

I love things to be tidy. Colleagues have been known to recoil when entering my office. It’s tidy. My family are not tidy. If you don’t give things away, you cannot be tidy. I am like a changeling. I have been trying, with absolutely no success, to make the Princess tidy. She suffers from the twin issues of loving stuff and believing that it is not a problem, if you let stuff lie where it falls. She and I fundamentally differ in this regard.

For some time she has been waging a campaign to get into my parents’ attic. I have been a regular visitor as I have been looking for the leg of a table, the top of which is at the back of my parents’ wardrobe and the whole of which I am hoping to get to my house in due course. You would think that a large Victorian table leg would be easy to find, but you would be utterly wrong. I looked – several times; my sister looked; even my brother looked. To no avail.

On this last adventure, the Princess finally got her heart’s desire and came up to the attic with me. Her objective was to retrieve my Great Uncle Dan’s gas mask [given out during the war and definitely in the attic – but where?]. I didn’t hold out high hopes as, if a whole table leg could disappear, then finding a gas mask was a practically insuperable problem. We did not find the gas mask. We did, however, find the table leg under the eaves on the left. Rejoice. Here’s a picture of the table leg [currently residing in the utility room until the top can be brought up from Cork].

I stood there in the attic looking at the mountains of stuff and I said to my daughter, severely “Look around you; this is what happens, if you never throw anything out.” Then, I realised that her eyes were shining and the attic was possibly the most magical place she had ever been. She brought back to Dublin: an old dial phone, a mug with a rose, two boxes and a china bowl with a hole in the bottom. She is desperate to get back up. I may not quite have conveyed to her the message I was hoping to get across.

Cork News

2 November, 2014
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

Last weekend I went to Cork with the children. We left at 11 on Saturday morning with a view to arriving about 2 for a late lunch. We all had a bite to eat before we left but we were going to be hungry when we arrived. My saintly sister said that she would have lunch ready for us.

Regrettably, the Jack Lynch tunnel which guards the entrance to Cork from Dublin* was operating a contra-flow system due to works. Apparently the bank holiday weekend was the best time to do this. It took us two hours to cover 6kms and we arrived into my parents’ house at 4 starving and cranky.

My father, rather tactlessly, said, “Oh yes, I knew about that, it was in the Examiner.” “You didn’t think I might be interested?” I asked bitterly. Of course, this was the kind of news item that was never going to be covered in the Dublin Intelligencer. Anyhow, we recovered. I was amused to receive a, somewhat contrite, letter from him during the week with a cutting. The Dublin Intelligencer continues to be above matters in the second city so no news likely from there.

*Obviously, very easy to seal off when the revolution begins.

Cork

24 July, 2014
Posted in: Cork, Ireland

I have been up and down to Cork a bit with the children.

On our last visit we donated a possibly interesting document to the city archives. I found it in a box at my parents house with random tat including postcards, school essays and the like. I suggested that I might drop it into the national archives but, my father, roused to vehemence, said he did not want it to go off to Dublin and it was to go to the Cork archives.

The city archives are not particularly central but they are near where the man who did my mother’s upholstery had his workshop. I saw a chaise longue on the footpath and pulled up on a whim. The boys sat resolutely in the car but herself came in with me for a look. It turned out that the upholsterer (Mr. Nodwell – an unforgettable name, you would think, but I had forgotten) had operated out of the premises next door but was now dead. The Princess and I had a look around the bric-a-brac shop with the chaise longue. I suggested that she look out for coins to add to her growing collection. The shop owner overheard us and made her a present of a big box of coins and a cheque from 1961 from a butcher’s shop on Castle Street (now gone) which specialised in crubeens. We had to explain to her what crubeens were. Burdened down by her gifts she whispered to me that she felt she ought to buy something. Her eye fell on a 1970s picture of a foxglove.

Her: Excuse me, how much is that picture please?
Him: â‚¬3.
[She opens her purse]
Him: Are you paying for it yourself? You should always haggle. Look, I’ll do it for you. Will you take â‚¬2, go on, it’s hardly worth â‚¬3. Alright so, you can have it for â‚¬2.

Giggling, she handed over the cash and left with her treasures clutched to her chest.

Then we went into the North Cathedral where I had never been before.

The children found the cathedral unutterably dull but I was surprised how attractive it was inside. It is also the burial place of the bishops of Cork. The Victorian bishop is on the left – no false modesty there. The other graves get progressively plainer until we get to Bishop Murphy who confirmed me whose tablet is flush with the ground. There’s a metaphor there but you’ll have to work it out for yourselves.

We strolled down to Shandon where I had promised the children a chance to ring the bells. Alas, the bells were being repaired and were unavailable to ring. The children sat in the Belfry dolefully for some time and we got chatting with the young man fixing the ropes.

Him: Where are you from?
Me: Cork.
Him: Do you know where Griffith College is?
Me: No, probably after my time.
Him: What?
Me: I haven’t lived in Cork for more than 20 years.
Him: You’re not from Cork at all then.
Silence.
Me: Where are you from?
Him: Leap (West Cork).
Me: Is there much money in the whole bell repair thing? It must be quite a niche job.
Him: I don’t know, I was a gardener until the day before yesterday.

I hope that works out for you Shandon.

Then, gluttons for punishment, we went to the butter museum. Of only mild interest, but having been there before, the children knew what they were signing up for.

I took them to the South Chapel as well. Because I can. But look, catholic church from 1766 and a famous sculpture. What’s not to love?

Summer

12 July, 2014
Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Family, Ireland

The children and I are on summer holidays and it is delightful. In my never ending endeavour to promote culture in the face of some dubiety from the children we have visited the following:
St. Michan’s where we shook hands with the mummified crusader in the crypt;
Christ Church where we inspected the view from the belfry

and rang the bells

(only some of us became air borne); and
the Casino Marino which is the best and the cleverest neoclassical temple you will ever see, if that is your thing

We also went to Cork where 3 of us swam in the sea at Garretstown and the fourth sat on the towels on the beach proclaiming dolefully that he does not like sand. We had the obligatory trip to Blackrock Castle Observatory which continues to be much loved by the troops.

We also purchased a new toaster the excitement of which outstripped by some distance all other events since the holidays began. Daniel got to watch a football match while we were choosing.

You can toast four things at the same time.

And I have also visited Rye (more details to follow – hang on to your hats etc.).

Cycling

11 July, 2014
Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Family, Ireland

Last time I was in Cork, I borrowed my sister’s bike. I cycle most days in Dublin but I haven’t cycled in Cork in 20 years. I was struck by the effort that the city council seems to have put into cycling infrastructure – loads of bike parking spaces, conta-flow lanes! On the minus side, it was raining. And I saw no other cyclists while I was out. I suppose that these facts might not be unrelated. In Dublin, at every junction you are likely to be joined by half a dozen other cyclists and nothing makes cyclists safer than lots of other cyclists. I hope that “if they build it, they will come” works out in Cork as it is a compact city with loads of students and it seems like a natural place to cycle to get around.

Meanwhile, back in Dublin, while during the year, all 5 of us cycled to school one morning, it was a bit hair raising in parts. There was a certain amount of pushing bikes on busier roads but we made it there (and back in the afternoon). We didn’t repeated the dose though. Much more pleasant was a trip we did on the bank holiday Monday along the banks of the Royal Canal from Phibsborough to Ashtown a round trip of about 10 kms which, in places, feels as though it is out in the country although it is very much in the city.

While the other two were happy enough (lovely cygnets, terrifying nesting swan, chance to accidentally cycle into the canal, quaternions), Michael was not enthused cycling gloomily and rather slowly along while muttering darkly. In part this was due to his refusal to use 5 of the 6 gears he has on his bike. He was peddling along in first gear with all his might but, as I unavailingly pointed out, the route was along a canal and, in consequence, almost entirely flat so he would have done better to have tried 5th or 6th gear. It’s a pity Michael was not keen as I would like to do it again but I fear that a very significant bribe would be required to persuade him to entice him out. Alas.

He did cycle into town with his father and brother the following weekend to play war games in a shop that sells expensive, small pieces of plastic, so I suppose that is something. While they were doing that the Princess and I cycled in to see the Fat exhibition in the Science Gallery (I sometimes wonder whether the Science Gallery regards part of its mission as being to revolt) and then went for a restoring tea and a bun before cycling home, all uphill. She and I have been on a number of cycling adventures in the warm weather which has all been very pleasing. If Dublin City Council get their way on cycle lanes in the quays, there will be lots more of this. Not news that has been greeted with unequivocal enthusiasm, but, go them, I say.

Final, bike related news: one lunch time, I arrived home late, locked my bike to the railings outside the house, leapt into the car, collected the children from school and brought them to the library. As we were leaving the library, I looked for my library card only to discover that my purse wasn’t there. When I got home, there it was, sitting happily in the bottom of my basket; untouched after a whole afternoon outdoors.

Peacefully, in his 99th Year

21 June, 2014
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Reading etc.

My friend M’s father died recently. They thought he would make 100 but he didn’t; he had a long and happy life and died at home surrounded by his family. He was very well until the last year of his life, in fact, he only finally gave up driving at 95 and shooting at 92 (some relief in relation to the latter, I think).

M’s father was born in 1915 and his own father was an old man when he was born, having been born in 1845. When M’s father was young, he remembered his father telling him about people calling to the door of the farmhouse in Tipperary, starving in the wake of the Famine. It seems extraordinary that someone with such a close link to the Famine should only have died earlier this month, I suppose he must be the last person to have had a parent who survived the Great Famine.