Cork

When I was growing up in Cork, there was nowhere that sold garlic. My mother used to buy it in France in the summer and bring it home. I didn’t taste pesto until I went to Naples as an au pair for the summer when I was 18 (remind me to tell you about that sometime). I was doing my shopping the other night and I noticed that you could buy 3 different types of pine nuts. Seriously, three types? And 6 different makes of chorizo; 6 different makes people. I don’t know; whatever happened to meat and two veg?

Mind you, it has come full circle in one way. My friend’s parents had their shopping delivered. Even then, in the 70s, I knew that was old fashioned and that everyone went to the supermarket. The man would come to their door with the big brown boxes and they would sit down and prepare a list with him for what they needed next week. I thought it was very odd. But here we are, all getting our shopping delivered again but now it’s by international corporations rather than locally owned groceries. This does seem a pity. But still, now we get three kinds of pine nuts. Progress, I suppose.

I know someone who took three weeks off work to nurse her children through the State examinations which ended today. I seem to remember that my parents went on holidays before I finished my Leaving Certificate. My sister maintains it was the matric (now abolished), but you see my point.

This brings me to a story. When I sat down in the Lee Maltings (now a trendy research institute) to do my matric in 1986 (yes, alas, neither today nor yesterday), I was young and considerably less knowledgeable than I thought. The invigilator who talked us through the form on the first day said, “Where it says place of birth, put Cork; they’re not interested in the competition between the Bons and the Ville.” As I had my pen poised to write that I was born in the Bons Secours Maternity hospital, his warning was timely.

That’s enough exam nostalgia for one day.