Every year my father reads the Holly Bough from cover to cover on Christmas Day. It’s a Cork publication and the content is, perhaps, not at the cutting edge of journalism. On the cover it describes itself as “A Cork Institution since 1897”. Its articles are full of quirkiness (the girl who was called Tanora – apparently only Cork people know what Tanora is, imagine) and nostalgia. It has several pages of pictures of Cork people in foreign parts holding aloft copies of last year’s Holly Bough. Are you getting a picture here? Nevertheless, I was really very pleased to come home and see that my loving husband had picked me up a copy. My ambition is now to get a picture in it for next year.
Gerry’s Dad drops over the Southern Star every week and I read it avidly. And I’m not from West Cork. Tis a Cork nostalgie de boue sort of thing.
Ooh, the Southern Star. I’m stalling on the Holly Bough actually. I’m about half way through and I’ve only found one reference to someone I know. I am outraged. What is the purpose of the Holly Bough, if not as facebook for the Cork middle aged exile?
Maybe – way down the line – when you actually reach middle-age, you’ll make the centrefold. Or something.
That’s right, way down the line…