My brother is on an extended holiday in the US [because he can] and he sends us the odd update [because he believes we should suffer].

Not a lot of people know this but as a child, my father lived in Southern California. His parents came back to Cork in the 30s and people used to ask him to talk – “Let’s hear the little yank”. He remembers the ice man, and seeing a film being made at night but that’s pretty much all we’ve ever heard of his sojourn in America. My father is not a great man for nostalgia.

Latest missive from my brother includes the following:

Hey folks how,s the form…..whoever sang that song it never rains in southern California has seriously misrepresented the reality. It,s been raining here solidly all day, it,s like the west of Ireland with Palm Trees thrown in. I,m in the apple store in Pasadena near Los Angeles, trying to use the iPad 2, have to admit it,s well cool though ridiculously overpriced. It is pretty cool despite the fact I can,t find the apostrophe on the key pad. It,s also the childhood home of [our father], the directions I was given to the actual house from the man himself was that there was a machine that sold nickel sweets on the street corner sometime in the 1930s. With these pinpoint directions I have only my ineptitude and terrible sense of direction to blame for failing to find the landmark building.