With one thing and another, I have been in Cork quite a bit recently. Does where you are from become more loved when you move away? Cork is delightful in the Spring (though showery). The city centre is small but not too small. Last time I was there a busker was belting out Spancil Hill in front of the Crawford and the sun was shining and people were milling about and it was lively and familiar.
I was desperate to get out of Cork and see the world when I qualified. I left in 1993 and haven’t lived in Cork for any significant length of time since. When we came back to Ireland from Brussels, Mr. Waffle suggested that we might consider moving to Cork. I did consider it but it didn’t suit for a range of reasons (including that neither of us had a job there) and I was ambivalent about living in Cork again. It’s small and all my friends had left. If I go to Cork now, there is no one I know beyond my immediate family. So, my homesickness is artificial and I think living there would be difficult. When I had the chance, I turned it down. But yet, it is a lovely place and I miss it.
It’s a bit like that diaspora dissonance Kingsley Aikins talks about: you’re in Boston wishing you were in Galway wishing you were in Boston….
Do you find yourself missing Brussels much?
Diaspora dissonance – I do like that.
Dot, funnily enough, not at all. I really thought I would but I don’t. I would like to go to visit again – which I have only done once or twice since we left but I have absolutely no desire to live there again. Isn’t it odd? I wonder how you would feel about Dublin, if you left?