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.
Just wait till the competition between Clinique Saint Jean and the Edith Cavell hots up.
ha! was just talking to my mum about the fact that my cousin was due to give birth any day now ‘in the Rotunda’ (I think? Anyway, where both my mum and my older sister was born). This is clearly an Irish thing.
MT – I’m sure in Bxls they talk of little else.
Disgruntled, really? Don’t people from other countries talk about the hospitals they were born in? How odd.
I was once party to a conversation bwtween two Cork people, where one of the opening questions was “Christians or Pres?”. Do these markers of identity assume the same significance in other countries?
Wait till you talk to a denizen of South Dublin on the vexed question of The Merrion Wing…..
Gosh, a whole world out there, I imagine.