Cork

I was in Cork at the weekend with herself. Nothing really happened but here we are in November and I have committed to posting every day. It’s only the 11th and I’m exhausted already.

I took herself to the cemetery to see my mother’s grave and almost missed it because the enormous overgrown hydrangea bush nearby, which is a handy marker, had been chopped down by somebody in an excess of enthusiasm. We went at dusk and it was quite beautiful. I couldn’t help feeling that had she known, my mother would have been delighted to be interred in such an interesting cemetery.

My father and my aunt were pretty remarkably perky. I made herself consult with my father for his live take on the rise of fascism for her history essay but as he was only 15 in 1940, it was a bit underwhelming – he just summarised what we knew already – but he did comment that his views were formed in part by the papers his aunts and uncles took: the Daily Mail and, oh God, the Express. I can only rejoice, I suppose, that he himself is a Daily Telegraph reader.

We went out on Friday night for my sister’s birthday which was a bit disastrous as both she and my brother were quite ill and herself was exhausted. We ate our way around Cork over the weekend. After our ill-fated dinner on Friday night, herself and myself had a satisfactory breakfast in the Crawford, then picked up lunch ingredients in the Market and in the evening she had chips and Tanora from Jackie Lennox’s; the following morning we had breakfast in the Nano Nagle cafe (aside, is it too early for the return of Hanora as a girl’s name?). All in all a culinary tour de force.

How was your own weekend? Much food?