Cork

Your Point?

3 May, 2016
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Reading etc.

A number of people sent me a link to this Kevin Barry piece in Granta about Cork.

It starts out as follows:

If cities are sexed, as Jan Morris believes, then Cork is a male place. Personified further, I would cast him as low-sized, disputatious and stoutly built, a hard-to-knock-over type. He has a haughty demeanour thatâ€™s perhaps not entirely earned but he can also, in a kinder light, seem princely. He is certainly melancholic. He is given to surreal flights and to an antic humour and he is blessed with pleasingly musical speech patterns. He is careful with money. He is in most leanings a liberal. He is fairly cool, usually quite relaxed, and head over heels in love with himself.

At the very least, the last of this is true: the city of Cork is besotted with itself, and it talks of little else.

It is a truly brilliant article; especially since the author is only a blow-in.

Happy Birthday

1 April, 2016
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

My father was 91 on Friday, March 25. Unfortunately, he celebrated his birthday in a hospital bed as he has broken his hip and then picked up the winter vomiting bug in both the hospital where he got the new hip and in the hospital he went to for rehabilitation (apparently you can get it multiple times, who knew?).

I went down to Cork on the Friday to see him – it was Good Friday as well which is, despite its name, a bit of a gloomy day for a birthday for a Catholic. He was pretty well, happily, and they may let him out on April 2 if all continues well; he is a pretty robust 91 year old (not, however, as robust as a neighbour’s 91 year old mother who we regularly see at mass although not on Easter Sunday as she was off in Lanzarote with the extended family). Keep your fingers crossed for my father’s safe escape and a more cheerful birthday lunch at home.

In other Cork news, my brother has used the opportunity of my father’s illness to tidy the parents’ house. This is a bit alarming as it consists of removing the accumulated debris of ages and stacking it on the floor. I have claimed for my own 1970s Monopoly, a dusty and ancient Othello set, many children’s books and a mysterious jigsaw map showing the “New County Boundaries in the United Kingdom and Ireland”. I say mysterious because on the cover there is a handwritten price label, clearly affixed at a jumble sale, saying â‚¬2. Who on earth would have bought this after 2002 and why? And most mysteriously of all, we made it over Easter and all of the pieces were there:

Update

6 March, 2016
Posted in: Boys, Cork, Daniel, Family, Ireland, Michael, Mr. Waffle, Princess, Travel

Hello, cruel world. A fortnight into the new job and I am absolutely flattened. I have gone from knowing everyone and everything to knowing no one and nothing. It’s very tiring. And I lost all my swipe cards on Friday night, so I may not even be able to get to my desk tomorrow. Quite the achievement.

So what news, I hear you ask. Well, the boys and I went to Cork. We went to Charles Fort and the Bulman for lunch. It didn’t rain on us. I call that a success. Then we saw a seal near the slip way beside the car park. Very exciting.

Nevertheless, probably the highlight was passing a shop selling holy statutes. Daniel looked dubiously at Padre Pio and asked, “Is that Obi Wan Kenobi?”

While the boys and I were in Cork, herself was in Rome for the week. Actually, Rome, Pompeii, Sorrento, Montecassino and Naples. Notwithstanding the exhausting programme, she had a wonderful time. She liked the Trevi fountain and the Map Room in the Vatican Museums the best.

Early on in proceedings, I got this email.

From: Herself
To: Me

Have successfully ordered McDonald’s in Italian. Forgot to ask for ketchup and was thrown by the choice between mela and kiwi but all in all quite successful.

Clearly, the trip was not entirely about expanding culinary horizons.

The boys and Mr. Waffle featured briefly on Irish language television talking about house swapping. I was at work and the Princess was at school but the boys were off being minded by their father so they got to star. Actually every word they spoke was edited out so they were a bit crushed. Former colleagues of mine (husband and wife team) saw it and when they saw the photo albums (to show the TV people the houses we had stayed in), carefully labelled they said in unison “That is so typical of Anne.” My filing fame has spread and in the most positive way, I’m sure.

Last Monday night was a bit hideous. Daniel had GAA, Michael had scouts and herself was in a massive Dublin archdiocese concert. They were bringing 600 secondary school students together every night last week to sing a range of hymns. 2,000 years of liturgical music and the focus was very strongly on those pieces composed for saxophone and guitar. Sigh. Some of the pieces were composed for the event. I particularly enjoyed the combination of jazzy upbeat music and the very old testament type lyrics “If the just strike me down, it’s done out of kindness” and “Let all that stray from what is good, be thrown a rock of judgement”. I did not get any dinner but I did have a large packet of maltesers at the concert.

On Friday night, Daniel and herself had speaking parts at some ecumenical event. The service was “prepared by the Christian women of Cuba” and it was held at the local Protestant church. Michael refused point blank to attend saying that he was not going to Mass on Friday and Sunday. The booklet giving the details of readings etc. also featured a couple of prayers like our prayers of the faithful. This one caught my eye:

” We recognize that we did not lift up our voices sufficiently to denounce an injustice like the economic blockade that affected the Cuban people for more than 50 years. We recognize our responsibility in allowing walls to be built up which destroy community.”

In the end Michael had to go as I couldn’t and Mr. Waffle brought them all. Daniel and the Princess carried out their roles with aplomb but attendance was poor. Elderly local Protestants and Catholics turned out but not many of them. Mr. Waffle feels that the women of Cuba may have been expecting a different kind of congregation when they decided to put the butterfly hymn on the programme. Apparently, you haven’t lived until you have heard a group of elderly people singing: “If I were a wiggly worm I’d thank you Lord that I could squirm/ If I were a fuzzy, wuzzy bear /I’d thank you Lord for my fuzzy, wuzzy hair”.

Daniel got to deliver the immortal line: “We will now collect our butterflies and bring them to the Scared Prayer Space”.

I was, alas, not in attendance at the Cuban prayer gig, because on Tuesday morning, my poor father fell and broke his hip. My parents are now the proud possessors of four plastic hips. I went down to Cork to see him on Friday night. He was remarkably cheerful given that a) he had a newly inserted plastic hip b) he is nearly 91 c) he spent about 24 hours on a trolley in A&E, and d) he has acquired the winter vomiting bug while in the hospital. My sister and I left him with the paper which he read and my sister tells me he has started to eat again today. He is remarkably resilient.

Final news items. We had parent-teacher meetings for all three children. They are all fine. All of the secondary school teachers told us that herself makes regular announcements over the school intercom. They were more impressed by this achievement than any other as far as I can see. All to the good, I suppose. Also, unrelated, she has won a 1916 poetry competition.

That is all.

Updated to add: I forgot – the dishwasher is broken. A new pump is said to be coming but in the interim we are washing the dishes by hand. The novelty has worn off.

That really is all.

Birthdays

15 February, 2016
Posted in: Cork, Family, Ireland

My mother’s birthday was on February 1. I went down to Cork the weekend before for a birthday lunch which passed off peacefully and which I hope she enjoyed.

Preparations were rendered somewhat stressful by my brother’s decision to re-organise the bottom of the [very large Victorian] bookcase where a lifetime’s supply of ware had nestled peacefully for decades. All that he had deemed worthy of salvation had been returned in ordered piles to the bottom of the bookcase but the dining room table was piled high with items about which he had his doubts. My parents, I discovered, are the owners of the largest collection of toast racks alive in captivity. I may well be responsible for their above average holding of Kwak glasses.

In advance of lunch I found homes for many of the items – intended as temporary but likely to become permanent, I fear – the trolley and the sideboard are now more heavily laden than previously. On the plus side, the dining room table was clear. With the blessing of everyone in Cork, I liberated a toast rack and a jam pot which made it safely back to Dublin. “Ah,” said Mr. Waffle, “the 50s are back.”

I have discovered that if you want your toast to stay warm, a toast rack is utterly useless. However, if your daughter has cold toast for her daily sandwich (don’t ask me), it is ideal for ensuring that the toast cools speedily so that you can minimise the danger of condensation in the sandwich bag. Don’t mock the afflicted.

The other birthday is my brother’s which was on February 5 and for which, as yet, he has got no present from his loving, elder sister. I’m sure it will be even better for the wait. I wonder would he like a packet of stroopwafels.

Quote of the Holiday Season

14 January, 2016
Posted in: Cork, Ireland, Princess

Herself, upon being required with her brothers to unload the dishwasher in her grandparents’ house having just done so in the house we were staying in in East Cork: “I was not put on this earth to unload the dishwasher.”

Christmas and New Year

11 January, 2016
Posted in: Cork, Dublin, Family, Ireland

We went to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. For the first time, all of us managed to last until the end. This is not the achievement it might be given that it starts at 9pm (notwithstanding the inaccurate title). I must say that our parish priest makes every effort to extend the ceremony but we did manage to get home by 11.

Herself and Daniel were in the choir and were also selected to carry the baby Jesus to his crib after the Gospel. This filled me with fear as I couldn’t quite see how they were both to carry the porcelain figure. However, it transpired that Daniel was following with a candle rather than carrying the arms while his sister carried the legs. They were both clean and wearing their new Christmas clothes and they were suitably solemn. I was very proud.

On Christmas Day, Santa came and, I think, was reasonably successful. He didn’t get everything on Daniel’s list but it was a long list. We had my parents-in-law around for Christmas lunch and then afterwards, we all went briefly to visit the cousins before returning to collapse at home in exhaustion.

On the 26th we went orienteering with the cousins. As always, it absolutely lashed rain. Obligatory photo of damp children in the rain on St. Stephen’s Day:

Afterwards we went to the usual pub in the Dublin mountains for lunch. This was not a success. I waited for 70 increasingly bitter minutes for them to deliver to me a small breakfast. All of the food was slow but mine was the slowest. The service was appalling. Each time we asked where the food was they said it was coming but it did not come. And then they said we hadn’t ordered it. And then when my small breakfast finally appeared, it was nasty. I am still bitter but I suppose we will go back there next year as it is not as though there is a lot of choice in that neck of the woods. Sigh.

On the 27th we drove to Cork. My sister gave the children an enormous bag of presents each. Joy was unconfined. There was personalised nutella.

And Minecraft t-shirts:

We were staying in our friends’ house in Garryvoe in east Cork. The flooding made the Cork-Garryvoe drive quite dramatic and exciting but we survived.

We went to Kinsale and had lunch at the Bulman.

The view was a bit gloomy.

But, as nothing, compared to the weather they saw later the same week – although I did notice that there were some sandbags against the wall of the pub. I hope they helped in the face of this.

Alas, Charles Fort was closed for the holidays.

Despite our walk in Kinsale, outdoor activity was pretty limited due to the more or less constant lashing rain. Herself got to stay overnight with her aunt and go ice skating with her uncle both of which she very much enjoyed. We took the boys to Milano’s.

And then we scuttled back to Dublin. The countryside was absolutely sodden but we were safely on our elevated motorway. I started to get sick (again, for heaven’s sake) on December 30 and spent the remainder of the Christmas holidays snuggled up by the fire.

I appreciate that this is a late Christmas entry but I have only tonight eaten the last mince pie in the house (best before January 6) so not, you know, that late.

Happy new year.