Hello from the small city of Cork in Ireland on the coast south of Dublin, somewhere I think the population, indigenous and expatriate may have been keeping below the radar. The weather for the week has been sunny and clear, my bald head is sunburned, lets hear it for global climate change.
I had lunch today in an open restaurant above the Old English Market, the oldest covered market in Europe. They have a set menu but if you want something else e.g. the fish of the day, I did and had a nice piece of hake, they go down to the market and fetch it. With a grated carrot and raisin salad, fresh wholegrain bread and butter, mashed potatoes rich with butter and a side of fresh mixed vegetable total €15.
I inquired as to why a young man working at a stand downstairs was, by his accent, English yet living and working in Cork. He assured me he was Irish but his parents were refugees, part of the exodus that fled Margaret Thatcher’s England for Ireland and thus his accent was English. Who knew.
With my old person’s bus pass in the morning I went to the small central bus station and took the next bus to, Skibbereen, where the Saturday market had old hippies selling hand made furniture and organic everything, Rosscanbery, simply beautiful, Kinsale, a small harbor town where 4,000 Spanish soldiers landed in 1601 to help with the war against the English, it must have greatly enriched the lives of the local girls and help explain the “black Irish.”
Yesterday, Sunday I went walking early and decided on an Irish breakfast in the Gresham Hotel, somewhat grander than mine, with a view of the river Lee. I crossed a large lobby went down a hall and asked the young man at the desk for a table for one. He asked for my room number and I told him I wasn’t staying in the hotel. He showed me to my table and asked me to pay at the reception desk on the way out. Poached eggs, Irish bacon the full Irish and a lot of tea. I ambled out later unwatched to the front desk and paid €10.
The town is a mix of locals with thick brogues, Polish immigrants working in all the restaurants and coffee shops, some who learned English here so with Irish accents. Small numbers of Asians, one working in Marks & Spencer’s with a Thai name badge and an accent so strange I inquired and she told me she grew up in Newcastle in the north of England, and a scattering of Africans. There are students from China to Venezuela and places in between ostensibly here to study English, many also with Irish accents. When their children get through high school and university Ireland will be much improved and never look the same.
They have great book stores in Cork. In Connolly’s a second hand bookstore I asked the owner if he had a copy of Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office”. Mr Connolly, he had lived and worked, among other places, in Brooklyn, Saigon in the 1970s and a small town inland from Darwin and also in Vancouver told me to follow him. In passing he picked the only copy of Post Office from a shelf and arriving at a wall with some photographs pinned on it told me “put your fingers in your mouth” which I of course did. Looking at me and tapping the picture he asked “don’t you think there is a resemblance”, a picture of Bukowski with his fingers in his mouth. And there was, ask my friend Mel he was there.
Before leaving I asked Mr Connolly why having visited all the other exotic places he had chosen to return to Cork, and he told me “why settle for anything less”.
I hope this finds you well and in good spirits,
John
The hotel lobby is full of people who have flown in from Germany and Scandinavia and one couple definitely from Scotland for the upcoming Bob Dylan concert. Mel tried to get us tickets for last week’s Dolly Parton concert but it was sold out.
Local graffiti. Be Yourself – Everyone Else is Already Taken.
I had lunch today in an open restaurant above the Old English Market, the oldest covered market in Europe. They have a set menu but if you want something else e.g. the fish of the day, I did and had a nice piece of hake, they go down to the market and fetch it. With a grated carrot and raisin salad, fresh wholegrain bread and butter, mashed potatoes rich with butter and a side of fresh mixed vegetable total €15.
I inquired as to why a young man working at a stand downstairs was, by his accent, English yet living and working in Cork. He assured me he was Irish but his parents were refugees, part of the exodus that fled Margaret Thatcher’s England for Ireland and thus his accent was English. Who knew.
With my old person’s bus pass in the morning I went to the small central bus station and took the next bus to, Skibbereen, where the Saturday market had old hippies selling hand made furniture and organic everything, Rosscanbery, simply beautiful, Kinsale, a small harbor town where 4,000 Spanish soldiers landed in 1601 to help with the war against the English, it must have greatly enriched the lives of the local girls and help explain the “black Irish.”
Yesterday, Sunday I went walking early and decided on an Irish breakfast in the Gresham Hotel, somewhat grander than mine, with a view of the river Lee. I crossed a large lobby went down a hall and asked the young man at the desk for a table for one. He asked for my room number and I told him I wasn’t staying in the hotel. He showed me to my table and asked me to pay at the reception desk on the way out. Poached eggs, Irish bacon the full Irish and a lot of tea. I ambled out later unwatched to the front desk and paid €10.
The town is a mix of locals with thick brogues, Polish immigrants working in all the restaurants and coffee shops, some who learned English here so with Irish accents. Small numbers of Asians, one working in Marks & Spencer’s with a Thai name badge and an accent so strange I inquired and she told me she grew up in Newcastle in the north of England, and a scattering of Africans. There are students from China to Venezuela and places in between ostensibly here to study English, many also with Irish accents. When their children get through high school and university Ireland will be much improved and never look the same.
They have great book stores in Cork. In Connolly’s a second hand bookstore I asked the owner if he had a copy of Charles Bukowski’s “Post Office”. Mr Connolly, he had lived and worked, among other places, in Brooklyn, Saigon in the 1970s and a small town inland from Darwin and also in Vancouver told me to follow him. In passing he picked the only copy of Post Office from a shelf and arriving at a wall with some photographs pinned on it told me “put your fingers in your mouth” which I of course did. Looking at me and tapping the picture he asked “don’t you think there is a resemblance”, a picture of Bukowski with his fingers in his mouth. And there was, ask my friend Mel he was there.
Before leaving I asked Mr Connolly why having visited all the other exotic places he had chosen to return to Cork, and he told me “why settle for anything less”.
I hope this finds you well and in good spirits,
John
The hotel lobby is full of people who have flown in from Germany and Scandinavia and one couple definitely from Scotland for the upcoming Bob Dylan concert. Mel tried to get us tickets for last week’s Dolly Parton concert but it was sold out.
Local graffiti. Be Yourself – Everyone Else is Already Taken.