My Fancy Took Flight

31st Oct 2002

My Fancy Took Flight
by Padraig Reidy

1. The Lough. Isn't the Lough brilliant? Seriously. It's got loads of different types of ducks and swans in it. When I was a baby my nana would take me out there to feed the 'bon bons' (swans- I always thought this was a general Cork term but the more I question people about it the more I'm convinced it was just my family that said bon bons). Apparently they used to have two black swans out there. Swans mate for life, and when the girl swan eventually died, the boy swan died of a broken heart a few weeks later. That story is probably utter rubbish, but it's nice all the same.

2. The proximity to the sea. The further away you get from it, the more you miss it. Water is brilliant. Ships are great. For a start, if there were no ships, there'd be no early houses. Apart from that though, the sea is still just marvellous isn't it? Even just down by Blackrock / Silversprings, where it's not actually the sea yet, but you can tell its not far off. Cork owes everything to the sea, and you mightn't ever think about it, but I guarantee you'd miss it if you moved to Athlone or somewhere like that.
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3. Cork accents. Not the guttural, mumbling, glottal-stopping filth that spills from the mouths of people who start fights outside Beamish & Crawford. No, proper Cork accents. This is going to be difficult to express without sounding patronising, but Cork accents are brilliant (in- joke time: say the phrase 'I know his brother; he's a langer!' - now try saying it in any other accent. Just sounds stupid, doesn't it?). Cork accents: they swoop, they soar, performing handstands mid-sentence, filling sentences with expressiveness and exuberance, without a trace of coarseness or stupidity. Honestly, a good Cork accent is probably the greatest achievement of the Irish oral tradition.

4. That new bit on the end of the Crawford Gallery. You know, the glass wall that balloons out on top in a strangely organic manner, almost at odds with the rest of the building but somehow making sense. I really like that, I do. Likewise the new facade of the Opera House. In fact, Emmet Place full stop, although they shouldn't have got rid of that fountain that had the distances to all the different cities. I loved that fountain.
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5. Christy Ring Bridge. Rory Gallagher Square. Jack Lynch Tunnel. No one can say we're not proud of our progeny.

6. Our latent artiness. Cork is dead arty. But you don't hear us going on about it, like Galway, and we got there first (Dublin Film Festival? Insulting. Dublin Jazz Festival? The Corpo should have sued the bastards.) How many other cities of Cork's size support two art house cinemas, a film festival, a jazz festival, innumerable award winning theatre companies, for whom original productions of original pieces are the norm, an art college, a music college, a big poncey market full of stuffed olives and weirdy cheeses. I could go on...
7. The ongoing pedestrianisation of the city centre. I don't drive. Even if I did, I think I'd have to acknowledge that this is a very good thing.

8. Our Europeanness. I may be wrong on this point, but I'm in a good mood, so I'll go with the argument anyway. People always go on about the way Dubliners see themselves as separate from the rest of the country. Oddly, I find elements of Cork far more removed. Dublin, as has been pointed out a few times recently, is fast turning into a provincial English city (sorry Dubs, not even Manchester; more like Birmingham).Cork, meanwhile, is turning into a rather pleasant European port town, say Le Sable d'Ologne, or Bordeaux or Seville. This relates in part to the previous two points, and very much to the next one.†

9. The availability of a half decent cup of coffee. I live in London. A city roughly twenty five times the size of Cork. I find it incredibly difficult to get a nice cup of coffee, and impossible to find a nice caf. Londoners still do not understand how to make coffee. Nor do Dubliners. Cork and bits of Galway do.

10. Home. Sentimental bit now. It's my home. It's where I'm from. It's where my parents are from.
It's where everything and everyone important to me has had its origin. When you come back at Christmas, the airport has a big red sign that says 'Welcome Home'. Which is nice. You may or may not agree with me. Please feel free to write an article, or post messages, with your own opinions. Thank you for your patience while my fancy took flight. To the home of my childhood away.

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