I took no photos and I wrote no journal during this week off, which makes it hard to retro-blog the visit all that much.
It returned to my mind in December 2021 when writing a vignette, Deeply, inspired by Rohan Candappa’s adverb colander:
In fact, that vignette contains most of the specific things I remember about that trip, other than the following scant details:
- We flew from London to Dublin, took the train from Dublin to Cork and back, returning to London by plane from Dublin I’m pretty sure;
- We stayed in modest hotels in both cities. I don’t recall any high-class meals in Dublin – but I do remember eating and drinking well. We had a good time;
- Although Bobbie has/had kin in Ireland, I’m pretty sure we didn’t visit any of them – we basically just looked around Dublin and then looked around Cork;
- I was still struggling a bit with my back (from the major 1990 injury) and we sought out swimming pools in both cities, with reasonable success;
- In addition to the football match night contained in the Deeply vignette, I also recall the following night, our last, when we ate at the Arbutus Lodge, a rather grand place which had a Michelin star at times and thus we ate a degustation menu at (by Irish standards but certainly not by London standards) enormous expense.
Bobbie might remember some other details and chip in with them – if so I shall add them of course.
That Deeply Vignette Replicated
I don’t much like soccer football. I’m certainly not one to be deeply affected by a football match. But one match is deeply embedded in my psyche. The Republic of Ireland v Albania in May 1992.
Bobbie and I went to Ireland for a week at that time. My first proper break since my back injury two years earlier and my first ever visit to Ireland. I didn’t take a camera and I didn’t take a notebook, making it the least documented trip I have ever taken abroad.
That football match between Ireland and Albania dominates my memory for two reasons.
Firstly, I remember that, in the build up to the match, the Irish media was full of news about the visiting Albanian team. Initially RTÉ news worried, on behalf of the visitors, because the weather was unseasonably cold in Ireland and the visitors reported an insufficiency of warm clothing. Two days later, RTÉ news appealed to the people of Ireland, asking them to stop sending jumpers, cardigans and the like to the Albanian team’s hotel, because the visitors were now inundated with warm clothing.
A deeply charitable nation, the Irish.
Also a nation deeply passionate about their sports teams.
The Republic of Ireland had done unexpectedly well in the 1990 Football World Cup. This May 1992 match was at the start of the qualification campaign for the next World Cup.
By the time the night of the match arrived, Bobbie and I had moved on from Dublin to Cork. Bobbie is a keen football fan whose dad was Irish. We resolved to watch the match in a suitable-looking pub near our hotel.
As usual in Irish pubs, Bobbie and I were warmly received as guests.
There was much genial chatter about the warm clothing news items. The vibe was also charged with keen expectation. The throng expected their now-successful Ireland team to win a qualification match against Albania.
At half time and beyond, with the score still at 0-0, the atmosphere in the pub became tense. Bobbie whispered to me that we should make a hasty exit if the match failed to go Ireland’s way.
Mercifully, Ireland scored a couple of goals in the last half-hour of the game, turning the mood into a memorably shebeen-like party, with plenty of drinking, singing and dancing, until late into the night.