I’m home by my own lovely Lee

Thursday, July 05, 2012

I love Cork.

I love its people, their accents. I am their kin, and that’s how I know they love their birthplace too, says John Creedon

SPORTS commentator Pat McAuliffe was mid-sentence as I switched on the car radio. By the time he reached the full stop, I knew who was playing. ‘It’s the girls in blue who have the sliotar now. Tracy Ryan to Breeda Power and on to Sheila Ryan … (‘All good Waterford names,’ I think to myself.) … dispossessed by Aoife McCarthy, who releases it to Siobhan Crowley, on to 16-year-old Sheila Cronin (sounds like the Cork minor camogie team to me) ‘…who pops it over the bar making it Cork 1-6, Waterford 0-4 points.’ Knew it.

In school, we were told ‘Aithnionn ciarog, ciarog eile’ (A beetle will always recognise another beetle). It’s true. I can spot a fellow Corkonian across a crowded room even when abroad. Three minutes into our conversation and I’ll detect the slightest nuance in the accent. A soft ‘r’ and I’m thinking east of the county, while the word ‘you’ pronounced ‘u’ and I’m thinking more the Kerry side of the county, Beara maybe.

There are few who possess as keen a sense of place as the Irish … and the Cork crowd have it in spades. I love being a Corkman and my years living in Kerry and Dublin have reinforced, not diluted, that passion.

While the people of Tuam or Tullamore seem resigned to their rank, Corkonians don’t. Maybe it’s because we live in Ireland’s second city that we compete with Dublin. It’s a mis-match, but it doesn’t stop us trying. We can be very trying.

Yes, we have a reputation for taking Cork too seriously and for referring to our home as ‘a republic’. But visitors report a sense of independence here. By Irish standards, Cork is self-contained. Nearly half a million of us live in Co Cork, and unlike the good folk of Carlow, Longford and other smaller counties, we don’t feel the need to look over our county bounds for much. Why would we, when, for generations, we have had our own university, airport and daily newspaper. Cork people marry Cork people and take their holidays in Cork. Why wouldn’t they, when the road from Youghal, in the east of the county, to Eyeries, in the west, is longer than the road to Dublin. We have critical mass.

But no logic explains love of place. It’s an emotion that cannot be described, only illustrated. Let me illustrate. It’s the feeling I get when I see a photograph of children, with oriental features, called Crowley peering from the pages of the Cork Holly Bough.

It’s the joyous sense of anticipation I feel when I instinctively (and prematurely) start to gather my belongings as the Dublin train approaches the tunnel in Blackpool.

It’s the growing sense of kinsmanship I feel as a trickle of red swells to a torrent as we head for the station, en route to Dublin, for another Cork appearance in a final.

Like any passionate relationship, a love affair with one’s hometown is rarely painless. There’s frustration I feel when the elegance of Patrick Street is shattered by crass announcements and crap music emanating from the outdoor loudspeakers of department stores and shops. You know who you are.

It’s the frustration I feel when a national newsreader refers to Togher as ‘Toe-har’.

Then, there’s that sense of being disenfranchised each time a Lord Mayor is selected, by pact, between political parties. Yes, we have had some remarkably brilliant first citizens over the years, but others have been remarkably awful. Let the people decide.

A true sense of place is not exclusive. A pride of place that doesn’t acknowledge the wonder of all places is mere chauvinism. So, maybe it’s because I love Cork so much that I can fully appreciate a Kerryman’s love of the Kingdom, or the lump in a Sligo woman’s throat as Ben Bulben comes into view on the road home. Those of us who celebrate Cork’s sporting achievements must surely relate to the tingle down the spine experienced by the occupants of Hill 16 as the Dubs charge out of the tunnel and onto the pitch at Croke Park.

If a northern unionist can rightly claim to be an Ulsterman, British and Irish, then I have no sense of divided loyalty when a Corkonian also takes pride in their Munster and Irish roots. They are not mutually exclusive.

That’s why my love of my home place informs my forthcoming television series Creedon’s Cities, where we visit four Irish cities to see how they developed, meet the citizens, and discover that pride of place is not exclusive to Cork.

We meet the enclosed order of nuns in Galway, who pray every time they hear the wail of an ambulance on the far side of the convent walls, or the Limerick rugby coach in Moyross who has gone door to door in search of a job for a young player expelled from school, and then there’s the true-blue Dub who enthuses about the sewers of his native city.

Home is where the heart is, and it’s all good.

* Creedon’s Cities is on Monday at 9.30pm on RTÉ One

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