The Heart of the City: Billy O'Callaghan's short Christmas story

“Over on the Grand Parade, starting back towards where I’d parked the car, I saw Francis stretched out on his side, asleep on one of the benches facing the library”

Looking towards the Christmas lights at the junction of South Mall and Grand Parade in Cork - one of the scenes of Billy O'Callaghan's 2023 Christmas story. Picture: Denis Minihane.

Last year, on a Wednesday lunchtime full of watery sunshine and stern, snapping wind, a week before Christmas, I was making my way at something of an angry walk into the heart of the city when a woman stopped me to ask a favour. 

Town has no shortage of such people, employed on commission by one of the charities, trying to smilingly flag down passers-by and coax bank details from them with some well-practised pitch of a sob story.