Softly as I leave you - our oldest Olympian took life in his stride

GREAT cities have a genius for throwing up characters and institutions, people and places that somehow manage to represent the quirks and foibles of the city.

For years after I married into the Carpenter family, I couldn’t travel anywhere in the world without meeting someone who knew the Club Hotel in Glenbrook, just outside Cork city.

They’d had their first dance there, their first drink, their first kiss. It often seemed that for thousands of people, and not all of them from Cork by any means, the little family hotel by the banks of the Lee held a very special place in their affections.