“Wishes are fulfilled and their dreams come true”

THE gentle swell and curve of west Cork is another world, I think to myself as I drive through bleak landscape north-west of Tuam.

Twenty minutes shy of Sligo, I take the turn off to Corrigeenroe and my flattened spirits rise; now I’m entering another world, a silent world of mountains, lakes and famine ghosts. After knackering my car’s suspension on a tiny boreen, finally I arrive at my sister’s house.

Yet another world inside; a warm domestic one that has four young children in it, each one bursting with the immediacy of its own need to say hello. They kiss me hard and hover politely, until I remember the chocolate I’ve brought in my bag. Then other needs take precedence; one-and-a-half-year-old Lola wants a story about an owl, Aida wants someone to do something about her tummy-ache, Marius wants to play with toy robots undisturbed and Rosie, 11, wants to see Twilight, Breaking Dawn at the cinema tonight.