Terry Prone: We forget pivotal chapters in our history, and fail to learn from them

What's fascinating about Ida Milne's book is its emphasis on our amnesia about a plague that killed 50 millions people, writes Terry Prone

Rosie O’Toole, a young visitor to Nano Nagle Place in Cork last September, discovering her counterpart guarding against another pandemic a little over a century ago at the centre’s exhibition, Small Lives: At Home in Cork in 1920. Picture: Clare Keogh

Day 129 

The new door for the wood-burning stove is going well until a retaining screw falls out of the handle and the new vacuum cleaner — demonstrating its efficiency — eats up the tiny screw before I notice. This means closing the door on the flames becomes a challenge somewhere between juggling and brain surgery with the ever-present threat of the smoke alarm losing its reason.