​And each morning, we’d awake, to the dawn chorus; the men of the Northside, Blackpool and the Red City of Gurranabrahar walking and whistling their way to work, along our street and all the way down to the docks towards the Motown of Fords and Dunlop's.
It seems to me, that soon after that the families moved out; out of the heart of the city, out to the reservations in the wastelands. And where once the downtown dirty-faces played, now stands a multi-story car-park, keeping the machine safe from people…
And still to this very day, sometimes as I’m heading down along Pine Street, deep in my inner ear, I swear I can still hear shrieks of downtown dirty-faced delight as a shower of sparks from quarter-iron tipped heels, sends a pig skin squealing: rip-roaring, like a rocket, rattling the back of the onion sack – shuddering sound waves along the steel sheeting of Smyth’s Store’s gate.
In my mind’s eye, Cork is a Josef Keys painting, looking westward from the top of Patrick’s Hill, framed by the salt and pepper cellars that are the belfries of St. Anne's and the North Cathedral. And there the rolling Northside laid out before me like a kitchen table at Christmas time, crammed packed with dainties and delights, stretching as far as the eye can see – and vanishing over the hill at Blarney Street and Knocknaheeney.
Bolts of pleasure and pain as my memories travel across Brewery Valley, stopping off along the way at the North Monastery, Eason’s Hill, Murphy’s Stack, and land-locked Poulraddy Harbour. Then all the way back to Redemption Road and over the city to the spiked towers of Holy Trinity, Saint Finbarre’s and the green tops of Saint Francis.
My city is a royal town dressed up in crimson. In the distance the County Hall scraping clouds, picks up the gold of a dying sun. And out along the beautiful Lee Valley to the Carrigrohane Straight, there like a last grasp at life, a setting sun sends flames of red and orange and yellow licking high up into the sky, it looks like Ballincollig’s burning.
CorkAnd that’s exactly it, Cork is home, there’s no place like it. ​