EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALNovember 1, 1998
Cork City
After tidying up and packing the car we drive, in tandem to Lisa’s
parent’s house in Cork. An enormous Sunday dinner of roast lamb and vegetables,
floury potatoes and two puddings greets us. Lisa’s parents are having their main
Sunday meal mid-day and I am finally united with what Frankie McCourt meant by
"floury" potatoes. They are a special kind of potato and they shed their skin
when boiled. They are powdery and "loose"—they sort of fall apart when you
poke them.
Lisa takes on a walking tour of her hometown of Cork. The Irish
Republic's second-largest city is compact, with attractive shopfronts and a pleasant
combination of old and new. The town dates back to the 7th century and survived
Cromwell but King William in 1690. In the 18th century it was an important
commercial centre with a major butter market. A century later the potato famine
turned Cork into a suffering, sad place, where the port of Cobh remained a major departure
point for Irish immigrants right up to the 1960's.
Lisa takes us through her quiet neighborhood, past the Basilica where
she took her first communion, and then introduces us to her family priest, who happens to
be taking a stroll in our direction. We walk to the University College of Cork where
Lisa’s father is the head of the Physiology Department and her mother is the Foreign
Student’s Guardian. The University is a mass of stone buildings hidden in sprawling
evergreens. The physiology department, where Lisa completed her bachelor's degree,
is a maze of labs and offices, with germ-boxes and incubators. Downtown Cork
City is small and metropolitan at the same time, where the River Lee is a slow wide
ribbon.
