Tag Archives: writing tralee

The Birdman of Tralee Town Park

The man often has a trolley with him – a black mini-sized one like you see in small supermarkets. It has a distinctive red handle with a yellow trim and looks like it was moulded from the one block of plastic. The trolley comes up to about the hips and has his backpack and a couple of reusable plastic bags in it. I think it must be a recent find, and funnily enough, I haven’t seen one in any of the shops around Tralee but no doubt one of them must use them. I doubt if he ordered it from a catalogue or online, but it would be lovely if that were so.

I saw him one morning push the trolley down the laneway by St John’s Church, which leads to the town park. There are a set of seven or eight concrete steps to navigate, but luckily the church has a side ramp beside them for him to get to the small graveyard below and through the arched gate into the park beyond. The arched gateway is a fine example of the grand entrances that once led to church properties, with granite blocks of a couple of feet high and wide, stacking about 8-feet tall to support a pointed arch that matches the design of the church behind. The inner arch over the cast-iron gate is pointed too, and you can imagine lines of nuns, priests, penitents and children parading through over the years. The park borders several schools and taking pupils to mass at St John’s through the grass and trees would be preferable to trying to control them on the streets. Not being a Tralee native I can only presume this was so, but I went to a convent school next to a church, and we were shepherded through the nuns’ gardens on mass days. When we transferred to the town school, all bets were off on getting us boys up and down the streets to St Colman’s cathedral, once out of the school grounds.

Across from the arched gate is the Garden of the Senses, which was a Millennium project initiated by the then Tralee Town Council. It has plants from around the world and sculptures which evoke our five senses. To the left when entering from the St John’s church side, behind a large bush and accessible only by the winding path is a large, flat granite sculpture on a single leg, that holds it no more than about a foot off the ground. It looks flat, but when you get a get closer you see that the surface of the stone is full of bumps and valleys cut into and over an area of about two square feet. Though I walk through the Garden of the Senses at least once a day, I never take much notice of the sculptures. I presume this large one is for touch. In its centre is a wide circle cut into the granite which works as a birdbath or drinking bowl. This is where I usually see the man with the trolley.

He always has a drink in his hand, the rim of it sticking out from a plastic bag. On some mornings it’s a brown paper bag, just to go with the stereotype. Each day he wears what looks like the same clothes: a grey hoodie under a fairly dirty looking blue rain jacket with the peak of the rain jacket hood coming out over that of the hoodie. His crumpled face is almost like the mask you’d see a 1950’s department store Santa wearing in family photos taken with lucky children. Daisy and I do a couple of laps of the park each day, and I see him nearly every day, now that the mornings are brighter, but I did see him too when the sun still wasn’t up by 8 a.m. Why he’s always out at this time I do not know, but I doubt if he’s sleeping in the park; he must be coming from somewhere, pushing that trolley of possessions.

One misty morning I lost Daisy when coming through the Garden of the Senses, at least I thought she was gone or even stolen. Usually she follows me in her own time, catching up as I walk through the Rose Garden on the other side. She often stops to sniff around the bushes or even chase a bird or two. On this morning she hadn’t reappeared by the time I made it to the path by the Ashe Memorial Hall entrance, where you lose the view of the Garden of the Senses. Not seeing Daisy scares me and I called, expecting her to come tearing out through the gap in the bushes, head up and legs going like the clappers. But she didn’t. I called and called, and whistled and whistled. No sign of her and so I headed back over to the little garden.

Inside I couldn’t see Daisy anywhere and out the back, by the entrance to St John’s, I couldn’t see her either. I started to worry. I called out ‘Daisy’ over and over again, but she still didn’t appear. I get an inner feeling of dread when things go wrong and don’t look like getting better any time soon. That feeling was now rising in my stomach and the fear that someone had dognapped Daisy was taking over. People were stopping and helping, asking other passers-by if they had seen a little dog. If Daisy had run after someone, through St John’s, she might be lost in town, vulnerable to being taken or rolled over by a truck -these were the sort of thoughts making me panic. After a couple of minutes a little old lady stopped and asked what was wrong? I told her, and she asked if that was Daisy over there, pointing into the Garden of the Senses? I looked through the bushes without their leaves to see Daisy munching down on a dinner plate of scraps. Relieved and thanking everyone I went straight over and put the collar around her golden neck. Daisy is such a scavenger she never passes free food, though her bowl at home is always full. What got me thinking though was from where did the plate of food, which looked like bread mainly, come?

I get my answer when coming through a few mornings later and see the man with the trolley breaking up a sliced pan and putting it on the white plate. He has a takeaway tea or coffee waiting on the sculpture and what looks like a roll-up in his mouth. On another morning I see him eating food from a deli keep-hot foil bag, though what it was I couldn’t tell from a distance. I always say hello now, and he usually mutters a reply. The man is there every morning, feeding the birds and having his breakfast al fresco, happy out and not bothering anyone. I wonder if he buys the bread on discount from the supermarkets in the evening and keeps it for the morning feeding?

I see the birdman around town from time to time, but he doesn’t recognise me. Maybe in the mornings he’s coming from a flat up beyond the church, or the homeless shelter not too far away? Who knows where anyone came from or is coming from right now?

What I do know is that the birds of Tralee Town Park do well out of this kind soul and seeing him each day does me good too.

This is the Egg Man

Leave a Reply

A tall man, dressed in a grey raincoat, black cap, blue jeans and black shoes comes down the stairs. While he is not very big, the man is tall and well built and in the narrow stairs he looks a lot bigger and does need to duck as he comes down the last few steps, just where the low ceiling meets the stairwell. In his hands are the empty soup bowl, plate and the mug that once held his tea. The man is smiling as his belly is full and the attractive lady behind the counter asks if all was ok with his snack? Later I discover that the snack to keep him going was a bowl of soup and many slices of freshly- baked rye bread, loaded with cheese and hummus; enough to fill any man’s belly. The man hands over his crockery to the woman behind the well-stocked counter. He thanks her and while probably not a shy man he looks like the quiet, modest type, definitely not the type to seek the limelight and in my experience all the better for that too.

“John,” the lady behind the counter addresses me, “this is Michael, the egg man, the man who’s eggs we love at home.”

I nod a hello.

“Michael,” she says next, addressing the egg man, “this is my husband John.”

We shake hands and I’ve a feeling I met Michael before but glad to be meeting him again too. In the shaking of hands Michael moves over beside me and as he does another customer comes into the shop. As she speaks with my wife Michael and I fall into chat.

The egg bowl is full with ones of all shades of brown, speckled and clear ones and all of a good size. I remark on how many eggs he brought in this morning, a cold day in February and a time traditionally when hens don’t lay as much as they would in warmer times. It’s the layer’s mash he tells me, nothing else gives the hens enough protein to produce a good nest of eggs each day.

“I tried the oat mix but it was no good,” he says, “you’ll get a few but they’ll be only small ones. The bread is useless altogether, though some people say it’s all they feed them. I don’t believe that at all ‘cos it’s pure useless.”

We go on to discuss what’s in the chicken feed and that layer’s mash has the best of all the ingredients and I can see the proof is in the laying. I ask him if the duck eggs are his too, as I notice three, half-dozen boxes on the other windowsill.

“No, not at all, though the woman who supplies them comes in on the bus with me,” he says.

The picture of the two coming in on the public service bus from Castlegregory with their stash of fresh eggs is a lovely one. I wonder what their conversation is about and how long they have known each other.

“I used to keep ducks but I got out of them, and sure not everyone eats the duck eggs these days,” he says.

I tell him how I used to love the duck eggs with their big yoke but lost my taste for them years ago. Michael nods as he knows exactly what I’m talking about. He has a lovely soft voice, clear but yet you feel like drawing nearer to him so as not to miss a word. It’s a skill that you couldn’t have if you knew you had it. As soon as you realised what a beauty you had in your voice you would either become self-conscious about it and speak less, or you would try to weaponize it and quickly cause the voice to lose all of its charms.

Michael and I talk about how life in Castlegregory and he tells me of how quiet it is at this time of year. I can only imagine, as it is a town very reliant on tourism and must be empty once the holidaying families leave in late August. Michael must have seen all the changes over the years and after decades of farming he is taking it easier I presume. While in hospital recently I met a man around the same age as Michael, retired too, after years of working on building sites. The man also ran a small farm and a roadside filling station of two pumps, one diesel, one petrol. His business had long gone as price alone was stopping him being competitive. What the man still kept was his small holding and he raised store cattle for selling on to other farmers as two-year olds. Nothing too strenuous, like Michael’s hens, but I wonder how many small farmers are there like the two around Ireland, keeping their hands in but also keeping them in connection with the rest of the country? They aren’t happy to stagnate or let the brain petrify, but keep going and will be as sharp as a tack for all of their lives. These are the people who keep rural Ireland alive and their younger successors on the way up will hopefully do the same.

I ask Michael about Sean Cummins, who I knew from my days in Dingle and I know lives over Castlegregory way.

“Ah Sean’s a lovely man,” says Michael, “he’s a neighbour of mine and I see him a lot on the road. A great man for fixing the tellies in his day.”

Which is how I knew Sean as he was the TV and aerial repairman for the whole peninsula in his time, and was in big demand.

“Sean would call to you at anytime of the day and night and he’d never let you down and sure it was probably what killed his marriage, being out all the time and never home for the dinner,” Michael says, looking at me, “and sure he’d stop for a pint too, you could in those days.”

“Well nothing worse for his wife that he’d be coming home late and smelling of drink too,” I say.

Michael nods wisely.

“Funny enough I never knew his wife was gone from Sean,” he says.

“No?”

“Sean never came to me one time, and when I met him on the road the next day I said to him: ‘I told your wife the TV was giving trouble’.”

“ ‘Sure I haven’t spoken to that woman in twenty years!’ Sean said to me,” Michael is laughing as he tells me, as I am too, “twenty years, can you imagine?”

Just shows that no matter how small rural Ireland may be, it is still possible to not know what is happening next door, though I imagine Michael wouldn’t be the nosey type.

“He called round that night and had it back working in no time, a genius with the tellies was Sean,” Michael says.

He’s not the only genius from Castlegregory I’m guessing.

The One-Eared Rabbit

Leave a Reply

“Your dog can’t walk,” the woman shouts, after whistling at me to stop. Sure enough Daisy is lying in the grass bank, head down in her paws and pulling at something. A minute earlier she was playing with the woman’s dog, and I had walked on, expecting Daisy to follow, as she usually does. I walk back to Daisy, who won’t let me look at her paws, snapping and growling at me when I try. I have a fair idea of what’s happening; she’s caught those long nails on the side of her paw on the ground while twisting and turning with the little black dog. I put the collar on her and continue walking, she gets up and follows, though she stops now and again to lick her wounds.

We make it home from the park, and Daisy goes straight to her bed to recover. I give her a snack, and she seems fine, still licking the sore paws but able to walk around and greet the others in the house. All evening she’s protective of the nails, hiding her paws from me and growling if I try look. Animals are often best left alone to look after small injuries, though I expect Daisy will have me at the vets at some stage. In the morning we go for our walk around the park. Daisy is running fine, but I can tell the paws are still bothering her as she stops every now and again to give them a lick. Back home I call the vet and make an appointment for that evening. Daisy is well capable of taking it easy, and I leave her sleep for the day, though she does follow me when I go out in the garden. Each time it’s the same when I look at her paws, a growl and a snap at me, so I know she’s still having problems. During the day the secretary at the vet’s clinic calls to reschedule Daisy’s appointment, and at just gone 5pm Freddie, Daisy and I head off to the surgery.

At the clinic a man is sitting with a German Shepherd pup, who gets excited when she sees Daisy in my arms. Daisy growls a small bit, but she knows the smells of this place and isn’t very confident in her surroundings. I recognise the man with the pup from somewhere and we smile in brief acknowledgment. He’s holding onto the strong dog with a stiff leash and though it is excited the German Shepherd isn’t a threat to Daisy. The nurse comes out from the surgery behind the desk and smiles at me.

“He’ll be about ten minutes,” she says referring to the vet, “we’re a small bit behind.”

“That’s fine,” I say, “we’ll wait.”

Freddie is looking around and Daisy is now glued to me, knowing that all is not as it should be. The door to the surgery opens and a lady comes out with two pet carriers, about the size for a small dog or cat. She looks like a lady in her mid-fifties, hair in a bit of a mess from being too busy to do anything about it and her round face has a serious look, yet ready to break into a smile at any moment, I reckon. She’s wearing a cream short-sleeved top and a long dress, down below her knees. A woman who cares for others and doesn’t take any nonsense, one who may, or may not talk, if she’s not bothered. She lays the two carriers on the floor and looks at Daisy, while behind her the vet sticks his head out and calls in the man with the German Shepherd.

“Oh, she’s beautiful,” she says, her face opening up in that smile I guessed was there somewhere, “what is she? A Cairn Yorkie cross?”

I smile.

“We don’t know,” I say, “we got her as a bit of a rescue when she was nine months old but there’s definitely some Yorkie and Cairn in there. Daisy is her name.”

“Oh you’re beautiful,” she says, coming over to pet Daisy, who, of course, loves nothing better than being told she is beautiful, while being petted.

“You’re saying all the right things now,” I offer.

“I often say the best dogs are the mixes, they’re far better than a pedigree,” my new friend is saying while petting Daisy’s long hair, “you have gorgeous hair, haven’t you?”

“It’s the hair that makes me think that she is a bit of a Cairn and the face is definitely a Yorkie,” I say smiling at Daisy’s new admirer.

“Well I do a lot of judging at dog shows around the county and Daisy is definitely the best-looking dog I’ve seen in a long time,” she says, “a long time indeed. She’d win prizes”

I smile at this, as I tell Lisa regularly that we should enter Daisy in competitions, as the €1000 prize money would be nice to win. Of course, there isn’t such prize money but the joke continues.

“It’s great that the hair is long too,” she continues “I see too many with that short hair and it looks stupid, they wouldn’t win a thing if it was up to me.”

She heads off to sit on one of the three, now free, chairs. I follow her as I’m enjoying the conversation. Daisy is still in my arms and the lady continues to pet her as we talk.

“What have you got in the carriers?” I ask, “cats?

“No, rabbits.”

“Rabbits?”

“Yes, I bring them in to be treated for parasites,” she says, “Do you know what’s the biggest killer of rabbits?”

I’m guessing myxomatosis or some new equivalent, but I shake my head.

“Parasites, parasites,” I’m told, “they get into their kidneys and livers and destroy them, that’s why I bring my ones in to be treated. They pick them up anywhere so you can’t take any chances.”

“How long have you had them?” I ask.

“Oh the one at the back I’ve had for about six years, a friend of mine found him in her garden and I took it in.”

“How long do they live?”

“At least ten years, more if you care for them. I’ve had the fellow in the front about two years now, so he has plenty left in him.”

“Where did he come from?”

“A rescue,” she’s looking at the two carriers all the time while she speaks and the rabbits are shuffling around, getting Daisy’s attention.

“Ah, the poor fellow,” I say.

“He’s only one ear you know,” she continues, “his mother bit the other one off in a fight when he was small. I call him Vincent, of course.”

I laugh at the idea of tough love but quickly stop when she looks at me.

“Great name,” I say to retrieve the situation.

“What else could I call him?” she laughs a bit too, “he’s a lovely fellow but very timid.”

She goes on to tell me how she found Vincent for sale at the mart in Listowel. Vincent was in a poor state and looked closed to dying. The man who was selling him is famous in the area for being cruel to animals. My new friend went to take the rabbit from him and when the man stepped in to try stop her, she turned on him.

“I ran him out of the building, shouting all kinds of abuse at him. Everyone was laughing and you never saw anyone run so fast in your life.”

So now Vincent has a good home. Getting treated for parasites regularly and is expecting to live a long life.

“I love the two of them and all my animals. The husband thinks I’m a bit cracked but sure what’s the harm.”

She was painting a lovely picture and yes, where is the harm in caring?

A Homeless Son

Leave a Reply

The first time I spot him he is crouched under a tree in the park, looking at his phone, an old Nokia, as if waiting for it to ring. A couple of days later he’s walking towards me, and I make a point of saying hello. He looks surprised but after a few days of me persisting, with nothing more than ‘hello’, he begins to nod in acknowledgement. I would put him in his late twenties, though the short, cropped black hair is already receding. The dirty jeans drag along under his heels, the permanent creases even blacker than the rest. A dark jumper comes down over the top of his waist, covering his hips. Smaller in height than me, though not too skinny, his eyes have the look of someone lost, someone used to being loved and the words ‘some mother’s son’ always come to me when I see him. Even in the height of a busy summer I see him somewhere in the park, and a ‘hello’, followed with a ‘how are you?’ is usually answered by a polite ‘ok, thank you’, in a difficult-to-place accent. His skin looks healthy without any tell-tale damage. I never see him drunk, or bothering anyone or even in the company of others, no matter the time of day. If you only see someone once, looking as he does, you might say he was on his way home after a night out, but daily, in the same clothes and around the same spots, can only put him among the numbers of our great modern shame: the homeless.

Towards the end of the summer, I add the riverbank to my route. The walk is well sheltered and is a bit more industrial, with the poured concrete walkway and continuous traffic close by, obvious contrasts with the peaceful surroundings of Tralee Town Park. The man disappears from the park during early August but pops up at times along the riverbank, where we continue our brief exchanges. I wonder if the tourists are too much for him in the park and he’s escaped to the riverbank for some peace?

The man disappears completely in late August. I don’t see him for weeks, until one October evening along the riverbank where he’s sitting on a bench, looking at his phone. There is an immediate look of recognition between us, and he smiles in response to my hello. I see him a few evenings in a row at the same spot, and on a few early-morning walks he’s there too. As the bench is close to some thick bushes, I wonder if that is where he sleeps at night. Seeing him always alone, in the same clothes, just looking straight ahead and always the old phone in his hand, makes me wonder how he ended up on the margins.

For the rest of the autumn and into the early winter, we pass each other regularly. As the weather turns he gets a black jacket that he keeps zipped up. One November morning I’m walking towards the little park by Lidl, when I see him coming out from the store’s carpark ahead of me with a bottle of cheap beer in his hand. As soon as he’s off the road and into the privacy of the park, he pops the bottle into his mouth, flicks the hand holding it and spits out the cap, which he picks up and puts in the bin. Then the bottle is back in the mouth and half drained in one gulp. All of this is done in seconds, while he keeps walking. He doesn’t look at me but walks over the bridge at speed, back to the riverbank, where I pass him a bit later, sitting on his bench.

He disappears again as the weather turns nasty for the winter. I presume, or hope that he is in the homeless shelter in town. Then one day I’m looking at shampoo in a supermarket when I get a slight tap on my shoulder and an ‘excuse me’.

I turn, and it’s him.

“Oh hello,” he says in surprise, followed by “it’s you.”

I say hello and ask how he is; as usual he says ‘ok, thank you.’

In his hand is a bottle of cheap beer and he holds it up to show me.

“Can I borrow 20 cents?” he asks.

“Of course,” I answer and dig in my pocket for change. I have a load of coins and I give him the twenty cents.

“Do you need more?” I ask.

“No, just this for this,” he says, holding the coin and the bottle up to show what he means before adding a ‘thank you’ and heading off for the tills.

As I queue I see him slide into the dark evening. No repeat of the opening of the bottle with his teeth but he does put it inside the black jacket. He looks healthy, and I hope he’s got somewhere to go, somewhere warm where no one will bother him and where his gentle soul will find peace for the night.

It’s all anyone deserves.

The Hitchhiker

Leave a Reply

He’s standing by the road on the Cork side of Macroom. The arm is out with the thumb pointing towards the city, but he’s not looking at traffic. It’s raining and it has the makings of a miserable morning. His black leather jacket goes just to the hips and looks as if the one button is holding it closed. What could be a thick, cream-coloured woolly jumper is sticking out from the lapels. Wet, combed-back hair, possibly by his fingers, reaches down to the collar of the jacket, sticking to it in places. Cars are moving slowly, the traffic is heavy and wet, dirty mist is adding to the delays.

The car behind me is far enough back and I indicate to pull in. The man looks surprised but walks over quickly and opens the door. His pockmarked, badly shaven face is younger than I expected and the blue eyes stand out under bushy eyebrows.

“I’m going to Cork”, he says, “are you going that way?”

“I am.”

He gets in. The scent of damp from being out in the mist is underlined by a heavier one of not being washed but I’ve smelt worse. His blue jeans are baggy on his skinny legs and are black at the creases, and even when sitting down the denim is nearly covering his muddy shoes.

“I’m only going as far as Ballincollig,” I say using my usual escape clause of the next town, in case things don’t go well and I need an excuse to get him out.

“That’s ok,” is the humble answer and I feel a bit of guilt at lying.

We drive on a bit when he appears to start talking to himself.

“Thank you for stopping,” he says after a couple of minutes.

“That’s ok. Were you there for long?”

More talking to himself.

“About an hour I suppose,” he looks down at his feet as he talks.

“Nobody would stop for you, even on such a dirty day and all the traffic on the road?”

“I suppose people are busy,” he looks up at me for the first time.

I realise that what I thought was my passenger talking to himself is his way of gathering his thoughts before speaking, possibly overcoming a speech impediment. We don’t make much eye contact but I feel comfortable with him.

“What are you up to in Cork?” I ask.

“Going up to the Penny Dinners, I haven’t eaten for a few days. They always do a good meal there.”

I don’t know what to say. I know of the Penny Dinners on Little Hanover Street as it gets a lot of coverage. We had the Penny Dinners in Cobh when I was at school. Our 3^rd Class teacher would collect from the boys and he’d often send me around to the other classes for names, which I’d write in a little accounting notebook. It was a way of feeding those who maybe weren’t guaranteed a hot meal at home in the 1970s. The fact that people are travelling over 30 miles for a hot meal in 2019 amazes me. I discover later that he doesn’t have the money for the bus and will need to hitch home again.

“They do great work,” I say.

“They do, but they close at one so I left home early.”

Home is southwest of Macroom, about another 15 miles from where I picked him up. He lives alone in a small cottage and moved there when he was about three.

“Have you any other family?”

“No, it was just me and the father and he’s gone now.”

“Do you keep any animals?”

“No, no animals by me at all, just me at home.”

We drive on in silence.

“When did you last eat?” I ask after a while.

“Sunday morning.”

It’s now just gone ten on Tuesday.

We talk as I drive. He’s 55 and worked all his life, and has even calculated how much he earned and the tax paid during those years.

“Nearly 650,000 in earnings and about 400,00 of that to the taxman, I never married so I was in Bracket A,” he says, referring to his tax band.

The hitchhiker worked on the buildings, in factories and a bakery for over 16 years, leaving home at four every morning, six days a week. The bakery and the factories are gone, and the buildings are only for the young man now. He never went into ‘the pubs or gambling houses’, though he has a couple of cans of beer at home on Thursdays. His face is free of the tell-tale signs of the drinker, though the fingertips are stained yellow.

“Another few years and you’ll be able to retire,” I joke and he laughs and nods, “you’ll even have the free travel.”

“If I get there,” he says, “it’s hard to live it.”

I turn off at Ballincollig but head into the city along the Carrigrohane Road. My passenger doesn’t say anything about me not turning for Ballincollig. As we pass the County Hall, I say that I’ll take him all the way to the Penny Dinners.

“Thank you, very good of you,” he says in that polite, humble voice.

Cork is busy with students, cars, bikes and people going about their business. I stop at a red light by the Maltings and I say that he may as well hop out as the Penny Dinners is close by.

“Thank you,” he says getting out.

“Enjoy the meal,” I say, and he nods back in the door as he closes it gently.

The hands go in the pockets. The thick collar of the woolly jumper is pushed up over his neck by a shrug of his shoulders against the cold. The blue jeans are well over the shoes, worn at the cuffs from dragging along beneath his feet.

“It’s hard it to live it,” he’d said earlier.

I see what he means.

Disappearing Casserole Dishes

Leave a Reply

My bottle opener broke just after Christmas. Luckily our kitchen scissors have a notch for opening bottles, which got me through that late December evening. A few months later and I’m still using the scissors to open bottles, and each night I say I must get a proper opener. I enjoy a bottle or two of good beer three or four nights a week, so on average, I must say that about eight times from Thursday to Sunday. Walking past one of my favourite shops in town last week I decided it was time to indulge myself; one of the reasons I hadn’t bought a new opener was that I hadn’t paid a visit to Small Benner’s for a while but now was a perfect time.

Small Benner’s is one of those shops every town once had, should still have, and thankfully Tralee still has today. Benner’s is over the door, and the shop is small inside, but full of all things hardware. From egg slicers to knives to meat thermometers and milk jugs you’ll find all you need inside the door. Among the many top draws to Small Benner’s are the array of goods and the staff, but for me it is the quality too. What you buy lasts: the glass measuring jug I purchased a few years ago is still going strong, the cut door keys are keeping our house safe, and the cushion pads are preventing the kitchen chairs from scraping on the marble floor. Yes, you can get those pads in all shapes and sizes in Small Benner’s Tralee.

As usual there are a few people inside. When you walk in the counter is to the right, which has a gap on either end to let staff float in and out without getting in each other’s way. To your left are shelves and hooks, literally to the ceiling stocked with all the goods any home may need. There is not any discernible layout; kitchen goods go cheek by jowl with ornaments and screwdrivers. Over on the right, behind the till and beyond towards the back are batteries, lighters, gas refills, pastry brushes, butter dishes, ceramic tea cups and much, much more. Looking around you see where you can get those items you only associate with your parent’s house. The kitchen drain sieves, the egg timers, solid looking cheese graters, wooden clothes pegs, stainless steel vegetable strainers which fan open, potato steamers, tap swirls, cup hooks and sink plugs. Notice the plural here because there is plenty of every item and many choices within the range. Not just the one brand of key fobs but a few of different sizes shapes and utility and it is the same with nearly every category of stock item. How they manage to get so much into so small an area, yet display every item clearly and not mix them up is a miracle of modern commerce. They sell fishing tackle, air guns, hunting knives and duct tape. The shop never seems crowded though it is always busy and even if you are not looking for something, you will see that one item you need.

I look around for the bottle opener I want, a wooden handled one with a solid steel mechanism. There is a three-in-one of opener, corkscrew and small serrated knife which catches my eye but I cannot see my particular choice. I ask the lady behind the counter who is as knowledgeable about the stock as any catalogue could be. She knows what I’m looking for and comes out to look on the wall by the door. Beneath the shower adapter for the bath taps and the good array of carving knives, she pulls back the mass of other goods.

“We do have one of those,” she says, “but it may be out of stock.”

She asks the young man helping another customer who thinks the last one went only the previous day, but more should be in by the next Friday. We look at the three-in-one opener I was thinking of, and I have a feeling it will be my new one.

“Look after that lady first,” I say, as I keep looking, waiting to make up my mind.

The attendant turns back to help the woman she was showing casserole dishes to, who has now made up her mind.

“I’ll take the floral white one, the large one,” she says.

“Fine,” says the lady putting it by the till.

“I’d better take five of them,” says the woman.

“Okay,” says the lady behind the counter.

“All mine are gone,” the woman continues, “my daughter brings her husband’s dinner up from my house in them every day and of course they never come back.”

That night I tell Lisa of the disappearing casserole dishes while opening my bottle of Beal Bán Golden Ale with my new opener. She laughs at the beauty of it, and we both ask, almost at the same time:

“Does the husband know?”

We can only wonder.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Leave a Reply

Tralee Town Park is the perfect place for an early evening stroll, Sunday morning walk or even a run if you are so inclined. I tend to do my daily walks first thing in the morning, when there are fewer people about, but on Sunday’s we’re up later and by the time I make it to the park it can be very busy. On a summer’s Sunday morning I met a man, who sort of sums up how a chance encounter can lead to great fun.

Daisy and I are walking in the park. I have her off the lead, and she’s darting in and out of the trees, chasing shadows and yapping at other small dogs. As we’re coming up to the Rose Garden I spot a man sitting on a bench and drinking a can of beer. It’s only 11:00 AM, the bells of the nearby St John’s are ringing and the sight makes me smile. Dressed in shorts and a polo shirt, can of beer on the go and his bike leaning against the back of the bench and now soaking up the sun, the man just looks so happy. And why wouldn’t he be? He obviously felt he deserved the beer, he’d done his exercise and now he was being rewarded. As it was a bit early to have bought the can, he must have brought it with him; he was planning this treat, possibly well in advance.

Daisy runs up to him and in around his legs. I call her back, and the man turns to see who’s behind the voice. As he sees me he gets up.

“Terrible day for a hangover,” he says.

“It’s never a great day for a hangover,” I answer.

“True,” he says, laughing.

We’re by now side by side, and I stop walking

“I’m wrecked,” he says, “I’ve been in England for the last four days, and I’m still all over the place.”

He doesn’t look too bad, considering he’s necking a can at eleven on a Sunday morning and has been on the beer for the last four days.

“Good time?” I ask.

“Great. Over visiting the brother, the cousin came with me. We got the bus and the boat, non-stop drinking.”

Getting the bus and boat used to be the standard way of getting to England but to do it for a four-day trip now seems very time consuming, but I think the travel was probably half of their fun.

“You know how much they charged for two whiskies on the boat coming back?” he asks.

I shake my head, but I remember in my day drinking on the boat was very cheap.

“Thirty euros” is the answer.

“Thirty euros?”

I’m genuinely shocked.

“As true as I’m standing here.”

“Wow,” I say, not doubting him but at the same time not believing that two whiskies could cost so much.

“Look,” he says, rummaging in the back pocket of his shorts, pulling out a piece of paper and giving it to me.

I open the scrunched-up receipt and there it reads, €30.00 for his two whiskies, with the time and date of 4.11 AM the previous morning.

“I hope they were worth it,” I say.

He looks at me.

“I wasn’t paying that; I told him to feck off and left them on the counter. We went off down the duty-free. A slab of Tennant’s for €9.99. Perfect I said and we grabbed two.”

“Better value there,” I laugh.

My man nods slightly while giving me a knowing look, before continuing:

“But you know what?”

“No. What?”

“I paid the money, and then the girl said you can’t take them out of the shop till we get to port. We were caught.”

“What did ye do then?”

“Went to the other bar and had a pint.”

We both laughed.

“I’ve been drinking those cans since I came home,” he says, but only with a slight touch of being under pressure.

As we’re talking two men pass by, and one is the local undertaker.

“Hey,” my man says, “I don’t want to be seeing you for a while yet.”

“If you can see me you’re doing fine,” answers the undertaker, “it’s when you can’t see me is when you’re having the trouble.”

We all laugh, and I walk off.