Merry Christmas! to everyone, a couple of days late. Ireland has taken full advantage of a Friday Christmas: Monday is one of the famous “bank holidays,” ensuring a four- to five-day break for everyone (unless you work retail). Christmas day and yesterday––the twenty-sixth, which is apparently called St. Stephen’s Day––produced a sight I didn’t think possible. I refer to Oliver Plunkett Street, the heart of Cork City and also where our apartment is situated, being completely deserted. Not a soul! No drunk revelers and road work crews at midnight. A miracle.
Well, maybe not too miraculous. All of the shops and watering holes closed early, naturally, for Christmas Eve. And as it turns out, Christmas day is one of two days out of the entire year when pubs are required by law to be closed (Good Friday is the other).
Christmas day we spent with the family of our friend, Gemma. We had many Irish Christmas specialties, including spiced beef (a Cork tradition), pork liver pâté (Katherine “forgot” to try this), potato-leek soup, and roasted potatoes (the secret is to baste the spuds with goose fat). We also had time to watch the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street. While Richard Atterborough is jolly and entertaining in a hard-to-describe way, my advice is to stick with the original. The newer version doesn’t even have the Macy’s v. Gimball’s dimension!
Tomorrow is Katherine’s birthday, she joins me in the doldrums of the mid-twenties. Send her some birthday wishes to cheer her up. On Tuesday I begin anew my job search efforts, as well as my entry writing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment