So today I met Mary at the park. She was probably 80. Dubliner all her life. I was sitting in Iveagh gardens park and so was she. I had come there for the fountains. They weren’t on.
I went over to ask her were they ever on? She told me they were on until noon. That started the conversation. I learned a lot from Mary (like you always do from older people).
She told me this park (which is sort of a secret park popular with Dubliners) was the front yard of the Guinness family of beer fame. St Patrick’s Greene park down the way was the back part. Their old house is the Irish Ministery of foreign affairs.
She said that when the place was too “common”, they moved to the coast and donated all of it to the city. We’re talking a huge swathe of land here.
She asked me what part of the US I was from. When told her where, she said her brother lived in Milwaukee and she had visited him in the 1960s. She loved the city.
She had two brother who went to the US. One lived in Massachusetts and been “Irishman of the year”. Quite successful, that one. She had been to the US a few times.
I told her I had been to Belfast and she was disgusted with what has gone on there. “It’s not about religion, it’s about politics”. London keeping control in other words.
Older people love to talk. I found that out as a nurse. You can learn so much about them in a short time. What you learn is usually really interesting.
That’s the fountain in Iveagh park.
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