Counties were flying everywhere. Has he no respect for his heritage?
Bits of Ireland flew from the table, their stumpy, wooden forms scattering in dismal flight across the living room. We were undertaking a time-honoured tradition for my wife’s family, the 32-piece Map of Ireland jigsaw which has been in her family for three decades, and which we decided we’d try on the boy as an alternative to his ever-growing coterie of electrical appliances.
My wife has had this jigsaw since she was a child, and it’s inordinately pleasing, depicting each of Ireland’s 32 counties in red, blue, green and yellow so you can slot them all together. She takes great pride in how quickly she can complete it – two minutes – and how long it takes me to do the same – closer to five minutes – without ever conceding that she has had a 30-year head start, and the privilege of an education in the Republic of Ireland. There, the lower three-quarters of the island are actually acknowledged, as opposed to the TV news of my own Northern Irish childhood, which insisted that the bottom part of the landmass didn’t even have weather.
Continue reading...from Lifestyle | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3cQbCTk