Croke Park, a good neighbour and one of the most loaded four-letter words in the English language

Irish Times

a day ago

Jimmy Noddy Black was buried on Monday morning. A handball man, a
Meath
man, a good man. My old neighbour.
It has been a difficult few weeks for McCullen Park, a small horseshoe-shaped estate in Kells known locally, and defiantly, by its residents as The Kingdom.
Jane Smith, a gentle, warm and kindly woman who lived in one of the first houses at the entrance to the estate, died just over two weeks ago. Jimmy's house is further back, but just a couple of hundred metres away. Sad times.
On Sunday afternoon, I took my two children to the All-Ireland women's senior football final at
Croke Park
,
Meath
v
Dublin
. The nine-year-old boy and six-year-old girl are born and raised in Dublin to culchie parents - a Meath dad and a Meathish-Cavanish but largely non-committal mother.
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Still, on Clonliffe Road, she bought them blue and navy woollen headbands. On subsequently meeting cousins in the Croke Park Hotel, the sight of said headbands was enough to raise faux outrage and open debate on the possibility of family excommunication.
For me, that is, not the children. After all, I was the adult in the room, allowing such horror to visit our fiercely green and gold Royal family.
But within moments, all that seemed to matter to the gathering of children was the colour of their MiWadi and the flavour of their crisps.
Approaching our seats in the lower Hogan about an hour later, we stopped to chat with Colm McManus – chairman of Meath LGFA and a man who also grew up in McCullen Park.
His mam, Moll, brought a tin of her home-made buns topped with slatherings of pink and white icing to our home every Christmas. No pastry has ever eclipsed Moll's buns.
That horseshoe-shaped estate wrapped around a humpy hill (imaginatively called The Hill) on which hundreds of World Cups and All-Ireland finals were won and lost, is where my mind automatically goes when I think of home.
And yet it is a place my children don't recognise or know.
All-Ireland Ladies Senior Football Championship Final, Croke Park, Dublin, on Sunday, where Meath played Dublin. Photograph: Inpho
Home to them is Dublin. Meath is where their grandparents and cousins live. But I'm not sure they realise, or care, that it's also where a large part of their dad will forever be.
Home can be one of the most loaded and complicated four-letter words in the English language.
Either way, the acquisition of free TG4 blue and navy flags (they were available in the colours of all the participating counties) at the turnstiles seemed to rouse the boisterous Dub within my children.
And then we found our seats. On which they sat, briefly. With their view of the pre-match parade obstructed, both of them figured the solution was to stand on their seats.
I made some faint protest against this reckless move, but they were already in motion and by then, naturally enough, everybody around us knew exactly how this venture was going to play out. Snap! The six-year-old went down first, her right leg moving back to tip the balance of the seat. The chair folded, and her leg was trapped.
The nine-year-old, intrigued and thrilled at the predicament in which his sister found herself, couldn't resist the temptation to shift his body weight for a closer gawk. Snap! Down went another little Dub.
As the parade turned for the Cusack Stand, I was on my hunkers trying to free both children. Given it was the first time all day they had lacked pomposity, I briefly contemplated leaving them there, but figured they'd probably tell their mother.
After eventually dislodging all limbs from seats, I calmly and confidently assured the traumatised children they'd just experienced a rite of passage, they'd learned a life skill: 'It'll not happen to you a second time.'
I imagined them, years from now, passing on my sage advice to their children, perhaps in this very stadium.
But then my reverie was interrupted by a woman behind us frantically screaming something about Jesus Christ. Beside me, the six-year-old now had both legs trapped in the chair and was bent forward at an unnatural angle, while the nine-year-old had made a sudden, unannounced break for the toilet. Which child to save first?
Dublin's Carla Rowe leads her side during the parade before the final. Photograph: Inpho
As for the game, it is fair to say it was over as a contest by half-time. Dublin were the better team, but they were also the more cynical side. I told the children this. They didn't seem to care. Instead, they enthusiastically waved their flags in my face and repeatedly roared: 'Up the Dubs!', each trying to outdo their sibling in a who-can-be-louder competition. I resolved that cynicism and boorishness are both Dublin traits.
By the time Carla Rowe was lifting the Brendan Martin Cup, the children – not satisfied with a factory load of chocolate and a freezer of ice-cream – were wondering what they would be having for dinner. 'The Meath football team,' I jested. Nobody laughed.
We stopped in Fairview and ate fried chicken and vinegar-soaked chips. The nine-year-old, mid-strawberry milkshake, asked if his cousins were in Meath yet. So we called them. Turned out they had made it back just in time for Jimmy's wake.
Later that night, the children inquired if they knew the person whose funeral I was going to in Kells on Monday morning. They didn't. And the truth is, they don't know many of the people or places of my youth. I'm aware of this reality probably more often than I should be.
But that was our choice in deciding to raise them in Dublin, a wonderful place with equally wonderful people, and a city that gets a bad rap more often than it should.
And with all that's happening in the world right now, what a privilege it was on Sunday to be among 48,000 people at a women's sporting event with my children, and the stadium dotted with family, friends and neighbours.
The town turned out to give Jimmy a fitting farewell on Monday morning.
After the funeral, I told my parents I'd be back down home soon. The Meath green and gold bunting was still flying proudly at the front of the house as I pulled away.
Then I drove back home to the children in Dublin, fully expecting to be greeted by a smiling six- and nine-year-old, both waving blue and navy flags while proudly wearing their new matching woollen headbands.