For Evelyn Cosgrave, Limerick is a chameleon-like place. It can be bustling and sophisticated on one hand, and a warm hamlet of familiar faces on the other
I can't help getting excited when I see my home city on the news. It's great when the shot is Thomond Park and even better when it's O'Connell Street and the story is Munster's Heineken Cup win. It's not so great when the shot is Moyross or Southill and the story is another young man dead. I can't identify with that Limerick. I hear the stories, I see the pictures, I sympathise with the families, but I don't really know anything about the lives of the people caught in the middle of some of the worst violence our city has ever seen.
When I see President McAleese on the news, in Limerick, unveiling a multi-million euro regeneration programme, and I see shots of estates that once were crime scenes, but where now happy children are riding horses across the green and a cute seven-year-old is telling the reporter she'd like to be a princess when she grows up, of course I'm delighted. Of course I'm thrilled that not only is Limerick getting some good publicity but that finally something is being done about serious social injustice. But I can't pretend that it affects me directly. That's not my Limerick.
I have several. First there's what I like to call my New York phase. When we got married in 1998, my husband James and I didn't buy a house. We did the scandalous thing and rented. Dead money, everyone said. Maybe the money was dead, but we couldn't have been more alive while we rented our sixth-storey apartment overlooking the Shannon. And it wasn't just the view of the river and the bridges and the city's stretching buildings that made it feel like New York, it was living in town. Where I grew up, just off the Ennis Road, is hardly deep suburbia, but suddenly it seemed as if we were living in one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.
I loved being able to walk everywhere. The Furze Bush, our home-from-home café-bistro was four blocks away. The Belltable Theatre, where sometimes I watched and sometimes I acted, was only two blocks away. Baker Place, where James played with his Blues band, was about six blocks, and Jerry Flannery's pub, where we went not for the rugby but for the poetry and the plays, was only five blocks away. It was better than New York. In New York you'd have had to get a cab.
There was some crime. For a brief period there was a brothel on the second floor of our building. But apart from one inquiry from a shifty-looking character as to whether I knew the girls on the second floor, the brothel didn't trouble us at all.
Then there was the drugs bust. We'd heard on the news that a large quantity of cannabis had been seized from the building, and one evening a large posse of Guards came to the door. They were a genial bunch of men, a mixture of uniform and plain clothes, with a particularly gracious front man. "Hello," he said warmly, "we're the Guards. We were just wondering if we could try a couple of keys on your door." I was delighted to oblige them and so eager to please that I was quite disappointed when none of their keys fitted our door. They wished us a good night and that was the extent of our brush with the law.
An earlier time I refer to as my Angela's Ashes phase. I'm not fond of referring to McCourt's version of Limerick but, as a wannabe writer one can't help drawing parallels between oneself and those who have actually done it. When McCourt's family first arrived in Limerick, they lived in a damp upstairs room in Windmill Street. I did too, for a brief period.
I had just returned to Limerick after doing my HDip in Trinity and I was determined to move out of home. I had the notion that four relative strangers would be easier to share with than an indulgent mother and father. They were all excellent people; the problem was entirely my own. Given that I used to pack up every weekend and go home, it soon became clear that I wasn't entirely ready for independent living.
I love "Limerick the Village". On the one hand the city is big and bustling and endlessly sophisticated; on the other it is a warm little hamlet of familiar faces where everybody knows your name. I've lived here for so long that everything has become local. When I go O'Connell's butcher they don't just sell me a good fillet steak, they have a chat and recommend a new recipe. At Saddlier's fishmongers I not only get the best lemon sole, I sometimes get an entry form for a Poetry Competition about fish.
When I go to O'Mahony's bookshop with my daughters I feel I can camp out for hours while they play and I have a quiet read. When I bring my favourite necklace (glass beads on a sterling silver chain, total value about €30) to Erwin's Jewellers to be mended, half the time they don't even charge me. I'm not a shopaholic, but for me there's nothing more therapeutic than an afternoon spent dipping in and out of the city-centre shops. It's not what I buy, it's the feeling that everywhere I go there's someone who knows my face. I'm sure I couldn't handle living in a real village but there's a lot to be said for a touch of the local friendly neighbourhood.
So that's my Limerick. A chameleon place that can transform in an instant into anything I need it to be. I just hope that the people who have been denied ownership of their city for so long will finally get the chance to experience a new version of their own.