My mother always loved eating out, I think it was because the business of producing savoury food, as against cakes and desserts, never really appealed to her.
From the time I started the restaurant in Waterford she always enjoyed coming there to eat and, once my father died, and she achieved independence, she would arrive to eat given any excuse whatsoever.She never found the eighty mile drive from Cork to Waterford to be the least hinderance.
I can remember clearly one afternoon in the late nineties telling her that some of her offspring were coming to dinner that night.
“I don’t suppose you wouild have room for another one?” she said, and, once assured of her welcome, hopped straight in the car (she was then in her late eighties!) and was with us a few hours later.

My mother died a few years before we sold the restaurant and moved on.

One of the things that she and Sile shared was a passion for gardening, both indoor and out. Some years before she died she had given Sile a cutting from a Christmas Cactus which had always thrived in her house in Cork, it likewise thrived in Mary Street in Waterford and always came out in nice time for Christmas, covered in flowers.
In fact it did so well Sile devided it in two and when we sold the restaurant she gave one half of the plant to my sister D. It also thrived for her in her house in Fountainstown.
Once we moved to Griffith Place , post restaurant,our half of the Christmas Cactus sulked and since 2004 it has sat stubbornly on a shelf, perfectly healthy, but adamantly refusing to flower.
Last May there was the faintest sign of a thaw and it produced one single blossom.
This Christmas again none.

Two weeks ago Sile pointed out that the cactus was showing signs of life and last week it produced a display of flowers, not up to its Mary Street standard but by far the best in the nearly four years we have been in Griffith Place.

I texted my sister, who having acquired the flowering offspring of the cactus was aware of our ones barren condition.

“Christmas Cactus flowered at last” I texted.
She replied;
“Delighted ! Mum must has decided to forgive you. ”
I suppose it took a while for the news of another potential eatery in France to filter up to her.

The Christmas Cactus this morning.