Just three years ago, in March ’12 I had my first encounter with the French hospital system. Having felt a certain different sensation about the heart I reported to my GP who made an appointment with a cardiologue for the following day who in turn booked me into a clinic in Montpellier the following week to fix what they described as “A Flutter”
There follows an account of my hospital visit (an abridged version of which was later to find its way into the health section of the Irish Times.)

A Heart Mending Story

Thursday last I took the plunge I went and signed myself into the Clinic de Millènaire in Montpellier to get my heart fixed.
My Cardiologist had told me to expect to be in for at least two nights as there were two distinct processes to perform, both involving inserting tools of different kinds into veins and once there being pushed up into my heart to perform their function. (Just like all roads lead to Rome so all veins lead to the heart).
Signing in was fine, Sile came with me to translate the harder words but in fact my French nearly sufficed.
I was put into a room with two beds and there was shortly joined by a friendly and kindly man of the Muslim persuasion who spent most of the rest of the time praying- I found this very soothing.

After a bit three nurses came to prepare me, one to shave the places where I was likely to be punctured, one to take my blood pressure and to give me an electrocardiogram and a student to watch and learn.
Then (having observed my girth) Madame the head nurse came back with two navy blue paper overalls ,one to wear with the opening at the front, one with the opening at the back (down at the theatre I was to observe that all the little slight French men had to do with only one) and also a fetching little navy bikini bottoms an essential thing to further protect the Famous Dwyer Modesty.
And so, shaven and shorn, having deprived myself off all food and drink for nearly eight hours and with my outfit topped off fetchingly with a baby blue Tam O’ Shanter hairnet the trollyman arrived and hopped me on my Chariot (that is what the French call them) and we headed down to theatre.
Imagine, if you will, Santa as a Gay Gorden in a navy paper mini kilt with matching knickers and toning Tam and you will get an idea how alluring I appeared.
We fortunately met no-one I knew on the way down but we did meet a frightened and lost Frenchman who, when I raised my self up in the chariot to see what was going on, gave a little shriek and galloped off down the corridor. My charioteer , it turned out , had spent some time in Sweden , a Northern and Liberal country , so was totally unphased by Santas in drag.

Once in the actual operating theatre I was rolled onto the table where a gowned up nurse took one look at my double paper pinafore ensemble and proceeded to cut it from me with a scissors. When I said indignantly “Madame you are destroying my beautiful dress” She replied (equally deadpan and quick as a wink) “Ah Monsieur but that blue is just not your colour”.
Thus bolstering my profound belief the French and the Irish share the same sense of humour.

Then a frighteningly young anaesthetist grabbed my arm, stuck one leg on the step of the table and with my arm over his knee deftly, painlessly and in a cool nonchalant fashion stuck a universal catheter in my arm. This was to be my mainline for the next two hours.
First up was my Radio Wave man and he decided to use the groin for his conduit to the heart. What he must have had (the squeamish and the genuinely knowledgeable should look away now) was some sort of soldering iron on a long wire which he then pushed up the vein to the heart. He told me that if I felt any pain I was to tell him and he would just increase the amount of drugs he was pumping into my arm.
At this stage I was completely pain-free, my only sensation was a delightfully pleasant feeling which was somehow reminiscent of bedsits in the sixties.
(I think they had dripped in something soothing into my arm to calm me)

For the next half hour or so he fiddled about with the soldering iron in my heart , every so often I would feel a burning sensation spread up to my jaw but it soon passed and I was not going to Let Ireland Down with a display of wimpishness.
What he was doing in (very) lay man’s terms was fixing the terminals in my heart battery to ensure that the recurrence of the skipped beat would not happen again.

Then to my surprise who appeared at my elbow, grinning from ear to ear, but my cardiologist.
“We decided”, he said” that while you were here we might as well do the second procedure as well- are you okay with that?”
I was fine with that.
Then he proceeded to push a small camera up to my heart via a vein in my wrist. He first of all gave me the same guarantee- “Any pain just let me know and we will fix it”
This one was a little more painful but, true to my new heroism when he asked me was I feeling any I croaked “No It’s Fine”
The cardio shot a look at me and then shouted at the Anaesthetist (in French) “He is being too brave, give him another little cocktail there Philippe”! Then a wonderful feeling of wellbeing spread up my arm and through my chest.
I was no longer feeling any pain.
Then as I lay there happily a familiar tune began to hum in my brain.
Then I began to recognise it; Georges Brassans “Copains d’Abord” one of my very favourite French songs- one I love so much I spent many weeks many years ago translating it, painstakingly, into rhyming English.
My Cardio was crooning it quietly and happily to himself as he worked: “Monsieur “I said “C’est Les copains vous chant” “You know this?” He said smiling. “It is my favourite song.”
I then explained how I had translated it etc. A truly surreal moment between him and me, talking about Brassans while he fiddled with my heart. So for the next twenty minutes or so, while he studied my heart from many angles (I could see out of the corner of my eye the images on the screen over our heads) he continued to hum “Les Copains” – a most reassuring sound as I knew that as long as he hummed contentedly about his work he was finding no evidence of heart disease- which was the whole point of his investigation.
After about thirty minutes or so (I was on the table for roughly two hours) he pulled out his camera, mopped up some of the blood from my various wounds and gave me the verdict :
“All Good “he said “Monsieur has fixed the flutter and I have found no evidence of disease, now you can go home tomorrow and then come into my office next week”, then he asked “Is your wife here” I said she was somewhere in the hospital. He shrugged and went off.
I then had to wait for a half hour in the recovery room , where I made myself busy teaching the nurse in charge the English terms for Hypertension and Echograph ( look them up) as she was hoping to spend some time on a Stage in England.
Eventually about two and a half hours after I had left it, I arrived back into my room- Sile was there. Before I could say a thing she said “It’s Ok, I know it’s good, the Cardiologist came and found me and told me all“ – I was amazed that a man so busy could have found the time for this moment of kindness.

I woke up the following morning feeling as light as a feather. Monsieur le Cardiologue was as good as his word, the strong weight I felt I had been carrying under my heart since Christmas was lifted and I felt truly well again, a marvellous feeling.
And then, the final bit of good news; when I called into the office to pay my bill on the way out, Madame stamped all my reports and smilingly assured me that there was nothing to pay.
Vive Le France!

This was the health advice given about wine consumption in 1930 here in the Midi.
I don’t think we would any longer recommend giving it to 4 year olds, even diluted, or say up to 2 litres a day would be good for health but, otherwise it seems closer to modern thinking that one would expect.
NB Pasteur preferred it to water as a health drink and he was no daw in the health fields.

The Road to Roujan

Carpet of wild Borage in the Vines

Wild Irises in Fontés

As summer comes you can (from the terrace)

Look at the world through rosé filled glasses.

Today I am begining to reap the rewards of the work we did over the winter on the terrace and on the courtyard under the terrace which we cleared out completely so that now you can sit in it. It is the most comfortable place to sit as the sun and heat of the garden warm the old bones while we are protected and shaded from the direct rays by the terrace and the view of the garden and the sky are framed gracefully.

Our wild garlic has come back again this year great flowers and terrific in cooking.

The stately Irises – a relic from the nuns day- while not my favourite flower certainly do have a certain presence.

This was taken a few weeks after our first date she was 20 I was 22

43 years ago today.

I just love the early mornings at this time, because the hour has changed and the church bells start now at what was 6.00 am last week so I am now wakened an hour earlier.

Now too it is warm enough to open the doors to the south and watch the dawn creep up over the pech making long morning shadows in the vines while I make my coffee.

This blog was one I originally put up in September 2005.

I came across this, to me, fascinating photograph today.
As soon as it was described to me by my Sister D a couple of weeks ago I immediately recognised it.
She had come across it somehow in my mothers effects.
I remembered being shown it by my mother who was most scathing about it. She told me “That’s Auntie Agnes and Uncle Billy’s Wedding, I was a bridesmaid but because I was only four they wouldn’t let me pose for the photograph”

It is a photograph that is so full of family history that it would need at least 1000 words to describe it!

The bride first,
She was Agnes Harding, grand daughter of an ex mayor of Cork , John Francis Maguire who was also a M.P., had founded the Cork Examiner and written a history of “Rome and its Institutions” for which he had received a papal knighthood.(I have a copy of the book)
She was later to prove a great cook, lived her life in some splendour in a Victorian villa in Rushbrooke in Cork which I remember chiefly for its summerhouse which could be turned on its axis to face the sun!
She came to our house to help with my three sisters’ weddings always bringing her own much worn carbon steel carving knife which I have managed to inherit. I remember her as a lovely warm lady.
Her husband, William Dwyer, better known as Billy, was one of Corks merchant princes, he made his fortune by founding Sunbeam Wolsey in Cork which at its peak employed several thousand of Corks northsiders. (Including, according to Google, Roy Keane’s father for his lifetime!)
Uncle Billy (who died before I was born) led my poor Aunt Agnes a merry dance by all accounts.
As well as being an entrepreneur of some skill he was also an MP and a great patron of the arts. At one time in the twenties he covered over his swimming pool (yes! a swimming pool in Ireland and in the twenties!) in the garden of his house to stage a midsummer version of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Perhaps his most famous claim to fame is that before his death he organised the money to be made available for a church to be built in Blackpool in Corks northside.
The people of Cork, in fairness, were never deceived by this piety and perhaps Aunt Agnes got a little revenge by the fact that to this day this church is known as “Dwyers Fire Escape”
I have come across two anecdotes about the man recently.
One Seamas Murphy mentions in one of his books.
Billy was given a few bob by a workman on the church to get a few masses said for his dead son. Billy instead got Seamas to carve the child’s name on the steps of the church so that everyone climbing the steps would pray for his soul.
Another story was told me, in the restaurant one night, by Darryl Gallwey of Tramore who knew Billy.
Apparently the curate of the church in Blackpool came to see my Uncle Billy and presented him with a Gold Sovereign (a huge sum of money at that time)
“Mr Dwyer” he said “ We found this in the collection plate last Sunday, you must have put the wrong coin in by mistake”
“But there was no mistake” said my grand uncle “ I always put a sovereign in”
It transpired that the sexton had taken his annual leave the previous Sunday, so the parish received the sovereign for the first time.
History does not record what happened to the sexton.

As to my interest in the wedding.
Well, it is not often one can suddenly come across a photograph of both sets of your grandparents together in a picture which is about 6 years short of being 100 years old.

The lady and gentleman third and fourth at the back on the left are my mothers parents

and the lady on the extreme right and the gentleman sitting next to her are my fathers parents.

This is because my maternal grand mother, Josephine is Agnes Harding’s sister, and my paternal Grandfather George (known affectionately to us all as Dubs), is Billy Dwyer’s brother.
Strange isn’t it?
My father was not I reckon yet born but until I firm up on the dates I’m not certain. My mother was, I imagine, watching the photo being taken and fuming because she wasn’t included!

I hasten to add that this doesn’t imply that me and my siblings are the result of an incestuous relationship!
My mother and father were, on their marriage no way blood related, they just had first cousins in common.

Well maybe not quite a thousand words ! But, as pictures go it certainly has a tale to tell!

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Post Scriptum September 13th 2005

This picture gets curiouser and curiouser!

Thanks in part to some notes which my brother David sent to me a long time ago which originally came from our cousin Neil Fleischman I have been able to identify some more people and even provide some anecdotes about the same.

Great Aunt Min Barry was the mater familias as William’s mother had died some time ago. She was a woman who has a reputation for performing great charitable works including sending packed lunches each day to the women in Cork Jail. She and her husband George Barry were childless so they adopted the Dwyer children as their own. My father still spoke fondly of Auntie Min.

This must be the brides mother, Mary Harding nee Maguire. A formidible looking lady as becomes the daughter of an apostle of temperance. She is in full Victorian mourning so we can take it that Edward Harding, the father of the bride is dead.

This lady is the most interesting of all.

Mabel Dwyer, in the family tree she gets a brief (Unm) after her name.
But what a wealth of family legend and heresay that hides.

Before I get to her story I must point out the most glaring omission of the day.

Where is the Grooms Father?

Walter Dwyer of Arbutus Lodge was alive and well.
Of this I am certain because in 1914, (which is the year this photograph was taken) he married for the third time.
His third wife was a May Goldie, a French Governess to the Pollack family.
(Family legend has it that she was previously courted by my grandfather, his son, George/Dubs)
Is that the reason why he was not present?
Was there a family row about his choice of bride?
We do know that Mabel, being the only one at home,had sought permission to marry only to be refused by her father on the grounds ;
“Who would look after me then!”
Mabel remained unmarried but the bold Walter went for the third wife as a safety clause.
That he had already built his own “fire escape” is evidenced that when the other daughter of the house, Mary, insisted, against his wishes in entering the Poor Clares, he promptly built a Poor Clare convent in Cork so she would be nearer him. This convent still stands and we as a family had special permission to attend Midnight Mass there on Christmas Day right up to my adolescence.
Furthermore as proof that Walter was not dead or indeed ailing he afterwards fathered four children with his third wife May. One of these, Rosemary, as Holy Child nun, Sister Colette, went on to become a marvellous champion of the Travellers in Ireland.
We know that after Walter’s death May Goldie went to London where she married an emigre white Russian Count, many years her junior.
Boys Oh! Boys!
Did these people lead colourful lives!
The researches continue.

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Post Scriptum 2 September 14th 2005

I am getting thoroughly fed up with Walter Dwyer.
I know he is my Great Grand Father and therefore deserves the usual amount of ancestor worship but, not only did he refuse his daughter her chance of happiness, wipe his sons eye with a french governess but now
despite all my wonderful projections he was at the wedding.
Furthermore, and just to upset me he sat next to the bride (I ask you!) and therefore escaped detection.
Unfortunately my eagle eyed brother Ted spotted him,

and remembered having seen a picture of him in a 1931 “Review of Progress
of Dwyers of Cork”

Not much doubting its the same man.

So he was at the wedding after all.
back to the drawing board Martin,