A Ship In The Night (And Voice In The Small Hours)

My wife's grandmother has had what appears to be a bad stroke. We don't know how things will go. She's in hospital in Wexford at present. My wife went down earlier to be with her mother. Our wean was very upset when he heard. They are very fond of each other and he often sits in her room watching TV or chatting with her. She is a very gentle, kind woman who at 93 has lived quite a remarkable life. I'm very fond of her and hope she recovers, against the doctors expectations.

The above is one of the partly commercial buildings off the road where we live that has changed owners a few times over the years, but remains essentially the same (though I think the original windows in the upper stories were actually round, like portholes). It looks 193os to me, though I don't know when it was built. It has been there for as long as I remember and used to be a grocery shop cum post office. We knew it then as Manning's, after the family who owned and lived in it. Decades ago, someone I knew once rang up Mrs Manning on a whim in the early hours and said: 'Now you'll have something to gossip about in the morning.' He was a child and didn't mean it maliciously, but it must have given the poor woman a fright. Or, perhaps more likely, she recognised the voice.