Thanks to everyone who wrote back about potatoes. Viola you are a star, I so love your tales of the past. And Champ sounds quite tasty also! Interesting that Irish style potatoes reached Cuba, thanks Carl. Probably because Che Guevara had Irish Ancestry! Thank you to Pat B and Dee for confirming the story I had heard about how many potatoes were eaten in a day. This will help me with some writing I am doing for a course which combines family history, my personal family archive, biography and creative writing. On 2018-05-18, at 3:41 AM, dianne swanwick wrote: On a recent visit to Dublin, a restaurant served peeled potatoes mashed, roasted and chips all on the one plate! The love of the potato lives on to this day. Thank you Dianne, and interesting that something similar happened to me in a posh Dublin restaurant a few years ago, the sort of restaurant that often serves small unadvertised plates between courses. Well, between the first and second course we were all given a whacking great baked potato! Beautifully presented and very tasty, of course. FG is a great site there is so much to learn and everyone is so generous with the time they spend helping others with their queries! Perhaps we will soon be back up at No 1 again. Val Mc in Brighton

On 2018-05-18, at 3:21 PM, Val McLeish wrote: > Thanks to everyone who wrote back about potatoes. Viola you are a star, I so love your tales of the past. And Champ sounds quite tasty also! > Interesting that Irish style potatoes reached Cuba, thanks Carl. Probably because Che Guevara had Irish Ancestry! > And of course it was a Maguire who first set foot in North America. He's the guy who hauled Columbus' rowboat onto the beach at Baracoa Cuba. I think it was Michael from Cork that told me that. One of four genuine Irish people on our tour, so it must be true. Cheers everyone Carl

My dear Golden Family and Friends, Thank you all for your kind remarks. At my age, I really Thank my Lucky Stars to be able to remember events from before I could walk, but it needs to have a 'trigger' to evoke an occasion or memory from childhood. My earliest memory is from when I was sitting in my Pram, which had two big wheels and two smaller ones, fitted with three removable padded sections. When the middle section was taken out it allowed the child to sit upright with one's feet in the "well" but still anchored to the side hooks by the little 'harness' normally worn by children then. A neighbour, (relative of J Dinnen), crooked his walking stick around the back of my neck and heaved both me and the Pram towards himself, reaching over the end of the Pram for my toes and saying "There's a wee mouse nibbling at your toes!" Needless to say that did not endear him to me, and was a lasting memory recalled every time I saw him.