Bishop Lucey Park is the site of this year's inaugural Christmas in the Park fest. There the remnants of the town wall, remind us further of Cork's origins as a small medieval settlement across two marshy islands and testament to how the city has expanded beyond its core. The gates to the Park belong to the old Corn Exchange on the site of today's city hall. The sheaf of wheat in between the arches remind us of the city's economic heritage in commodities such as corn and butter and beef.

The Canon in the adjacent footpath represents tensions arising from the Siege of Cork in September 1690, where supporters of the Catholic King James II took over the walled town and the town was besieged by William of Orange forces, causing the walls of the town to be battered and subsequently taken down in the first decade of the 1700s by the Tuckey family. The Tuckey family reputedly turned the canon upside down and used it as a bollard on their quayside for tying up ships.

In 2007 the Grand Parade is also being transformed. Wider footpaths mean you can now stop and enjoy the city's built environment with all its higgledy piggleness design with all the different colours and different heights. A square has been created in front of the library. The revamped Berwick Fountain and the National Monument are echoes from Cork's civic development in the nineteenth century and the City's and the region's rebel past in the early twentieth century respectively. The stall owners in the English Market (established in 1788) prepare for another Christmas with all its products especially the turkeys, hams and spice beef.

So what are you waiting for, Christmas is what you make it no matter what age you are at. Get out and re-witness your youth in the city. Look to the skies and perhaps who will re-awaken your imagination and see a team of reindeer pulling a sleigh with a red suited bloke pushing onwards through the Cork sky…

Cork Christmas Fest is a great initiative of Cork Marketing Partnership, see www.christmasincork.ie for more on Christmas in the Park.

Open invitation, Sunday 16th December, Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Ballinlough 3p.m., I'm compering a carol service- the more the merrier!

Back to the world of the River Lee next week…

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