On a wall at the far end of the street, Marianne spies her great friend Joanne McCluskey, and waves and hollers her direction. Her husband wanders on oblivious, having lost a fair portion of his hearing.

Joanne races to greet her sister in all but birth with a face all smiles and arms all akimbo. "Och Jesus oh isn't it an age since I saw you last?" says she to Marianne. "And look at this young article!" She bends o'er the pram, cooing and prodding at the toddler's ample cheeks. "Look at you!" says she, again.

"Isn't he a right imp and a half?" says the mother.

"Oh, he's that. Tell me this, is he walkin' yet?"

"Well now, he'd be like his father there of a Thursday morning. He'd be able to stand for a second or two but it'd be a foolhardy fella would bet on one leg being fit to cross the other without the lot crashin' to the carpet."

The women laugh at this, Michael Senior by now half-ways up the street, oblivious to the fact that his wife has paused in her travels.

"And is he talkin'?" says Joanne. "I bet he's got a right wee tongue on him by now."

"No" Marianne sniffs. "No he hasn't said a word."

"Ach he must've said somethin' by now."

"He's not," says the mother. "Now tell me, how's your own twins getting on?"

Thusly runs the banter anytime anyone asks about young Michael's verbal abilities. The truth of the matter is that he's said at least eight words by now, but not one of them have been any word a lady might in good conscience attribute to the mouth of her child.

"Fuck" went one. "Bum" went another. A third wasn't far removed from "Bastard."

It'll be another nine months afore he'll say anything repeatable, and it'll be the word "Boat." By that time, most o' the folks in the tiny County Cork community will assume Marianne and Michael to have fathered a mute, and will be bound in a sore sympathy for the parents.

Thanks folks.