{"id":16537,"date":"2026-04-18T09:50:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T09:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/16537\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T09:50:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T09:50:29","slug":"roisin-ingle-i-took-my-mother-to-london-to-see-joyce-her-only-remaining-sibling-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/16537\/","title":{"rendered":"R\u00f3is\u00edn Ingle: I took my mother to London to see Joyce, her only remaining sibling \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It takes a village to persuade my mother, Ann Ingle, to get off the island these days. At 86, with mobility and eyesight issues, each potential trip must be carefully considered. The unfailingly helpful assistance staff at the airports smooth her passage, but even travelling on the island takes it out of her. My mother\u2019s aversion to leaving her home turf of Phibsborough<\/a> is as much emotional and psychological as it is physical.<\/p>\n

More than ever, she likes routine, knowing exactly how the day will unfold. Her morning begins with a cup of tea handed up to her by one of her housemates and ends with a play on BBC<\/a> Radio 4 Extra. So I knew I had to come up with an intoxicating itinerary to convince her to abandon her extremely comfortable comfort zone, pack up her sleep apnoea machine, locate her passport and travel to her home city of London<\/a>, a place she left to set up home in Dublin<\/a> with my father 63 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe might go to see Hamilton,\u201d I told her, which elicited some positive noises. She\u2019s a fan of musicals in general, with Les Mis being the exception. Controversially, we both have an aversion to that show and have been known to leave at half-time. \u201cAnd you could come with me to the Tracey Emin<\/a> exhibition,\u201d I said, but Emin\u2019s gloriously messy bed at The Tate Modern held no appeal. <\/p>\n

She has other grandchildren and a son and daughter-in-law in London, so I wiggled that carrot in front of her. \u201cAlso, I will get you a salt beef sandwich.\u201d The favourite snack of her youth did some persuading, but she still remained on the fence until, with a flourish, I presented my trump card: \u201cYou\u2019ll be able to visit Joyce.\u201d Joyce turned out to be the magic key that unlocked our family trip to London. <\/p>\n

Her sister Joyce is 97 and lives alone in what we joke must be the Blue Zone around Ilford. Joyce used to be her father\u2019s favourite daughter until \u201cBaby Ann\u201d came along when she was 11. After that Joyce had to live with being second fiddle. She forgave Baby Ann for this, though, and the thought of seeing Joyce, her older sister, her only remaining sibling, persuaded my mother to let me book the flights and the airport assistance and, as an extra bonus, tickets for Hamilton. <\/p>\n

The journey there was uneventful. There are no kinder people than the ones helping those with mobility challenges navigate their way on and off planes. When we got to Ilford, Joyce was expecting us. She opened the door and threw her arms around my mother. \u201cI thought I was never going to see you again,\u201d she said to her little sister. I suppose every time must feel like the last time when you are 97. <\/p>\n

My mother sat in front of Joyce, so her failing eyes could see her sister and so that her sister, who has a cochlear implant but not much else wrong with her, could hear everything Baby Ann was saying. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I am going to die of,\u201d Joyce has been known to muse. There\u2019s nothing obvious that is going to take her out. She makes her meals in the air fryer and is still handy with the knitting machine that sits facing a window in the sunny front room. She\u2019s currently crafting a yellow cardigan for one of her four great-great-grandchildren. <\/p>\n

Joyce is thinking of moving out of her house and into an assisted living place to be nearer her daughter. It has a conservatory where you can sit and talk to other residents if you want, but she\u2019d have separate living quarters for when she\u2019s not in the mood for company. \u201cMy pension will pay for it,\u201d Joyce told us. \u201cBut there\u2019s no room there for me at the moment, I have to wait for someone to die.\u201d Then she laughed. Joyce\u2019s laugh is sudden, startling, loud and long. A laugh that makes everyone else laugh. You know the kind. <\/p>\n

On my urging, Joyce told us the story of that time during the second World War<\/a> when she went to do some messages for her mother and brought Baby Ann in the pram. She was coming out of the shop when an air raid warning startled her and she ran home. When she got there her mother said, \u201cWhere\u2019s Baby Ann?\u201d Joyce had left the pram outside the shop. She ran back and thankfully Baby Ann was still there, unharmed. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0I\u2019m missing some teeth but I can\u2019t stop laughing or grinningOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

There was another time, a few years later, when Joyce was supposed to pick Baby Ann up from nursery but when she got there was told Ann, now aged four, had gone home by herself. There were two ways home. One way was relatively safe. The other was through Leyton Marshes, which was filled with bomb craters. Joyce ran home terrified that Baby Ann had wandered home through the marshes and fell into a hole. When she got back Baby Ann was still alive and being praised by her mother instead of admonished: \u201cClever Baby Ann!\u201d You can see how it must have been annoying for Joyce, all the same.<\/p>\n

The London trip was a success. My mother devoured her salt beef sandwich and some divine mussel flatbread in Straker\u2019s of Notting Hill. There was a big family dinner in my brother\u2019s place and lots of noisy card games. <\/p>\n

But Joyce was the highlight. \u201cI hope I see you again, Ann,\u201d she said, hugging my mother as they parted, sounding as uncertain about any future assignations as is prudent when you are three years short of a century. They\u2019ll be laughing together again soon enough if I have anything to do with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It takes a village to persuade my mother, Ann Ingle, to get off the island these days. At…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[146,6275,27,7781,7780,7783,7782],"class_list":{"0":"post-16537","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-london","11":"tag-phibsborough","12":"tag-roisin-ingle","13":"tag-second-world-war","14":"tag-tracey-emin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116425092110771479","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}