Our son is defending himself against the crime of blasphemy. A magnet had fallen off the fridge and met the floor with a startling crack, causing him to shout, ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Language!’ we say, with disapproving voices. If I’m honest, mine is actually my dad’s voice. I can’t help it. I’ve never really developed a disciplinary mode of my own, so any time I need to admonish my children it’s him that comes out, unbidden and full-throated, with a tinge of his Fermanagh brogue to make its source even more mortifyingly obvious. My wife, too, has a similar affliction, inflecting her most authoritatively maternal barbs with hints of her mum’s native Carlow. There we stand, a Derryman and a Dubliner in London, so unused to confrontation we can only raise our voices using accents we’ve never had.
