‘And a hard word it is,’ said Richie, ‘as my brainpan kens to this blessed moment.’

“HIEROPHANTIC—expounding mysteries” the note said. “Pernoctation—all night vigil” and “ursicide—one who kills a bear”. The words were scrawled on the paper, which had fallen out of an old wallet. It was a relic of times long ago when in idle moments I foraged through the dictionary and tried to construct sentences using the words that caught my interest. The mysteries of killing bears could very well have been explained to a tyro by a seasoned ursicide during an all-night vigil, perhaps achieved while sitting up a tree. / I turned the paper over and was at once transported into the early 1950s.

Back in the days when Cork City was dog rough, where to take a night-time stroll was an act of madness comparable to forcing long deadly skewers into your eyeballs, Cork was a jungle back then.

Such incidents create debate about localism, a brand of territorialism that has been practiced at surf breaks around the world for decades.