IT'S A DAD'S LIFE: Who'd have known our iPod-savvy child would follow my train of thought?
THE YOUNGER had a visitor from Dublin. The crony and her mum flew down to see us.
The younger was proud, her self-esteem shot up and she got her prima donna head on. She was sweet to her friend but came over all Naomi Campbell with us, preening and demanding the blue MMs be removed from every shop in the southwest.
We did our best. The visit also made me look up tourist attractions in the area which, even though we'd been holidaying here for years before we ever dreamt of moving lock stock down the road, I was blissfully unawares of.
My search turned up the Clonakilty Model Railway Village. Couldn't work, I thought, model trains - in this day and age?
The kicker, though, was the "Tschu Tschu". You pay your entrance to the railway village and included in the price is a trip around town on a road train.
It's like the Luas except it covers all the town. That sold me.
In the end the younger and her bud didn't come, worn out after 12 hours of continuous shrieking. That left me and the elder to sample the model village's wares.
And it was what it appeared to be. Model trains, tracks and buildings spread out over a big back garden preceded by a tour around the town we hang around every day anyway. Model trains - in this day and age? We loved it.
The geezer driving the road train was the happiest man in Ireland. There were three adults and one kid on our tour, spread over two carriages that I guess could carry about 40.
You'd think he'd just won the Lotto. He told us to wave at everybody we passed and, as it turned out, we had to because most of them waved at us first.
Maybe they're convinced the driver's happy pills will kick into them if they cheer him on every time he passes. It's worth a try for sure.
It's not like he's working with gold material - there's Michael Collins and the old open-air markets but when the recorded voice mentions the site of the old wallpaper factory you know items of significance are spread thin on the ground. Still the driver's bonhomie doesn't waver.
Afterwards, the trains. I'm convinced the elder will find this a yawnathon, but I can't keep up with her as she sprints from point to point. "Dad, look at that, it's a train. Look at that, it's another one!"
The words "Model Railway Village" hadn't spoilt the surprise for her.
At the end of the line, when we've tripped through the whole old west Cork rail network there's a café, in a railway carriage.
"It's a café. In a railway carriage," breathes the elder.
I am tripping out at her amazement. Here's a seven year old who can download tunes to an iPod, knows how to get online to check her mails on a Blackberry, is aware of what's hot this season, and will always choose Kylie over Britney. Who knew she would dig model trains?
I'm sipping coffee and she's fiddling with a Ribena. We're looking out over the bay, comfy in our CIE couches, c.1965. She wants to know about train trips and I tell her about travelling to Irish college in Ballybunion in 1984, by myself, scared out of my mind.
She laps it up. I'm aware I sound like Frank McCourt but she thinks it's more Famous Five. My stories always have happy endings so she's probably right.
I tell her about journeys to Galway, from Edinburgh to London, criss-crossing Europe. Snow-covered fields flashing by, poppy fields, the dark thrash of wheels as engine hums through tunnel.
The train is a time machine; it sits you beside LeCarré's heroes slipping in and out of cold war east Germany, it makes you one of the Railway Children, it floats you in time and space with a vista the plane can never hope to match.
She's bitten. She wants to go somewhere right now. I make promises I hope I can keep. Either way, when I see the driver on our way out I give him a wave thinking he's right, this is happy town and he gets to skipper the cheery bus every day.
We get home and the missus eyes me dubiously. "How was that? Could you stick it?"
"Bloody marvellous," I tell her.
"You're ridiculously happy," she says.
"I know. There's a driver fella down there, he must have magic beans. He must have put them in our drinks."
The elder and I beam at each other. He must have. Model trains. Who would have thought it?
• abrophy@irish-times.ie