There were surprise engagements of short duration and others of many years that both ended with hasty trips to Irwin’s jewellers in Roches Street or McDowell’s the Happy Ring House in Dublin, the date for the wedding set. Babies come early in that family was a saying that needed no translation, for men were men and women women, and, in Sonny Cooney’s summation, the dish always runs away with the spoon. (It would be another ten years before Sonny would have to concede a dish sometimes ran away with a dish, a spoon with a spoon, not to speak of forks.)
