Cork woman takes break from swingball to visit park after five weeks of cocooning

The “thwock” of a tennis ball smashing against a racket has become a familiar sound in Beechwood Park in Ballinlough, Cork city as Hannah Kirby makes the most of swingball to maintain her daily exercise regime.
Cork woman takes break from swingball to visit park after five weeks of cocooning
Hannah Kirby keeping fit with her swingball set while cocooning. Pic: Larry Cummins

The “thwock” of a tennis ball smashing against a racket has become a familiar sound in Beechwood Park in Ballinlough, Cork city as Hannah Kirby makes the most of swingball to maintain her daily exercise regime.

For a particularly active 70-something year-old, cocooning has been a real challenge, so she is “over the moon” that as of this week, she can now travel beyond her own home, on foot or by car, while observing social distancing.

Determined to make the most of this concession, Hannah was up and about before 8am on Tuesday to make a beeline for the nearby public park which she reckoned would be reasonably deserted at that hour of the morning.

Otherwise, her plans are modest.

“I’m going to get into my car and drive around Ballinlough and see what changes have taken place in the five weeks or so that I have been cocooning,” she said.

“I don’t plan on doing anything drastic now that I can get out, I still can’t go to the shops and that’s fine.

I am looking forward to driving up to Frankfield (a suburb of Cork city) to see my grandchildren.

“They are dying for me to drive up, but we will all still be following the rules about social distancing,” Hannah says.

In the pre-Covid-19 world, Hannah was a regular fixture at Ballinlough Tennis Club, where she ran the Ladies’ Morning twice a week, as much a social occasion as an opportunity to plan tennis.

She’s also been the organiser of an annual fundraiser, a coffee morning in aid of Marymount Hospice, which usually takes place in September but which may or may not go ahead this year.

With all the tennis club activity on hold, Hannah resurrected swingball from the garage, which she has had since her grown-up kids were little.

Anchoring it in the garden with a steel umbrella stand, she’s been giving it welly every day, along with clocking up thousands of steps walking around her beautiful garden (gardening is also a passion).

Hannah Kirby in her garden. Pic: Larry Cummins
Hannah Kirby in her garden. Pic: Larry Cummins

By lunchtime last Friday, she had clocked up almost 8,500 steps since breakfast.

Hannah, whose husband passed away 25 years ago, is used to living alone, but not used to isolation.

As “one of the originals” of Beechwood Park - she’s lived there for 53 years - she has plenty of friends in the neighbourhood and has regular “gate visitors” - which could yet enter the lexicon as a way of describing house callers that don’t quite make it to the house due to the 2m rule.

She’s glad the cocooning was imposed coming into the summer.

“If it was November or December, and the weather was bad, I might have a very different perspective on it,” she says.

One thing that does bother her is that she cannot reassure her grandchildren about what life will be like on the other side of the pandemic.

I can’t tell my grandchildren ‘This is how it will pan out’ because we have never been through something like this before.

What she can look forward to is a chance to see some of the world’s best tennis players in action, albeit not this year.

One of her three daughters lives in the UK and had bought her a ticket to Wimbledon as a birthday present. As the tournament cannot now go ahead, she can look forward to carrying the ticket forward to Wimbledon 2021, in the hope that sporting events, and life in general, will be back on track by then.

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