In his dusty workshop, on top of a virgin block of stone six inches taller than the smallest of my daughters, is a small clay model of a boy.

“He’s looking up,” Ken Thompson explains to my 10-year old daughter Mary. “He’s not looking down at his phone, as everyone is these days. He’s looking up – with joy, at the stars, at God …”

We were visiting the stone carver and letter cutter Ken Thompson at his home and workshop in Ballytrasna, near Ballycotton, a 25-minute drive from my mother’s home in Youghal, East Cork. He is coming up to 80 and lives alone but, we thought, is in bold spirits. At the large table in his kitchen overlooking the sea our daughters, nine, 10 and 11, drank tea and wondered at his simple phone, identical to their own, which they have never known a grown-up to prefer. It is the nearest thing to technology in the old stone farmhouse, its walls, shelves and window sills littered with woodcarvings, stone letter blocks, books and prints. One of the outhouses has been converted into a simple chapel, where Mass is celebrated occasionally by local priests. The workshop is lined with old dressers and cupboards, every surface covered with offcuts, dust cloths and the tools of the trade: hammers, mallets and chisels.

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