Down The Rocky Road – What Is Civilisation? Two Lessons From History

 

On Monday 27 October, autumn half-term, we decided to head to two places in County Roscommon that are very important to the history of this island: the National Famine Museum in Strokestown, and Rathcroghan, which is one of Ireland’s five ancient royal sites and the burial ground of the kings of Connaught.

Aoife had told us of a lot of noteworthy events and places to go during this week, so we took her advice. She is a particularly wise woman and her husband works at the museum in Strokestown. We were told it was an interesting place, but until we arrived, I don’t think any of us were prepared for what awaited us. The vast grounds lead up to a sprawling complex of buildings housing a multiple-award-winning testimony to the horrors of the early Victorian period in Ireland.

The reason the National Museum dedicated to the single most catastrophic event to befall these islands is located in Strokestown is explained in the main exhibition itself. Major Denis Mahon, a British Army officer, was the landlord of Strokestown House at the time of the Famine and was ambushed, shot and killed on his way home from an emergency relief meeting. There are still question marks over the identity of his killer and also over his character, but on the whole, he was another in the long line of English ruling class bigwigs who put value for money above the struggle for equity and justice. The events leading up to his death, the potential motives for them, the records left intact and the buildings that bear testimony to the Famine make Strokestown the most important remnant of the age.

In 1836, nine years before the Famine, Major Mahon took over Strokestown House from his uncle Maurice, against whom he brought an injunction claiming he was unfit to care for the estate. This was primarily because he had waived the rent agreements of the village of Ballykilcline under his control and ceded part of the estate back to the Crown. Maurice was handed an official declaration stating he was a lunatic, and that Denis was to be his legal guardian and the sole executor of Strokestown House along with its vast lands and estate.

A typical dwelling of the time made out of turf, or peat

The estate itself was in serious debt – £30,000 to be precise, or over £4 million in today’s money, so Major Mahon set to work trying to claw back the debts. This included demanding the three years of rent owed by the villagers of Ballykilcline and various other tenants his uncle had turned a blind eye to.

Many of the inhabitants of Roscommon, the county where Strokestown is situated, were so disgruntled by the obligation to pay rent despite all the hardships befalling them, that they went on strike. Mahon tried to evict many of his own tenants, but they kept returning, so in 1847, two years into the Great Famine, he took the advice that the price of hiring a couple of ships to send his own tenants off to Canada would cost less than their upkeep in Strokestown.

It was about 70km to Sligo Harbour in the west, but he was advised it was cheaper to make them walk to Dublin, over double the distance away. From there they had to catch a boat to Liverpool before being herded onto four of the notorious Coffin Ships and transported across the Atlantic. The journey in 1847 took about six weeks but could last double that time, depending on the skill of the navigator and the clemency of the weather. Added to that, people weren’t always allowed to leave the ship upon arrival: many ships were quarantined due to disease.

Some of the faces of those from the area, placed on pillars and hung from the ceiling

The lack of food, water, hygiene and space experienced by these émigrés meant that only a little over half of all Mahon’s former tenants made it to Canada. That is why they were called Coffin Ships – a fact that even the sharks of the Atlantic Ocean were aware of, as they were often seen trailing these vessels, for obvious reasons. When word about the conditions reached those back in Strokestown who hadn’t made the journey, there was great distress.

We have to understand the political situation at the time to get a fuller picture. I won’t go into the minutiae of details, but it’s safe to say that the Prime Minister of the time, Sir Robert Peel, was about as popular in Ireland as a bout of e-coli. Indigenous Irish Catholics, who made up the vast majority of the population, were more or less at the mercy of the Protestant landed gentry. A famine a century earlier, along with several promises to raise the Catholics from their status as second class citizens that had been broken, had already made the Westminster ruling elite and the British Crown deeply unpopular.

William Pitt the Younger actually resigned as Prime Minister after 18 years because he was thwarted by the aristocracy while trying to emancipate the Irish Catholics. George III, a man who had already misjudged the American situation, showed further signs of being tone deaf when he refused to allow Catholics to sit in Parliament. This meant that when Ireland and Great Britain merged as the United Kingdom on 1 January 1801, not a single MP was representing the majority in Ireland in the House of Commons.

In August of 1847, three months after many of his tenants had left Strokestown, Mahon showed up at his domain having been in England far away from the chaos. What chaos do I mean? In September 1845, a little under two years before this, a disease called Phytophthora Infestans had arrived on the shores of Ireland having been detected in other parts of Europe from 1842 already.

The blight had not affected other countries’ inhabitants as much as those of Ireland because they had a more varied diet. In Ireland, there was only one main crop: the potato. It provided the nutrients needed to sustain the people and up to 6kg of the stuff was consumed per grown man each day. With the arrival of this blight, it soon became clear that there was going to be a national emergency pretty soon.

A list of people
designated to receive
 a package of meat
at Christmas

But the government in London wasted an abominable amount of time holding inquiries and conducting research into the causes and the likely outcome of the potato blight. Indeed, all this obfuscation and mindless wasting of precious time meant that by the time a consensus had been reached, the whole island had been engulfed in a horrific famine. In many parts of the island, it was reported that not a single animal lived, and not a sound could be heard from the countryside. When it was decided that action needed to be taken, Major Mahon thought shipping his tenants off to Canada was the best course of action.

For that reason, upon Mahon’s return in August 1847, he was a deeply unpopular man, and the priest Father Michael McDermott, who Mahon had left in charge of the Relief Committee in his absence, gave a vitriolic diatribe from his pulpit, accusing Mahon of taking pleasure in turfing his tenants out and destroying their properties to keep them from returning. It was claimed by a sitting Lord in Westminster, raising the subject later on, that Father McDermott had denounced Mahon as being “worse than Cromwell”, going on to add “yet he lives”.

This alone was an inelegant and unintentional authorisation to remove Mahon by any means necessary.

One thing led to another and in early November of that year, Mahon was ambushed and killed while riding home from a relief meeting. Four suspects were named and pursued, but nobody actually admitted to the murder, and anyone who may have known never came forward, such was the feeling of contempt towards Major Mahon.

One of the suspects most likely to have been involved lamented the “accursed system” of the secret society known as the Molly Maguires, who used to bring turmoil and disorder wherever they went, and may have been instrumental in Mahon’s murder. The Dubliners wrote a song about them, containing the lines:

“Make way for the Molly Maguires,
They're drinkers, they're liars but they're men;
Make way for the Molly Maguires,
You'll never see the likes of them again.”

Major Mahon is interred in a mausoleum in the grounds of Strokestown House, and was the first of the landed gentry to be killed. His daughter, Grace, who was on her honeymoon at the time of the murder, vowed never to set foot again at Strokestown, so her new husband, Henry Sandford Pakenham, who himself came from a family owning a vast amount of land, took on the administration of the estate. Under his guidance, the huge debts accumulated by the Mahon family were paid off, but the evictions and dispatching of tenants continued.

The Pakenham-Mahon family remained owners of Strokestown House right up until 1979, when it was sold to the Westward Group, a large enterprise with a greatly varied portfolio. Since then, they have invested a significant amount of funds into restoring the estate. It was the logical site of the National Famine Museum because of the events I described, but also because when the Westward Group took over the estate, they found a colossal number of records, letters and artifacts from the time, enough to turn it into the most evocative and illuminating museum I have been in for many years.

One of the most shameful parts of this story was the way the British government handled it: the strict adherence to procedures that led to more suffering and the miserly way the British treated the Irish through introducing levies and tariffs on Irish exports meant for their salvation, they were totally dependent on the very rulers who chose to treat them as competitors and suppress them.

The fact that it has won several prizes comes as no surprise: it has been meticulously restored and everything that could be displayed is there for all to see. I wholeheartedly recommend a trip to Strokestown House if you are in the area, and make sure you set aside a good half-day as there’s a lot to take in.

A plan of Strokestown from the period

We arrived on a rather grim, wet autumn afternoon. Coming through the town outside the gates, a pretty and lively place with a wide boulevard leading up to the premises, it gave off an air of a bygone era of enormous wealth and prestige. It reminded me a little of the streets outside Het Loo in Apeldoorn or the Palais de Versailles with their avenues all pointing to the main residence in the area. The domain itself was situated at the end of a long and well-asphalted driveway where the car park overflow had reached the front of the main building. There were evidently a lot of people who had the same idea as us.

Dedication to
the Choctaw

We parked and went in through an ultra-modern portal into a very welcoming foyer area with a gift shop and a café with woodland views just through the back. After consulting the receptionist at front desk, it was clear she loved her job. She gave us multiple suggestions including a Samhain walk for kids through the wooded grounds that went round in a spyglass pattern.

We went to the café first as it was lunchtime and we were hungry. They had a proper selection of food, which is one of my chief requirements when I visit a public building: what’s on the menu, and is it fresh? They passed very well – my second positive impression. We went back to the reception and opted for the main museum and the Children’s Samhain Walk.

Passing through a courtyard that contained a memorial of thanks to the Choctaw people of North America for coming to the assistance of the Irish in the Famine, I could instantly tell that this was going to be an intense experience. From the moment you walk in the main museum, you are greeted with texts and artifacts in chronological order explaining the story, the main points of which I explained earlier in this article.

A few weeks ago, Dainoris and Milda had asked us about the history of Ireland and Bonny Bee had found a series of images from the 1800s including those of the hardships, so they were aware of this period of time. Now they were in the museum, they went round the pictures and maps asking all sorts of pertinent questions and for the first time they didn’t hurry from room to room, like they did at Dublin Castle recently. It was an exceptionally gratifying experience, and they deserved their Children’s Samhain Walk.

The museum did a great job with the woodland

Despite the rain, we trudged through the woodland area with a map containing some blank spaces to be filled in to win a prize. They had really thought the whole thing through because there were lots of informative placards explaining the origins of Samhain all round the course. The woodland area itself was also pleasingly landscaped and planned: native trees, some obviously very old, lined the trail.

Back at the museum, we got our prizes and went back to the café to warm up and have dessert. They had such a terrific selection of cakes and biscuits, it was difficult to choose which one. And the day was still fairly young… what to do?

I suggested paying a short visit to Rathcroghan Archaeological Site, just down the road. It was in this area of over 500 hectares with 60 individual monuments and 20 ring forts, that Samhain was first conceived, which then spawned Halloween. The period around 31 October-1 November has for centuries been associated with death and remembering ancestors. These days, the church has of course gentrified it into the time of year when descendants visit the graves of their predecessors and reverentially drop off a few flowers.

But it is a sanitised and rather pious interpretation of this time of year.

Samhain always marked the end of the year, when the fecundity of the spring and summer turned into autumn and then into winter. Very often the inhabitants would have saved all the fruit they didn’t eat and put it in underground storage – peat was a very good pantry in those days. By the time they took it out, the fruit would have fermented and turned alcoholic. Mixed with some ground grain, it would turn into a centrepiece for a midwinter feast to celebrate the turning of the darkness into light. This is where those Christmas sweets come in – they are direct descendants of early humankind’s marking of the seasons.

Livia takes her own route

Let us focus on Samhain for a moment: it is said that this time of the year is when the veil between this life and the one beyond is at its thinnest. It is said we can communicate more easily with our ancestors and deceased loved ones during Samhain. If you think talking to the dead is a bit fanciful, ask a Catholic priest – they do all kinds of acts to communicate with the dead, mainly so-called “saints” and beatified figures they feel worthy of being addressed. The pre-Christian folk did that but to people they actually knew.

And at this place, with so many standing stones and circles, the calendars were marked and observed by the people. It helped them know when to plant, when to reap, mow, sow, dig, and prepare for what was to come. They even made babies according to the calendar, so that the majority of pregnancies had a good chance to last during the gentler summer months. They were also used for ceremonies to mark the passage of time and to celebrate or commemorate. They probably held feasts during times of abundance and convened gatherings there during times of scarcity or war.

The view due south from the top of the mound

One of the reasons women were in charge more than at any point since the Church took over is because of their biological faculties. They had the power to populate villages, so they would take matters into their own hands. Marriage was (and kind of still is) a root of population decline, and they weren’t always a prerequisite. Morals have always been open to interpretation and for sure they fit the times and the conditions, but it’s really much more about necessity than about developed-world trends and expectations. Back then, it was about survival more than anything else, so women would aim to get pregnant by any means.

After Christianity spread, morals concerning sex were very much guided by people who often chose to be celibate. They berated and vilified the people adhering to the old ways: one of the reasons why the stereotype of a demon is a horned, red-faced pitchfork-wielding creature is because the Christian clergy would point at ruddy-faced peasants out in the land, turning the soil with their forks. They would often have skulls of animals like goats or deer near the entrances of their houses, hence the horns. This was how the Church cajoled society into abandoning ways they had grown accustomed to for generations.

They took the old pagan festivals and spun them into stories about their own deity. Samhain, the festival commemorating the dead, became “All Hallows’ Day” and “All Saints’ Day”; Yule, the darkest time of the year when there were fires and feasts celebrating the returning of the light, became Christmas, when a symbolic light was personified and came to take us from so-called “darkness”; and the festival of fertility and rebirth named after the Germanic goddess Ostara and the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, possibly going back to the Greek Eos and maybe even to the Akkadian goddess Ishtar, became Easter, when another kind of rebirth was foisted in to replace the original one.

Out with nature, the seasons, astronomy and agriculture, and in with a calendar centred around a story about some strangers in a faraway land and agreed upon by people who had never set foot in a muddy field. They would spend centuries proselytising and moralising, shaming and cajoling non-believers to join their flocks. They would send kings and armies to invade their Holy Land, send emissaries to far-off countries to overpower and enforce their book upon the people, causing untold amounts of death, pain and indignity on people from Aztec Mexico to the rainforests of Africa. Hundreds of thousands fell victim to enslavement and deracination, all due to the insistence that the deity being introduced to them was the one and only.

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What do these two stories tell us?

Firstly, that those with the power to do so will direct the narrative in their favour, no matter how much damage they may have inflicted. Nobody has ever brought criminal charges against any Witchfinder, Conquistador, or English landowner for their roles in the respective calamities they were responsible for. Indeed, many of the Popes and Crusaders that foisted their religion on everyone in the name of “enlightenment”, killing, displacing, enslaving, or expelling the folk from their lands were elevated to sainthood, or at least beatified by their patrons. Some even had cities, provinces and countries named after them. They were quite within their rights to act with total impunity as it just took too long for history to catch up to their crimes.

The one thing that democracy has brought us is the ability to bring charges against those responsible for causing harm and to act as a dam holding up the waters of decline and deprivation. They don’t always get justice done, but it’s the best we have. Over the years, many people have been brought out of their rudimentary conditions and elevated to a higher standard of living. The fundamental principles of a functioning democracy is its aspiration to continual development and advancement of its society. But this doesn’t always mean it’s the best thing for everyone – most civilisations get on with their own thing far better just by being left alone to sort it out.

How would Ireland have fared if it had been left to its own devices? We’ll never know, but my guess is maybe something like a warmer version of Iceland but maybe with its monarchs. Imagine if the Incas or the Aztecs had been able to ward off the Spanish: would they be a superpower now? How about religion? The last country to remain pagan was Lithuania, and it still has a thriving community today. It is possible that the old gods of Ireland would have been more relevant for much longer. They are making quite a comeback these days, so it’s not totally lost. More on that another time.

The day we visited Rathcroghan, it was a windy, blustery afternoon approaching darkness. Nevertheless, it made an impression on us all as the view from the top was indisputably breathtaking, and we all understood the significance of the site. We will return when the weather is more clement. What the visits to these two places taught us personally is that our ancestors paid heavy prices for us to have what we do today, and it would be unwise or even foolish to think that a dose of autocracy or outside interference is what we need. Considering what happened to the Irish, it most definitely is not.

      

Turnips used to be used in Ireland as Jack O'Lanterns until the Americans used pumpkins. The final photo shows a fairy door in one of the trees.

Down The Rocky Road – How Things Have Changed

Irish skies are epic

On Wednesday 27 August, Milda had her first day at school; Livia and Dainoris would follow the day after. Livia’s scholar history has been one of trial and abject failure time and time again. In the beginning, she went to a miserable school in Germany whose team leader, despite the qualifications, was about as suitable for the job as a leopard guarding a chicken coop. I even caught one of the teachers verbally berating a three-year-old in the corridor for wanting to go to the toilet while the class was reading. So that wasn’t really Livia’s fault, but it certainly made her determined not to speak a word of German.

After a happy period in a delightful crèche in Luxembourg, the rest of the time was miserable for her. All the private schools in Luxembourg and Spain were obsessed with “excellence” and to hell with special needs. I used to be a strong advocate for private schools, but having seen the transactional, Darwinian way they go about providing education, I have absolutely no sympathy fuel left in the tank for them. Every private school I have seen advertises that they have departments to handle children with special needs, but in reality this is usually an external semi-qualified self-employed child psychologist who couldn’t find a practice that would hire them. They come for a couple of hours a week and do a little round to check if the kids on the watch list are starting to behave like everyone else.

We therefore had a low bar, regarding expectations. On the morning of Livia’s first day at school, she did a lot of protesting, wailing, writhing and hiding. She was very nervous almost to the point of hyperventilation. This was to be expected, considering the way she had been misunderstood and mistreated in schools. One would have thought that, by now, the education world had understood that not every child learns at the same pace and some need a little extra help. The special needs methods and policies in many countries neither meet the requirements, nor do they reflect the realities in society.

First day of school

So it came as a complete surprise when Livia came hope with a smile on her face and a few words about her day. That hasn’t happened very often. In her last school in Spain, although the staff tried their best, Livia often came home a complete mess. Some days she would shout for minutes at a time about her teacher that she hated her and hated the kids.

But now, we were starting to see signs that she might actually settle down and get along. The head of the school, a woman with a mission and a heart as wide as the majestic River Shannon, has taken more steps in the past two months than all Livia’s other schools combined. She got in touch with the appropriate services, then called us in to fill in an application form for government assistance. Not only that, she made sure the process got sped up by putting in a few words with the right people. Livia still has many, many issues, but the first priority – providing the right learning environment for her – has been emphatically fulfilled. She comes home every evening with a smile on her face and she talks and talks and talks: things that, only six months ago, would have been inconceivable.

We are awaiting the full acceptance and onboarding process, but things are on the move, and that is an achievement in itself.

Dainoris is developing his own character now, too. He is an exceptional spatial designer – he will take everything in the house that isn’t nailed down and make some architectural masterpiece out of it: castles, especially, but also holiday houses with swimming pools and rooftop terraces. He can name a lot of dinosaurs and animals, and he can draw them incredibly well. He enjoys school and loves to give us some small mathematics exercises.

Milda is a charming young lady who loves a chat. For her age, she is an adventurous eater – give her salads, curries, vegetables, cheese varieties, and she will be your most enjoyable lunch partner. She is very helpful, as is her brother, but she can tire easily. She and Dainoris can play for hours in various roleplaying games, sometimes with Livia. At school in general, she is very advanced for her age, and her handwriting is incredibly neat.

Another important thing the school principal did was to give us the contact details of a very kind after-school childminder. Originally from Cork, living in a cottage 10 minutes away with a lovely shaded garden, two sheepdogs, a rabbit and a husband with very green fingers, Aoife looks after Dainoris and Milda four days a week. They finish school an hour earlier than Livia, meaning I would have to hang around in town or do a lot of driving in the middle of the afternoon.

Athlone Castle

I go to pick Livia up, and she has a quiet time each afternoon before we all jump in the car and go to get her siblings at just before 6pm. Aoife has a quiet, calming demeanour and is a really good communicator. There are several other children who come to her each day, and she has so many things to play with, that Livia has declared Aoife’s house is her favourite place.

At the back of Aoife’s cottage, there is a terrific glass-festooned extension made of SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) with a lot of light and nature right outside. It’s like having the garden as your wallpaper. I will be copying this once we get the main house in order.

Over the last few weeks, we have been gathering materials and booking builders, ready to get reconstruction started in the house over the coming weeks. The first thing we have accomplished is the hearth. It had a ridiculously heavy Stanley Range sitting in front of some hideous tiles that had covered a concrete mess over the original fireplace. I took full responsibility for the decision to unblock the whole thing and let the house breathe again.

Although I was aware anything was possible, what I didn’t expect was that it would be such a mess. I smashed the tiles off, and tried to clear the fireplace, but it wasn’t budging with the tools I had. So I called the chimney sweep. He arrived the next morning with the idea he’d be home by lunchtime. Nope. The entire chimney stack was filled in with all types of rock, creosote and soot. It took him two full days to empty the whole thing.

We removed a 120kg Stanley Range

All this fell out of the chimney - several barrowsful had already been taken out

Despite all the work, it was worth it, because we now have an extra metre and a half, plus a rather splendid stone fireplace. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone would think filling in a chimney in that way and bricking up a lovely noble-looking fireplace was a good idea. Not only is the brickwork of the hearth beautifully curved, it’s also got some delightful lettering on some of the stones. A lick of fireproof black gloss paint has given it new life, and we also placed four square flagstones in front, ready for the new stove to sit on. The item we bought is a 120-kilo leviathan with a glass-fronted door, an oven and a cooking top in case we have a post-storm power cut similar to the one last winter that lasted in some areas for three weeks.

After that is fitted, we hope by the end of November to be able to get a bathroom and utility room installed in the back of the house. Soon after, the plan is to cover the ceilings in the main house with a decent layer of insulation, and then we will save furiously for a kitchen to go in a beautifully bright room next to the bathroom, where the water supply is. I would also like to break the window down and add a double door to the kitchen, so that it becomes the main point of entry from what will be the garden.

I hope that part will be ready by the spring. While all this is going on, in our spare time, we hope to get the bedrooms ready so that we can move into the house proper. After two and a half years with our possessions in storage, we are becoming a little weary of not being in full control of our own lives right now. But hopefully, by the late spring, we can send for them and repopulate the house with all the familiar possessions we know and love: the artworks we hold dear, the books we read and then placed in the library we built back in Saarburg, the toys and scooters, the remainder of the clothes, the heirlooms, the cutlery, the porcelain, the familiar furniture, the trinkets, the pots and pans, and all the other household stuff we haven’t been able to use since June 2023.

The two things I will never get back are my lovely garden and my beautiful covered terrace. I have a lot more land now, and I intend to turn it into a haven for wildlife, just like I did in Saarburg, but this will take time. In the meantime, I have plans for a new covered terrace but this will need special materials to survive the Atlantic storms.

Drumcard, Co. Fermanagh

Lough Macnean, Fermanagh

The one thing I have managed to recoup is the car. When we arrived in Dublin on 30 June, the car hire company had reserved a modest medium-sized SUV for us. When the employee saw the luggage we had (3 huge suitcases and 9 sports bags), he uttered the most obvious statement: “that ain’t gonna fit in the car I reserved for you.” So he upgraded us for free to a huge VW Tayron. It was an absolute monster, but it took all our stuff. We kept it for about 4 weeks, and asked if we could keep it for another few weeks while we sorted out a car.

Not having a credit history in Ireland meant it was going to be rather difficult to get a new one. In Cavan, the car hire has an outlet, and having taken the VW back in August, swapping it for a Skoda Kamiq, we decided we needed to buy a car outright: it was costing us over a thousand a month to hire, as Ireland doesn’t have many long-term leasing companies. But just across the road from that outlet is a Toyota showroom. If anyone was going to sort us out, it was the good people at Toyota. Near the end of September, I drove into the forecourt and went in to see what they could do for us. I was greeted by a kind man who happened to be head of sales there, and after telling him the back story, he said a most significant thing, and every other search we had for cars went out the window – “next week, someone is bringing in a Toyota Prius from 2016.” My lovely German Prius Plus was also from 2016 and was the single dearest possession of mine. This was an ordinary Prius and it wasn’t black but blue. I didn’t care: it had driven almost 350,000 kilometres and hadn’t been taken in a single time for repairs. The previous and only owner was a doctor, and he had looked after it with great care.

A couple of weeks later, the car was brought in to the man at Toyota Cavan, and I went there to take possession of it. I paid in cash a lot less than the vast majority of other similar models on Ireland’s online market website, DoneDeal. That website is astonishing: you can pick up a cheap wardrobe, a ton of peat, some sandstone blocks that used to be a wall, a 1920s lamp, or a cocker spaniel from a reputed breeder. You can find everything except someone to sleep with you, basically. And here I was, circumventing it and buying directly from the horse’s mouth, so to say.

The man at the showroom came clean to me: he wasn’t after making money from this deal; he wanted me to return to him in a year or two to buy a new car off him. He was investing in the future, and he was absolutely right. I will be going there to buy any new car, as the service I have received from Toyota everywhere has been faultless. Funnily enough, I used to work for Toyota Motor Europe in Brussels back in the early 2000s, and the man in charge of the department was an Irishman. What’s more, this gentleman sitting opposite me in his office knew the guy. Small world.

I took the car with me; I felt like I was going on a date with it. I had to pick up a parcel in Northern Ireland, so I drove this beauty across the heathlands, hills and lakes of Cavan and the Cuilcagh Range feeling like Jeremy Clarkson on one of his reviews with the customary spectacular backdrop. This car has even more features than my previous Prius, and even some gadgets from before their time. One of my favourite things about the Prius is the gentle acceleration and braking system. My main criticism of the VW and the Skoda was the sensitive brakes – one little press and you risked smashing your shopping into the back of the passenger seats. Not so the Prius – it is the smoothest ride of any car I’ve ever driven. Oh, and it has the turning circle of a particularly agile cat. I seem to have gone full Clarkson, so let’s move on.

We see more than one rainbow per week

One of my biggest discoveries has been the abundance of facilities for the self-employed worker. There are what are known as digital hubs all over Ireland, even in the smallest of locations, giving freelancers and startups a really generous leg-up. The one in our local town even has a studio and recording facilities. I will be going in there to record a series of podcasts for my upcoming online documentary on the history of the English language. In Luxembourg, to use the studio in the coworking space was prohibitively expensive. In Valencia, I found the designated podcast room had very thin walls, was next to a frequently-occupied toilet, and you had to bring your own equipment. Here, there’s everything from a green screen to a top-of-the-range TV with built-in camera that follows you as you move. And it’s accessible to everyone for a small fee, as all of these things should be.

What has changed concerning the food? One thing I really enjoyed in Valencia was going to the covered mercados. Every town has one, and they are usually rammed full of produce from cured hams to fresh-the-day-before fruit and vegetables, from 18-month-old cheeses to fish straight off the boat that morning.

Beef Rendang, My Kitchen by Sham Hanifa, Carrick-On-Shannon

So it came as a lovely surprise to discover that Carrick-On-Shannon has a covered farmers’ market every Thursday. What’s more, there are even more varieties of cheese than in Spain, and a wider range of vegetables too. There is also an excellent bread and Danish pastry stall run by a French woman who really knows how to please. The woman on the cheese stall is from Germany and lived about 20 minutes from our old house in Saarburg. It’s a small world, after all.

In our local town there is an excellent butcher’s shop selling some of the best meats around. In Valencia, one of the unfortunate criticisms I had was that the meat in most supermarkets and butcher’s shops was not particularly inspiring. There were periods of the year where we would be eating a lot of repetitive dishes. In Ireland, I find myself in the enviable position of having my imagination fired up day after day. In Spain, I used to cook only at weekends as the children ate at school, and we were in our office so we ate at the cheap local restaurants during the week. In Ireland, I cook 6 days a week – and we rarely have the same thing in a two-week period.

Chapter Food 6 Living, Cavan Town:

There are also a great number of cafés and restaurants in Leitrim with very attractive menus, and their sweet treats reflect one of the things I missed the most about these isles when I departed at the beginning of the 21st century: sticky toffee pudding, apple crumble, bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, Bakewell pudding, cinnamon buns, Eton mess, strawberry flan, creamy cheesecake, chocolate fudge cake or brownie, jam tart, trifle, carrot cake, scones with clotted cream and jam, Victoria sponge, banoffee pie, treacle tart, and lemon drizzle cake. These are just the ones I could remember: the list goes on and on, and I have yet to find anywhere that beats these isles for their sweet fare.

Creegan's Pub, Cloone, Leitrim

To give you some idea of the ease of social integration in Ireland, let me tell you a little story: according to a recent study by the European Commission, Ireland was ranked the loneliest country in Europe. But here’s the important part: most people are ready to strike up a conversation with you. It’s not weird to talk to strangers. However, it’s not easy to make friends in Ireland, but this has been the case everywhere I have lived. What I noticed is that in countries considered cold, like Germany, the UK and Ireland, people are likely to give it time but you’re not frozen out. And once you’re in, it’s locked.

I would say, though, the UK is easier to make friends but Germans are the sincerest friends you can find. All three countries, though, are far easier than Belgium, Spain, Italy or southern France. But it is easy to see why Ireland is a lonely country – you need a car to get anywhere, and there are a great number of houses located in places where there are no street lamps or even asphalt on the roads.

But once you get to the urban areas, even small villages, there is an abundance of life. The local town to us, population under 1000, is bustling all day. Even in the evenings there is a sense there’s something going on.

Then there’s Carrick-On-Shannon, population under 5,000, and about 2,500 people smaller than Saarburg where we lived for 15 years. And yet, there is more going on in Carrick on a Tuesday afternoon in October than there was back in Saarburg. Irish people have done their level best to maintain life in their town centres, although they are under great pressure at the moment due to the proliferation of retail centres.

The River Shannon at Athlone

Looking down onto Sean's Bar (left of the square), the oldest pub in Ireland dated from 900 AD

And these places aren’t by any means stereotypical backwaters. Carrick does have a huge supermarket at the edge of town where you can pick up a jar of harissa, find a few slices of San Daniele and a host of Asian spicy sauces, but the town centre has a number of attractive restaurants, niche cafés, and cosy pubs serving food. You want pierogi? No problem, there’s a Polish supermarket on the riverside. You fancy a beef rendang? Head to Sham Hanifa’s My Kitchen just over the river. Feel like a few petits fours with your flat white coffee? Try Cake Me Away next to the former post office.

There’s a lot in this tiny market town – top-range Italian, cheap and nasty Italian, Tandoori, proper burgers, full Irish breakfasts, Sunday roasts, steaks and barbecued ribs, bao buns, bibimbap, and for those who like their food tasteless, there’s even one of those fast food joints with the two golden arches, although I’ve never seen anyone going in or out of them. Incidentally, Carrick-On-Shannon was awarded the accolade of Ireland’s Tidiest Town for 2025. When you see the picture-postcard centre and immaculate streets, perfectly planted flower beds and freshly mown public parks, it’s not hard to see why.

Then, out in the hinterland you can find some very special locations, such as Jinny’s Tea Rooms in Drumshanbo; Leitrim village (population about 500-600) with its four well-appointed restaurants and hotels; Ballinamore’s Main Street with its row of pubs selling top-quality local food; The Cottage restaurant in Drumsna, owned by the TV cook Sham Hanifa; the three popular restaurant-pubs in Dromod, and the list goes on. Go in any direction for up to an hour: to Mullingar, Sligo, Enniskillen, Athlone, Cavan, even Longford, and you won’t have any difficulty finding some place with appetising food, busy shops, pub concerts and the like.

Dressing up for the school Halloween party

One of my main complaints in Spain was that each time I went to an event, such as the Fallas in Valencia, I wasn’t really made to feel too comfortable. The Fallas is a very good example of how difficult it is to socially integrate in Spain – they are clubs that have lots and lots of events, and their own premises. They have the power to close the roads outside their HQs for events, causing mayhem for through-drivers, bus routes and even pedestrians. It is almost an admission of their superiority in Valencian local life that a lot of politicians can’t get on the ballot unless they have been a fallero or fallera.

In Ireland, there is the GAA: the Gaelic Athletics Association. It is a ubiquitous organisation, considering every parish in the country has one. But the difference is, they organise events for everyone, regardless of their affiliation. For example, there is a Halloween walk organised by Cloone GAA at Bóthar na Naomh. You pay a fee online, you show up at the allotted time to Cloone Community Centre, and a bus takes you to the starting point. I mentioned Bóthar na Naomh before: it’s a wooded area with bridle paths and walking trails, fishing posts, bird watchers’ lookouts, all surrounded by rolling hills, a lake and meadows. But at night it is a formidable place.

It was actually an extremely well-organised and entertaining time fit for a blustery October night the day the clocks went back – we arrived far too early and decided to hole ourselves up in Creegan’s Pub across the road. It was a cosy little place with a bar that ran right round the corners into the four parts of the building. As we were really far too early, I decided to ask in the Community Centre if there was anything we could do and the organiser said we could get the next bus in ten minutes.

So I ran back to the pub, we hurriedly finished our drinks and crossed the street to get the bus. It took us to one of the entrances and we had to follow a path through the woods. One of the shopkeepers in town had said it was properly scary and her kids had had a massive fright, but I didn’t believe her. However, when we left the bus, we could barely see anything, and the children didn’t stop screaming all the way round. It went on for a good 800 metres through the woods.

There were firepits everywhere making the place extra smoky, demons, ghouls and banshees stalking us, there were witches chasing us, zombies harassing us, vampire bats in a tunnel we had to walk through with a lot of people dressed in quite elaborate costumes clattering bells or cackling fiendishly, a corpse sitting up and screaming then pinching my behind as I walked on (I wonder how many bums got squeezed that night… great work if you can get it!). They had turned a car on its side and put people inside who opened the doors upwards and wailed, one of them was up a tree desperately yelling for help, there was a being with a chainsaw, and there were flashing lights and eerie sounds every step of the way. There were empty stretches where you felt something was going to happen at any moment, and there was even a man who appeared on a horse wearing a long cape, threatening to take us to the underworld.

All-in-all, it was worth its 10 euro fee. Considering there were buses taking 14 people to the drop-off point every few minutes, I am sure they raised a lot of money for their charity. And that’s the thing – nobody earned a penny that night. Except for our local butcher who had parked his burger van outside the hall. When we walked back to the village along the street, thinking the experience was behind us, there was a goblin that gave us an almighty fright springing out of the window of one of the houses on the street.

We bought some burgers and chips from the butcher’s van and took them to Creegan’s pub to devour. Milda was a little bit exasperated by it all, Livia was relieved, and Dainoris was already planning next year’s event. I put a euro on the pool table and waited our turn. Suddenly, the wall went up and the pub doubled in size. By the time we had finished our game, the place was heaving like a Ryanair departure lounge ten minutes before boarding. There was going to be live music later that evening and everyone wanted a good seat. We shall return there, that’s for sure.

So what I can confirm is that Ireland may be the gloomiest part of Europe, which is already a comparatively gloomy continent, but it is a really enjoyable place. It’s a land that has found peace with itself and has found its calling. People go to the Mediterranean for sun, but they go to the Isles of the North-East Atlantic to gain new experiences, have fun, and enjoy all what they have to offer. On balance, there are some things I regret leaving behind in Spain, but on the whole, our lives are so much richer and happier now.

SUPPLEMENTARY PHOTOS:

Dainoris and Milda go for a walk with Aoife along the lane to the farm

We are frequently visited by the neighbours' chickens

Livia, in Aoife's kitchen

Dainoris and Milda enjoy the outdoors, whatever the weather

Dainoris is fascinated by animals

Red sky in the morning, rising above the neighbours' house

A rainbow at Carrick station

Morning sunlight

Evening sunset

Long shadows

The Barge, Leitrim village

Down The Rocky Road – So That Was Summer

Aughris Beach

Mid-August. The sun was making a very good impression on us all, having been out for most of the month so far. According to several people we know, this has been the best summer weather for decades. We took the road out west to the beaches of County Sligo to make the most of the fading summer warmth. Around here, autumn doesn’t just creep up on you during September. Oh no no no. It comes up behind you and says “boo!” and before you’re ready to put away the shorts, you’re taking the thicker coat off the hanger and ironing a few long-sleeve shirts.

The kids were doing their best to sound intelligent by asking a lot of preposterous questions: “Do dinosaurs brush their teeth?” “Do unicorns eat breakfast?” “Do boats fly?” “Where does spaghetti come from?” I answered as well as I could: “Dinosaurs use children to climb in their mouths and pick pieces of rotting flesh out of the gaps in their teeth.” “Unicorns don’t eat breakfast. They have brunch because they’re American and they prefer to prepare a huge and wasteful meal later in the morning, then leave half of it.” “Have you ever seen a flying boat? Nope, neither have I. Oh look up there above that mountain, it’s a boat! You missed it, it sank inside that cloud. I hope the crew managed to fly to safety.” “Spaghetti comes from Swiss spaghetti farms where they grow on trees. Take a look at this BBC documentary on it.” For developing critical thinking, I believe I’ve taken an extreme route, but it is actually working. Nonetheless, it keeps us amused and allows me to flex my imagination every so often.

Anyhow, we headed out west for a final fling on the beach before the whole summer curtain came crashing down a few days later. I was going to return to the same location we had visited the previous week but I changed my mind as I discovered a lovely place called Dunmoran Beach, a little further this time, and not too far from what seemed like a decent seaside rural pub. The beach experience was fairly short-lived as the skies kept threatening to cloud over and ruin summer. The children seemed content enough to play in the sand, albeit with some extra clothing, but Livia braved the waves and ventured quite far into the sea. This meant I also had to go in: I would need to make sure she didn’t hazard a trip into waters where she couldn’t touch the floor. She is sensible in her own way, but the current can play some awful tricks.

Once she had had enough and the clouds were gathering, she went to wrap up and play on the sand instead, so I took myself for a walk along the beach. The sun, obscured and weak, was in a losing battle against the rampant forces of gloomy weather, but we were determined to enjoy our day at the coast. We packed up our stuff and made a move to the pub, called simply Beach Bar, in a hamlet known as Aughris. It was heaving with people, as well as cars, camper vans, motorhomes, cyclists, and coastal hikers. It was like one of those novels where you passed through a veil into another dimension. Most people were there to soak up the sun, which had mysteriously won its war against the clouds, albeit too late for us to have enjoyed it. I drove around the precariously narrow roadways and parked in a gap close to the pub.

Beach Bar

They had space for us near a window, and we sat down to wait for the menu. And what a beauty it was. Proper beef in Guinness pie, Irish stew, and other culinary masterpieces stood out on the page. Bonny Bee and I had those two, and the children had some crowd-pleasing shiny beige fare. But then came the desserts – I took a warm dark chocolate brownie, which was a most arduous decision because of the constant pressure from the hot sticky toffee pudding and the apple pie and custard. But I did not regret my decision for one second, as it was one of those desserts, that when you put a piece in your mouth, you can hear the nearby playing of cherubim and seraphim on their harps and the voices of ten thousand angels in twelve-tone harmony.

Choco-gasm

At the end of the meal, it was still only half past three. We went for a walk along the beach path to digest all the food. We had reached no more than about fifty metres when we came to a shallow stream discharging its clear water over some light-coloured rocks across the beach, and into the sea. Of course, the children wanted to stop at this point and play in the shallow waters. I was determined to get in some walking as after the substantial lunch, I felt like a wheelbarrow with a tyre-flattening load.

The sea front at Aughris is like a lot of Western Ireland’s coastline: just enough paved area not to disturb the landscape, and what’s there looks like it’s supposed to be there; it’s a good, honest compromise between human incursion and trying to keep nature unspoilt. The path led from the car park to a grassy campervan park, then having crossed a bridge over the stream, a boreen took us between a farm and the beach, before landing at some windswept farmhouses at the far end. It was quite lovely on this calm August day, but I am quite sure I would not want to be here in the winter when the Atlantic storms blow in.

Boreen by the beach

Seaside farm

We walked along the boreen for a while and greeted the cows in the paddock there before returning to the stream, sheltered by the surrounding buildings and campervans. The children played happily in that area for quite a long time.

Once everyone had run out of energy, I proposed we all head to the car and take a drive into Sligo, a place I knew nothing about, but was willing to get acquainted with. And it was a markedly surprising encounter: the sun was delightfully warm, and the city centre’s riverside bars were teeming with hedonistic and soon-to-be impoverished beer guzzlers, getting tanked on seven-euro pints and singing along to some famous Irish songs like The Fields of Athenry and Tell Me Ma. We could hear them on the other side of the river as we lingered near the main footbridge, a joyful and photogenic flower-festooned pedestrian crossing linking the two car-free halves of the city centre. This could have been Utrecht, Odense, Toruń or Lübeck, but it was north-western Ireland on a summer’s evening.

Sligo Riverside

Sligo road bridge in the background

We stopped at a café terrace right above the water and sat next to the bridge watching the people go by, some stopping for photos. The handsome road bridge, about 100 metres further up, has seven arches and is a very well-used background for selfies. After cake and coffee, we sauntered around the riverside square where there is a city logo in huge wooden lettering with seating and ladders for children to climb up. Sligo is a fun, young city with a lot going for it. I would recommend it on any road trip around the island.

Weekend revelry

On Sunday 17 August, we had our really last summer outing to Derrycassin Wood, sadly devastated in last winter’s Storm Darragh and Storm Eowyn, but still a haven of wildlife and a decent walk in the evening sun. The children have really taken to Ireland, and they have gladly accepted that there’s no going back. I don’t think they want to, in any case: they too had their issues with Spain.

Derrycassin Wood

The following week, I was to give my final course to the EU before the contract was handed over to an organisation with no loyalty to the long-term team members. They would be bringing in their own personnel, and we were too expensive for them. It was a two-week course for interpreters at the Commission. One very interesting feature of Ireland is how well connected it is: all over Ireland there are digital hubs or coworking spaces where you can book a desk or an office. I gave my course from the one in Mohill, and it was a good bookend to my time as a provider of language consultancy to the EU. I may be back, but for the moment, the rates the newly-installed provider proposed to me were not enough to warrant my continued participation. This type of company I call a WAMPIR: Wants A Master, Pays Intern Rates. If after nearly 25 years in the trade I am to earn less than when I started, that is a no-no. I replied with a very explanatory and far-too-courteous email why I felt insulted by their offer.

On the Wednesday of the second week of the course, the children’s school term was due to begin, making my days rather eventful. Nonetheless, the process pales into insignificance when compared to the average routine in Germany/Luxembourg a mere 30 months earlier. That was the purest definition of strain: the day would start a little before 6, which was its most harrowing in midwinter. We would get ready in the bathroom, eat breakfast, then jump in the car a little after half-past seven in order to go to another country to learn and work. The journey to Luxembourg took a little under 40 minutes when the traffic was clear, but could take well over an hour at peak times, especially if there was an accident. Their school started at 8.30, and was nearer Belgium than Germany, so I had to go round the ring of Luxembourg City and enter on the western side of town. I created several playlists on Spotify in order to pass the time in the car.

Now, though, we are getting up after 8am, as it takes a maximum of two songs to reach the school and the days pass so much more slowly than before. That means we can all get so much more done if we really want to. Bonny Bee can spend a lot more time translating, and I can get on with my writing as well as driving the children around, grocery shopping, cooking, gardening, preparing the house, going for walks, photographing the landscape, feeding my muesli to next-door’s lovely chickens, staring at sheep, and other essential activities. In a way, I am now a full-time author with a lot of side-duties.

School uniforms

On Saturday 23 August, we wanted to go to a museum commemorating the Battle of the Boyne in County Meath, a good hour and a half away. The drive there was, as usual, very scenic – this still hasn’t got boring. However, when we arrived there, the place was experiencing a water outage and they were closing up. This was especially tragic for them, as they had been advertising a battle reenactment on the magnificent grounds of the stately home where this was to take place. We decided to get back in the car and go to Dublin, a mere 45-minute drive away.

There were two things I wanted to do there: first and foremost, I wanted to view an art exhibition in Dublin Castle. The family of a friend of mine, someone dear and significant to me, had lent some works of art made by a Polish artist to the castle from their private collection and I wanted to learn more about it. Second, I wanted to see more of Dublin City, as each time we had gone there, we didn’t have enough time to enjoy anything.

Dublin Castle courtyard

Staircase at the entry

Dublin Castle is dripping with history. It’s a place with a dark past: the seat of oppressive rule for seven centuries, it has nowadays become the location of state visits, EU summits, and presidential inaugurations. The exhibition was in one section behind the presidential gallery in a couple of spacious rooms, but we couldn’t stay for any decent amount of time because the children flitted from room to room not really paying much attention to their surroundings.

A reception room in the castle

The city of Dublin itself is a mix of fun and business. Architecturally, it’s never going to rival cities in the same category like Prague, Kraków, Turin or Barcelona, and it doesn’t really have a famous building or landmark that represents it on the world stage, such as the Atomium in Brussels or the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. But it more than makes up for all that by being a playful and welcoming city, and the epicentre of joy. It flaunts shabby, swaggers in scruffy, and wallows in jumbled architecture where ornate terraced houses with colourful doors, stone steps and wrought iron railings are juxtaposed with former factories that have been converted into shopping centres, hostels, offices, more offices, fitness centres, car parks, offices. theatres and massive pubs with perpetual live music and endless sport on the TVs. Oh, and did I mention offices? If Dublin were a person, it would be a functioning alcoholic with a fabulous salary and a battered old Ford Focus parked in the street.

Dublin

I put our car in a crammed multi-storey car park near St Stephen’s Green and walked from the damp and soulless storage cupboard for vehicles into a many-layered atrium of light, glass, metal and marble that is St Stephen’s Shopping Centre. Taking the glass lift downwards, we were briefly reminded of Valencia and its Aqua retail centre but the atmosphere was cosier and less volatile.

The streets of Dublin were teeming with shoppers, daytime revellers over from the UK or the continent, and in some places traffic roared very close by, loud and menacing. The Dubliners have made the most of their city and its potential. It is chock full of monuments to its past, but the difference is this: whereas London has statues to its leaders both military and aristocratic, Dublin has two types. There are still a few monuments to its military connections, but they are more about revolutionaries than those of the time Dublin was the second city of the British Empire. There are such illustrious warriors as Bernardo O’Higgins, the Chilean freedom fighter with a Basque and Irish background; Theobald Wolfe Tone, a very important figure in Irish independence from the 18^th century, and Admiral William Brown, who served in the Argentine navy 200 years ago.

Molly Malone

But the vast majority of statues in Dublin are of prominent poets, musicians, philanthropists and fictional characters from Irish culture. Arthur Guinness, naturally, has a prominent place on the Green, but out on the streets and squares you can find Molly Malone, Constance Markiewicz, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce of course, Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy, and two of Luke Kelly. If you don’t know who Luke Kelly is, then you have definitely heard him at some point without knowing it, I promise. He was a larger-than-life member of The Dubliners, arguably the greatest folk band of all time. Luke Kelly had a striking face with a prominent set of teeth peeking out from behind his golden beard, topped with his abundant curly ginger hair.

But it was his voice that identified him the most: his raspy, smoke-addled spoken tones gave him an air of gravitas. When he gave orations, crowds hushed, put down their drinks and listened. Search for his rendition of For What Died The Sons Of Róisin? Likewise, when he sang, he had the audience in thralls. Listen to his versions of famous songs like Dirty Old Town, The Wild Rover, and The Old Triangle, and then try The Black Velvet Band, Hand Me Down My Bible, and Raglan Road. Every performance of his was dispatched with the kind of gusto that made it obvious he was having the time of his life entertaining the crowds.

He also had that rare gift of being able to make you both laugh and cry. Try not to shed a tear as you listen to Peggy Gordon, a most heart-rending Canadian love song, follow that with the sweet anthem of The Nightingale, where the crowd sings the chorus, and then put on his saucy live delivery of Monto, about a notorious red-light district of eastern Dublin. His uproarious interpretations of bawdy or satirical songs would frequently bring the house down, and he could deliver punchlines in song too, such as the hilarious anti-war numbers The Button Pusher or Protect And Survive, or the raucous Maids When You’re Young Never Wed An Old Man, which was made doubly funny by the fact he was far younger than the other band members Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna, who would be cringing comically behind him as he looked at them gleefully. It was his delivery of Phil Coulter’s Scorn Not His Simplicity, a song about the composer’s son who had Down Syndrome, that endeared him to the nation. The Night Visiting Song is the ballad that I think many will have heard before, and was one of the last songs he sang in November 1983, two months before he passed away.

One of the main roads by the River Liffey

River Liffey

He left us far too early – and a piece of Dublin went to the grave with him. A brain tumour, compounded by his busy touring schedule, hard partying, and love of the drink was a fatal and malevolent blend that caused him to have memory blackouts and episodes of fainting. Thousands attended his funeral in the north of the city, including politicians from all sides, a tribute to his raw talent, and confirmation of his importance in the hearts of many Irish people. Ronnie Drew, the leader of the Dubliners, said at his funeral that he was the best singer of the folk idiom in the world. That is why there are two statues dedicated to him in Dublin, and I will always regret that I never had the chance to listen to him live.

And this is the important point about Ireland: it is the epitome of what it means to be human. The nation’s priorities are clear – promote art and culture as an instrument of unity, stand up for the little guy, give a voice to those who have been silenced, encourage those in less fortunate situations, and let talent flourish. Luke Kelly is the personification of this philosophy: he left school early and had an extremely hard youth, but he had a very strong will, and could count plenty more achievements than most by the time he passed. One does not need diplomas if one has raw talent combined with the drive and passion needed to succeed: one needs exposure.

School life was about to start for the children in their new habitat – we were about to see whether we had made the right decision. If my description about Ireland is correct, I am sure they will be all right.

SUPPLEMENTARY PHOTOS: