Dingle Trip July 2008

It’s not often that we get a chance to escape the Australian winter and get back to a northern hemisphere summer, but July saw Orlando and me flying off to Europe to the wedding in France of our friends Ariane and Igor. To make the most of our time, Orlando headed back to his beloved hometown while I went to Ireland to catch up with family. The summer had been a changeable one so we were not expecting great weather. After a hectic weekend trying to keep up with my alcoholic brother and sister on the red wine front, Mum and I jumped into the car with Bernard’s children Ashling and Connor for a road trip to Dingle. I had not been to Dingle in about eleven years.

Strangely for this summer, as soon as I arrived in Dublin the weather changed and we had nothing but sunshine most days. This happens quite frequently: Mena went home a couple of years ago for Annette’s birthday in May, and ended up in a heat wave. And I have been pictured in these pages sunbathing on the Antrim coast in April.Late departing Dublin, we headed out the Limerick road, which is motorway as far as Portlaoise these days. When I worked in Cork twenty years ago the good road stopped in Newbridge and it was country roads the rest of the way. The original two-hour drive to Portlaoise was completed in just under an hour.

With my obsession with Irish ham at its zenith, the family had eaten half a pig the day before, and we had the leftovers with us for a picnic. Mountrath (Maighean Ratha – the fort in the bog) is almost exactly halfway to Limerick from Dublin, and we found a lovely picnic area beside the River Whitehorse and the imposing church of St. Fintan. We ate and drank; the kids played a game of football and checked out the playground while Mum and I rambled across a little footbridge to see the old church. They don’t make them like this anymore: high arches, imposing altar, plenty of God and gold on show. Peaceful, though.

Down through Munster we went, tripping past Limerick on the ring road like lightning, and stopping in Tralee for an ice cream. Blennerville’s windmill also warranted a stop: it is the biggest working windmill in the British Isles. During the Great Famine, the pier beside the Blennerville windmill was a major point of emigration for thousands of Kerry and Munster people. Thousands of people were carried on “coffin ships” to the east cost of the USA and Canada. Many did not survive the journey. Now, the coast of Tralee Bay boasts only beautiful views and seafood restaurants to serve the twenty-first tastes of sophisticated residents and tourists. Who’d have thought.

By late afternoon we were approaching Dingle via the Connor Pass – well, what other route do you take if Connor is in the car? This was the only patch of bad weather we encountered. The mists and clouds descended in true Kerry fashion, and we could hardly see the amazing view back west across Brandon Bay.

We scrambled on rocks above a small waterfall, saw a heart-shaped kettle lake and a couple of text-book corrie lakes almost hidden on the side of the valley. Through the thickening fog we saw some old ruins, of which later we were told the legend.

Apparently these had originally been the simple farm buildings of the O’Donnell Brothers, who had travelled south in 1601, like many Ulstermen, to join the Siege of Kinsale. They somehow decided to farm rather than fight, settled in the valley and led a quiet life. Until one of them killed the other with a shovel!

Our B&B was simple but welcoming. Tom (the archaeologist who told us the above story) was a little hesitant but a lovely man, always ready with local information or help with our Irish vocabulary. I insisted that we all spoke as much Irish as possible as soon as we passed the Gaeltacht sign, and we didn’t do too badly.

We had dinner in John Benny Moriarty’s, a famous bar on the harbour front. John Benny is a well-known local accordion player, and his wife a renowned singer. The bar food was simple but delicious, and the live music when it started was excellent.

We wandered down to the pier after dinner, taking photos at 10.30pm in broad daylight. Love it.

Next morning I had a date with the local scuba diving shop, so I was up and out by nine. Eric runs a friendly dive shop, helped by two English girls. I kitted myself out and chatted to the other divers. Padraig was a young local lad who had just qualified as a teacher, and was off bungee jumping the following week.

May (second from right) was a Cork woman about my own age, who had learned to dive with her three children the previous year, and they were all there for the dive: Matthew who was working as an intern in the shop, Caoimhe, a chatty young teenage girl, and Ruairi, the youngest at twelve. What a great thing to do as a family. Two of Eric’s friends from Belgium made up the boatload.

We hopped in the rubber dinghy and set off at alarming speed out of the harbour and into the bay. I was sat up the bow, hanging on for dear life like it was an episode of Miami Vice. It was sensational. We sped along the rugged coastline as if on a roller-coaster for what seems like ages until we stopped at a small headland called Parkmore Point. We broke up into smaller groups and backflipped into the water.Sadly, visibility was not great, but I had an enjoyable dive with Padraig and Sophie our dive master. No great marine life to speak of, but a good wall and lots of sea grasses. And after all my worry about the cold, I was a lot warmer in my double wetsuit than I had been in the dry suit in Melbourne!

The second dive was back in Dingle Harbour itself, an incredibly shallow dive but worth it nonetheless. We anchored up and the first person to backflip in simply stood up to talk to us – we were in about five feet of water. Then almost immediately, Fungie, the local dolphin, arched up out of the water not twenty feet away. We all squealed with delight, and those in the water tried snorkelling to catch a better glimpse.I don’t think I could have done a better dive in such shallow waters. The official name for the area was the Gravelly, but it was better known locally as Thornback Alley. I soon found out why. I must have seen over fifty thornback ray on that dive. They were simply everywhere – floating past one minute, rising suddenly out of the sand below you the next. They were all sizes, up to about a metre wingspan, with the long, thorny tail that gives them their name. Between that and the forest of seagrass we found ourselves in, it was one of the most fun dives I have ever done.Turns out that despite the overcast day, I got seriously sunburnt on my face! So much for Australian education on the dangers of the sun.

Back at shore I was so uplifted and excited by my dives. The rest of the family was at the harbour to welcome us home, and as soon as the paperwork and chores were done we headed off to explore the rest of the peninsula. By this time the sun was out and it was a really lovely day.
We meandered along, down to Ventry Harbour where a small caravan park seemed an idyllic place for summer holiday – as long as the weather was good!

Out further along the coast road, every turn in the road gave us another spectacular view. Slea Head, one of the most western points in Ireland, presented a panoramic view of the Blasket Islands, with a glimpse of the craggy Skelligs away on the horizon. Further along towards Dunquin, the dry stone walls and tiny houses spoke of earlier, poorer, simpler days. And still the sun shone.

A pilgrimage to Louis Mulcahy’s pottery shop was a must. Years ago as a young engineer I visited Louis with a colleague: his kilns used a lot of our gas. I was struck by his unique style even then, and bought myself a small vase. We wandered around the shop twenty years later, Mum and I trying in vain not to buy any jugs...

I gave in, buying a beautiful little white jug in Louis’ new Japanese-influenced style, and Mum bought me a lovely little bowl to match. I was happy. Later in town I bought a beautiful orange-red shawl from his weaver wife, Lisbeth.

Stopping off in Tig Áine, a quaint café near Ballyferriter on the Atlantic coast, we watched as the sea mists rolled in and just as quickly disappeared. It seemed the weather was going to last.
Back across the peninsula on the Bothar Fada, the rear-view mirror now offering spectacular Atlantic views, it was hard not to stop every few hundred yards to take another look. Truly, this country (and I know I am biased) is one of the most beautiful in the world, and even more so when the sun shines.





Dinner this evening was further along the harbour-side, in Paudie’s Bar. Again, the place was thronged with locals and visitors alike. Again, the food was fresh, simple and delicious. My mackerel was to die for. I ate slowly. Again, the live music when it started, was skilled, casual and entertaining. Makes you proud to be Irish.

Next morning the day was even more sunny and warm than before. We took another trip around the peninsula, anti-clockwise this time to pick up Ashling’s sweater she’d left in the café. If it were possible, the views were even more spectacular, the waters bluer, the countryside more rugged. We drove slowly, savouring our last hours in Kerry.

Back through Anascaul along the coast of Dingle Bay this time, we could not help but stop at the spectacular Inch Strand (what is the difference between a strand and a beach? The Irish would tend to use the former).

Three miles long, this beach was used for the filming of “Ryan’s Daughter” years ago. Now, in summer, it is a holiday place, with surfing lessons, cars on the beach, lifeguards perched ridiculously far from the water’s edge, kids in wetsuits, and a little café you can sit outside and watch it all happen.

Ashling and Connor had to go in for a swim. Mum and I ate lunch and watched them from afar. It was after three o’clock. It was a sunny 26C - a rarity in Ireland. It would take seven hours to get home. I needed to be up at four in the morning for my flight to Paris. Do I leave them in the water on the one tropical summer’s day of the year, or do I cut the day short and get us back on the road again? .... No contest. We sat back, relaxed and didn’t leave till after four.

Almost back in Limerick I was flagging. We had just spent half an hour trying to find Matrix Castle (Connor reckoned it was an interesting name) to no avail. I spied a sign for Adare, and turned into Adare Castle instead. At least we could see inside this castle. The gateman let us in and we parked outside one of the most spectacular buildings in Ireland.

Built in the 1830s, Adare Manor has 53 chimneys, 75 fireplaces, a minstrel’s gallery inspired by the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, 850 acres of garden, one 350-year-old cedar of Lebanon… and a championship golf course on the other side of the river.

We sat in the lounge overlooking the manicured gardens, drinking coffee while Ashling and Connor explored. The bar menu was pretty good value – actually not much more expensive than the little beach café we’d eaten at on Inch strand. We will definitely come back another day for high tea, which looks particularly appetising.

Stopping off in Portlaoise for a late dinner, it was almost midnight when we finally got back to Dublin. A pit stop for me: the children helped me unpack and re-pack for the trip to France next morning, before I fell into bed for the three hours sleep I hoped would revive me for a few more hectic days ahead.

Pat Ingoldsby

Pat Ingoldsby is an Irish phenomenon. Poet and playwright, people of my generation also knew him from his children’s TV programmes such as Pat’s Hat.

His poetry is wonderful: simple and honest, the poems vary from hilariously funny to painfully sad. He is one of my favourite poets, and my favourite of his books is called “Welcome to my Head: Please Remove your Boots”.Ten or so years ago, Pat withdrew from the Irish mass media. He set up his own publishing company, Willow Publications, and appointed his cats to positions of authority such as CEO and Head of Accounts. He sells his books through a small number of bookstores in Ireland, and also sells directly to the public on the streets of Dublin.

His books carry a note that they are protected by the "Bratislava Accord 1993, section 2 cre/009 manifest-minsk", the terms of which allegedly protect his book's content from being included in school textbooks, examinations, elocution classes or anything with the word "Arts" in it.

My mother and I came across him on the corner of O’Connell Bridge in Dublin, when I was over there in October. He was sitting on an upturned milk-crate with his books laid out in front of him. In his trademark Drizabone coat and wide-brimmed hat, he looked comfortable watching the world hurry by. I was star-struck: “That’s Pat Ingoldsby!” I whispered to my mum over the traffic noises. I tried not to stare too much as we walked past to cross the bridge. Then I came to my senses, and retraced my steps.

Shyly I stood before him, pretending to look at the titles of his books. He caught my eye and I asked if he had a copy of “Welcome to my Head”. We got talking and I told him I was a huge fan. He was such a lovely, gentle man, speaking about his books as if they were his children. I introduced myself to him and he said “God, I’m delighted to meet you Máiréad”.

He was charming to my mum. When I told him she was about to celebrate her 80th birthday, he gallantly told her she only looked 64 (later she complained he was three years out as the lowest number she’d been quoted so far was 60).

I bought one of his books and he signed it for me. Mum took a photo of us standing there on Westmoreland Street, and I shook his hand and said goodbye.

If this had happened to me after 25 October, it would certainly have been included in my 40 Amazing Things To Do This Year. But it was about ten days too early. I will have to include it in the Twenty Or So Amazing Things I Did Last Year.

Food & Drink I Miss

Food & drink I miss about Ireland

Decent sausages
Decent brown bread
Smoked cod from the chipper
Tayto and King crisps
Corned beef
Red lemonade
Liga!
Irish cheddar cheese
Decent apple tart (preferably made by my mother)
Decent fruit scones
Bernard’s meatballs and spaghetti


Food & drink I miss about England

Egg mayonnaise ready-made from the supermarket
Kettle Chips sea salt and back pepper
Walkers roast chicken or prawn cocktail crisps
Diet ginger beer
Diet ANYTHING (it’s not that easy to find unless it’s Diet Coke)
Moet & Chandon champagne at UK prices
Diet tonic water for my gin!
Proper toasted bacon sandwich from a proper London caff
Decent hummus from the supermarket (with the number of Greeks here wouldn’t you think it would be everywhere?)
Spotted dick and custard
Clotted cream
Real Cornish pasties
Suzanne’s mushrooms on toast


Food & drink I miss about Europe

BANANAS (when we get them here we don’t have to worry about Fair Trade bananas – they are all Aussie-grown – but at $15 a kilo I don’t think so)
Kit Kats (haven’t had one here but Orlando says they are not the same chocolate as European ones)
Spanish manchego cheese (you can get it here but it is more expensive than bananas)
Spanish Vina Albali or Pata Negra red wine


Australian food & drink I Love!

Cherry Ripe chocolate bars
Fat-free semi-sundried tomatoes
Shark from the chip shop
Red Rock Deli lime & black pepper crisps
Fresh healthy food for lunch anywhere (I work in the equivalent of Blanchardstown or Watford and can get gluten-free fat-free dairy-free anything at my local caff)
Proper fruit toast (the one with more fruit than bread)
Lemon lime and bitters
Decaf coffee and soy milk EVERYWHERE!
All the Australian wine they keep for themselves and don’t export

Culture Shock Update

Language

The equivalent Aussie terminology for "like O'Connell Street/Piccadilly" is "as busy as Bourke Street Mall". Of course, as soon as Aly and Mena pointed this out to me, I remembered it.

Another great phrase I heard in a meeting today (I had to stop the meeting to ask the context!) was "get a guernsey". The bloke was talking about something being put onto an "urgent" list by a government department, and said we wouldn't know until later in the month whether it got a guernsey.

What the...?

Apparently, it comes from getting a place on the footy team, i.e. you are definitely on the team so they give you the guernsey (jersey/shirt) but you still don't know if you will get to play in the game.

Love it.


Car Maintenance

Another thing I have noticed is the water in the car for washing the windscreen. Back in Ireland or England you have to remember to top up the washer water fairly frequently, especially in winter. There is nothing worse than driving through winter rain in bad traffic with mud flying everywhere, and running out of water for the washer.

We have been here almost exactly nine months, and bought a car two weeks after we arrived. I have not topped up the washer water once. The car was serviced one time and maybe the man topped it up then, but one would expect the reservoir to empty a lot more than that. It just doesn't really rain a lot here, and when it does, it doesn't seem to turn into a mudbath.

I mean, I haven't washed the (white) car all winter and I reckon it will be a month or two before it really needs cleaning.


Internet

Broadband internet here is less than 10% the speed of Europe. It's almost quaint waiting for pages to load. That means for every minute it takes you in the UK or Ireland to download something, it takes almost two hours here. Perhaps not so quaint.
Think of me here trying to update these very pages...

Culture Shock

Most people here think that moving to Aus is not such a big change to living in the UK. But, as I explained to my friend Aly the other night, in some ways moving to Australia is more of a culture shock than visiting India or China. Just because The Bill and Neighbours are on TV, the food looks the same and everybody speaks English, many aspects of ordinary life are completely new or sometimes completely impenetrable to foreigners. Here are some examples of what I mean.

Food

Yes, the food is similar. We have fish’n’ chips, meat pies and pasties, takeaway pizza, sausages on the barbie. So far, nothing spectacularly different. But on top of that there are so many new things. Melbourne is a gastronome’s paradise: there is even a permanent newspaper segment called Epicure dedicated to all things gourmet.

There is an infinite number of places to have breakfast in Melbourne, even out in the suburbs. Whilst now and again we miss the honest fare of a good London-Greek caff or a full Irish breakfast (aah, how I miss Irish sausages and decent brown bread), even close to work I can sample divine French toast, fruit-laden raisin breads, omelettes, eggs benedict, home-made muesli, porridge with banana, and of course good coffee.

Melburnians take their coffee extremely seriously. Not for them a Starbucks at every corner: the local cafes and even train stations serve the very best espressos, macchiatos and café lattes. Starbucks is here, but tolerated rather than revered.

Good delis and markets are never far away. Footscray Market is our local, dominated by Vietnamese and Chinese food but boasting the very best fishmongers and butchers not to mention fresh fruit and vegetables. It is mentioned in Rick Stein’s “Food Heroes” book as an excellent source of fresh produce. Victoria, Prahran and South Melbourne Markets are just as good, with famous dim sims at one (larger versions of Chinese dumplings) and a great organic produce section at another.

Melbourne also has a burgeoning Slow Food culture too. The state of Victoria alone has five Slow Food convivia, and coming up soon is A Taste of Slow, two full weeks of quality food and wine, with a focus on seasonal, regional and traditional foods and boutique wineries.

Wine

We live surrounded by vineyards. It is heaven to live in a country where wine is a locally-produced item. Nowadays, even buying a South Australian wine seems pointless when there are so many Victorian wineries I haven’t tried yet. My personal favourite is Candlebark Hill up in the Grampians, in Hanging Rock country (about an hour’s drive from here). But the Yarra Valley and the Mornington Peninsula are no more than an hour’s drive from home, and we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of these regions or Geographic Indications, the Australian version of “appellations controllées”.

Grape varieties I have never heard of are enthusiasically embraced by boutique wineries. Petit Verdot, Arneis and are wines I could select by the glassthe other night in a small wine bar. Even grape clones are heralded as varieties in their own right: for example the MV6 pinot noir clone so beloved of the Hurley vineyard on the Mornington Peninsula. However I don’t think I will ever be able to bring myself to order a glass of “cab sav”, preferring to give cabernet sauvingnon its full title always, despite not being understood by many waiters.

All in all, food and wine here in Australia is so different in many aspects as to be a completely new experience. I cannot think of one way in which our lives have not been enriched by this aspect of Australian life.

Traffic

No matter what traffic jams we experience here, nothing is as bad as Dublin on a bad day or London on any day. Dreadful traffic here constitutes a ten minute delay. Anything worse is headline news on TV that night. Most of the time at weekends we don’t even bother switching on the car stereo as we are hardly in the car long enough on any journey to bother.

Australians do love their cars, though. I admitted the other day to not having washed our car for over four months: I was confronted with a wall of incomprehension by colleagues who religiously valet their cars every weekend, usually driving to the local car wash where they pay to have somebody else do it while they have a real coffee while they wait (see Food and Wine above).

Personalised number plates are ubiquitous. People of every age soup up their normal suburban hatchbacks and saloons: under-car purple neon lighting, blacked-out windows, huge decals, “sports” exhausts (meaning specially designed to be noisy) adorn the vehicles of forty-comething blokes who should know better. There is no age limit to burning people off at traffic lights or doing spectacular U-turns on dual carriageways. It is a nation of boy racers (and that’s only the shielas).

Language

The old adage about England and America being two countries divided by a common laguage could also be said about England and Australia. Yes, they speak English here, and mostly it is understandable, especially when you get used to the so-called “high-rise terminals” – the ubquitous interrogative tone that make every Australian sentence sound like a question?

People really do use G’day as a greeting, and the phrase “fair dinkum” is commonly used, even by politicians in speeches. But it takes a while to understand words such as sook ( a softy or sulk), rapt (delighted), bogan (somebody who is perceived as being an unfashionable "lower-class" person, typically of British Isles ancestry and living in deprived urban areas), and shonky (dubious, underhanded).

Once you have figured out that shortening any word and ending it with an “o” will make you sound like a local, you’ve made it:

Ambo paramedic
Arvo afternoon
Servo petrol station
Reffo refugee
Rego vehicle registration
Milko milkman

One also has to learn where Woop Woop or the Back of Bourke is (very far away), how to handle a stickybeak (tell them to mind their own business) and find the alternative local phrase to”It’s like Piccadilly/O’Connell Street” when trying to emphasise how busy somewhere is (still looking for that one). One of my favourite alternative local metaphors – the same as a few sandwiches short of a picnic – is “kangaroos loose in the top paddocks”.

On the other hand, if you use a phrase familiar in England or Ireland like “starter for ten” or “I amn’t” or “it was great crack” you are also likely to get mystified looks as if one was speaking a foreign language (which of course one is).

Clothes

It’s Melbourne. Seventy percent of all clothing is black. Get used to it.

Sick Leave

Being well used to EU regulations it never dawned on me that you would have to earn your sick leave. Over here you accumulate sick days at a rate of around one day per month worked. Down side is that many people use them like an extension of their annual leave.

TV and Celebrities

Celebrity TV shows and gossip magazines are totally lost on me. We have no idea who these people are. There are famous people doing TV and billboard ads for stuff like All Bran and Nurofen but we didn’t realise they were famous people – we thought they were just actors. There is a “Fifty Years of TV” exhibition on in the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Everybody is talking about it. It might be nostalgia to Australians, but it is impenetrable to us.

We don’t know who the famous people in Torvill & Dean’s Dancing on Ice are (is that a show in the UK too???). Celebrity Big Brother will no doubt also be lost on us. We have no idea who the ex-Big Brother housemates are (although a friend of the family is going out with one).

Popular Music

We have not found any radio station we can listen to on a regular basis as we recognise about 20% of the music (and that’s stuff we would switch off anyway). Spicks and Specks is the Aussie version of Never Mind the Buzzcocks: because we don’t recognise either the famous contestants or the songs they are being quizzed on.

We were in the city on New Year’s Eve and the big midnight fireworks display was accompanied by what sounded to us like random anonymous heavy rock music. We were baffled until somebody told us much later that it had actually been a medley of some of the most famous and best-loved Australian hit songs of recent years.

Wildlife

Everything in the country is trying to kill you. Crocodiles, jellyfish, man-eating sharks, baby-eating dingoes, not to mention the six species of stinging tree, five of the world’s seven most deadly snakes and the nine most poisonous spiders in the world.

Spiders come as big as you like. I have discovered that the three most frightening words in the English language are as follows:

Bird Eating Spider

A friend of ours once saw one. He mistook it for a crab. The female of the species can grow to about 60mm (2.5 inches), and that’s just the diameter of its body.

Funny enough, the smaller the spider, the more deadly it is. Mena tells me that Huntsman spiders (typically 2 inches in diameter) are not really scary as they are more like small furry creatures than spiders. Apparently, it is the tiny redback under the toilet seat I should be more worried about. Now, why did she think any of that would comfort me?

Family Birthdays 2

The Doyle birthday season continues, with Annette (the glamorous sister) celebrating her 50th birthday last week. I missed the party and a weekend of celebrations (that's what jobhunting will cost you) but I'm assured the last party-goer departed at 9am the following morning.






Annette is the person who introduced me to India eight years ago, and has strong links with the country herself. Here she is with little Aishwaria, the youngest addition to a family Annette has been friends with for more than 20 years. She visits the family every time she travels to India (which is twice a year) and she is like the eldest sister. She doesn't ever talk about the assistance she has given this family over the years, such as paying for a well to be dug to irrigate their farm, and contributing to the education fees of most of the family. Her latest idea is to help buy a tractor for the family's village - any ideas, anyone?



However Annette is not just a phianthropist and has been known to be a bit of a party animal too. Here she is after a long night partying in Essex (where else), having convinced the local police to give her and her mates a lift home when they locked the keys in the car. Charming.

One Year On

It is hard to believe that a whole year has gone by since he left. The trip had been a last-minute decision, and in the end we only saw each other for a few hours. Then I kissed him and told him I loved him, and walked out the door. It was the last time I saw him.

I had seen relationships end before, and had experienced heartbreak. This was no different: the chasm hurt like a physical wound. I sat and sobbed to my friends on the phone, bewildered by my abandonment. Despite the anguish it caused me, I continued to talk incessantly about him – even his presence in a conversation was better than nothing. The feeling of closeness I experienced when talking about him almost dulled the pain of losing him, if only for a few minutes.

One thing was different though. When my heart had been broken in the past, my feelings of rejection were difficult to separate from the hurt of the relationship ending. This time all I had to contend with was the knowledge that I would never see him again: I know he loved me. He told me enough times, and more than that, for almost 40 years he demonstrated it in everything he did. He was my father and he loved me. I was his daughter. Nobody could change that.

One year on, on the other side of the planet, I sit with a glass of red wine by the fire, candles glowing in the silence of the evening. This day last year, this very minute, I sat by his bed and watched him drift in and out of sleep. Now he is gone. The treasure of those last hours fills my memories, and the reliving of that night makes me feel close to him still. It is worth the pain I feel to recall the look on his face when he woke in his hospital bed to see me arriving with my little suitcase on wheels, a smile of joy for me despite his suffering. “Ah, Maiready!” He was the only one who ever called me that.

I remember that I went back one last time to kiss him goodnight again, to tell him I loved him again. I didn’t know then that it would be the last time, but it gives me comfort to think back on that impulse now. Nothing was left unsaid.

Today is no different than any other day really. He cannot be more in my thoughts than he has been every day in the past year. I could not miss him more than I have missed him since that day. But still I sit and relive the events of a year ago. It is my way of honouring him I suppose: no church visits for me, no grave to stand beside. For a short time, my sorrow will again be eclipsed by my bittersweet memory of the last time I saw his face. He was my father. I am his daughter and I love him.

Life and Death

My wonderful father, Ben Doyle, died on 7 May 2005. He had been treated for cancer in the last six months, but towards the end his heart gave out and he passed away quickly.

I was so lucky to see him the evening before he died, as I had come over for the weekend to celebrate my nephew Connor’s birthday. So I got to kiss him goodnight only hours before he passed away.Nothing prepares you for hearing the words that somebody close to you has died, but I was amazed to discover how many reserves of courage we all have inside us.

My mother was a superstar. She bore the loss of her husband of 51 years with grace and dignity, and gave me even more to feel proud of. Friends and the wider family came out of nowhere to support us, feed us, comfort us while we cried and share with us when we laughed (and we did, even in the midst of the sorrow).

Over 250 people came to pay tribute to Daddy on the two days of the funeral. As we sat in the front pew of the church on the Tuesday night a seemingly never-ending line of people filed past us, each shaking every family member’s hand, or hugging us if we knew them well. Many didn’t know what to say. Some were crying themselves. But all looked us in the eye, touched our hands and told us in words or in gestures that they shared our sorrow.

Now I understand why it is important to pay your respects like that. In the past I never quite knew whether to approach a family where, for example, I only knew one person. But we had groups of people I had never met before, explaining who they were (colleagues of my brother, co-workers of my mum, people who played bowls with my dad) and every single person meant so much to each of us. The family drew a lot of strength from these people who came to mourn with us.

Similarly, others who could not be with us in person sent messages in many ways. Some called on the phone. Neighbours stopped us on the street. Sympathy cards and mass cards came by hand or by post by the dozen – we received over 150 cards from all over the world. We got emails and even text messages. Every one of the words we heard or read gave us strength and comfort.

Some people didn’t know what to say; we got a lot of standard lines like “I am sorry for your troubles” and “our thoughts and prayers are with you” and “my condolences” and simply “I don’t know what to say”. One neighbour, an old sparring partner of my dad’s, stopped me on the street to shake my hand and offer his sympathies but couldn’t say a word to me as he was crying silently as he stood there.

None of it mattered – all that mattered was that another human being was trying to connect with us, to say that they loved our dad, to say that they were sorry for our sadness, to sympathise and to let us know we are not alone. We remember every face in that crowd of people who came to the church. We pored over every word and every picture in the cards we received. I saved every email and even text message I got. It all mattered so very much to us.

If you are ever concerned about doing the right thing in a situation like this, the right thing to do is to make contact in some way and say you are thinking of the person who has been bereaved. Don’t worry if you don’t know what to say.

Don’t worry if you don’t think you can call - you could send a card or email or even a quick text message. It’s not impersonal at all – in fact it was good have the support coming through in lots of different ways.

For example, sometimes I couldn’t bear to talk either but a quick one-line text from an old mate or work colleague just asking “How are you doing?” or “I am thinking of you” at the strangest times of day gave me a little more strength to get through. Believe me when I say you will never say the wrong thing. All that will be remembered is that you cared enough to make contact.

I wouldn’t recommend this death business to anyone. Now, more than ever, I understand how it feels to have my heart broken. But death is a part of life and I was amazed to discover I had the strength and resilience to survive it.

If you get one message from my experiences, though, it is this: go now and tell the people closest to you that you love them. I am so very fortunate to know that my father heard those words from me before he died. Of course he know I loved him, but it is really comforting for me to know that I told him, many times over, while he was still with me. He was the most wonderful Dad in the world. I miss him.

Paul Curran marries Carmel Bennett

On Friday 16 July 2004, my dear friend Paul from UCD days married the beautiful Carmel Bennett in Sallynoggin Church. So what better excuse for a bit of a reunion? Joe Dalton and Elva came, and Michael Ward flew in especially from Idaho with wife Kris. Orlando and I made the trip too and it turned out to be a hell of a day.

The church ceremony was lovely, and Carmel looked radiant as she walked up the aisle to her fate. Paul looked so handsome in his formal outfit, and although he insisted that his calm exterior belied the turmoil within, he looked pretty happy to me!

The reception was at the Marriott at Druid's Glen in Newtownmountkennedy, starting with a champagne reception and a coin toss between Joe and Elva to see who was the designated driver.... they took a cab in the end! The menfolk did seem to find the Guinness even more palatable than the champagne too...

We tried taking a photo of the women's fabulous eyes - me with brown, Elva with deep blue, and Kris with iridescent green... but I'm afraid all you can see is our amazing beauty in this shot!

It was so great to catch up, and the bride and groom were not shy in rambling about during the reception, gossiping and generally getting to spend time with their guests. The speeches were perfect - sentimental, funny and not too long - and I have to say the food and wine were fantastic.

The night was a long one, especially for Michael and Kris who had flown in on a 20-hour marathon that morning and had yet to sleep. This did not stop Kris from becoming the queen of the dancefloor before spiralling finally into a deep sleep on Michael's shoulder at about 2am.

All in all, it was so good to get together for such a fantastic occasion. I will admit to a few happy tears toward the end of the evening, as I saw how happy Paul was. And now I can rest - all my "five boys" nicely married off to women with good prospects. I can do no more for them!

A Christening and a Reunion

One weekend in June I travelled down to my old home town Maidstone in Kent, for the christening of the third offspring of my old friends Denis and Lizzie. Denis and I were in University College Dublin together, along with the rest of the core group – Joe Dalton, Brian Costello, Paul Curran, Michael Ward, Conor Byrne, and Colin McDonnell, with Manu Pillai joining the gang halfway through.

Denis, Brian and I worked together in Maidstone for several years, and they both got nabbed by local women. Brian still lives there with his wife Alison and their kids Ryan and Kara (in a great big posh house I might add). Denis, on the other hand, convinced Lizzie to move back to the wilds of the Donegal Gaeltacht with him, where they live with their three children, Sam, Eilis and bay Róise.

So Roise was christened in Maidstone on the family’s way to France on holiday. A lovely ceremony was held in the church where Biran and Ali got married about 100 years ago. Brian (god help us all) was godfather to this poor unsuspecting child. Afterwards we all met up in a local church hall to eat food, drink wine and catch up.Turns out there is a rash of ceremonies happening this year.

Paul Curran gets married to the lovely Carmel in a couple of weeks in Wicklow (photos to follow I promise). And Colin McDonnell has been snared by a beautiful Galway woman, we hear, and the nuptials are occurring in October. Looks like 2004 is turning into a great year for a reunion and a few beers!

Like Father.....

Like Sons!!!! Personally I think it is scary how Brian and Denis (above) have passed on their genes to sons Ryan and Sam

I managed to herd the Costello clan to gether for one nice photo but failed to do so for the five wild Ferrys.

If you are reading this and are thinking of your old school or college mates, pick up the phone (or click on your mouse) and get in touch now. You’ll never guess what they’ve been up to…

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Not sure what my compatriots will be doing on Wednesday… well, that’s not strictly true. They will get up, go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in whatever Irish city they live in, have a few pints and enjoy the day off work.

We in London have to satisfy ourselves with a parade the Sunday before (missed it myself) and a full day’s work.

With the size of the Irish diaspora, it should be a national holiday in all the nations of the world!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Beannachtaí na Féile Phádraig oraibh go léir!!!

Barry Lategan

Walking back to my office from a meeting today, I stopped at my car to pick up my laptop. A middle-aged man was standing outside our car park with a camera in his hand, considering the wall of the parking lot with some interest. As I walked past, he smiled and said he was glad I had come out, as he needed a bit of elegance for his shot.

We got talking and he explained that he was a photographer, and that whilst travelling in Egypt recently had stumbled on the idea of advertising boards and other hoardings being the artistic backdrop of city life. The wall of our car park had been pasted with a light blue paper, which had been painted with graffiti images of people – an artistic effort rather than an act of vandalism, we assumed.

We waited a moment until a good-looking young girl walked past with some coffees in her hand, and the gentleman took his shot. He showed me the image in his digital camera, shielding the view screen for me with his scarf. The composite image of the girl striding past this unusual backdrop was indeed striking. This man was indeed a photographer and a good one at that.

He asked me if I was Irish (the accent is always a giveaway) and said that Seamus Heaney had just inspired him to notice place names, as he had been listening to him on a radio programme earlier talking about Irish place names. We chatted about this, and I said that Irish names mean nothing to others but to the Irish they are really significant and often beautifully descriptive.

The gentleman pointed out the name of the street we were standing on - Valentine Place - and how the name conjured up such a different image in one's mind to the one he had just captured.

As I made to leave, he tipped his hat to me in an old-fashioned but genuinely natural manner. He extended his had to shake mine as he introduced himself as Barry Lategan, a photographer who took the very first pictures of a young model called Twiggy. I walked back to my office thinking how amazing this part of London is with all its theatres and art houses so close by. Just by wandering about at lunchtime I have bumped into Sir Ian McKellan and now a famous London photographer.

Don’t you just love this city?

Walking in Oxfordshire

We had a day in the country on Saturday. Despite the cold, we wrapped up warm and headed off into deepest darkest Oxfordshire to See Some Nature. Orlando is a city man at the best of times, so he still looked somewhat urban in attire as we parked the car in Wallingford and wandered off to find the footpath along the Thames.

We walked for almost three hours beside one of the loveliest stretches of river, with lots of wild birds to watch, and the sprouting buds on the weeping willows promising springtime coming soon. We saw bullrushes and wild daffodils, watched Oxford University rowing teams doing their stuff in the water, got followed by a bunch of hungry-looking ducks and drakes, and got covered in mud for our sins. Fantastic.

As we drove up the motorway towards Banbury we were knocked out by an amazing sunset that literally painted the sky red as a huge sun dropped beneath the horizon.

A couple of visits to cosy country pubs completed our day, which was a welcome change from London City.

TV Shows

One of the great things about living in London is that you can get to see TV programmes getting made. What a great way to spend an evening, and the tickets are always free!A few weeks ago we went to see an episode of the satirical comedy Bremner, Bird and Fortune being made in Wembley near where we live. It was my first time at a TV show recording, and the main thing I remember is that THE STUDIO WAS FREEZING COLD!!! Really entertaining, though. We got to see sketches at their full unedited length, and Rory Bremner was pretty funny between takes too.

Last Thursday night Orlando and I had tickets to see the recording of Tonight with Jonathan Ross (which goes out on a Friday night on the BBC). This was being recorded in the venerable halls of BBC Shepherd’s Bush. Three other shows were being done at the same time, so we shared the waiting room with the audience of Parkinson, Watch with Monkey and some other show we had never heard of called I’d Do Anything. One of the audience for that last show was wearing his underpants over his trousers, so it was pretty clear what he would do…

Anyway, we got great seats right in the front row, directly opposite the host’s desk and the guests’ sofa. Or so we thought. Once things got going two huge cameras and a stills photographers completely blocked our view of most of what was going on… but we got tantalising glimpses of the first guests – John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten) and Liza Tarbuck.

Luckily when the big star guests appeared there were two of them, and the cameras changed position, giving us (well me) a perfect view of that stars of the new Starsky and Hutch movie, Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller! They were sitting no more than 20 feet from me! The weird thing was that most of the time Owen Wilson was staring directly at me. I understood that he was probably looking directly into the camera and tried not to get freaked out, but I have to say I spent most of the time feeling a little shy!

Funny thing was, when we saw the show on TV the following night it turned out that Owen Wilson was actually staring beyond the camera for the whole show. Which means ….. that he had actually been looking at me all the time!!! Oh my god, Owen Wilson was staring at me the whole time, probably thinking “I’m a big movie star and that woman with the furry coat on keeps looking at Ben Stiller all the time. What’s wrong with me???!!!”

Anyway, Owen, if you are online and reading this (hey, why wouldn’t he be?) I’m sorry. Even with that funny nose you are still quite cute, and I was a big fan of David Soul’s when I was a kid anyway, so I’m sorry if I gave you a complex on Thursday night.