Vacation in Ireland sends my son on a flight of fancy
For a day trip, we drive five minutes over the water from Ballyhack to Passage East in Waterford. The boy is bewitched by the car ferry and keeps asking to see the captain, much like a food critic asking to see the chef so he can get up and shake his hand. Spotting the gruff, smoking man in an orange jacket who might fit that description, I decide he might pierce his mythical respect for this fictional figure and tell him that the captain is too busy plotting our course with his lieutenants for us. speak now. When given the choice between fact and legend, like any Irishman who finds himself involuntarily working for the Irish Tourist Board, I decide I must print the legend.
Like so many emigrants, the tradition of home vacations began less as a new treat and more as a necessary trip to see grandparents. Now those trips have taken on another role, as a tether between my childhood and his, a light sprinkling of Irish for our little Londoner, and a chance to instill a certain Hibernian superiority in his English bosom. Luckily my son loves this place and prefers it to his more regular hangout spot in Dublin - which he took to calling Ireland City as if it were the Vatican or Luxembourg. Guidebooks sometimes refer to Wexford as the model county, deriving from its status as a model of progressive farming methods - the sort of hip slang you get from Irish government departments - but it could just as well be referring to its unwavering beauty , its beautiful beaches and manicured lawns.
So we take hedge-strewn walks along tidy country lanes; descend from the cliffs to nearly empty beaches to bathe in the waters adjacent to the seals; go hunting in rock pools, collecting seaweed and shells when your quest for a bigger and more active career inevitably fails; salute the Hook lighthouse and lie to each other about the whales that we see on the horizon; contemplate the stars that develop, Polaroid style, on a bare sky of light, piercing the field with black like salt sown on velvet; falling asleep in a total vacuum of noise that maintains, all night long, the sanity-preserving calm you only get in Walthamstow immediately after a car alarm goes off, making you think the steady hum of London background noise, for once, equates to silence.
None of these are mentioned when I ask, that night in bed, his favorite part of the trip so far. “The fairy captain, he said to me, of the fairy ship! », before telling everything about the mythical smuggler he saw, met, and whom he knows as well as any of his friends; presumably an elven king, winged and resplendent, stationed at a mighty steering wheel, charged with ferrying weary adventurers, in their Volvos and Audis, between distant and magical lands, such as Dunmore East and Ballyhack. I say nothing in correction. Even in memory, I infer, the caption must be printed.
Did you hear Mammy die? by Séamas O'Reilly is available now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Grab a copy from guardianbookshop for £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
For a day trip, we drive five minutes over the water from Ballyhack to Passage East in Waterford. The boy is bewitched by the car ferry and keeps asking to see the captain, much like a food critic asking to see the chef so he can get up and shake his hand. Spotting the gruff, smoking man in an orange jacket who might fit that description, I decide he might pierce his mythical respect for this fictional figure and tell him that the captain is too busy plotting our course with his lieutenants for us. speak now. When given the choice between fact and legend, like any Irishman who finds himself involuntarily working for the Irish Tourist Board, I decide I must print the legend.
Like so many emigrants, the tradition of home vacations began less as a new treat and more as a necessary trip to see grandparents. Now those trips have taken on another role, as a tether between my childhood and his, a light sprinkling of Irish for our little Londoner, and a chance to instill a certain Hibernian superiority in his English bosom. Luckily my son loves this place and prefers it to his more regular hangout spot in Dublin - which he took to calling Ireland City as if it were the Vatican or Luxembourg. Guidebooks sometimes refer to Wexford as the model county, deriving from its status as a model of progressive farming methods - the sort of hip slang you get from Irish government departments - but it could just as well be referring to its unwavering beauty , its beautiful beaches and manicured lawns.
So we take hedge-strewn walks along tidy country lanes; descend from the cliffs to nearly empty beaches to bathe in the waters adjacent to the seals; go hunting in rock pools, collecting seaweed and shells when your quest for a bigger and more active career inevitably fails; salute the Hook lighthouse and lie to each other about the whales that we see on the horizon; contemplate the stars that develop, Polaroid style, on a bare sky of light, piercing the field with black like salt sown on velvet; falling asleep in a total vacuum of noise that maintains, all night long, the sanity-preserving calm you only get in Walthamstow immediately after a car alarm goes off, making you think the steady hum of London background noise, for once, equates to silence.
None of these are mentioned when I ask, that night in bed, his favorite part of the trip so far. “The fairy captain, he said to me, of the fairy ship! », before telling everything about the mythical smuggler he saw, met, and whom he knows as well as any of his friends; presumably an elven king, winged and resplendent, stationed at a mighty steering wheel, charged with ferrying weary adventurers, in their Volvos and Audis, between distant and magical lands, such as Dunmore East and Ballyhack. I say nothing in correction. Even in memory, I infer, the caption must be printed.
Did you hear Mammy die? by Séamas O'Reilly is available now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Grab a copy from guardianbookshop for £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
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