A time for reflection in isolation
IN THE WAKE OF UNPREDICTABLE CIRCUMSTANCES TOM MCGRATH REFLECTS OVER MANY SUBJECTS
IT is the slow burn of eternity. Time’s candle conducts a symphony of infinite silence. Larghissimo. Day 41.
The Letter
They published his letter in the Irish Times, and he felt quite pleased with himself. It caused a bit of a national, and even global, reaction, multiplied through social media channels and travelling as far as Europe, Singapore, Australia and Bermuda. His 15 minutes of fame – for twelve words. “Just because you got a letter printed in the Irish Times it doesn’t make you a budding George Orwell or Ernest Hemmingway,” she said. But he knew she was also pleased. The Irish Times was no Penny Dreadful, and they had deemed his curt, humorous protest about pub closures, and accompanying appeal for the drinking classes, fit for publication. He reads it once more; “For God’s sake, open the pubs again before we all become alcoholics.”
Later, on their now upgraded 5km allotted walk the same subject was broached by a familiar voice. “I see you had a letter in the Irish Times. “Oh, yes, thank you. What did you think?” “I found it quite pithy.” Well, that’s not very respectful, I’m sorry to hear that, but don’t think your….” He put a brake on his indignation. Just in time he realised that it was the O’Brien twin without the lisp that he was engaging with! “Yes, indeed, of course, thanks again,” he replies, before continuing their walk. “That fella’s full of pith,” he says to herself, and giggles.
On their daily walks they are cheered by the ambient Wicklow community. Along with the swopped salutations there are the word-free waves; the mutual shoulder shrugs of resignation; the shaking of the head, struggling with comprehension; the eyes swiftly cast skywards. The semaphore of silent communication is a rich one.
The Deserted Village
‘These were thy charms –
But all these charms are fled. Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn: No busy steps the grass grown foot-way tread, For all the bloomy flush of life is fled.’
Oliver Goldsmith
He misses his Dublin visits and the transfusion of animation and curiosity into his sedentary veins. He wonders what it must look like now with its streets depopulated of traffic and pedestrians; its boarded retail outlets defying the most intrepid of window shoppers; its energy exhausted by the absence of buskers, beggars, tourists and 7th. Day Adventist preachers; its familiar sights, sounds and scents packed away in the long-term left luggage department; its very lifeblood emptied by the vampire virus. Still, he never thought he’d live to see the day when you could go fox hunting on Grafton Street.
Group solidarity
During this Purgatory of isolation they are heartened by the virtual contact and solidarity offered by friends from shared - interest groups. Their time living abroad, aligned with their combined interests of sport, literature and arts and crafts, allowed them form relationships with many kindred spirits. There are, of course, the football associates: the homegrown Wicklow footie brigade, and the more internationally blended ’Friends of Stuttgart 88;’ there are the Tokyo quilters and embroiderers who continue to proffer advice and support from the East; there are academic and media friends from shared Middle Eastern projects.
He still keeps in touch with friends from literary gatherings of the past. He remembers Wednesday nights of decades ago sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Irish ambassador’s residence in Luxembourg reciting Yeats, Heaney and Paul Durcan to European and Irish colleagues at the weekly poetry readings. The Irish passport then, to European colleagues, was a catch-all synonym for drink, song, literature and language. He smiles as he remembers the German Freund who applauded that the Irish love of drink was so intense that they put the Guinness symbol on the passport.
Keeping the Irish language on international life support through the exchange of the ‘cupla focal’ with like-minded wild geese in several European taverns was a long-time labour of love. And it was this happy symposium that spawned one of the EU’s oldest, and still running, informal institutions – the Irish Philosophical and Debating Society (IPDS).
The IPDS
Established in 1979, it meets annually, every December, in Luxembourg over a working lunch. It has a cohort of over 50 now, forming an expansive group of mostly, but not uniquely, Irish emigrants and repatriated who travel from Spain, Germany, Ireland, the UK. Belgium, France and Holland.
The enthusiastic gatherings of the pioneering days evolved, over time, into more culturally aware exchanges. The IPDS is now regarded as an amateur Davos Forum, where matters of political, social, sporting and economic import are discussed and their conclusions shared with similar think tanks.
It has survived the 11 September, the financial crisis, the demolition of its headquarters that hosted the first 35 years of meetings, and continues to thrive in its central Luxembourg location.
Hopefully this year, unlike the Rose of Tralee, the Tokyo Olympics, the Rolling Stones tour and the Eurovision Song Contest, they can meet physically, in December for their 44th. Session, when agenda items will include: the European landscape after the Virus, the EU’s financial framework, and Ireland’s football aspirations under their new manager, Stephen Kenny. This college of cognoscenti, a Parliament of wise owls regularly run the gauntlet of their partners’ playful derision: IPDS! “Irish Public Drunks Society, more like,” she says as he packs his briefcase for the impending mission.
Back to their roots
Old age ripens and mellows his outlook on many aspects of life. He finds, in the case of music and literature, that his playing and reading lists return to their earliest roots; so too with old friendships born in the formative years of youth, friendships that transcend the obstacles of separation and defy the ravages of time. He grew up in the Dublin suburb of Churchtown where bonds were made early on the streets and playing fields. These friendships grew and prospered through the teenaged years and early twenties.
After their emigration in 1977 those relationships were kept simmering on the back burner through sporadic exchanges of letters (remember them!), and occasional phone chats. On their return to the island, after more than 40 years away, there is a reunion. They meet up and, almost straight away, the conversation seamlessly continues from where it left off four decades previously. This reaffirmation of the durability of old friendships forged in youth, the flame still burning, undimmed by time and distance, is a treasure for the aged and the ages.
Garden / Hair
When we eventually emerge from this enforced hibernation our well-groomed gardens will be in stark contrast to the Trolls that tend them. The closure of barbers means that he currently sports a shock of hair like a caveman from an earlier glacial era, the colours a mixed palette of green, white and red, like the Italian flag. She has more cute and covert ways of maintaining her well-coiffed crown. And she has transformed the earlier jungle land garden into something akin to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
Litany of loss
The restrictions and deprivations caused by the lockdown are multitude. The continuing chronicle of deaths is heart bursting. He ponders also the detritus of dashed dreams of so many, laid waste by the virus: the untrodden red carpets; father-of-the bride speeches, undelivered, in the inside pocket of moth-balled suits; drained and arid baptismal fonts; Communion dresses back in the pawn shop; useless vouchers (not refunds!) for cancelled flights and holidays; plans for the gap year trekking through South East Asia; preparations for the Erasmus university exchange year in Naples or Barcelona…
Food and Drink
They have enjoyed meals in restaurants in many parts of the world, whether the food be family, fast or fancy. However, he confesses to a difficulty in adjusting his palate and wallet to the Dublin eating experience. Yes, they will always have Burdocks but you have to chip away at the mountains for a long time to locate a diamond. He has the impression that restaurant owners get too submerged in the science, and forget the interests of the customer. Too often they overegg the omelette.
They are often greeted with pretentious and inscrutable menus – the below an example from a city centre eatery:
• Killenure Dexter Beef Tartare, Smoked Eel, Beetroot, Lovage
• Alsace Bacon Consomme, 36 Month Parmesan Ravioli, Gougere
• Valrhona Manjari Cremeux, Blood Orange Curd, Vanilla ice Cream.
He thought he’d been handed extracts from’ Finnegans Wake’ by mistake. Wicklow restaurants are a mixed offering of eating experiences and cuisines: the two grand old dames – the old country houses - delight more than they disappoint and are important landmarks on any national gourmand’s trail.
The chippers are excellent, the Asian choice diverse, the pizzerias need lessons and ovens from their Neapolitan masters.
He remembers in a steak house once in town, now in another incarnation, unhappily scanning the overpriced wine list. Eventually he opts for a middle range French claret.” That wouldn’t be my choice”, the impatient owner/ sommelier posits. He will return with a witty repartee later.
Some months before Covid 19 closed the restaurants there were encouraging signs of a mini renaissance with some new kids on the block. He hopes that when the restaurants (and bars) eventually reopen that he will still have his own teeth.
There are three fridges in the house, one of them for food. The second fridge stores Asahi, Bitburger and Peroni beer, Black Tower, and Sake; he has named this fridge – the Axis Powers. The other fridge stocks Kronen
bourg 1664, Heineken, Amstel, Sauvignon Blanc; this he has dubbed the Resistance fridge. He is unsure where to place the Stella Artois and Jupiler.
Tnevda
He looks at his annual travel and appointments calendar for 2020; by now they should have visited Brussels, Malta, York and Tavira; other travel plans for coming months remain in abeyance; a red pen with cancelled is struck through the dates/locations.
Coronavirus allows no forward planning; what stares back at them now is a perverse collection of cancelled visits and appointments, like an Advent calendar in reverse: Tnevda ; there! he has created a new word born in the time of Covid 19 ….Tnevda: a collection of cancelled events looking back to a future that didn’t happen. John Prine
On Day 12 news of John Prine’s death found him with no prepared defences. He was his best friend whom he never met. With his brandied Bob Dylan voice, his songs of heartbreak and humour guide you on an elegiac orbit through the human condition. He sings for the lonely, for the old, for the broken. His universal anthem for loneliness ‘Hello in there, ‘with its elegance and empathy is so fitting in these times of Coronavirus.
He has known him since the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1973, from when he provided the background music to the budding romance with herself. He was a permanent, welcome presence in their relationship. In 2010 he saw him in the Ancien Belgique in Brussels, by now his cancer-battered body evident, but his soul indomitable and his voice a molten embrace of poetry and pathos.
The last time he saw him was in the National Concert Hall in Dublin, in 2018, returning to the capital after yet another cancer assault. Cancer committed two sustained muggings of his body but couldn’t take or break him. However, it weakened his resistance to the cowardly Covid, to which he sadly submitted earlier this year.
That night in the NCH he encored with ‘Paradise’ when his bluegrass band ignited the occasion with demonic guitaring, fiddling and accordion playing, causing John to embark on an impromptu, near manic dance. It was a dance of defiance, a dance of redemption, a dance of joy. The more intense and athletic the dance the more the audience’s seismic reaction encouraged him for more and more; and John danced, and danced into the night, into eternity, and – well – into Paradise, where Steve Goodman was waiting for him.
Religion
Organised religion irritates and intrigues him. Sometimes, he’s a lonely angler casting hooks out into rivers of doubt, trying to reel in some beliefs that will comfort him at the final froth of death. He’s had to throw a lot of tiddlers back in.
His was a traditional Catholic upbringing, reared in Ireland’s dark age during the period of the Taliban Twins (De Valera and Mc Quaid), sipping from a religious cocktail of guilt and fear; that drink was laced with a suspicion of sex and respect for the cloth – how much better if they had been inverted! He wonders about monotheistic religions and the stern faces on the paintings and icons of their protagonists and compares that lugubrious gallery with the arcade of constantly smiling beer-bellied Buddhas. What do they know?
Baptism released him from original sin, communion enriched him with a collection of tin, confession had him concocting sins to divert the priest from the obvious interrogation. Confirmation conscripted him as a soldier of Christ, he took the name Joseph -Jihad Joe – and also the pledge of abstinence, ratified by the episcopal hand on his young cheek by the terrifying Taliban Mc Quaid. This antipathy continues through his life, yet their lives and loves were pledged at an altar under the Catholic dome of the Pope’s church.
The Seventies
He realises, with a constantly contracting future, that a lot more time will be spent travelling through time tunnels of his past than looking too far into the future. It is the traveling backpack of the elderly.
He holds a particular love for the seventies – a time to dare, to confront convention, a decade of hash, hipsters and hair. Those hipster trousers, just about balanced the right side of decency, precariously protecting the fortitude and future of the nation! He remembers the dancehall days as times of acne, angst and dusted down dreams. When the first dance was announced by the band it was like the charge of the Light Brigade by hopeful, old-spiced athletic male youths, across the Siegfried line of the ballroom to the waiting womanhood. There was more reluctance and hesitation for the slow dance as if it was the signing of a charter of commitment.
The Irony of the more tangible times pre-Covid 19, in that era of touch, was that you weren’t allowed to!
Social distancing was in vogue then long before it became unpopular in the times of Coronavirus. In his early teens the lurches/ slow dances at the social club were supervised by a patrolling priest ensuring that there was no contact, by either dancer, between the neck and knee. “Leave room for the Holy Ghost”, he urged. Great balls of fire!
In later years, and in more confident times, with a deeper voice and budding moustache under his nose, the absence of clergy at the dance halls sparked more hopeful trysts. A Whiter Shade of Pale offered the prospect of a great lurch! Up close and personal. He eagerly enwrapped himself around his dance partner, then went through the movements grimacing at the torture. His chest proudly bore the stigmata of the Prussian-helmeted pointed and protruding bras of the girls. He felt like Richard Harris in ‘A man called Horse.’
In that world of male/female relations there were no pre-programmed applications, no apps, no carnal or computer qualifications; They were armed with conversation, the power of speech, collections of sentences and words, verbs adjectives and nouns; there was no trailing text or photo, no technical recce of their prospects. Armed with a limited vocabulary he strode across the dance floor: “Would you like to dance?” “No, not even if it would help the peace process”.
Rejection. And then began one of the two longest walks in life, back to the far wall where his friends mustered, waiting to hear news from the front; the clawing shame and mortification was akin to that other long walk - back to the centre circle after missing a penalty in the cup final shoot-out, and the cocktail of scorn and sympathy that accompanies the reassuring slap on the back from a team mate.
The Hospital
He still shivers when he passes a hospital: cancer’s deluge swept away his mother, father and sister, her parents and engulfed herself. He remembers months of accompanying her through the cancer wings, the sterile, subterranean, silenced corridors; the relentless thud of the daily trek joining the patients’ forlorn procession; a famine of smiles. What words describe the loneliness and fear in the curtained cubicle, waiting for the call and then trying to interpret the oncologist’s welcoming smile, the bearer of the latest news about her condition and future: life, death, chemotherapy, radiation, how many days?...
And so he thinks now of the Dante like descent into Hell of patients being wheeled into Covid 19 Intensive Care Units: carrying the knowledge that only one in five will survive this ordeal; the dizzying array of tubes, apparatuses, ventilators, computer screens, intravenous drips, drugs; the pain, the struggling, the broken breathing, the terrified eyes pleading, the confusion; the mask and visors of the plastic garbed personnel, the mortuary porter in attendance..
This, often final, journey is one taken alone now, denied the reassuring hand squeeze of a loved one; the beauty of a child’s tear; the close communion of a friend’s ear; the fading echoes of words of love..
Zoom
He is not yet adept at the digital applications that monitor and mark movements in Covid 19 times. He was Invited to a Zoom party recently where he spent the whole time, sitting under a strange hat, smiling and waving at himself as 16 screenshots bantered and joked with each other. Still he thought his Pierrot hat quite innovative, until he was informed that the party theme was Belgian detectives. The clowns’ party was the following week. His 5-year old grandson had to advise him on the correct button to press on a videophone link-up.
The Library
Wicklow has always enjoyed a healthy relationship with the arts, witnessed by the numerous ‘writers in residence’ in the county and the film-making facilities that have assisted in the production of many international films and tv series.
The County boasts 13 libraries and one mobile, representing a significant punching above their weight in national per capita rankings. The town’s new library will open soon: its construction - Covidus Interruptus – should be finished by the end of 2020, almost 100 years since the Bayview Hotel (RIP) offered the site for the town’s first library.
This is a cheering prospect and he looks forward to rediscovering the silent sanctuary of a library, to walk the aisles and their colonnades of books, where genius reposes; to enjoy the aesthetics of sight, touch and scent of the volumes.
Final words
He finds himself wondering these days what his final/dying words might be: Something witty? Pithy even? Help? It is not something he can rehearse as he cannot know the circumstances, or the audience. At one stage he thought he might have uttered them on an earlier visit to the capital. He remembers on one of Dublin’s undulating and unforgiving paths, after an argument he lost with a protruding step, taking a great leap forward into - he thought – his Creator’s arms; the carefully cherished books he was carrying taking flight like an airborne, mobile library. This involuntary take off was precipitated by the distraction of alfresco eaters tucking into colourful, oval dishes. “Is that a Moroccan restaurant?” he remembers as his ‘final’ words. Not exactly a dignified inscription to be chiselled on to a headstone. Hardly comparable with Seamus Heaney’s dying message to his wife -‘noli timere.’
CORONAVIRUS ALLOWS NO FORWARD PLANNING; WHAT STARES BACK AT THEM NOW IS A PERVERSE COLLECTION OF CANCELLED VISITS AND APPOINTMENTS, LIKE AN ADVENT CALENDAR