Lockdown? Once I got my reading mojo back I was fine
In a revealing interview RTE legend Anne Doyle tells of her life during restrictions and why she will always be a city slicker
AT the first screening of the latest Bond movie Anne Doyle was approached by a young woman who just wanted to say hello. She was drawn to the RTÉ doyenne as she had just moved to Dublin from the country and of course, she was lucky enough to meet one of the most down-to-earth celebrities Ireland has to offer, who herself made the same journey in her teens.
‘For those of us who came from outside the cities as a student or to work it’s that time of year,’ Doyle says, remembering her own first steps to a new life in the Capital.
‘I ventured to Dublin in and around the end of September to go to UCD and I said to myself that was a while ago. It was startling to realise how very long ago it was because I came here in 1969 when you think of it.
‘I am living in Dublin — which I love dearly I might add — for 52 years. Probably best not to dwell on it to be honest. You could get a bit of a turn if you thought about it too much.’
Anne lives with her partner Dan McGrattan on the south side of the city, close to his pub on Fitzwilliam Lane.
But of course, during the pandemic, the face of Anne’s beloved city changed dramatically as offices emptied and people disappeared into the suburbs. Some found the experience of lockdown a soothing one — for Anne, a vivacious and sparky character, it was anything but.
‘I got on alright,’ she says of those isolated times. ‘I would imagine my response to it was pretty similar to most people — I mean, I detested it. I did not find anything soothing or relaxing about it. I applaud people who did and took stock of their lives. Some people decided to make fundamental changes but I certainly found it difficult.
PSYCHOLOGICALLY, I hated that idea of things being closed down and because in the city it was terribly, obviously so. You live in a busy, kind of buzzy place and luckily there are more of us living here than you might think. And suddenly footfall didn’t exist, people weren’t there and all the nice places that are near me that I like to go — the galleries and museums and whatever — were all closed.
‘It was really silly and there was no logic to this at all, but psychologically I found the 2km restriction really hard to get my head around. I could go anyon where really that I wanted to go within reason absolutely within the letter of the law within that 2km. So I was really quite lucky in that respect, but I just found the idea so awful. And even when it went to 5kms it just seemed to be a physical manifestation of the way the world had closed in on us.
‘I did actually try to be reasonable and reasoning about it and I managed to reason it out perfectly well but it didn’t alter a damn thing. I bitterly resented it. But I accepted it and understood the point of it.’
Anne was fortunate, she says, to have escaped without getting sick as did those close to her. And she has great admiration for some of her friends and the other brave souls who had to cocoon and stay indoors and managed to come out unscathed.
‘Some of them seemed to do awfully well,’ she says, in amazement. ‘And I take my hat off to them. I don’t think I’d do very well doing two or three months indoors my own, thank you very much all the same. This may indicate a very weak character but I would find that terribly lonely. I think I would find it overpowering. Maybe I’d discover I have a monastic side I didn’t know about but I’d be amazed. Good luck with that one Anne,’ she says, laughing ruefully at the thought.
And within the confines of the initial lockdowns, Anne admits she lost the ability to concentrate on her favourite pastime of reading.
‘That trapped feeling I found affected me,’ she reveals. ‘I couldn’t concentrate as much on reading as I normally do and for a while I really lost my reading mojo. It was a huge loss to me because being a feckless creature it’s probably what I do more than anything else. I felt sort of a trapped feeling, that’s the best way I can put it. And why wouldn’t you? The world was closing. Thanks be to heavens we seem to have struggled through it.’
Anne’s love of reading was one of the reasons she signed up to become an ambassador for AMD Awareness Week, in an effort to alert the over 50s to the fact that age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of sight loss in their age group.
ANEW survey found that 65 per cent of the public are not aware that it is a leading cause of sight loss and the earlier it is detected, the sooner it can be treated to reduce its progression, which is why Anne wants to encourage people to get regular eye tests and visit a professional if they see any changes in their vision.
Of course, the pandemic brought the idea that your health is your wealth into sharp focus.
But for Anne, who had bouts of pneumonia as a child and a couple of serious flu cases including a brush with swine flu, it wasn’t a case of being afraid.
‘There was an element of everyone being in it together,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t be someone who takes great comfort in thinking “we are all in the same boat” but there was a bit of “let’s soldier through.”
If you live long enough you will have lived through hard times — different hard times. I don’t mean a global pandemic or anything like that.
‘But I remember we had a cousin of my father’s — well she was a second cousin of my father’s or something and we always called her aunt. There were eight in the family and she was working away from home during the Spanish Flu — one brother survived but the other six died. That was a terrible contagion and that memory was kicking around when I was a child growing up. People had survived it and people who had lost their whole families were knocking around.
‘There are a lot of folk memories too — my great grandfather lived through the famine so these monstrous events are not that far away from us.
‘So I didn’t get scared in the sense that I would get this damn thing and it would kill me. I was philosophical about it really — it didn’t weigh heavily on me.’
As the owner of a pub, Dan’s business was closed for some time but Anne says he always went to work, renovating McGrattan’s so that people could return within the social distancing rules.
‘He is delighted to be back in business but he is finding it hard to get staff, I think a lot of businesses are,’ Anne says.
‘Our house is only about ten minutes walk from us so he went down every day and there was work going on every day deep cleans and paperwork. He worked — regrettably not for any profit but look,
you know, call it a long term investment.
‘And he cooked — me being the world’s most undomesticated creature, I used to go down and have my dinner there more often than having it at home. His daily pattern wasn’t very different but he certainly wasn’t sitting at home — sure you’d go mad sitting at home!
He has a very strong work ethic but when you have a business I guess you always have to be thinking ahead and planning ahead you can’t just down tools.’
So how did Anne stop herself from going mad, sitting at home?
‘I am great at amusing myself to be honest,’ says the iconic newsreader in that voice that is both familiar and comforting.
‘I was very constricted in meeting my friends and neighbours but sure we resorted to the power of the telephone a lot and once I got my reading mojo back I was fine. I am very lucky in that I am only a stone’s throw from Iveagh Gardens, Fitzwilliam Square, the little park there from Merrion Square which is a beautiful park. I am beside the canal so there were lovely walks so it was a lot easier for me than for most people.’
And while many are now bolting from the city to seek out rural idylls and coastal hideaways, glamorous Anne Doyle’s love affair with Dublin continues apace.
‘When I came to Dublin initially I had digs for a short while in Mount Street which would be a 15 minute walk from here,’ she says of her move from Ferns in Co Wexford as an 18-year-old. ‘I lived in Rathmines for a long time and I’ve lived around here a lot. In the 70s, I had a falling down flat in Fitzwilliam Square in a house that would have been lovely if you had the money to put a roof on it. But I loved the area. That house was subsequently bought and done up and now my old flat is where my GP’s surgery is.
‘I loved it there, I love Baggot Street, Merrion Row, Leeson Street, this area. I like the shelter of tall houses. I mean, I love my home county of Wexford dearly and if anyone asks me where I am from I will always say Wexford, even though I haven’t lived there for a long time. But my heart is in this part of the city.
‘I loved it from the day I arrived and I wouldn’t consider myself to be the most adaptable of people but I think I was very fortunate.’
Arriving at the age of 18, fresh from an all-girls boarding school was, she says, part of the thrill.
‘As you can imagine being in boarding school for five years then getting to Dublin was pretty terrific,’ Anne says. ‘But I felt curiously at home here. Recently I was talking to someone who lives down the road and she said: “You really identify with this area” and I thought that perhaps it’s in my genes. My maternal grandfather was a herdsman, a cattleman and he and his wife worked on the Fitzwilliam Estate here. So maybe I got it from the water. I just feel very at home and I love Rathmines as well as it still has a bit of a bohemian edge to it.
Good luck to the people on their rural quest and who have decided to move back — it is a great thing for small towns and villages to have that injection. Not such a great thing for the city though, and I hope the city doesn’t lose out too badly.’
THOUGH Anne is not claiming to be au fait with town planning, she does feel the emphasis on hotels being built in the city is somewhat troubling as it is diminishing the possibilities of reasonable family accommodation for people who want to live in cities.
‘The focus seemed to be “get another hotel up, get another hotel up” and while the tourist business was booming,’ she says. ‘I felt that we were overdoing the hotel vibe and the virus then certainly made it clear that there were other aspects to life.’
Now that things are opening up again and some are returning to offices, Anne is noticing people around her beloved city. She can, once again, go any distance she pleases, visit the galleries and gaze on great works of art. And though she is hoping people do return to work, Anne thinks those who haven’t been able to work from home deserve more recognition.
‘We have a great many jobs and a great many people who have been working solidly through this and who cannot work from home,’ she insists. ‘The world does not revolve around people who can work at the other end of a computer. If I want a loaf of bread or open heart surgery or three pints there’s not really much point in someone telling me they are working from home. I take my hat off to the great unsung heroes through all of this who are the people who worked in shops and supermarkets and drove buses. What would we have done without them?
‘They were unfailing and unflagging and incredibly goodhumoured and they were down there with their bloody masks all day and not a word about them but people are having a crisis because they might have to wash themselves and go into the office two days a week.’
AT 69, Anne is still the epitome of glamour and although she admits to not being very domesticated, she likes everything to be in its place. ‘I am one of those tidy untidy people,’ she laughs. ‘Someone once said to me, “Anne you’d straighten dust and it might be handier just to dust it.” But if things are unsettled around me I can’t really settle very well. It would freak me to leave the house without making the bed and I know that if I had a work situation where part or all of it I was doing from home, I would need to get into work mode. There is no way I could be hanging round in my pyjamas.’
She doesn’t do much by the way of cooking but then, there’s no need as restaurateur Dan, her partner of 15 years, is a dab hand in the kitchen.
‘I used to,’ she says of cooking. ‘I gave it up years ago but I am fortunate I have a keen sense of finding places where I get fed. It is a challenge,’ she laughs. ‘People might say that’s very lazy but it has its own skill set.’
So what has caused Anne’s aversion to the trappings of domesticity?
‘I had a long relationship that ended and I had done my best to domesticate during that and I decided that hadn’t been a success so I wouldn’t bother any more,’ she admits.
‘I wouldn’t refuse to put on the pan and stick a bit of fish on it but different strokes, honey.’
So the lockdown habits of banana bread or sourdough starters were very much absent in Anne’s city pad, though you get the sense she’d be happy to have a nibble if the finished product was presented.
‘If people enjoy doing it then why not? If that’s what floats your boat’ she says.
‘Me, I like to hear the clatter of cutlery in different places.’
And there’s no doubt that many are setting the table in the hope of welcoming Anne’s sparkling wit and scintillating company.
See amd.ie for more details about the See The Full Story AMD Awareness Campaign.