Trains, boats and yellow brick roads: it's all one big journey

RADIO REVIEW:AS A GIRL in a blue gingham dress and pigtails once said, to find what you're looking for, sometimes you need look no further than your own backyard. We all need occasional respite from financial acronyms that may or may not spell crisis averted and from the great pain that constantly rings out across the land.

It's easy to take diversions such as Sunday Miscellany(RTÉ Radio 1) for granted, perhaps because it drifts into our half-slumber, or because it has been bidding us good morning like an old friend for 14 years. There were a lot of female voices last week, too, which made a nice change in the often male-dominated schedules.

In Saying Goodnight to Our Lady, Catherine Foley reminisced about her childhood fascination with a large plaster statue of the Virgin Mary her mother used to take off the window sill before bedtime. "Her blue sash flowed down elegantly by her side and her hands were clasped together like a steeple," Foley said.

Over time her magnificent obsession waned: “There was no throbbing presence, emanating energy and love . . . I longed for the angelic, childlike love I’d felt, but it had slipped away from me. The statue was a dead thing, even though I stood on the landing getting cold once or twice waiting in the hope I’d feel it again.”

The piece was accompanied by an inspired choice: The Song of Bernadetteby Leonard Cohen, performed by Jennifer Warnes. It was followed by Queen of the May, a poem by Catherine Ann Cullen, which began: "I won't wash my face in the dew at first light / I never had that maiden skin, soft pink or hawthorn white." There was a quiet fierceness in her words and in the spirited way that she delivered them. "No, I'll cross the threshold of summer with a bold stride /bringing in stars like a promise of harvest / I'll close my eyes to the shadow of the scythe / toss my hips at virgins and fairies / and defy them to deny me . . ."

Gemma Tipton's Trainsgave welcome perspective to our lives, again via our backyards: "From proud thoroughbreds on the Curragh to shaggy ponies in boggy fields and back gardens, the train, running by the backs of people's houses, shows you a more secret side of things, and reveals what the roads do not: that Ireland is still the land of the horse." Tipton continued: "Before the railways spread their tentacled network across the country, different towns operated local time. There could be up to half an hour in the difference, which made train timetables tricky things to put together. For some towns, giving up their local time was a matter of civic pride, and it wasn't achieved without a struggle." We have some moxie left in us yet, it seems to me.

Charlotte Vale had some too. The heroine in Olive Higgins Prouty's novel Now, Voyagerwas brought to life in Classic Serial(BBC Radio 4, Sunday), directed by Andy Jordan and dramatised by Neville Teller. Set in the interwar period, it tells of Charlotte (Sarah Lancashire), a repressed spinster who gets a makeover, takes a Mediterranean cruise and falls in love with the married Jerry (Anthony Head). There is one day left to hear this sumptuous production online. The title is from Walt Whitman's poem The Untold Want:"The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted / Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find." Joan Plowright played Charlotte's domineering mother to the hilt. She told her: "Charlotte, do please stop feeling sorry for yourself. Remember you're a Vale." Let's just say they're not the type of family to talk to Joe.

There were an estimated 6,000 X Factorhopefuls at Croke Park hoping for their lives to be transformed overnight. On Henry McKean's report on Monday's Moncrieff(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) young hopeful Casey spoke of his experience auditioning: "I just felt all popular or something. It was deadly, it was."

This year the Irish can vote – a boon for Louis Walsh, as he longs for an Irish act to win. You could say he is something of a latter-day suffragette.

McKean’s interview with Walsh, who is quite the live wire, hit some serious static when he called the impresario a star, then said Walsh was even more famous than Gerry Adams. “What band was he in?” Walsh said. “Was that Gerry and the Peacemakers?” It got worse. McKean reminded Walsh (57) of his upcoming 60th. “Age ain’t nothin’ but a number,” Walsh replied. McKean wondered what would become of all the disappointed faces and suggested that people might become bored of the fame game. “Be positive,” Walsh said. “Enjoy it for what it is. Don’t try to analyse it.”

Oh, Henry. Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.