Picture this: Frank McNally on commemorating departed friends

At a Christmas party in the French ambassador’s residence on Thursday night, the grand piano was strewn with postcard pictures of a uniformed Steve Dunford, late friend of mine. On which hangs a tale.

The uniform was that of an officer in the United Irishmen, circa 1798: a subject he spent much of his life researching, writing about, and re-enacting.

But he owned several other such costumes (I use that word as an in-joke, because Steve was always having to correct me – “it’s a uniform, Frank, not a costume”). And since we were about the same size, he sometimes found excuses to have me wear one too.

So it was that we recreated General Humbert’s Year-of-the-French march across Mayo’s Windy Gap – liberating Leonard’s Bar in Lahardane along the way – and paraded through Humbert’s hometown in the Vosges Mountains one Bastille Day.

Blowing a Gaskin – Frank McNally on gasconades, gasúns, and Ireland’s Bay of Naples

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In the long run – Alison Healy on the bizarre Olympic marathon of 1904

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Valour invalidated – Frank McNally on a mysterious Irish anti-hero: the “Great Gaiscí”

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Frank McNally on royal typos, Tennyson’s Tories, and the mystery of ‘Operation Sonnet’

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But our short friendship also included days spent sea fishing off Killala, with his brother John (Sharon Shannon’s long-time manager).

Alas, the larger-than-life Steve was reduced by sudden illness in mid-2021. The last time I saw him was in the Mayo hospice that autumn.

We had a few laughs even then. I noticed, for example, that on a whiteboard in his room, someone had compiled a league table of Dunford head sizes: it being considered that there were several notably large ones, with circumferences of up to 24 inches (61cm).

I mentioned that my head was big too. Whereupon Steve’s daughter, Romy, produced the measuring tape. And sure enough, I came in at a pumpkin-sized 24-and-a-half inches to steal the crown. Not that the crown would fit. Among all the Napoleonic-era uniforms Steve had, we never found a bicorn hat big enough for me.

He died soon afterwards and Sharon Shannon played at his graveside. But sad to say, she has since had to repeat the role for her former manager.

When I last met John, at a 225th anniversary commemoration of the Humbert landing last August, he was in great form and still fishing: in fact, he had just bought the boat. Then he too was struck down, with a similarly aggressive illness to Steve’s. He died last month.

Among the brothers’ memorials is a tune on the Waterboys’ classic 1988 album, the aptly named Fisherman’s Blues, called “Dunford’s Fancy” (so-called because Steve recorded it in a pub). Now there is also the composite picture, mentioned earlier.

It is often said that the departed live on in the memories of those they leave behind. But Catherine Gagneux, France’s Honorary Consul for Connacht, took this idea to inspired lengths when creating a portrait of Steve comprising 300 smaller pictures of his friends, uniformed and otherwise.

I’m in there somewhere. So is Catherine. It was for this and many other initiatives as France’s representative in the West that she was this week awarded an Ordre National du Merité, well deserved, by Ambassador Vincent Guérend.

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I have never worn a uniform in real life (as it were). But that almost happened once too. Back in the grim 1980s, newly out of school and already stuck in a dead-end office job, I considered escaping through membership of the Garda, then advertising for recruits.

I passed the exam and interview. Then at the medical in Garda HQ, I met an old schoolfriend, Gary Sheehan. We hadn’t crossed paths for a while and parted again that day with a cheerful “see you in Templemore”. But my life took another turn soon after. By the time they called me up, a year later, I had a different career path.

So I never saw Gary in Templemore, or ever again alive. I didn’t even realise he had donned the uniform until one terrible night months afterwards when, like the rest of Ireland, I watched the breaking news of Don Tidey’s release from IRA kidnapping, at the cost of the lives of a Garda recruit and soldier, both killed in the shoot-out.

I remember being struck by the detail that the bodies could not be retrieved from the woods until daylight next morning, and how lonely a thought that must be for the families, whoever they were. Then the phone rang, from home. That’s when I found out that poor Gary had been called up first.

Incredibly, this was 40 years ago today (December 16th). The anniversary will be marked on Saturday afternoon with a ceremony in our hometown, Carrickmacross, and again with a Mass there next Friday.

I doubt if Gary could be commemorated with a 300-picture composite of his friends. Not that he was short of friends. He was enviably popular (especially with the girls) and had a county minor football medal among his souvenirs.

It’s just that there weren’t many photographs taken back then, of anyone. Still, he too lives in the memories of those who knew him. And a small consolation of having been robbed of most of his life is that, in our mental snapshots and videos, he will always be young.