. . . on holidaying in Connemara
WHEN PEOPLE FOOLISHLY ask you what your holiday plans are and you tell them that you’re just back from two weeks in Connemara, you see them flinch. There are only two versions of the story they are about to hear and they’ll be praying it’s the first one. Given the option, we all have a mild preference that others should suffer. They’ll hope to hear that you thought you would save money and escape the horrors of an international flight, but that the holiday god is a vengeful travel agent at heart, who punishes the cheapskate without mercy. That the weather was awful, that it rained in that malicious west of Ireland way that mocks your belief in the sun. That going outside was idiocy and doing anything inside was misery, as the house became infected with fog and the carpets got soggy underfoot.
Scenery was replaced by weather and the only conversation that was possible was whether conditions were improving or worsening. Your take on that depended on your psychological condition. By day three everybody was on the same page and somebody was always crying. You thought nostalgically of alarm clocks, traffic jams, drive-through fast-food restaurants, dry clothes. “Never again,” that narrator ends with a shiver and a facial expression like Shelley Duvall at the end of The Shining.
Our experience this year was the alternative version. The one where the roads are unblocked and the skies become bigger and bluer as you get closer to your destination, where the sea is turquoise and sparkling, the sand white and the beaches empty. Where bread and ice cream and pints taste like they did when you were a child and the publican will drive you home at the end of the night. Where you look across a bog at 12 mountains and watch clouds massing and flying eastwards as you stand ruggedly under the sun.
You have always been an outdoorsy sort of person, you see now, beer in hand and flip-flops on feet. It is all so beautiful and wholesome that it’s impossible not to feel that you deserve it.
You hear yourself talking about “this great country” and using the expression “it’s raining in Dublin” several times a day and you realise that smugness is reaching toxic levels, so instead you just point at things and say “look at it”.
But even when everything works on holiday, you still have to deal with others in the house whose enthusiasms may be different to your own. Happy comments about the smell of flowers and grass and hedges do not get a good reception from people, say, whose eyes are streaming and who only interrupt their sneezing to blow their noses.
Talking about the beauty of the cuckoo’s call will not ingratiate you with insomniacs, for whom “the fecking dawn chorus” is just noise. When you next wake at 5am, in an attempt to empathise, you disengage your ear until it all becomes a cacophony. It’s easily done. Three hours later you’re still half-awake, listening to what now sounds like dogs howling out on the bog. “Bog dogs,” you think. “Or dog bogs. Are they a thing? Or am I making this up?”
There are cormorants nesting in broken trees at the end of the house and they bring an extra dimension to the mix, something horrifying and prehistoric, with their shrieking and clacking and crunching of bones. During the day they circle overhead as children play on the grass. The birds are big and the babies are small. Pictures form in your head. Dark shapes swooping. A muffled yelp.
Two grown men wearing garden furniture are interviewed by police: “And what were you doing when the incident occurred?”
“Drinking. And watching. He was smoking a cigar.” You bring the children back inside.
Holidaying on your own was easier. No cormorant could ever take you. You knew what you liked. Birdsong was a comfort and the smell of privet was a joy. But, frankly, without the company of others, the country frightens you. There was a week spent working alone in a holiday home in Dunmore East. It was November and you were car-less. There was nobody else in the estate, which was on the side of a hill surrounded by woods. There were no curtains, so as soon as it was dark – which was four o’clock in the afternoon – all you could see was movement in the trees and a white-faced man reflected in the windows who followed you around the house.
It was a jumpy week. There was no radio and the television could get picture or sound but not at the same time. The only shop in Dunmore East seemed to be a garage and the owner was not a talker. “I’m going mad,” you told your girlfriend. “What do people see in this place? There are no shops, no pubs, no people. I’m living on Easi-singles and crisps.”
When she came at the weekend she brought food and drink and discovered lots of shops and pubs and people. She discovered the real Dunmore East, which had been 200 yards around the corner for the past week. What you thought was Dunmore East was in fact just a garage.
Róisín Ingle is on annual leave. Chris Binchy's latest novel is 'Five Days Apart'(Harper Collins)