Drimcong House, its lake and lands will soon have new owners. That is the stark fact at the end of 15 years of our association with this extraordinary place. It took six months to find. We had trawled Ireland and considered many houses in diverse parts before coming across Drimcong. The view along its winding avenue of elderly lime trees was at once stirring and decisive.
We knew we wanted a house and property large enough for a country restaurant combined with a family home, space for Marie's garden and leeway for the dreams that provoked us. Drimcong was it. We got more than we needed or bargained for - a lake, cottage, outhouses, bungalow, woodland and the house itself.
It took to its reinvention as a public restaurant with almost tangible enthusiasm. The house grew with us. We felt its encouragement when new windows were installed. There was a noisy, evident defiance when we forced open a two-foot hole in the thick kitchen wall to accommodate an extractor fan.
After Kinsale, where our small restaurant sat snugly in narrow Main Street and passing cars belched fumes through the open door and windows, Drimcong's 20 acres of space was and continues to be a revelation. We revealed ourselves to ourselves through the labour of love that the management of house and business became. We saw our limitations daily in bleak winters when hungry foxes massacred our beloved hens. A verse from a poem I wrote about Moycullen seasons describes the winter lake scene as follows:
The black lake is heron-less,
Lunatic wind is out
Hunting in gusts
Through hunched woods.
Driven into a cangle
Clouds break down
All over the grieving day.
Springs are liberations of daffodils and all our subversive plots. The garden expanded and is today capable of supplying much of the restaurant's green needs. Summers build up from the steady stream of spring business through May/June - graduation dinners, academic outings from the university.
With my chef's hat on I associate this time with elderflowers, strawberries, water mint and wild sorrel. July/August are the busy tourist months characterised by an increase in dining numbers rising to a frenetic peak in race week and the endurance test that is always August.
Tender souls among the staff flinch, sometimes succumb, before the tidal waves of restaurant intensity during the "wicked month". This is the time, too, when I begin to consider and plan the annual autumn cookery courses, an increasingly difficult chore at the end of demanding summers. Courses, however, have become a valuable vehicle on which to transport us financially through lean Novembers and into the smooth pre-Christmas traffic.
But there is more to summer than business. Hot weekends at the lake culminate in barbecues and eventual retreat indoors before the onslaught of irritant midges. Rhododendrons are succeeded by wild irises which in turn give ground to the seasonal cream froth of meadowsweet. One is forever astounded by the avalanche of growth. Amazon at our own back door.
Over and through long-limbed summers fly spitfire swallows. They skim the lake and lead the dogs a merry dance around the lawn. Shiva, our latest rough collie and successor to Sam, has not yet learned to give in. Swallowchasing, however futile, appears to be in her blood! Sam was a chaser of foxes. We buried him within sight of the lake two years ago. Within a week of his interment, I discovered a dead fox adorning the grave. The ultimate compliment?
Any record of the Galvin regime must be heavily cast with people, the personalities that entered the story and in some cases became the story. Our children, Cristina, John and Jennie, have each a separate, private connection to Drimcong. They alone know the secrets they have shared with this tree, that cat, those stones. They will always have their individual memories and part of them will always bear the stamp of their experiences here.
In the early years my father lived with us and became well-known to regular diners. He relished his well-rehearsed role as venerable patron, greeting guests at the front door. I picture him now, proud as punch, cigarette at the ready, preparing to engage with visitors. He could talk to anybody and with a Tio Pepe or two on board he was fit to entertain the world and his wife. It was then, with us, he spent some of his happier days. My sisters visited from Carlow and Canada and London. It was a boon to have bed-space galore and garden to dally or get lost in.
Marie is a Deering. To be a Deering is not merely a matter of nomenclature; it is a state. Deerings are clannish and proud and given to occasional communal gatherings or outbursts of intense fellow-feeling and bonhomie.
We have had the good fortune to be able to provide a base for several such events over our years here. Gatherings of the hordes. At their peak these were day-long celebrations that included canoe trips from our lake to the Corrib and back through the network of interconnected minor lakes. There would be hurling and football, riotous table tennis tournaments and of course, long, prolix dinners that led to party games, quizzes and serious drinking. Those house parties lasted two or three days and were hugely pleasurable for everybody. The younger cousins particularly benefited from the camaraderie and fun-filled days then and the fond memories they now treasure. Latterly our get-togethers are more sober. The children are absent adults very often and the elder members are more likely to indulge in verbosity over dinner than the former breakneck physical activity.
The Beugs from Dunderrow - Katherine, Joachim and their children, Anna, Lena and Thomas - are our very good friends. Their visits to Drimcong have always been highlights. They have been our sounding boards for new ideas and the most benign and persuasive critics. Katherine's paintings populate our walls, Joachim planted our one and only fig tree and the youthful walnut whose full bloom we will never witness.
And then there are staff. On the quality of staff does a restaurant fail or flourish. We have been lucky. Successive young and notso-young staff have been at the centre of Drimcong's success. Many have moved on to senior positions in the catering trade throughout Ireland. Some are now running their own businesses and some others are still with us. We depend on them greatly. We have had three marriages of working colleagues, several romances and a few broken hearts. The kitchen, perhaps because of the heat, seems to provide more than its share of combustion between the sexes. In the very early days, one pair of chefs fell in love over the stove and took to copulating in the cold room.
From the professional and business point of view, we have had much satisfaction. We did realise our dream of creating a country house restaurant that could maintain high standards and be financially viable while at the same time providing us with a beautiful family home. For myself the 15 years have been fulfilling. Even though I have never seen myself primarily as a chef, I have had a fair share of acclaim for the food we produce. Above all I take satisfaction from the number of inspiring relationships I have had with young chefs who have worked here. Their enthusiasm and capacity for concentration in the face of extremely hard work have encouraged me.
Work has been the ever-present leitmotif. There is always work to be done in a busy restaurant or with the house or the garden. Sometimes it is too much, sometimes one has to stop. Our winter break each year has given us the necessary time out to detach from the severe routine. We have now reached a stage where the pause is likely to be a longer one, not just a couple of months to relax and refuel as heretofore. While we do not have a clear idea of what we might do if the sale is a success, we do have a strong sense of possibility. We want to explore life beyond cooking and running a restaurant. As Louis MacNeice put it, "world is crazier and more of it than we think".
It is time to take stock, know that we have had some joy here, accept that we have made a contribution and move on to the unknown, wherever and whatever that may be.
Drimcong will soon, probably, have new owners to which it will adjust as it has done to generations of former owners. We wish the new relationship well.