The worst pothole situation in all Ireland is in County Cavan? Is that so, or is it just a widespread illusion? Or a figment of the imagination? From experience you might think that there is at least one contiguous county which could give Cavan a run for its money, not to say downface it completely. Anyway, what are these thoughts, as you spin along, driven by someone else in his car, to the town of Cavan, in the most agreeable evening sunshine and, it has to be said, on one of the widest smoothest roads you could ask for. On either side, snug, trim houses, mostly a good few yards back from the road, and looking down on it.
This is on the road from Virginia and the outing is to celebrate an auspicious occasion. In one street of the town you have the offices of our contemporary, The Anglo Celt, and the Crannog Bookshop, which was celebrating the opening of an exhibition on its premises of wood sculpture by James Kelly, a Cavan man to boot. And the wood is from the depths of Skeagh Bog in East Cavan. It was old, the wood, says the catalogue, before the time of Patrick.
This James Kelly will be known to you more for the series of events which led to what became known as the Arms Crisis and later the Arms Trial, nearly 30 years ago. A time when loss of memory played a part in a drama. Well, that same Captain Kelly, retired from the Army, did so many different things, after he had written his own lively and well-documented account under the title Orders for the Captain, an adaptation, no doubt, of John Keegan Casey's lines in The Rising of the Moon:
I bear orders from the captain, Get you ready quick and soon . . .
and you know the rest. Since then he has owned and sold a pub, edited a weekly, the Cavan Leader, and done other things. But for some time he has been occupying himself at wood sculptures.
The critics will put words on it, but the 21 or so exhibits, mostly of this bog oak, made a mighty impression on those who came to the opening. He has been many things. He is now undoubtedly a serious artist. Asked at the opening where he gets his ideas, he replied that he looked long at the wood and it told him what to do. John McEvoy, who runs the shop with his wife, Anne Connolly, says the exhibition continues to the end of August "at least".
Y