Does anyone understand the ways of the marketplace? There is, we almost all agree, no replacement for it; for every attempt to regulate markets ends in failure, sadness, tears and often famine. Yet it is surely the most baffling of our gods, the deity which we must revere yet whose ways we find as perplexing and unpredictable as our weather. Each Thursday, we read of a kennel from which, with the aid of a ladder and a good stout telescope, one can see Sorrento Terrace on a very good day, fetching a million pounds; yet simultaneously, houses which are truly wonderful attract not a single bidder at auction.
On the market
That was the fate of Drimcong House in Moycullen, Co Galway recently. The auctioneer arrived with his hammer, but nobody else did; and it remains on the market to this day. Perfectly baffling. And without trying to answer the opening sentence of this column - to save you looking it up, it was the one which asked: Does anyone understand the ways of the marketplace? - can it be that people assumed that such a magnificent 18th-century manor house, now turned into one of Ireland's most famous restaurants, was simply beyond their means? Does the innate modesty of Connacht people simply cause them to shy away from the prospect of having the name "Drimcong" on their letterheads?
It is a problem, to be sure: if people ask where you live, and you reply, "Drimcong House", what do you do when the gales of hilarity have subsided, and, wiping tears of mirth from their eyes, people ask you again: "No, really, where do you actually live?" Do you insist, "Drimcong House", and invite more shouts of ridicule, possibly accompanied by that what- a-pretentious-poser look in the eyes of your audience. There's only so much of that kind of stuff which most of ordinary folk can take.
So the temptation is to reply to the question, "Where do you live?" with: "Dun Romin, a modest dormer bungalow, Spanish arches, Georgian portico, Tudor beams, Victorian carriage lamps, antebellum Virginian wing, you know, the average run of the mill Connemara atrocity, very tasteful." And not an eyelid will flicker. Put it up for auction and undertakers will be bidding for the business of those killed in the crush.
Drimcong's problem is that it is not just a beautifully preserved, maintained and wonderfully restored early Georgian house with wide handsome acres, including a big fat lake, so close to Galway yet still within a pike's spit of Lough Corrib and Connemara. It is also, of course - as everyone knows - the home of one of the great restaurants in Ireland; and this too must add to the burden of doubt of anyone who might wish to live there. How does one live up to the preposterous public expectations which must dog those who follow humbly in the foodsteps of Gerry and Marie Galvin?
Restaurants
It is a reasonable fear. What indeed happens to great places after the restaurants which once lived there have moved on? Traditionally, restaurants have colonised fine and elegant houses. Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud lives in one of the most elegant Georgian premises in Dublin. So too does the Commons in St Stephen's Green. So too does John Howard's Coq Hardi, the unsung pioneer of haute cuisine in Dublin. How is it possible to convert such places back to what they had been: homes?
The answer? Dunno. But all buildings follow unpredictable cycles. Leinster House was hardly erected to be the forum for the bewitching oratorical splendours of Jackie Healy-Rea. Those who constructed Stormont surely did not have in mind besuited Sinn Fein delegations with briefcases gathering within its Portland stone grandiosity to meet the political descendants of James Craig. And who could have guessed that the gracious unionist boroughs of Pembroke, Rathmines and Rathgar would, within a generation or so, move from gentility to grubby bedsitterdom before once again becoming fashionable residences, with homes now worth close to a million pounds?
What is a restaurant need not remain a restaurant; what was Drimcong House could easily return to being a house for a family who like gardens, a lake, space, outhouses, a bungalow, and a sense of style - with a bloody good kitchen thrown in for good measure. Few such houses will find their way onto the property market again in the Galway area well into the future, foreseeable or otherwise, simply because such residences, in such a location, are just about as common as lesbian live-acts amongst the Swiss Guard guarding the Vatican.
Key figures
Yes, yes, yes, but why am I saying this? Partly because the Galvins are friends of mine, but they became so in the early days of my tenure in this column. In 1981 they won a Diary competition which asked people to nominate their favourite words. Their choices were rich and pungent: akimbo, I remember, was one.
Gerry and Marie Galvin are among the great people of Irish life. They were, pre-Drimcong, in part responsible for the triumph of Kinsale, and they are key figures in the transformation of Irish cuisine. They dropped a stone in turgid waters and its ripples will ripple long after they are gone. Now they seek fresh waters to drop stones into: they deserve to get on with the rest of their lives. Whoever buys their house will thank me forever for directing them towards Drimcong.