In June 1999 I handed over my EBS cheque, bursting with pride. Finally, my dream had come true. I was now the owner of "a cottage in the country". I hadn't bought it for the obvious reasons: I had no spare money, and I couldn't grasp the intricacies of buying for tax purposes or as an investment. No, the roots of my decision lay in what I considered to be a deprived childhood.
During those long, hot summers of all our childhoods, everyone in my gang went to their grannies or aunties in Galway, Mayo, Donegal or Wexford. I had no country relatives to go to on my holidays, so I was left to my own lonely devices in the smelly old Dublin of the 1950s. The only holiday-related activity I can remember was the cycle out to Blackrock Baths. And that was only once a week because the entrance fee was 3d.
Padraic Colum
I think it was when I was learning off by heart the Padraic Colum poem The Old Woman of the Roads in fourth class that the dream was truly born. "Oh to have a little a little house / To own the hearth and stool and all / The heaped up sods upon the fire / The pile of turf against the wall."
Years and technologies later, I browsed the web, phoned local estate agents, and drove around whole counties looking at buildings of various types, sizes and states of repair. To describe some of them as houses would be to contravene the Trade Descriptions Act. By the time I found what I was looking for, I was weary of the whole business. But by the time I got the keys, I had invited almost everyone I knew for a weekend in lovely Leitrim.
Leitrim, as I told anyone who would listen, is a beautiful county with a lacework of lakes and rivers and a landscape almost empty of houses. A year-and-a-half later, I was telling everyone that the people around Carrick-on-Shannon, Leitrim village and Drumshanbo were the nicest you could meet anywhere in a month's wanderings. Their welcome for me was unconditional, even if some were puzzled why anyone, other than boaters or fisher-people, would want to holiday in a county that couldn't keep its own people (recent figures show Leitrim to be the only county with net emigration).
They wondered, for instance, if the weather hadn't put me off. I replied that even if it was a bit wetter, wasn't the countryside all the lusher and greener for it? And sure there was snow on the Dublin and Wicklow mountains when there wasn't a sign of it anywhere else in Ireland, so Leitrim couldn't be much colder, could it?
Everest
Well, yes, it could. This month it is so cold my little cottage might as well be located at base camp on Everest. With one crucial difference: there are no water-pipes on Everest. The other day, I had a phone call from one of my neighbours. Catherine had investigated a strange light and discovered it to be the light in my attic shining into my kitchen, which now had no ceiling.
"You have burst pipes and there's water everywhere," Catherine said. "Inches deep." With sinking heart, I phoned neighbour Gerry to ask him to turn off the water and saying I would get there as soon as I could. But the roads being icy and dark, it would have to be next morning.
I lay awake in my warm and dry modern house in Dublin thinking: I know all about freezing water expanding in pipes which burst when the thaw sets in and I know about lagging and insulation. Hadn't I checked the lagging and insulation? Where had I gone wrong?
About 3 a.m. I started to worry about getting the pipes fixed and new ceilings installed. How on earth was I going to make arrangements at this distance when I'd been waiting for three months in Dublin for a plumber to fix a leaking radiator? And how much would it cost? I got up and searched for the insurance policy, knowing full well what I would find. I was right. I wasn't covered. I hadn't read the small print.
Selling up
Next day, with TV images before me of the poor sods in England who had been flooded by overflowing rivers, I turned into my lane, having decided: I'm selling this blasted cottage. Haven't I enough to do minding one house in Dublin? What was I thinking of, taking out another mortgage when the first one was nearly paid back? All because of a sentimental old poem and nowhere to go on my holidays.
But I hadn't counted on the energy and good will of Gerry, Rose and Catherine. As a result of their efforts, not alone was there now very little water, but all the big items that had been soaked (carpets, armchair, beds - the bedroom ceiling had also come down under the weight of water) were out of the house and men were working on the pipes and measuring up for new ceilings. Various cushions, sheets, duvets, rugs and mats had been whisked off to neighbouring hot-presses and garages to dry out.
By the end of the day, I had made another decision: I will never sell my cottage in the country. How could I when, with incredible luck, I have found myself among the kind of people I thought existed only in the nostalgia of old folks and poets?