Forty-foot waves, roaring swells and deep Atlantic depressions are not a normal priority for the melee of people rushing around like headless turkeys doing their Christmas shopping these days. More than likely it is crowded car parks, long bus queues, honking horns and antagonistic traffic lights ensuring stress levels are propelled up towards the North Pole.
However, for the few thousand people who live on the rosary of islands surrounding the Irish coastline, such worries are trivial. Their prayers have been answered if weather forecasters have hinted at high pressure, if heavy frosts and Arctic air hang over the coastline, if the skies are winking with the magic of starlight and the sea is calm, flat calm. In island parlance: “Not a shtir of swell, or a flam of wind.”
As is the norm for almost two decades now, this Christmas Eve I will be praying for fair winds and steady sea-legs as I don my oilskins and lifejacket and sail for Clare Island to spend the festive season with the ex-husband (he is an islander), our three pirate princesses (they are O’Malleys and claim a connection with Granuaile), and the two canine grand-dogs Morisson and Samhradh, who always wear their best tinsel cravats for the Christmas dinner.
But before we indulge in that mammoth meal we toast all the gods of the wind and the rain, the seas and the ocean for propelling us safely across Clew Bay and the four miles from Roonagh Pier to the safe haven of the harbour in the village of Capnagower.
It may be two decades since I lived on the island but my memories of those Christmas shopping pilgrimages to the mainland will forever be etched in that pantheon of neuroses that makes me who I am. Take December 1994, there had been no ferry for weeks. The island was surrounded by walls of salt water, marine craters, swirling currents, hissing surf, cacophonies of waves crashing along the cliffs like kamikaze banshees.
The boats were berthed so far up the pier, in a maze of ropes and chains, we began to wonder of we would ever see the world outside again. Hailstones the size of golfballs battered our homes and shattered our nerves as letters to Lapland lay uncollected from the villages of Bunnamohaun to Ballytoughy, Tormore to Faungloss.
We were genuinely beginning to believe our goose was cooked as rehearsals for the Christmas concert were in full swing in the national school and we mothers resorted to saying novenas in the adjacent church.
“Lord, please let there be a break in the weather!”
How were we going to start explaining to the 24 wide-eyed pupils in the school that Santa Claus just mightn’t make it this year.
You can imagine their innocent answers.
“But Mammy, do you not realise that Rudolph flies in all sorts of weather conditions.”
When prayer failed to work, we resorted to plan B and phoned the Department of Defence.
“Could you put me on to the Air Corps please, it’s an emergency.”
The whirring up that Sikorsky helicopter cutting through the wind the following morning was like manna from heaven.
“This is Delta Hotel 245. We are letting down over Clare Island.”
Less than an hour later we were like a gaggle of geese spreading out into the shops of Westport with lists for Barbie dream houses and Ken sports cars, boardgames and boxsets, dried apricots and brussels sprouts, bottles of brandy and port, parmesan for the roast parsnips, new baubles for the tree.
Ironically, the sea had calmed on time for our return voyage so there was no need, on this occasion, to employ the dexterity of a Bolshoi ballerina to jump onboard the ferry as saltwater cascaded over the harbour walls.
Whether calm or stormy, cloudy or clear, as the last boat laden with festive fare docks up on the island on Christmas Eve, a convoy of cars and Landrovers, tractors and trailers will line the quay. Along with me and my pirate princesses, there will be university students hauling unfinished projects; aunts who have flown in from Chicago; vegetarians from London seeking asylum from the carnivorous carnival in the island’s yoga centre. A few extra barrels of beer – just in case – will be carted off to the community centre. Candles will be lit in the windows of houses all the way back to the church. There will be a faint smell of fresh hay in the crib, and Santa and his reindeers will have just crossed the sky towards Inishturk and Inishbofin, and Clare Island could very well be his next stop.