FROM THE ARCHIVES:Given the date one should be wary of everything one reads in newspapers, as the then septuagenarian writer Kate O'Brien warned in this "Long Distance" column from her home in England. – JOE JOYCE
FOOLS' DAY, when you unfurl this Irish Times. So watch out. But you need not watch out from me. Because as I write the great feast is four days off, and it is not legitimate to start up the fooling so far in advance. But I have all my life loved Fools' Day, and usually have knocked some fun out of it.
In Spain they celebrate fools, very pleasingly, I think, on December 28th, the feast of the Holy Innocents.
On that day every newspaper in Spain carries on its front page one piece of news which is false and idiotic.
This nonsense always makes for great fun and confusion. I remember falling flat into it when I was a young woman governess outside Bilbao – when on Innocents’ Day the great and now long defunct Liberal journal, El Sol, informed me over my coffee that the Crown Prince of Japan, on board his own flag-ship, would sail up the Nervión into Bilbao that morning. My room overlooked the estuary, and I flew to my balcony in excitement – to the delight of my pupil, José-Maria Areilza. But I, old and trusted character now, dare not offer you at home any jokey pieces of non-information. In these heavy days and in these northern latitudes journalism is a grave business. So all I dare do is wish us all a very happy feast-and happy returns of it.
We do enter April foolishly, of course, hoping for the best, God help us, as the daffodils and primroses seem to insist we should. As March has roared itself out in blue-skyed, cold and windy sunlight, we have argued ourselves into boredom over the [British] Budget - and I think I have been alone in this parish in defending it as a very intelligent budget.
There can never be such a thing as an easy budget – never any more, in view of what nationalistic and ideological follies have exacted of all the world in this mad century. And although one is very sorry for poor old England – broken and uncomfortable now mainly because of victories and generosities within the easily memorable past – still, looking about at the immediate social scene, one cannot but see that it is essential to call for a check on self-indulgence, and our all-round laziness and personal extravagance.
However, we are into lovely April now, and all round here in Kent is burgeoning exquisitely. Soon the women will be out training the hops, and all the fields are turning gently in their delicate colours, from brown to subtle green, to gold, as they shoot. The orchards are at the alert, nothing yet to see except the lively promise. There are primroses everywhere, and even in my ragged little garden lovely daffodil. So we move again towards all our local pride. In a very few weeks from now Kent will be in her first glory – and that is certainly something to be glad to see.
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