Have you ever tried eating for, let's say a week, without the usual implements - knife, fork, spoon? When Thomas Mason, author of The Islands of Ireland, brought his wife and four sons to the Saltee Island some time in the 1930s, they were landed by a boatman who was told to come back in a week. No mobile phones, of course, not much radio about, even. Nor was there any certainty that attention could be attracted by signalling with a torch, or flares, that could bring the boatman plying his oars back in a hurry. They had had to wait three days at Kilmore Quay before a landing could be attempted, and two rabbit trappers, who had been weatherbound for over a week, were just arriving back on the mainland.
At mealtime Mrs Mason asked him where he had put the cutlery. `Imagine the consternation when I confessed that I had put them in one of the pockets of the car after an al fresco lunch on the way down and had forgotten all about it. No knives, forks or spoons for a week.
"We managed by using Boy Scout knives and penknives, metal tent-pegs for forks, and - necessity is the mother of invention - we fabricated useful spoons by binding limpet shells into the split ends of pieces of wood which we got from the box from the grocer to hold our food. The boys really enjoyed using these weapons at their meals - it was more like Robinson Crusoe than civilised spoons and forks."
Fantastic bird life and 37 different species on the island, mostly nesting there. But the book is not about birds. Its about islands and people. And he had many friends among the people of the islands he covers. He was a modest man, and this book, while not covering all the islands of Ireland, nevertheless gives us a picture of how we were. The photographs, mostly taken by himself, are magnificent - and particularly so of the people, many of whom wore clothing which is today considered out-of-date.
He admires the people on Aran who, he writes, are "intensely religious". And, "It is this all-pervading sense of a Divine Providence that enables them to lead happy and contented lives in circumstances that, under a materialistic philosophy, would lead to a loosening of all moral standards of comfort".
Above all, Mason was a brilliant photographer, and this book displays his expertise to the full. Published by Batsford of London in 1936, it may have gone into other editions, but is hard to get today. Not a `period piece'. But a monument to a life well lived, which brightened that of many others. Y