Well, Kylemore Abbey was a disaster. It took us an hour to drive there from where we were staying in Glencorrib and when we arrived, the first thing we found was that the nuns, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to hold an impromptu ceremony which meant the Abbey was closed to visitors. “No matter”, we thought, “we’ll go around the famed walled gardens instead”.
The signs indicated it was a mile’s walk to reach the gardens so we duly set off. We had nearly reached them when the heavens opened and more rain fell in one hour than either of us had seen in a lifetime. Mum of course had no wet weather gear at all so I gallantly lent her my baseball cap to protect her from the elements while carefully zipping myself in to my own full length Gortex weatherproof jacket with matching hood. I wanted to continue our walk in the gardens but I was irritated to find that her fervent desire was to immediately return to our car which was now a mile away. “She’s obviously not the nature lover I took her for” I thought, as we made our painful way back.
When we finally reached the car she complained she was wet through to her knickers and wanted to return to our digs to change into fresh clothes. After a lengthy and somewhat bad-tempered discussion, I finally agreed to this but said we should find the nearest pub first and have a hot toddy before continuing on. We duly found a pub and I ordered the toddies. Yer man who was serving looked first at me and then at my Mum who was sat at a nearby table surrounded by an ever-widening puddle. “Is that your wife?” says he, staring at me. Well I gave him a mouthful of abuse I doubt he had ever heard before from the lips of an English tourist. “That’s my fecking Mum”, I said. “Do I really look that old? She’s 85!”
He peered more closely. “Is she really?” he said in astonishment. “I thought she was sixty.” I softened a little. “You’re right” I said. “She’s amazing for her age – you would never think she’s been dead five years would you? Even more surprising to me is that I had her cremated in the first place.”
The Irish have a very flexible notion of time which is both charming and infuriating to the English in equal measure. Shops that should open at nine in the morning are still stubbornly shut at ten o’clock. You’ll arrange to meet someone in a pub at eight in the evening and they’ll finally arrive around closing time and not even offer an apology, as though closing time was when you really expected to see them in the first place. You find yourself standing patiently in line at the local Spar shop while the woman serving decides that now is the time she should ask a customer what really happened between Maggie Foley and the man across the road and why was she foolish enough to marry him in the first place? For the first ten minutes this is perfectly charming but after half an hour, you’ve decided that Maggie Foley was indeed a fool for marrying him and if you’d known she was going to hold you up this long you would have raised your own objection at the Banns.
And here’s another thing: have you noticed how the Irish struggle with the pronunciation of certain words and insist on either removing syllables or throwing in an extra one which is entirely superfluous? For example, instead of “film” they say “filum”. If you ask them to say “vehicle” they’ll insist on pronouncing all three syllables rather than the two they should use. So “veh-cle” becomes “veh-i-cle”. Try it next time you come across an Irish person. It will give you hours of simple pleasure…