My Heart’s Tonight In Ireland

Considering I am writing this at 9.45am on a Friday morning, that’s a bit of an odd title. It is actually the title of a song by Andy Irvine, in which he reminisces about his days touring the country playing music with his band at the time, Sweeney’s Men, in the vanguard of the huge folk/traditional music revival movement that swept through Ireland & England (and indeed Europe) from the mid 1960’s through the 70’s. Andy went on to be a major player in that movement, not least through his work with Planxty.

“My heart tonight is far away across the rolling sea
In the sweet Miltown Malbay, it’s there I’d love to be
So long ago and far away but nothing can compare
My heart’s tonight in Ireland in the sweet County Clare.” – Andy Irvine

By the time I was old enough to listen to all the music from the era referenced in the song, and later when I started playing, the folk revival had pretty much passed by, or was at least waning. But for a while in the mid 70’s, as a very young boy, it held me in thrall.

I remember being on a summer holiday in Glengarriff in County Cork around 1975 (give or take a year). We stayed in a caravan park and spent a week touring the whole south west of the country in my Dad’s Vauxhall Viva. The Conor Pass, The Ring Of Kerry, The Killarney Lakes, the Dingle Peninsula, Bantry Bay and Garnish Island, The Gap of Dunloe – it’s all as clear as day in my head even now, and I was only about 7 at the time. It was superb. I particularly recall the evenings when we’d stroll into the village with Mum & Dad. They’d sit themselves down in a pub for (probably) a pint of Smithwick’s and a Bailey’s and the boys and myself would wander around exploring what was going on. In a place like Glengarriff in the summer of 1975, there was a LOT going on. Every single pub (and there were quite a few) had music of some sort going on every night, whether it was a solo singer with a guitar, or a session involving what seemed to me at the time like dozens of European hippies who spoke very little English but knew all the popular folk songs & tunes of the time. One such pub that I remember was The Blue Loo – so named because the toilets were….well…blue. The exterior of the pub itself was painted blue too. I can’t recall much of how it looked inside but in my mind’s eye it was very rustic and very crowded. I remember one of the nights I went in (the brothers frequently abandoned me to my own devices, because in Ireland in 1975 there was nothing noteworthy about a 7 year old boy wandering around a pub at night by himself) and through the much cliché’d “smoky haze”, I saw a group of people with guitars at a table singing Ralph McTell’s “Streets Of London”. Looking back at it now, they were kids of maybe 18 or 19, but to me they were the epitome of what I would call bohemian coolness and modern grown-up sophistication, not that I could have articulated it thus at the time. But at that moment, I was smitten by the look and sound of the steel stringed acoustic guitar. I sat there watching them for what seemed like hours (but in reality it was probably 30 minutes tops before I was missed – but they knew where to find me quickly enough!) The rest is history. Google tells me The Blue Loo is still there, and still blue (on the outside at least).

You might well be wondering what any of this has to do with the photo above? Nothing really, except it’s a meandering segue into today’s topic – holidays in Ireland, or more specifically the lack of them in the current situation. Like everyone else, travel plans are off the table for the immediate future, and so our usual June trip back to The Island cannot happen this year. It’s not a complaint or a whine – there are far worse things happening to people – just an observation. Over the last few nights – just after the witching hour – the Facebook Memories thing has been throwing up The Posts of Holidays Past, because it’s almost always in the last few days of May that we fly out of Changi. Sam was very grim about not going this year – to him June simply means “holidays at Nanny’s house and Supermac’s burgers”.

So last night’s (or rather today’s) tease from Facebook is a photo of which I am particularly fond. It was taken three years ago today in The Book Centre in Waterford. The Book Centre has been family run for at least four decades and is hands down the BEST bookshop in the world – that I’ve been into at any rate. Sam was intrigued to find the full collection of his favourite books at the time – the Diary Of A Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney – in both English and Irish language editions! So he got me to read passages from the Irish versions and try to translate them, and he’d check the corresponding page in the English edition to see how I did. I was very pleasantly surprised. Like a lot of folks my age, I have forgotten 90% or more of the Irish I learned in school, and cannot string a sentence together. But I can understand it reasonably well at a very basic level. I have long been talking to myself about learning it properly and getting a better handle on it than the proverbial cúpla focail. But of course, to do that, you have to use it on a daily basis – not much opportunity for that in good old Singapeór – especially with no social interaction with anybody. Oh well –
b’fhéidir go dtiocfaidh sé níos éasca tar éis an ordú dianghlasála. 😉

For now – we will content ourselves with reminiscing on trips past, and look forward to the time when we can go again.

Now I must go – Sam is hanging to use my computer and I promised it to him last night. The Isolation Sessions continue tonight – http://www.facebook.com/germythen

Slán go fóill 🙂

GM