2012-03-30 00:48:14
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| Lovely but Horrible (Expand pics) |
Blasket
Last summer I disgraced myself on the Great Blasket in the presence of PD Templan, the man who has transliterated the entire mountain nomenclature of our blessed island for this site. He has laboured through peat hagiographies of dinnseanchas to produce hundreds of mountain etymologies,enriching our elevated experiences immeasurably. Well here's the story. On a sunny August day our family made it to the island . I brought my lads to the rocky shore and then to the high point of the island and we had wonderful views, and felt satisfied with the glories of the place and the day. The experience of the high hills is the very opposite of any kind of managed packaged cacophanous menagerie of mankind, which is why I love them. That day I resented the fact that I had had to queue to get out to the island. And then I realised that everyone wanted to come home on the same boat. More queues, on a concrete ramp leading to the sea. But I was delighted to meet PD Templan on the ramp and we exchanged warm greetings before returning to our entourages. There were different boats going to different places and all the tension that goes with uncertainty and crowds packed together like penguins. When one of the stewards shouted out: "Anyone for Dingle come to the front" our family bizarrely but innocently interpreted this as meaning the peninsula rather than the town! We were ushered forward only to discover on careful inquiry that we were wrong. So naturally we made our way back up the ramp to where we had been, embarassed that the crowd would see us as fools or knaves. Eventually those in front of us were brought off in dinghies to the bigger boats and at last we arrived at the water's edge - legitimately this time!. Then the lad who was giving out the life jackets (one's boarding card) decided to by pass us and move around us and behind us. It seemed clear to me that he had decided we had been up to no good earlier and was punishing us. I decided to ask him to explain but he seemed to ignore me. So I asked him in rather stronger terms. I felt like a South Vietnamise concubine trying to get my mixed race family onto one of the last helicopters leaving Saigon. Helpless. Furious. And madly embarassed that I behaved so boorishly in the presence of PD whose companions included foreign friends. I did not enjoy the sensation of having to meekly accept the fate of my family because ,literally, if we complained any further we could have put our return trip in doubt. I resolved to make my own way in the world for as I long as my limbs would let me, and postpone the experience of the refugee until I am consigned to a suitable nursing home when I become too much trouble for the children. And when that time comes, I hope to join with fellow rebels, a la One Flew OVER The Cuckoo's Nest, and escape once more, if only to the nearest pub.
