August 2008 – For the fainthearted . . .

Seventy years later

Sitting under grey skies, looking out at Atlantic rollers, I finished the fourth volume of Sean O’Casey’s seven volume autobiography. O’Casey’s departure from Ireland at the end of “Innishfallen, Fare Thee Well”, (the title he gives to volume four), marks his leaving, in 1938, of a country that had become something very different from the republic of which O’Casey had dreamed when secretary of the Irish Citizen Army. O’Casey finds himself on the margins – a Protestant in a country overwhelmingly dominated by the Roman Catholic hierarchy; a socialist in …

Electronic problems

There is an ambivalent relationship with technology here. To find a Wifi connection requires a ten minute walk down the road to a campsite bar where a card for three hours costs €18 and gives a connection almost as slow as the days of dial up internet. Even moments when it seems that the 21st Century might have arrived, the old ways persist.

Last night marked the beginning of the French domestic rugby season. Why the first round of matches should take place at 7 o’clock on a Tuesday evening …

The sea shall give up . . .

Sitting staring fixedly out to sea, the scene was something from a child’s picturebook. The water was a deep blue, and in a gentle breeze a yacht made its way across the corner of the Bay of Biscay; it sails, matching white triangles, worthy of inclusion in those primary school depictions of a day at the seaside. The lateness of season meant the beach was almost empty. The water was so placid that the waves broke no higher than the knees of a young couple who walked along the shoreline, …

If only it had rained

After a wet and misty morning, the cloud finally broke and bright Basque sunshine lit the coast. This was what brought people here, the vast sweeping white beaches that ran on forever. The whole of the country could be here and it would not be crowded.

We walked to the beach. Massive Atlantic waves pounded the sand, making a spectacular scene and a dangerous place. Red flags and large notices forbade bathing; only a fool would endanger their life by going into that water.

We walked a couple of miles …

Age no barrier

The two sisters sat looking through old school photographs. Faces from the 1930s stared at the camera with a freshness that could have come from that morning. It was hard to imagine that the lacrosse and hockey teams had probably been long ago called to a different league.

“My friend Kay used to play in that team”, said one sister. At eighty-eight, she was two years the younger of the pair.

“Where did Kay live?”

“Oh, she and her husband still live in England”.

The younger sister pondered for a …

The day

Not for the first time, the BBC television drama series Our Friends in the North came to mind. Hailed as one of the greatest BBC productions of the 1990s, it concludes in a moment both simple and profound.

Do you remember the bit?

The four friends from thirty years previously have gathered in Nicky’s house after his mother’s funeral. Mary agrees to meet Nicky for lunch the next day. you get the feeling that yet another opportunity is going to be lost, that it will be another of lost moment. …