Ferg, reluctatntly having his pic taken after scampering up Croagh Patrick in August. A day perhaps most memorable for - not raining at all.
Monday 20 October 2008
Saturday 21 June 2008
Perhaps it’s my age.
So many small changes – and most of them irritating.
Come out of Westport on the Louisburgh road, and the bulldozers are going in again on a little bit of wet meadow. 29 exclusive and luxurious new homes. All with splendid views, of course.
And it’s the same where ever you turn. We are supposed to be on the brink of a housing crash, and yet there’s speculative building still all over Mayo and the west. In Westport alone there’s Cedar Place out by the GAA ground, a huge Stalinist-style development out towards Ballinrobe, another by the fire station.
I’ve no doubt some of the accommodation is excellent, the designs striking. But taken as a whole these developments threaten the character of Ireland’s handsomest town. And the families who can be persuaded to live in them expose the frailty of Westport’s infrastructure.
The fact is that Westport is verging on dysfunction. It is bursting. You cannot drive through it. When you do fight your way in, you cannot park. Best stay away in the middle of the day now - ‘till October.
* * *
We have a grand morning out at Clew Bay golf course, Claggan. Fears that it might have to close late last year seem unfounded – the course looks a picture, the greens have had work to them, new flags in the pins.
The view from the fifth tee is one of the best in golf. Yachts in the bay at Roscahill are a kaleidoscope of colour, the sun glinting on Inishgort lighthouse, with the hulk of Clare Island beyond.
And I get round at the cost of just four golf balls.
* * *
I compliment my neighbour on her new car.
“So you don’t know what happened to me then?”
She tells me a terrible story.
Driving home a month ago after dark she turns onto the Roonagh road, and is chased and rammed from behind by a gang of lads – joy-riders she calls them. She ends up turning the car into a ditch and her assailants, far from stopping to help, throw a wine bottle down after her. She escapes with her life, just. She crawls out and up on to the road, seconds before her vehicle is a fire ball.
As she tells me this tale I can hear the trauma and fear in her voice. But that’s not the worst of it.
She says the Guards have an idea who is responsible, but will not press charges. The word around the village is that it is the same gang that is running amok after dark every night, when the Garda station is unoccupied, stoning house windows, preying on tourists foolish enough to pitch a tent, and turning the main street into a drag racing strip.
To add insult, her insurance company is loath to pay the bill for the Fire Service pulling her wreck out.
* * *
This is the best looking week of the year. The field between our cottage and the beach is a riot of yellow flags and butter cups. There is blossom everywhere. And late afternoon the whole expanse glows pink with orchids.
* * *
It is not until I drive off the boat at Dun Laoghaire, that I remember that the Lisbon Treaty referendum is imminent. Brits are blissfully ignorant of the whole thing, and studying the posters, pro and con, across Ireland provides the boys with a useful minor distraction.
“What will happen if Ireland votes no?”, son 2 enquires. The whole thing will be scuppered and we’ll start again, I venture. “But why would Ireland want to mess the treaty up when Europe has been so good for Ireland – and why are the farmers against it?”, he demands. I say it has something to do the World Trade Agreement. “What has that got to do with Lisbon?”.
I have no ready answer, and study the road.
* * *
One of the great frustrations of following the property market in Ireland is the coy tradition of auctioneers not advertising sale prices.
In England, brazen estate agents have no such qualms, and so weak is the market there now that sellers are even showing off how much they have dropped their prices in recent weeks.
So here is a revealing straw in the wind.
Page 63 of last week’s Mayo News. Houses for sale – with the prices quoted.
And if that’s not shock enough, then the identity of one of the cottages for sale certainly is. 300,000 euros, stunning location. I once bought that house for 65,000 punts. Now there is property price inflation for you.
* * *
We follow the morning sun out to Silver Strand. The sea is glass still and azure. There is no one parked. Son 2 and I have the beach to ourselves.
We mess with a ball for an hour or so and then go out way along the headland to fish. We climb down onto a stone ledge and cast out with a heavy three barbed mackerel lure (this is important).
Then it is Son 2’s go. He gets into position and I take a few steps back, but he sends the rod back over his shoulder and the lure whips round and …hits me in the face. After the first shock, I realise that I am hooked through the nose and upper lip.
I cannot shift the hooks, and as I struggle the barbs dig in deeper. My son is on the point of tears, and there is nothing to do but cut the line and clamber up with the metal still attached.
In the end this is a happy story. But I apologise for the bloody fright I gave five French women walking up towards us, and I must thank the English people who had the sense to help me to strap the lure to my face before I drove back to town, one hand on the metal weight, one on the wheel – not many gear changes.
And most of all, I thank the doctor who gave up her lunch hour to clean me up and cut the hooks out of me.
“What were you fishing for?”, she asks. “For pleasure”, I say, trying not to laugh.
Son 1 says , “That’s the most you have ever caught Dad”, and both boys now refer to me as Captain Hook. Secretly I am hoping that when the stitches do come out I’ll be left with a modest, piratical scar.
“You are going to look as bad tempered as you usually are”, I am advised. No doubt it is my age.
And it’s the same where ever you turn. We are supposed to be on the brink of a housing crash, and yet there’s speculative building still all over Mayo and the west. In Westport alone there’s Cedar Place out by the GAA ground, a huge Stalinist-style development out towards Ballinrobe, another by the fire station.
I’ve no doubt some of the accommodation is excellent, the designs striking. But taken as a whole these developments threaten the character of Ireland’s handsomest town. And the families who can be persuaded to live in them expose the frailty of Westport’s infrastructure.
The fact is that Westport is verging on dysfunction. It is bursting. You cannot drive through it. When you do fight your way in, you cannot park. Best stay away in the middle of the day now - ‘till October.
* * *
We have a grand morning out at Clew Bay golf course, Claggan. Fears that it might have to close late last year seem unfounded – the course looks a picture, the greens have had work to them, new flags in the pins.
The view from the fifth tee is one of the best in golf. Yachts in the bay at Roscahill are a kaleidoscope of colour, the sun glinting on Inishgort lighthouse, with the hulk of Clare Island beyond.
And I get round at the cost of just four golf balls.
* * *
I compliment my neighbour on her new car.
“So you don’t know what happened to me then?”
She tells me a terrible story.
Driving home a month ago after dark she turns onto the Roonagh road, and is chased and rammed from behind by a gang of lads – joy-riders she calls them. She ends up turning the car into a ditch and her assailants, far from stopping to help, throw a wine bottle down after her. She escapes with her life, just. She crawls out and up on to the road, seconds before her vehicle is a fire ball.
As she tells me this tale I can hear the trauma and fear in her voice. But that’s not the worst of it.
She says the Guards have an idea who is responsible, but will not press charges. The word around the village is that it is the same gang that is running amok after dark every night, when the Garda station is unoccupied, stoning house windows, preying on tourists foolish enough to pitch a tent, and turning the main street into a drag racing strip.
To add insult, her insurance company is loath to pay the bill for the Fire Service pulling her wreck out.
* * *
This is the best looking week of the year. The field between our cottage and the beach is a riot of yellow flags and butter cups. There is blossom everywhere. And late afternoon the whole expanse glows pink with orchids.
* * *
It is not until I drive off the boat at Dun Laoghaire, that I remember that the Lisbon Treaty referendum is imminent. Brits are blissfully ignorant of the whole thing, and studying the posters, pro and con, across Ireland provides the boys with a useful minor distraction.
“What will happen if Ireland votes no?”, son 2 enquires. The whole thing will be scuppered and we’ll start again, I venture. “But why would Ireland want to mess the treaty up when Europe has been so good for Ireland – and why are the farmers against it?”, he demands. I say it has something to do the World Trade Agreement. “What has that got to do with Lisbon?”.
I have no ready answer, and study the road.
* * *
One of the great frustrations of following the property market in Ireland is the coy tradition of auctioneers not advertising sale prices.
In England, brazen estate agents have no such qualms, and so weak is the market there now that sellers are even showing off how much they have dropped their prices in recent weeks.
So here is a revealing straw in the wind.
Page 63 of last week’s Mayo News. Houses for sale – with the prices quoted.
And if that’s not shock enough, then the identity of one of the cottages for sale certainly is. 300,000 euros, stunning location. I once bought that house for 65,000 punts. Now there is property price inflation for you.
* * *
We follow the morning sun out to Silver Strand. The sea is glass still and azure. There is no one parked. Son 2 and I have the beach to ourselves.
We mess with a ball for an hour or so and then go out way along the headland to fish. We climb down onto a stone ledge and cast out with a heavy three barbed mackerel lure (this is important).
Then it is Son 2’s go. He gets into position and I take a few steps back, but he sends the rod back over his shoulder and the lure whips round and …hits me in the face. After the first shock, I realise that I am hooked through the nose and upper lip.
I cannot shift the hooks, and as I struggle the barbs dig in deeper. My son is on the point of tears, and there is nothing to do but cut the line and clamber up with the metal still attached.
In the end this is a happy story. But I apologise for the bloody fright I gave five French women walking up towards us, and I must thank the English people who had the sense to help me to strap the lure to my face before I drove back to town, one hand on the metal weight, one on the wheel – not many gear changes.
And most of all, I thank the doctor who gave up her lunch hour to clean me up and cut the hooks out of me.
“What were you fishing for?”, she asks. “For pleasure”, I say, trying not to laugh.
Son 1 says , “That’s the most you have ever caught Dad”, and both boys now refer to me as Captain Hook. Secretly I am hoping that when the stitches do come out I’ll be left with a modest, piratical scar.
“You are going to look as bad tempered as you usually are”, I am advised. No doubt it is my age.
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