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Random and rambling as a long June evening, I continue my summertime meanderings, and this long one brings the whole clan back to the Fermanagh homelands.
It's for a kind of merry wake in honor of our late sister Maura and it's mighty, and better still I invite along my double, Professor Mark Feinstein from Boston and his wife Carol and, in so doing, inflict a subliminal scandal amongst the more conservative members of the older family in relation to our poor father Sandy. More of that later.
We held the wake in Mahon's Hotel in Irvinestown. If you are ever in Irvinestown drop into Mahon's. It is an old family hotel with a huge heart, great barmen, and the kind of spirit which sees a smile on the face of all the staff at all times. That's getting rarer every day.
We did not tell them it was a wake we were having. We told them it was a family celebration.
And that's what it was. They roomed us well and fed us well and the bar was lively. And the music and song went on until three or four in the morning. Maura would have loved it.
Her nurses and carers were there. Small Michelle, who became like a daughter, came all the way from England. And there were friends from Clare and Cork and Dublin and Kerry and Scotland.
And Cathal and Mickie were in rare good form, leading about 20 musicians and singers into the wee small hours. And we had our own priest, Father Dinny Bannon, to lend gravitas and holiness to the occasion (still important in Ireland) and the great fiddling priest Father Seamus Quinn and the showband priest, neighbor Brian D'Arcy on hand as well.
And plenty of food and drink. What more could you ask for?
But the scandal was created amongst the older ranks of the family by the appearance of my double Mark Feinstein. He was specially invited for that kind of devilment maybe!
We are so alike, he and I, that when he went into the function room first he was kissed and hugged by 50 family women of all ages, calling him Cormac! Then they heard his American accent and he explained the situation.
And then there was a considering kind of silence. And, reading the faces of the elders all day, I knew well that questions were being asked about Sandy's whereabouts all his younger life.
Didn't Sandy go to America one time when he was young to collect a small legacy? He did for sure. It was delicious to read the faces. (Mark is of Russian descent, not a drop of Irish blood!)
We broke up serenely the next day and went our various directions. There's peace in the North nowadays and it's palpable and deep-rooted by now.
The village of Kesh is of a Protestant character, and the villagers had their Orange Arches and Union Jacks and buntings already up in preparation for the marching season. I never thought I'd feel so relaxed driving under an Orange Arch.
Lunch in Bundoran on the long way home, a great wake. A mighty meander altogether.
And tonight, slightly in the line of duty, because I'm writing about Clare's country pubs nowadays for one outlet, I'm going to the Blacksticks out near O'Callaghan's Mills. This is one of the great music-and-song pubs, and there is a Denis Donnellan amongst the regulars, as good a humorous songsmith as you are ever likely to meet.
And, sometime tomorrow evening, the Dutch Nation and myself will sally south to Waterford, to the town of Dungarvan, to spend a night there and pick up a replacement retriever bitch pup for the late lamented Silke. The Dutch Nation is as excited as a child about that.
In between I've to work hard to pay for these meanders. I was on sport this morning, detailing how Kerry and Cork did Munster football battle again at the weekend, and how Kerry nearly always win-as they did again.
And then I'd a kinda short story to write for a farming supplement, and I wrote about how it was always claimed in Galway that the foundation of the success of their great three-in-a-row team of the 1960s was the sugar industry. This was because most of the team were from the farms which grew crops of sugar beet.
This crop needs intensive weeding, all then done by hand. The strong hands and wrists developed from such intensive labor converted the Tribesmen into magnificent fielders and effective tacklers. No sugar beet is grown in Ireland any more, and Galway is not doing as well nowadays.
Anyway, up to these early days of July, with the weather not too good at the moment, that's a record of the meanders to date. And then, after collecting the pup in Waterford, we have to be in Connemara on Saturday for the second birthday of my grandchild Orla. And Spiddal with its great pubs is nearly on Cuan and Niamh's doorstep!
Further reports if I survive....