Insider View - Keeping Cheerful

It has been a merry season. Never mind, for a moment, that we live under a tomb-like pall of grey, or that the misery of unemployment is all around us, small groups of people have got together to see that our world is not entirely without cheer.

I shall call it the Yvonne effect, after our local mayor. The putative Yvonne, a mother of 11 and a full-time laundress, somehow finds the hours to organise the community into spirit-raising events while, I must add enviously, managing to look like a teenager herself. And she is always smiling.

This year the Yvonne effect was evidenced around this country, largely to the south of our border town, as was articulated by a friend from the North who, attending the recent Monaghan Food Fair, pointed out that there was much more community spirit in the Republic.

I can’t argue with that, but our whole summer and autumn has been punctuated by a series of little festivals and gatherings celebrating or commemorating, providing distraction for those unable to afford holidays, and destinations of interest for visitors to this land.

In our local town of Clones, Co. Monaghan, there has been the Famine Commemoration. Now the famine is a subject which for a long time was taboo, and a friend asked to write a book on the subject was unable to do so for lack of documentary evidence, but it is a subject of great interest to visitors to this house, especially those of American and Antipodean origins, researching their roots. After all, many of them are the descendants of that particular diaspora.

The reckless and probably illegal destruction of our local Workhouse earlier this year caused much anger, but was alleviated by the decision to allow Clones to host the National Famine Commemoration. This prompted a weeklong calendar of events culminating in a visit by President McAleese, who with dignity and compassion, managed to make the event into a profoundly moving experience.

The only contentious issue was the decision to prettify and disguise our shut-down shops, but I am told that this often precedes visits of the great and good. We took a South African guest to the commemoration, and wide-eyed she said that the afternoon had given her more insight into the culture and history of this country than anything seen in previous visits.

On our doorstep too we have had a Fleadh Cheoil, a Blacksmith’s festival, road races, a Jazz festival, the aforementioned Food Fair, and most of these taking place under the unforgiving rain. As someone who feels personally responsible for the weather, and although most tourists will say ‘we don’t come to Ireland for the sun’, we who have to endure it year round have stopped pretending that it doesn’t matter.

Rain, almost but not quite, stopped play at Ireland’s first Mushroom Festival, which took place this autumn at Killegar in Co. Leitrim. This was the creation of Sue Kilbracken, the Australian widow of the late writer Lord Kilbracken, and the day was packed with fungal events and forays around the woods and lakes of the lovely but somewhat forlorn old estate. On this island we have some six and a half thousand species of wild fungi and a number of enthusiasts, amateurs and professionals, who want to draw our attention to their existence. That afternoon in Killegar, wet-necked and bending over a group of amanita phalloides a co-forager said to me “This is what we should celebrate in this country, our wonderful natural heritage.” It was then I began to think about the spas.

For years I have railed about the spas. Yes, they have popped up everywhere with their white interiors, flawless girls and infinity pools and we have consistently resisted developing anything resembling one ourselves. We also have felt rather smug about it. “We prefer the natural landscape” our cry has been, waving at a field of rushes and sodden sheep. But I am beginning to think we were wrong. Questioning friends who choose to stay in hotels which seem to have no attributes apart from their ‘wellness centres’ the answer is always something like this; spas are not weather dependent.

One of this country’s most successful and celebrated hoteliers told us he would not have survived the last few years without his spa. Too late for us, of course, but my holiday in the west of Ireland with grandchildren could have ended in a murder had it not been for the welcome presence of a hotel swimming pool.

Give me a warm, white towelling dressing gown after a session bird-watching in the marshes, follow it with a Hot Stone Body Massage or a softime float experience with nothing but the gentle tones of some World Music and I shall be happy. Nature and spas, we need both.