Articles

There is a cartoon postcard that friends have been known to send us, entitled ‘THE GUEST FROM HELL’. It depicts a drawing room with blazing fire in front of which the club bore, refilling his glass, is regaling other guests, who are either yawning or have lost consciousness altogether. Even the dog looks frantic.
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Lucy Madden considers the paradox of death by health & safety, among other things. To the jaw-dropping astonishment of my husband, our accountant recently suggested that we might like to pay him less. This may have had to do with the alternative, as he saw it, of not being paid at all, or perhaps it was an acknowledgement that fees paid in the past are unsustainable.
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Lucy Madden longs for simplicity and a celebration of things Irish on our plates – and takes a trip to Belfast. Somewhere out there is a factory where a huge vat brims with an unctuous liquid waiting to be bottled and distributed to a restaurant near you. This ubiquitous thing called sauce appears in swirls, puddles and blobs partnered with just about anything, promiscuous as a serial bigamist. Chef may have added a sprig of thyme, some pearl barley, a dash of pernod, but we are not fooled...
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Lucy Madden ponders, among other things, the increasingly prolific (and obscure categories of) hospitality awards... We are told, and no surprises here, that airbrushed stars in magazines leave young girls stressed and wanting to drink. It's the same effect that the annual round of hospitality awards have on me, especially when we haven't received one, or even been shortlisted. They swish around, these awards, and the categories become ever more obscure. Soon there may be an award for the receptionist with the best teeth. At a stage in life when the onlv accolade I am likely to receive is a cuddly grandmother cup at the local fête, I gnash my teeth (I still have them) at pictures of the beaming recipients and sometimes wonder, in sour and bitter mood, how the hell did they get that?
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My son likes to remind his prurient mother that she once, when driving through Gloucester, suggested making a detour to see the house where murderers Fred and Rosemary West carried out their foul deeds. I can't remember this, but it is possible. I admit to a fascination with gruesome venues. I also like to see places where famous people have lived and died; cemeteries are irresistible...
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Lucy Madden muses on our affluence, or lack of it, and thinks she may have got hold of the germ of an idea which could open up a whole new tourist market in Ireland - and give back to children and teenagers some of the freedom and sense of wonder that’s been lost in recent years.
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The other day found me eating a large meringue before going to lie on my bed, as you do when overwhelmed by a large work-load. Yes, business is very slow: this country has so many bedrooms now. For premises with a large staff to maintain, it must be tough. For those like us who rely on, and now can’t afford, ancillary staff, the work still has to be done.
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Remember the couple who were spotted ‘fornicating’ on a beach in Dubai? They got off lightly, I reckon. Three months in the slammer seems lenient; in other places, it could have been death by stoning or decapitation, or worse. It only goes to show how horribly we Westerners behave as soon as the seat-belt sign is switched off at foreign airports. Then the hordes of overweight, tattooed, inappropriately dressed individuals spill out onto foreign soil. It’s all so embarrassing.
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There is a handwritten card of the utmost sadness pinned up in our local shop, and it reads: 'Polish woman desperate to work. Will do anything.' Whoever would have thought even a year ago that things would have come to this, and so quickly?
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Lucy Madden recalls a busman's holiday to Edinburgh, winding up in the B&B from hell, and begins to understand just why we should be grateful for the exceptionally high levels of inspection by the Irish Tourist Board (Fáilte Ireland).
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