‘Do you want to go back? You can go back if you like’.

‘I don’t know what do you think?’

‘You can do whatever you like’.

‘Is it better for you if we go back or if we stay as we are?’

‘It doesn’t matter to me what you do. I am the finest’.

‘Ok so we’ll stay as we are then’.

This was not a conversation about our  options as returning emigrants with the emigration officer at the ferry port in Dublin. That as usual consisted of, ‘Where are you from?’ delivered without listening for an answer as we continued on our way. Nope, this was on a very different kind of ferry leaving Tarbert in Kerry to cross the broad majestic Shannon to Killimer on the west coast of Clare, regarding our position on the car deck. Oddly he didn’t seem to care either way.

As it happens on arriving at the actual ferry port in Dublin we had some other important business to attend to. We had arranged to meet Lee and Michael Clynch at the ferry port terminal in Dublin. They are Peter Doyle’s cousin’s. The good ones who were happy to accept Peter and welcome him into their family regardless of the not unusual consequences of his birth outside marriage for which both Peter and his mother suffered such profound human cost.

You can read much more about Peter elsewhere on this site and his story is very much part of what Aisling is all about. For the final time we brought Peter home on the minibus to unite his ashes with his family. When Peter talked about his new found family he always made a sound in the back of his throat half way between a sob and a laugh, like he was overwhelmed by the feeling. I swear to god I had the very same experience handing over his ashes that day.

Aran had joined us at Quex Road church in Kilburn at 6am on Saturday to set off with us on our latest Aisling adventure. He was John Glynn junior’s best friend and John senior had bequeathed him four boxes of books, mostly Irish history and a bit of the more esoteric stuff that John enjoyed so much. Aran was living now in Kerry, having moved there with his partner to a small-holding near to Sneem. We had promised to drop the books off but now Aran would be joining us on the journey.

On the way Aran had made arrangements with his mother, who lives in Dublin to collect him and his precious cargo at the ferry port. An amicable arrangements which saved us all a six hour round trip to the south of Kerry. That was a busy day at the terminal building on Dublin’s north quay. I am afraid we may have embarrassed Aran by waving from the windows of the minibus as we headed off for the west, standing looking forlorn amid his pile of books, assuring him that his Mam would be arriving soon.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that we missed an opportunity to visit The Kingdom. Half my family is from Kerry and Sneem is where several Aisling people had come from and one even went back there to live, he has since died. Aran also turned out to be a great guy and a welcome passenger on the Aisling minibus, any friend of either John Glynn…. And so we didn’t get to visit his family and menagerie on the far western shore.

We did cross the Shannon though to visit a favourite place of mine at Foynes on the Limerick side. I have had a particular fascination with sea planes/flying boats since I was a boy. Something romantic and adventurous drew me towards these almost mythical monsters and in the early days of Aisling Joe McGarry and I visited Foynes to look at the old flying boat air terminal that was still there on the inland waterway of the Shannon complete with jetties, custom sheds and chalets from the old days of Transatlantic air travel, dreaming somehow that it could be a future Aisling resettlement centre.

What it did become was a flying boat museum as well as a museum in memory of Maureen O’Hara, great Irish Hollywood actress and patron of the museum and another early fascination of mine for very different reasons: visions of a wild flame-haired Mary-Kate Danaher striding over the technicolour heather, in John Ford’s classic ‘The Quiet Man’, once seen never forgotten.

What  a perfect fit the twin museum is coupling the romantic early days of passenger air flight and the beautiful star from the great, glamorous early days of film. The retro technology is another reason the museum is so worth a visit and there is plenty of it including vast global positioning machines that you couldn’t fit in your pocket if you were King Kong as well as film cameras and  other movie paraphernalia. So we did make it to Kerry and back again to Clare including the curious interlude in our opening paragraph.

I think this might be our third visit to Killaloe in east Clare, which is separated from her twin

sister Ballina on the Tipp side of the Shannon, soon to be reunited by a brand new bridge which is under construction and causing all sorts of mayhem on the approach roads. In the meantime drivers must make do with the single lane stone bridge as an umbilical for a few more months.

The new construction, in stone and concrete has moved away from the favoured tubular steel designs on Irish bridges of recent years and even includes some pleasant decorative curly bits (not sure if this is the architecturally correct term) under the arches. It should make a huge difference for future travelers to the endless traffic flow and provide a pleasant walking experience on the ould stone bridge when it is devoid of motor traffic.

We were staying in cottages next to the Spa Hotel alongside the canal. ‘Ha,’ said Charlie, ‘ I knew there was a canal here, Youse all said it was the Shannon and had a right old laugh at me. Well what is that?  A pork chop?’ ‘You’re right Charlie, that is not a pork chap that is a canal’. We dined in the Spa Hotel on Sunday but had missed the carvery roast dinner by a few minutes. There was always the pork chop a la carte. Most went for fish and chips and I had the duck. Charlie had an amazing thing called a beetroot burger, definitely not a pork chop. Sadly we did not have use of the spa facilities so had to work off the dinner walking along the canal side.

On the Monday we called up an old Aisling friend who had moved to Ennis and went to pick him up to catch up on his big move. After 30 odd years in London we were afraid he might have been  a bit bored in such a small town after the constant buzz of London but no, Pat was happy as could be. The first six months he had found difficult and had been on the phone looking for news pretty regularly  but he had eventually settled down and had a great flat just out of town. We picked him up at the giant Dunnes Store on the outskirts of Ennis and drove out to the Cliffs of Moher for a blast of air.

At the cliffs I channeled my inner John Glynn and Ithink his spirit was with me as we made it into the touring coach park nearer to the actual site and got a cheap parking deal. The sun was shining and it was unseasonably warm but there was a gale blowing as always up on the cliffs. That wild Atlantic wind, invigorating and a bit terrifying, lifting you up from your shoes and almost blowing you out onto the Aran islands. A cup of tea and a fancy pastry later and we were on our way back dropping Pat off where we had found him. We had to make three separate attempts to leave the car park before everyone had a toilet break at Dunnes. That cliff tea having blown it’s way through our systems like a gale.

Our sightseeing was not over yet and we took a run out to the Burren another day and it was a major treat for those who had never been there before. The mind blowing scenery like nothing else on earth made up of slabs of limestone rock crisscrossed by more rocks laid in dry stone walls as if they were boundaries to regular fields. Finally I now know the origin of the folk song: ’As We Plough the Rocks of Bawn’. I suppose it is the traditional way of clearing the roads but my god such hardy people lived here, or were they human at all, were they even terrestrial? Another very strange occurrence happened later when we were heading back home, Les was driving and I was nodding off in the front passenger seat when I distinctly heard the theme tune to Father Ted playing in my head and I looked out of the windscreen to see none other than that house. The old parochial house on Craggy Island there in it’s all too familiar glory on the side of the road just as if the credits were rolling for yet another half hour of bizarre clerical humour. We had to get out and take some pictures. T’would be rude not to.

We also got to visit the Burren perfumery which was always a favourite stop off for John Glynn on days when we passed this way. On one memorable occasion Frank was travelling with us and he bought some perfume. John was surprised and asked Frank if was for his girlfriend? ‘Yes’, he said, ‘If she doesn’t like the smell she can always drink it’. We were in time to see the film about the amazing flora that has blown on the wind and in the guts of traveling birds from far exotic places and ended up taking root in the cracks in the limestone and growing here, like nowhere else in Ireland. The phenomena has become a thriving industry for the perfumiers of the Burren and is well worth a visit. Good tea and scones too. John used to take a bucket load of the fragrances home for his wife. It made a change from the ‘duty free’ stuff from the ferry. John pulled Charlie aside one time and proudly showed her a drawer-full of perfume. ‘Jeeezus  John there must be hundreds of pounds worth in there. Did you buy it on your joint account?’

It was Brendan’s chance to visit his mother for the fourth time with Aisling. We have never had a client  who’s mother was 102 before and we take every chance to give him time with her. He is in great form after his visits and I swear it is extending his life too. It’s also a chance for us to hang out in Limerick which we have come to enjoy more and more as we get to know the city, thanks in some part to Brendan’s expert turn as a tour guide.

Most of the gang are non-drinkers these days but one, a good bit younger than the usual Aisling demographic was with us on a promise to limit his drinking to three cans of Guinness a day. This is not as easy as it sounds because there are a few pubs in the area and it is easy for Gerry to go off for a few sneaky ones, but trust has to be established and we don’t want to be too preachy about it. This works grand until a drinking partnership occurs. Sean has severe neurological problems and regularly has blackouts which he is usually very careful not to exacerbate with alcohol. We thought it was a bit suspicious that the two of them did not come on one of our outings and when we got back they were missing in the town somewhere.

We rang them both up and of course they were in the pub. There followed the usual round of denials then justifications, we left them with no food (‘no food’ turned out to be ‘no black pudding’. There was plenty of everything else). The conversation went on something like this:

‘We couldn’t get back because it was getting dark and the road was dangerous on foot.’

‘That’s ok we’ll pick youse up in a few minutes’.

‘We can’t go now we have just ordered a new round of drinks.’

‘We’ll do some shopping and we’ll come back for you.’

‘We  moved to a different pub and we are in a game of pool. Don’t come in the pub you’ll disgrace us in front of our new mates’.

I know as well as anyone the sheer joyful pleasure of a day spent in the pub making new friends and that is grand but if you have made agreements for the benefit of your own health there has to be trust on both sides or we just can’t do what Aisling was founded to do. Of course getting them out of the pub and back home was only the half of it. The blame game continued all evening and into the night until the drink wore off and we were all worn out. In the morning the magic was still working. ‘What drink? Sure we had nothing at all’. Happily there was no recurrence and we dropped the subject so as not to inflame simmering resentments bubbling under the surface.

Tom had planned to visit his brother but not until the end of the fishing season that occurred on the 30 of September. The brother seems to be giving his total concentration to the end of the fishing line until that date. He is not only a dedicated fisherman but a committed conservationist, regularly campaigning against water pollution and for clean rivers. He is known to the local fishery custodians in the southwest of Ireland as well as Fergal Sharkey has become in Britain. A thorn in their side and a great friend to anglers and all others who value clean water. That is everyone except for the privileged few who cut corners to take profits out of the system.

It’s estimated that 52% of Irish women and 48% of men emigrate in general but women tend to be more successful in putting down roots and making a good transition to life in London. Despite this we like to have a group of women with us on each trip and we have one house on this one including three returning women with Charlie as the housekeeper. Despite their better chances at survival as emigrants, many women have major problems, often with partners for whom a visit home can be a respite.

By the end of the week everyone was back at Killaloe ready to head home, if not exactly looking forward to it. We had our last meal in Ireland at the Spa hotel again and were up at 5am the following morning on the road to Dublin to catch the ferry to Holyhead. Five hours of hard driving later we arrived in Cricklewood. We dropped most people off outside the Crown, a regular occurrence for some of them back in the day. The rest in Kilburn and then Brendan and myself headed for south London, the intention being to drop him off in Brixton and drive on to Balham to leave the van outside my house until Monday when I could drop it off at Gallaghers yard in Kent. More bridge problems, traffic on Vauxhall Bridge Road was backed up all the way to Victoria, so I attempted a sneaky route over Chelsea Bridge and fell into a black hole around Nine Elms which is now a totally confusing forest of new high rise blocks, the new American embassy included (for once I agree with Trump who said: ‘They have moved the US embassy in London from a high class part of town to a shitty part of town’) . We were not in Kansas, or indeed Killaloe anymore.