Walking home on ‘The Island’ three (maybe four?) years ago. I’d gone up to visit the Martello Tower and it was such a beautiful day I decided to walk back to the village.
The place hadn’t changed that much since I’d last been there although the Government has shut off access to the old submarine pens with a half-hearted, delapidated wire fence. The houses were all in a far better state than I remember as a kid. ‘Back inthe day, the Island’ used to suffer some pretty serious poverty and the houses were in far worse nick.
As were the cars.
I remember once seeing an oul fella parking his battered old Volkswagon on a hill in the village. The car was in such a bad state, he had to get a kid to jump out and drop a cement block in front of the tyre to stop it rolling away.
Some overseas individuals with Irish heritage seem to yearn for this ‘simpler’ time. Given the complexity inherent in the world today (plus the sheer effort necessary to operate effectively in society), I can understand that … to a degree but there are some things, none of us in Ireland want to go back to.
