Raining Outside, Sunny Inside

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Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

Raining Outside, Sunny Inside

July 19, 2007

By Cormac MacConnell

THE calendar says that the sun is in Leo this month. It’s somewhere else anyway because we have not seen it in Clare for the past drenched three weeks. It has been hiding behind the most obese grey clouds you ever saw in your life. Still, I said, that won’t stop my ritual summer meanders.

I worked in Waterford one time for a good year. They call that area the sunny south east. I did not suffer one real shower of rain for the whole year.

I looked at the map and saw that the fishing village of Dunmore East is about as far south east as you can go without falling into the sea. I booked a room in the Haven Hotel there, collected the Dutch Nation, and away we went.

It was raining heavily in Limerick. The rain began to cease about Clonmel. When we arrived in Dunmore East the sun was shining through a glittering evening. Sometimes you get it right.

The old English gentry knew how to site their big houses. A few of these, like the Haven, have mellowed with the years and have been converted into hotels.

Our bedroom window, with a balcony outside, was huge and was full of sea and surf and boats and long leisurely waves. After a while you could believe that the sun is indeed in Leo. Very fine.

The dinner was good and there was lively music in the bar afterwards. We strolled through the picturesque village which I’ve not seen for a quarter-century, and there was a buzz around the place, that midsummer thing that is good. No rain at all, though there was a fresh enough breeze coming off the bay.

Outside in the porch for a smoke late in the night, I again meet maybe Ireland’s best balladeer, Andrew Murray from Inishbofin Island off the west coast. He’s just back from a good tour of Europe and is perfecting his sailing skills through a local course. You always meet somebody you know.

We were not in Dunmore East by accident. Next morning, by arrangement, we go to Dungarvan to collect our new pup, replacement for the lamented Silke. The breeder of the already christened Anika is a lovely lady called Angela Dalton, a noted retriever expert.

She has a pleasant husband called Kevin, a young son called Kevin, two gorgeous young daughters, a huge tomcat called Bertie Ahern, a hamster whose name I didn’t bother to find out, and lovely pups.

The Dutch Nation recognizes the Anika immediately, cocky, white and plump. Her mother Tara keeps her head on my knee whilst the women are doing the paperwork, and she is a gentle old thing.

The Anika, in the way of modern Ireland, costs me as much as a small bullock, but I don’t mind at all. She sits happily on the Dutch Nation’s lap on the journey home. She whines only when she gets the scent of her mother from the sleeve of my shirt.

It starts to rain around Dromkeen, east of Limerick. It rains the whole way home.

Never mind. The pup takes to the cottage and her new surroundings like a duck to water. That’s appropriate because there are ponds in the garden. Never mind. There’s the makings of a huge crop of apples on the two trees, and we are going to have grapes again come autumn.

Next night, wandering abroad again, this time in the line of duty, I’m in the old Blacksticks pub near O’Callaghan’s Mills. It is raining again outside but its high summer within, music song and craic galore.

Even a new song from my inventive old friend Denis Donnellan who, I’ve always said, is such a good wordsmith that he could make a fortune as a copywriter if he wanted to. Somebody else of our company was doing the driving so I had a few pints.

“Lads,” I said sometime during the night, “the sun is still in it. I saw it below in Dunmore East.”

Further up the road on the Sunday, again in the line of duty, I’m in Hyde Park in Roscommon for the Connacht football final between hot favorites Galway and perennial losers Sligo. On a great day for football, though, the Sligo side tear into the favorites from the off. They score a great goal via their captain Eamon O’Hara and, even though he was injured shortly afterwards, they hang on to a narrowing lead to win an epic by a point.

It’s always heartwarming when the underdogs triumph, and their fans flood Hyde Park in their thousands just as if the Magpies had won the All-Ireland final. It’s an easy story to write afterwards.

Word seeps through from Tipperary that the Waterford hurlers defeated Limerick in a good Munster hurling final, their giant forward Dan the Man (Shanahan) scoring three goals in the process.

There is so much sport happening on the GAA front these weekends that I almost forget to check if my own Fermanagh beat Wexford in the qualifiers. They did, handily enough.

A good day, though it started raining heavily again on my way home.

The Dutch Nation confesses that Anika thoroughly enjoyed the ankle and foot of one of my prized handknit Aran fisherman’s socks. I forgive both of them.

The meanders continue even as the rain does. I’m off in a couple of hours, a mixture of business and pleasure, to the annual midsummer musicanza that is the Willie Clancy Summer School in Miltownmalbay. Tell ye about that next week, unless I’m either drowned or devoured whole in the meantime.

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