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Cormac MacConnell - The West's Awake

The Oldies But Goodies

August 30, 2007

By Cormac MacConnell

RUMMAGING in the cottage attic, I found an old notebook from 30 years ago. A reporter’s notebook with spiral binding, its cover long since missing, pages yellowed, it stopped me in my tracks up under the rafters. Why did I keep it? Why did I put it away in a safe place? I have kept so very few of all the thousands of cheap jotters I’ve used up in a long hack’s lifetime. There had to be something worthwhile inside.

I descended the ladder from the attic. I made myself a cup of coffee. I began to read my shorthand outlines from some working evening in Connemara all those years ago.

Some of the early pages were missing altogether, but it was clear that the jotter had traveled up to Donegal with me at the start of that week to cover one of the several trawler disasters I covered up there in the 1970s and ‘80s for the Irish Press.

There were the ritual statements from the Gardai (police) and the rescue services, blurted interviews with the next-of-kin of three missing fishermen, finally a scribbled longhand story for the morning deadline about the recovery of two of their bodies.

And then about 20 pages were covered with the racing shorthand outlines of a yarn about a mosque going to be built in the Mayo town of Ballyhaunis (it is there now) to cater for the many Muslim workers in a meat plant there.

And then, obviously on the same trip, a brief interview with the greatly loved Monsignor James Horan of Knock about developments around his beloved Knock Airport, a single page about a road traffic accident which claimed two lives on the coast road near Spiddal. All routine stuff.

And then I discovered why I kept the jotter.

Poignantly, I never wrote down the name of the 101 year old Connemara man I was talking to for the next eight or 10 pages. That’s not unusual for me. I’ve often found that producing a jotter at the start of an interview with older folk can have an inhibiting effect on them.

I would have known the man’s name already and been conversing with him for five or 10 minutes, easing into the chat, before I’d have produced the jotter. All I wrote down on the first page was:

“102 on September 14, smokes pipe, sharp as a needle, good hearing.” And, sadly, I have no memory at all of meeting him.

Too many times back then you did interviews with old men and women who had reached the century. Newspapers loved them. Their photographs often made the front page.

Their images blur in my memory except that of one old lady who vividly remembered being kissed “full on my mouth” by a dashing English officer who dismounted from a black horse when he met her at 16 going to the well for water. Her I remember, not the others.

Sad that. They were treasure chests.

But like all hacks, I would have asked this man what was his recipe for a long life. And he would have answered slowly and at length.

And I know this now because the shorthand is perfect, not flurried under the pressure of high-speed speech. And I know I retained this jotter because this is what he said to me:

“Drink plenty of spring water. Drink it in the morning after you rise and drink it through the day and drink it at night before you go to bed. Drink it even when you don’t want to drink it because that keeps the blood thin and healthy.

“That’s the main thing, the spring water. Avoid drinking water out of the tap or the pump because they do put all sorts of s***e into that nowadays.

“Keep the main drain open. You understand what I’m saying?

Keep the main drain open. Always make certain that you empty yourself every day. You have to get it out. You have to get rid of the poison. If you go beyond the second day use the castor oil or the Epsom Salts.

“Never eat anything out of a tin. Tins are deadly. Eat nothing out of a tin or it will rot your guts out. I never ate anything out of a tin and there was oftentimes I didn’t have enough.

“There’s nothing better for you than bacon and spuds and cabbage and plenty of white fish with spuds and carrots. Chicken is mostly for women and children. It does no good for a man in my view.

“If you get wet shod (wet feet) change your boots as quick as you can. If you are wet to the skin change all your clothes as soon as you can. Constant wettings kill and cripple the best of men, and getting half-wet and not changing your gansey and frock (sweater and jacket) is even worse because the damp gets into your bones.

“Always wear good boots. You are in them for a lot longer than you are in bed.

“Don’t smoke if you can avoid it . . . though I couldn’t . . . but if you do smoke then smoke a pipe with plug tobacco. Drink your fill, but drink porter and stay away from whiskey. A sup of poitin at Christmas will do you no harm at all, but take too much of it and you’ll end up in Ballinasloe (the local mental hospital).

“Never drink on an empty belly. Never go to sleep on a full one. If you can walk somewhere and it’s dry then walk or cycle on the bicycle. Don’t play football or hurling after you cross 30. Your bones get stiffer that time…”

The pages after that have him talking about the Black and Tans and about sailing hookers to the Aran Islands with loads of turf. But I’m certain that it was what was written down above that made me retain the old jotter.

And is there not a lot of old wisdom in there? Could any medical expert today give any better advice?

I’m so sorry I don’t remember his name or what he looked like,

God rest him.

But somehow I’m sure he made his 102nd birthday that long ago September. There was good stuff in him.

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