Category Archives: Travel

North Dublin’s Sandy Shore – 2

Posted on by
4

Memorial Road merges with Amiens Street as we head further north. This is transport city; seafaring ships on the river behind us, the railway curving along the Loopline to our left, while ahead Bus Aras forms a glass and steel embrace for the bus traveller.

Bus Aras is about my vintage. Blinking into the world in the mid fifties, just as I was, not far away in the Rotunda Hospital on Parnell Square. First mooted in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, it took ten years for the project to be realised. Dublin’s first modernist building, it was also emblematic of the modernist rebuilding of Europe after the war.

This significance sat uneasily with conservative Ireland. Bus Aras had to be scaled back from eight storeys to seven, providing a foretaste for Ireland’s perplexing fear of tall buildings. Ultimately, the building features two rectangular blocks of differing heights at right angles, over a circular central foyer, and a semicircular glass frontage jutting onto the concourse. It was designed by Michael Scott and a team of architects including the young Kevin Roche and Robin Walker. LeCorbusier was a major influence, enlivened by more ornate features such as the top floor pavillion and the flowing canopy sweeping along the frontage. This was the work of Ove Arup, structural engineer who would subsequently work on Sydney Opera House in the late fifties.

Through a changing scenario of clients and governments, the project proved expensive. Plans extended past functionality, with restaurants, nightclubs and cinema all planned for a multi purpose complex. High quality materials and various texturings were used: copper, bronze, terrazzo and oak Irish, and a number of expensive meals at Jammet’s thrown in; architects have to eat too.

A small newsreel cinema for waiting passengers ran for a couple of years until replaced by the Eblana theatre. Its small size and situation in the basement, next to the Ladies, led to detractors calling it the only public toilets in Dublin with their own theatre. The Eblana and its company Gemini Productions was founded by Phyllis Ryan and despite its shortcomings, and goings, survived as a theatre until 1995, premiering works by such major playwrights as Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and John B Keane.

Eblana is a name dating back to Claudius Ptolemaeus, or Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer and cartographer whose map of Ireland appeared in his Geographia in the second century AD. It appears south of the Boyne and north of the Avoca of Arklow, and is reckoned to be the first mention of Dublin in historical records. The placing looks right and the name could be a corruption of Dubh Linn, the Black Pool, used centuries later by the Vikings. There is no actual evidence of significant trading settlement hereabouts, way back when. Some scholars think Eblana may refer to areas further north which boast some evidence of Roman trade, with Loughshiny and Portrane as possibilities.

These days Busaras is central to a travel network throughout the city and country. You can even take the bus to London from here, via Holyhead. The Luas red line stops outside, connecting Connolly, next door, with Houston rail station away on the western end of the city. Eastwards, the Luas will continue past Connolly and on through the ultramodern development of the North Wall area as far as the point. There are bars, cafes and restaurants along the way, with Mayor Square providing a good oasis to stop and ponder the modern city.

Meanwhile, back on the banks of Amiens Street, Connolly Station is more than a century older than Busaras. Long known as Amiens Street Station, it was the terminus for the railway connecting Dublin and Belfast. This came into operation in 1844 as the Dublin and Drogheda Line. There was for a while a brief portage at the Boyne while the viaduct awaited construction. This provided the last link in 1853 and made the trip to Belfast a reality. The Dublin terminus was designed by William Deane Butler. It was built of Wicklow Granite and is distinguished by its ornate colonnaded facade and Italianate tower.

Amongst its many virtues over the years was the fact that the station bar worked as a sole oasis for the weary wayfarer. Designated a bona fide premises, that meant it could serve alcohol on days of abstinence, for the bona fide traveller. Armed only with a valid rail ticket, you could claim your reward at the bar, while luckless pedestrians waited outside in the cold and dry. The long Good Friday is no more, only Christmas Day remains as a day of abstinence; well publicly, that is. Matt Talbot would be turning in his grave. Madigans continues to serve food and drink for all who hunger and thirst, day in day out.

The Station faces down one of Dublin’s longest street vistas. The line of Talbot Street continues straight through O’Connell Street, becoming Henry Street, then Mary Street until it hits Capel Street. At 1.3km, it is almost a metric mile from the corner to Slattery’s of Capel Street. Talbot Street has nothing to do with the aforementioned Matt, it is named for Charles Cetwynd Talbot, Ireland’s Lord Lieutenant in 1820. The buildings were laid out in the 1840s at the start of the Victorian era. A certain pall of sleaze has hung in the air from early on. Monto, Dublin’s red light district in gaslight days, was just around the corner. The dreaded loopline came crashing through in 1890. Since then, such premises as the Cinerama, once the Electric Theatre, and Cleary’s pub on Amiens Street, functioned with the added sound effect of trains trundling overhead.

Talbot Street was one of three places in the capital hit by the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in1974. Fourteen of the thirty three victims died here, most of them women and including children and a full term, unborn child. The car bombs were planted by the UVF and exploded at Friday rush hour. The act was part of the Loyalist campaign against the Sunningdale Agreement which proposed a power sharing executive for Northern Ireland. Elements in British security forces, hostile to the British Labour Government, colluded. Peace would come however, twenty years later, with the Good Friday Agreement; Sunningdale for slow learners. A memorial to the victims was unveiled in 1997 and stands at the top of Talbot Street, across from Connolly.

The song Raised by Wolves from U2’s album Songs of Innocence references the event, describing the car and its registration. It features on their 2014 album, Songs of Innocence.

Boy sees his father crushed under the weight
of a cross in a passion where the passion is hate
Blue mink Ford, I’m gonna detonate and you’re dead
Blood in the house, blood on the street
The worst things in the world are justified by belief
Registration 1385-WZ

North Dublin’s Sandy Shore – 1

Posted on by
2

In contrast to the hilly southside, Dublin’s north shore is quite flat, other than the hill of Howth jutting into the bay. The coast makes an opening for the central plain, extending past Drogheda and on to Dundalk where the Cooley Mountains rise above Carlingford Lough at the Border.
It was an ancient power highway, connecting the Liffey to the Boyne and the centre of Irish power radiating from Tara. And it was a doorstep for invasion too. The Vikings established their first power bases along this coast in the ninth century, originally settling in Dundalk. The emergence of a strong high king, Niall Blacknee, forced them south to establish Dublin in around 845 AD. Originally the settlement was sporadic, but was secure by the end of the millennium, and remained so for two centuries until the Norman invasion.

Dublin was originally built on the higher ground south of the river. The north bank was farmland. The Ostmen were Danish speaking and their territory became known as Oxmantown. Further north the denizens were known as the Fingal, the fair foreigners. The fair foreigner is said to denote the Norwegian Vikings, while Baldoyle, further north, is the town of the dark foreigner, which is said to refer to the Danes. It seems unlikely that this signified distinct, contrasting complexion or even hair colour, the Vikings were generally fair in both. It may have been a note on character. In which case it was surely relative, Vikings were not usually renowned for peace, love and understanding. These days, beyond the city boundary, north county Dublin is called Fingal.

You’ll notice how the Liffey is already widening into its estuary east of O’Connell Bridge. The flow of water is tidal, with its inherent smell and rowdy host of seagulls. The land hereabouts has much been reclaimed from the shallow sea of Dublin Bay. Since the late eighteenth century, Dublin Port has developed along constructed quaysides with the silting estuary being cleared at last by the huge engineering feat of the North and South Bull Walls. While the South Bull is a direct extension of the south quays, the North Bull is farther away and out of sight, a finger extending into the bay from the distant suburb of Dollymount. The North Quays terminate at the Point and the East Link Bridge; Dublin’s modern port and docks extending further east for a bit.

As a starting point for our safari along North Dublin’s Sandy Shore, we can walk either bank down past Butt Bridge, under the Loop Line and on to the Talbot Memorial Bridge. The bridge was built in 1978 becoming then the easternmost crossing of the Liffey. It is named for Matt Talbot, poster boy of Irish temperance, with his statue standing on the southern end.

Matt Talbot was born in 1856 in North Strand and worked as an unskilled labourer. A fierce drinker from his early teens, he abandoned the demon drink at the age of twenty eight. His obsession with alcohol was replaced with an extreme, though benign, religious fervour. On his death in 1925, he was discovered to have practiced self mortification with several chains wrapped around his body beneath his clothing. He was renowned as an admirable worker and, while poor, was a dapper dresser. Some characterised him as a strike breaker in 1913, though there’s no evidence of this. Apparently he refused strike pay, donating it instead to comrades with families to support.

Photograph by Paula Nolan, a contemporary of mine at NCAD, George’s Quay. A fine photographer, she has exhibited at the RHA.

Also in 1978, George’s Quay became temporary home to the National College of Art and Design. I was one of the inbetweeners studying graphic design there as the college moved from its base in Kildare Street, between Leinster House National Library, to its current campus at Powers Distillery on Thomas Street. The surrounding area crumbled while awaiting the redemption of development. The theme song to the rubble and crumbling chimney stacks provided by U2 at Windmill Lane nearby. Today, the crystalline towers of the Ulster Bank form a significant landmark for the modern city. Begun in 1997 and completed five years later, the complex is distinguished by seven pyramid crowned glass towers and is now known as George’s Quay Plaza.

Another photograph by Paula Nolan, from the tv seat of a bus heading south on Memorial Road

Across the Bridge, the Custom House floats serenely above the waters of the Liffey. Initiated by Ireland’s first Revenue Commissioner John Beresford in 1780, it was designed by James Gandon and after completion in 1791 would be regarded as his masterpiece. The project had been much derided at the start, being built on a swamp and seen as remote from the city centre. The Corporation, enraged traders and the High Sheriff himself, sharked up mobs to disrupt construction, but Beresford prevailed. Now it’s a definitive symbol of Dublin, and stands away to the west of the extensive docklands.

Not that it hasn’t suffered its fair share of depredations in the meantime. It was burned by rebels during the War of Independence with the aim of destroying tax records. Unfortunately, the interior, the dome and irreplaceable historical records were also destroyed. The new government of independent Ireland moved quickly to restore the building. The renovation is apparent with the darker stone used for the reconstruction of the central tower. Meanwhile, Memorial Road was named in honour of those from the Dublin Brigade who died in this, and other engagements in the war.

Downriver, the International Financial Services Centre, is an undistinguished grouping of medium rise glass blocks from the late twentieth century. Beyond, lies the modern, geometric heart of the new commercial capital. Upriver, the Loop Line Bridge occludes the Fair City. This wrought iron bridge and carriageway of 1890 has attracted the ire of the aesthetically sensitive ever since.
The Loop Line linked Ireland’s South Eastern railway system, affectionately known as the Slow and Easy, with the Great Northern Railway, linking the capital to Belfast. Pragmatic trumped aesthetic, with the project crashing through the facade of the South Eastern’s Westland Row HQ, before masking off the view of the Custom House and much else to each side.

However it was functionally a boon, completing the East Coast railway axis and crucially linking the Mailboat service from Kingstown. Even more so today, providing direct access for freight and commuters between Dublin and Belfast, and all around the bay and beyond to the towns and cities of the South and East. Besides, it is a visual delight to sit aboard a train twixt Tara and Connolly and finding yourself at the centre of the joyful panorama of Dublin and its sublime River Liffey. Better yet, it is a vista unmarked by the intrusion of the Loop Line itself.

I referred to the song What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding earlier on. Written in 1974 by Nick Lowe, it became a hit for Elvis Costello in 1978 and was tacked on to the American release of the album Armed Forces. It forms a neat counterpoint to the theme of conflict implicit, if vaguely, in the songs and album title. Oliver’s Army directly references British military campaigns in Ireland right back to Oliver Cromwell. Costello was born Declan McManus in London and is of Irish descent. His songs are rich in wordplay, snappy phrases, and catchy too. He didn’t write this, but he could have. It’s a song of other times, one that fits with our times, and one for all time.

As I walk through this wicked world
Searchin’ for light in the darkness of insanity
I ask myself, is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside
There’s one thing I wanna know
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding? Oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace love and understanding?

Interior Leenane Hotel

Posted on by
1

We went to Connemara for a short break, the winter just gone. Mind, with snow falling in February, the winter’s not exactly gone yet. Back in November, we stayed in the Leenane Hotel on Killary Harbour. It’s a late eighteenth century coach inn, modernised, but with its cosy atmosphere maintained. It made an excellent base for touring Connemara and there were excellent walks nearby, and the Ashleigh Falls just up the road. As night fell at four we would return to this haven for a pint of Guinness before the blazing turf fire. The time was opportune.

In this acrylic I am standing in the lobby slowly taking in the internal panorama. All is quiet, the place all but empty. But I am there and M awaits by the fireside. Beyond at the bar, our pints are being pulled. So, poised between the cold and heat, the inner and the outer worlds, time takes a second to pause as we await our aperitif.

I am inspired here by the wonderful Dutch painters of interiors, such as Jan Vermeer, chronicler of domestic scenes of the17th century. The checkerboard tiles floors are a regular feature of his paintings. They make a timeless surface, from ancient days to ultra modern. They even suggest, in certain illustrations, Einstein’s configuration of the space time continuum. Music Lesson, Art of Painting, The Astronomer, the Geographer, Lady Writing a Letter, the latter in the National Gallery in Dublin, are amongst Vermeer’s greatest hits. These paintings feature the major art forms: writing, painting and music, and the sciences of the world and the universe. Each caught for a perfect moment in the amber eye of the artist.

That is what I am looking for in my painting, and in life I suppose. Who doesn’t? In a moment of perfection, all stories await their writing. And then we’ll see.

Fabulous Fore

Posted on by
4

The village of Fore lies in County Westmeath, in the centre of Ireland. In this part of the North Midlands, you are heading into Drumlin country. Here, the fairly flat green cloth of the central Plain crumples up into a picturesque maze of hillocks and lakes, fit for a Hobbit. Drumlin is an Irish word meaning small hill. Found all over Ireland, but particularly on the northern end of the midlands, they were carved out of the soft earth of low lying country by the retreating glaciers of the last ice age.

The area is off the beaten track. There is much of interest here, as Meath was once the centre of Ireland (Meath means middle), politically and religiously, pagan and christian. Meath and Westmeath were sundered in 1543. Around Fore there are fine walks and fishing, with a rich store of heritage. It is under fifteen kilometres to Lough Crew in Meath, with ancient hilltop megalithic tombs more than five thousand years old. Nearby, Mullaghmeen Forest walk is ten kilometres north, where Meath and Westmeath meet, overlooking Lough Sheelin along the Cavan border. The walk winds through a wonderful beech forest and climbs to a cairn marking the highest point in the county, which at 258 metres is the lowest county peak in Ireland.

Fore is nestled between the Hills of Ben and Houndslow on rising ground above Lough Lene known as Ankerland. The name Fore denotes water springs in Irish. It is said St Feichin summoned the waters with his staff to power the mill for the Abbey. St Feichin founded his abbey here in 630. Feichin, despite its sound to or ears, is quite an appealing name. It means little raven in Gaelic. He died in 665, but his foundation endured intact until Norman times despite at least a dozen burnings by the Vikings.

Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath, established the larger abbey in 1180. Benedictine monks came over from Normandy to run the abbey which remained active for a further four centuries before being disestablished in 1539 when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.

The ruins have been well preserved, comprising an impressive collection of largely intact Romanesque buildings dating mostly from the fifteenth century. The complex rises like a mirage from the surrounding marsh. It’s such an eerie feeling, like walking on water into ancient times. Over our shoulders we can see St Fechin’s abbey diminish beneath a startling rocky outcrop. Pushing on, there is a boardwalk through the marshland to take us right into the Abbey. The buildings suggest a large fortified castle and settlement of medieval times. In its heyday the complex accommodated three hundred monks and two thousand students. Now all is quiet.

You can continue the walk through to a well maintained path over low hill and woodland which loops back to the village. There a interesting carved artworks dotted along the way, drawing on the rich heritage of ancient Celtic and early Christian, as well as the natural magic of the woodland.

The modern church of St Feichin stands outside the village, the entrance still marked by the remains of medieval village gates. There are two welcoming hostelries, the Abbey House with its attractive stone frontage and the Seven Wonders Bar. This namechecks the Seven Wonders of Fore. And they are, in no particular order: the monastery in a bog, the mill without a race, the water that flows uphill, the water that won’t boil, the tree that won’t burn, the anchorite in stone, and the lintel raised by St Feichin’s prayers. He was a mighty man, to be sure. We raised seven pints in his honour.

The Fab Fore

On the Road

Posted on by
7

You know the first time I traveled
Out in the rain and snow
In the rain and snow
I didn’t have no payroll
Not even no place to go

The Snow Tree

This is the first time I’ve put together an exhibition of my paintings. Although I have been painting and drawing for as long as I can remember, my visual art has been a bit sporadic over the years. Most of my energy has gone into commissioned work or illustrations for specific briefs and events.

Rainy Night in Ripley Hills

Over the last five years I have devoted more time in generating a coherent body of work, painting on canvas. This has culminated in the show, On the Road, currently at the Signal Arts Centre in Bray.

Approaching Fairyhill

There are twenty painting in all, around the loose theme implied by the title. It’s subtitled: a travelogue in pictures. All this means, is that as soon as I step outside my front door, I am on the road. Early paintings in this process were taken from walking home at night and feature streetscapes of Bray and its suburbs.

Driving Through Skye

Farther afield, I have used photographs through the windscreen of our car, driving the highways and byways around Dublin and Wicklow. Then there are the many places I have visited over the years. Vancouver, the snowy mountains of British Columbia, the city of Granada in Spain and the highlands of Scotland are included in my subject matter.

Road to Whistler

There are many ‘nocturnes’, nighttime paintings of cities and motorways. At other times, I am painting into the low winter sun. I like the stark contrasts created, those long, eerie shadows. At other times, it’s the rain, and that great feeling as countryside or town emerges from a heavy shower, the dark veil of cloud pulled aside for the glaring sun.

Crossing Morehampton Road

It’s exciting, isn’t it? Stepping out into the world, never stepping in the same river twice. And so it goes. I keep on painting, looking for new inspiration and challenges. Most of the paintings have appeared in these pages, with prose attached to set them in their context. Here I am reprising them again.

Snowy Night in Granada

The Signal show runs to the end of the month. Thanks to everyone there, they have been wonderful. And thanks for all the comments and encouragement from folks on wordpress and facebook and all my friends here, and far away.

Vancouver at Night

But I ain’t going down
That long old lonesome road
All by myself
If I can’t carry you, baby
Gonna carry somebody else

Canned Heat recorded On the Road Again in 1967, the summer of love (or the autumn thereof).

Winter in Connemara

Posted on by
7

It’s been at least two years since I’ve been out of my native locale, Ireland’s exotic east coast. No better place, I know; still a change of scenery is good for the soul. So, as November surrendered, M and I, packed our gear into the chariot and headed way out west for a few days in Leenane, County Galway.

Crossing the Shannon, you can feel the fabric of the country shift. Athlone is downriver, the huddle of spires and domes sketched in the mist, a crown shimmering above the fading urbanity we are leaving behind.The words wild and west go well together, and hurtling along the stony spine of Roscommon, you begin to understand why. And the rain lives here.

Past Galway City and Oughterard, the mountains don’t gradually appear, but jump us from out of the drizzle, becoming somehow all the more majestic for it. The light of evening has already extinguished as we snake down the steep sides of Killary Harbour and into Leenane. Our hotel, Leenane Lodge lies a mile or so to the west, on the Galway side of the water. Nestled into the cliff face it beams a comforting glow across the slate waters of Killary Harbour.

Killary Harbour, described as Ireland’s largest fjord, or even Ireland’s only fjord, is ten miles long and up to a hundred and fifty feet deep. Killary means narrow inlet as Gaeilge. It was carved out of the mountains of Connemara during the last ice age over ten thousand years ago. It marks a spectacular border between two of Connaught’s counties, Mayo to the north, and Galway on the south. From our room we can look across the fjord in the morning at the Mweelrea range and Ben Gorm, the blue mountain. In fact Ben Gorm shifts through many colours in the shifting prism of the day, some of them even blue. Behind us are the Maamturk Mountains, and further west the exuberant spectacle of the Twelve Bens. Connemara is a name given to much of western Galway. It is a Gaeltacht, an Irish speaking area, the largest such in the country with twenty five thousand Irish speakers out of a population of just over thirty thousand. Con denotes the local Tuatha, or tribe, and na mara means of the sea.

The hotel dates back to the late eighteenth century when it opened as a coach inn. We had a room with a view, of course, and a little balcony perched above the fjord. As night fell, early enough with the encroaching mountains, it was time for the traditional December aperitif, a pint of Guinness, enjoyed in the cosy bar centred on a blazing turf fire. One could eat there, or adjourn to the adjacent restaurant. We chose the former, why change a winning team? I chose Chicken Ballotine on day one, rolled with a pudding and bacon stuffing, with potato cake and mushroom sauce. I had to be rolled out to the lobby myself afterwards. Over the next few days I moved on through the menu, which was quite a journey, one I hope to do again. There was a large residents lounge on the other side of the lobby, with well fed guests, and a well fed fire, and folk and ballad entertainment there later in the evening.

We awake to sunshine on the fjord, and good prospects for exploration and mountain gazing, one of my favourite pursuits. After a hearty breakfast, we take a walk on the Wild Atlantic Way which passes outside the hotel door. The route travels along the road for a bit, passing a tiny picturesque harbour with a trio of moored boats. About a quarter mile on a rough path rises to our left with a gradual climb to give a glorious elevated view of the fjord below. We climb a style by a singing gate, the wind playing ghostly Irish airs through its rusted bars, I swear! As we get a clear view of Mweelrea and the fjord’s mouth off to the northwest, the sky’s expression shifts again and a scowling dark veil makes towards us. So, we return whence we came, the gate now giving a medley of jigs and reels, making the road as the rain hits. And just as quickly, it’s gone again. Winter sun, soothes the blue waters of the fjord, and Ben Gorm tries on a new range of colours.

For the afternoon we drive towards Letterfrack. The road rises out of Killary into high peatland, framed by the Maamturks and the fabulous peaks of the Twelve Bens. There’s a right turn where we follow a coastal route through Tully Cross and Renvyle. Renvyle is a finger pointing into the angry sea. The landscape is alive with gulls, gannets, wind and waves. Sailing out on its promontory is the stark ruin of Renvyle Castle, built by the Joyce clan in the thirteenth century. Neighbouring clan, the O’Flaherties, captured it after massacring guests at a Joyce wedding. A more successful wedding in 1546 saw chieftain Donal O’Flaherty marry pirate queen Grace O’Malley. Grace inadvertently put a hole in her new home when her ship set off its canon in salute while moored offshore. After Donal’s murder two decades later, Grace was forced to leave the castle and return to Mayo. During the Spanish Armada in 1588, the Falco Blanco with a hundred men aboard was wrecked on the nearby reef. Survivors were held in the castle before being handed over to the English authorities. Up to three hundred Spanish survivors were executed in Galway City. After more than three centuries of excitement, Oliver Cromwell ordered destruction of the castle in 1650s and the O’Flaherties land was confiscated.

We follow the coastal road around to Letterfrack. There’s a visitor centre there, but I’m not sure it’s prepared for our visit. These are, after all, strange days. We park at the church and visit the Monastery Hostel which holds memories, some with the spirit of summers of love. We potter around a bit and share some words with the friendly proprietor. Below the church, the village forms, something of a chimera in a cold oasis. There’s a couple of bars, one with encouraging signs for traditional cigarettes. It looks cosy within, and I file it in my memory box.

We complete our loop by way of Kylemore Abbey. The abbey is home to Benedictine nuns who fled Belgium in the Great War. They came here in 1920 and set up house in Kylemore Castle, as it was then known. The castle was built fifty years earlier by English couple Mitchell and Margaret Henry who fell in love with the area when honeymooning here some decades before. One can see why. The gothic creation perfectly compliments the view, its reflection in the facing lake an illustration from a medieval romance.

The nuns established a school for girls which closed ten years ago. It now hosts academic and retreat programmes in partnership with Notre Dame University of Indiana, USA. You can visit the demesne, including parts of the abbey, its gothic church, family mausoleum and the surrounding walled Victorian Gardens between March and October with restricted access in winter.

Another trip down memory lane for us the next day. Up, to be precise, and rather a steep lane at that. We return to Letterfrack for our assault on Diamond Hill. Again, the visitor centre carpark confounds us, but we park in the forecourt anyway. Diamond Hill is an isolated peak of the Twelve Bens. Rising to one and a half thousand feet, it resembles the Great Sugarloaf behind my home in Bray, in size, shape and material. Its glittering quartzite gives it the name. The path is well maintained, with boardwalk and stone guarding against erosion. A path well travelled, but through such a green ocean of space that the sense of isolation, especially in the bleak mid winter, is profound.

We continue on to Clifden for refreshments. Clifden is the largest town in Connemara with a population of one and a half thousand. It seems a lot more, especially in season. There are a dozen pubs, plenty of cafes, shops and hotels. Clifden evolved in the early nineteenth century and knew truly interesting times in the early twentieth. In 1905 Guiglielmo Marconi built his first transatlantic wireless telegraphy station nearby. The first service connecting Europe to North America opened in October 1907. A railway was constructed to convey equipment, workers and visitors across the bog to the station. It carried celebrity aviators John Alcock and Arthur Brown in 1919 after their sixteen hour flight from Newfoundland crashlanded in the bog nearby. It was the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic and ushered in the Air Age.

I get no kick in a plane
Flying too high with some guy in the sky
Is my idea of nothing to do
But I get a kick out of you

A statue of the aerodynamic duo stands in the town centre, across the road from the hotel bearing their name. The Marconi station was destroyed by republican irregulars during the Civil War and operations were transferred to Wales, and the railway subsequently obliterated.

We return in murky rain by way of Lough Inagh, the lake flooding the floor of a beautiful and lonesome valley. At its heart is Lough Inagh Lodge, a fine, remote hotel in the old fashioned way. It dates from 1880, when it was built as a fishing lodge. It was redeveloped by the O’Connor family as modern boutique hotel. I stayed here some dozen years back, on a midweek course in watercolour painting. I have always been a painter, but back then I was sadly lapsed, and the course reawakened my interest in painting. The scenery of Connemara has certainly given me much food for thought. I have a rich store of visuals which I will soon be working on, and a determination to return as soon as I can. Meanwhile, it’s back to the Leenane Hotel, and that winter aperitif.

I get no kick from cocaine
I’m sure that if I took just one more sniff
That would bore me terrifically too
But I get a kick out of brew

I Get a Kick Out of You was written by Cole Porter for the 1934 musical Anything Goes. First sung by Ethel Merman, there have been many covers since, including Frank Sinatra, Gary Shearston and most recently Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett.

Setanta Centre

Posted on by
7

Built in 1976 and designed by Brian Hogan, the Setanta Centre is a five storey office block that looks over the lawns of Trinity College from its perch on cold, cold Nassau Street. The ground floor frontage is most famously occupied by the Kilkenny Design shop and Read’s Design and Print. It functioned as a short cut on my way to Art College in the late seventies, through an entrance off Nassau Street, which opened onto an internal square leading to the rere of the building and on to Kildare Street. I had quit my job in the Dept. of Posts and Telegraphs that summer. Their HQ, Telephone House, at the top of Marlboro Street, was also designed by Hogan. Setanta seemed to occupy a space on which the sun never shone but this was alleviated by a good mural of the Tain Bo Cuailgne by Desmond Kinney to the right of that inner space.

The Tain is the major story of the Ulster Cycle of mythology, set in the centuries immediately before Irish written history. Hero of the saga is Cuchulainn, whose given name was Setanta. The Tain tells the story of the cattle raid of Cooley, leading to a war between the kingdoms of Ulster and Connaught. Since Connaught wasn’t established that early, drawing its name from Con Cead Catha (Con of the Hundred Battles) some centuries later, we can see that the area covered is a bit elastic. Ulster dynasties at various times annexed Louth, Meath and Dublin. Setanta probably hailed from Dublin. Given his prowess at hurling it could hardly have been Louth, Meath or Ulster.

As a boy, traveling from Dublin to Armagh, he came upon the house of Culann, smithy to the Ulster King, Conor McNeasa. Culann’s hound leapt at the young hero, slavering jaws agape. Setanta, drawing his hurley, thwacked the sliotar down the hound’s throat, killing him. Culann, who one would think should have tethered the brute, was not well pleased. So our hero had to take the post of guard dog to the smithy until a replacement guard dog could be trained. Hence the name, Cu Chulainn, Culann’s Hound.

Cuchulainn at last reached the school for warriors at Navan Fort (Armagh) where he could beat the men of Ulster, combined, at hurling (not hard, mind) and came to be their hero. When Queen Maeve of Connaught launched her audacious raid to capture Ulster’s prize bull, the Men of Ulster were asleep and it was up to Cuchulainn to defend the kingdom single handed. He did this by demanding single combat at a succession of fords until Ulster’s King could muster his forces.

Fighting Cuchulainn was a fearsome prospect. Amongst his special powers, most awesome was his warp spasm. His body would reverse within its skin, his eyes would oscillate, his hair transform into fearsome metallic spikes, and his warrior’s light, shining from his forehead, become a column of boiling blood to the height of a pine tree. If you were flatsharing with Cuchulainn, it was best not to leave the cap off the toothpaste.

Horslips second album was a rock opera based on the saga. They first performed it in concert at the National Stadium in 1973. Standout track is Cuchulainn’s first person eulogy, Dearg Doom. Horslips weird and compelling hybrid of rock and traditional Irish music is probably at its best here. It starts with a to-die-for riff, based on a traditional tune, O’Neill’s March. It became a hit single in Ireland and Germany. Dearg is the Irish word for red, while Doom refers to the legend that he was shadowed by the vision of his death foretold. Combined, the title evokes the red mist emanating from Cuchulainn as he entered warp spasm. It was adapted as the song of the Irish soccer team, the first ever to qualify for a world cup finals tournament in 1990 when they reached the quarter finals. Put Them Under Pressure featured a rare example of Yorkshire Rap from team manager Jack Charlton. Larry Mullen of U2 composed the montage, including the ethereal voice of Maire Brennan of Clannad and a rousing team chorus of Ole Ole Ole.

You speak in whispers of the devils I have slain
By the fire of my silver Devil’s Blade,
And still you dare to flaunt yourself at me.
I don’t want you, I don’t need you,
I don’t love you, can’t you see
I’m Dearg Doom

This painting describes a wet day entering Setanta’s concourse from Nassau Street. There is an echo of the painting The Wanderer, by German gothic romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich’s tableau depicts a silhouette poised before the aching beauty of nature. My wanderer carries an umbrella before her like a shield. But cities in the rain, even in their plainest raiment, are jewels to behold, whether rough diamonds or polished just so.

And a Happy Christmas to yous all.

Good Day in Blackrock

Posted on by
6

Blackrock has been, since Early Modern times, the first settlement you hit south of Dublin city. It perches above the rocky shore along the rocky road to Dublin. Whack fol dol de day. From where we pass Blackrock College the town begins to emerge. The main road, which for long wound through the old village, was rerouted along the western fork at Blackrock Shopping Centre in the 1980s. This new route, Frescati Road, takes traffic towards Dun Laoghaire and the N11. Veer left and downhill for the town centre.

In olden days, the entrance to Blackrock was presided over by Frescati House. This was a grand Georgian mansion built in 1739 as Dublin’s upper classes sought property outside the teeming city. The FitzGeralds, Ireland’s largest landowners, acquired it as their summer residence from Leinster House and Carton House, Kildare. It became the home of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a leader of the 1798 rebellion.

Lord Edward had been a veteran of the American War of Independence (fighting for the British), but later took inspiration from the French Revolution and lived in France in 1792, where he repudiated his own title and was dismissed from the army. Returning to Ireland, Fitzgerald hosted meetings of the United Irishmen at Frescati, entertaining the likes of Tom Paine, writer of the Rights of Man, and Lord Cloncurry, a neighbouring landowner. However, the movement was riddled with spies and FitzGerald was betrayed by Thomas Reynolds and forced into hiding. On the eve of the planned uprising he was captured after a gunfight on Thomas Street. FitzGerald killed an arresting officer but sustained gunshot wounds and was taken. He died from his wounds in Newgate Prison in Smithfield in 1798 at the age of thirty four.

In the late sixties, the glare of development fell upon Frescati. The unremarkable exterior may have harmed its case for preservation, still, preservationists fought a thirteen year campaign before the house was demolished to make way for Roche’s Stores shopping centre in 1983.

The town itself was first noted in the late fifteenth century and was named, prosaically, Newtown. By 1610 Newtown became Blackrock. The black rock in question is limestone calp, which appears black in the rain. With the well-to-do colonising the coast in increasing numbers. Blackrock was booming by the eighteen thirties and provided a ready customer basis for the new Dublin Kingstown railway line. The construction of the railway causeway created something of a swamp north of the town, all the way up past Booterstown. In the 1870s the town commissioners tamed the part adjacent to Blackrock and turned it into a park.

Blackrock Park provides a scenic route into town and connects to the linear coastal park by way of Williamstown Martello Tower. The Rock Road entrance takes us across a rising green lawn which culminates in a twin pillar entrance against the eastern sky. To the left of this is a monument to Irish nationalism. The commemorative garden was opened in 2016 on the centenary of the 1916 Rising. The coastal views from here are splendid. Meanwhile, to our right, entrance through the twin piers takes us into the Park proper.

The ground plunges down to an attractive pond. This forms a naturalesque amphitheatre with the sloping green sward rising above the placid water. A small circular island provides an open bandstand. Time was, my friends and I would make our way here of a weekend, where we basked in those golden days with Thin Lizzy, Mellow Candle, Horslips, and, em, Chris De Burgh. That line up played here in August 1971.

What could beat a summer’s day, full of sunshine and flower power, and a vague scented mist settled over the hollow? Mellow Candle in one of their less mellow moments would launch into the manic vocalisation: toor a loor a loor a laddy, toor a loor a lay! Leading to the refrain:

I know the Dublin pavements will be boulders on my grave
I know the Dublin pavements will be boulders on my grave!

That number finished their album Swaddling Songs, released the following year, and brought their set to a close with audience and band taking a communal plunge into the pond. The waters are still and lily padded now with visual suggestions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, mythology and rebirth. But if I hunker down here, I swear I can detect an echo of those soundwaves rippling the leaves and water like restless ghosts.

As a designated route linking Blackrock to Booterstown, the park is open all hours. There’s a children’s playground, designated cycle path, and an outdoor gym area. Heading around the pond, there’s a folly on the larger island to the south and here the terrain is softened and shaded by mature woodland. Farther on there’s a traditional bandstand. You can exit the park uphill at an entrance taking you to Main Street, or, as I did, through a narrow lane along the railway line, emerging at the Station.

Blackrock Station is a grand two storey structure with a portico. The Railway Station opened for business in 1834, being the one stop on the original Dublin to Kingstown line, twixt Westland Row in the city and the terminus at Kingstown.

Seaward of the far platform stood the baths and swimming arena. Blackrock Baths were built by the Railway Company in 1839. Fifty years later they were enlarged, with designated bathing for men and women in separate pools. In 1928 they were used in the Tailteann Games, an Irish Olympics after Independence, with a fifty metre pool and a stand for a thousand spectators. Usage declined in the seventies, leading to closure in the eighties. Sadly, the Baths were demolished in 2013. You can still see their outline from the pedestrian bridge over the tracks to the south of the station.

There’s still bathing along the coast from a narrow strip walled off from the railway. This culminates a hundred metres or so on at an imposing structure. The new railway crossed the private beach of Maretimo House, property of Valentine Lawless, Lord Cloncurry. By way of compensation, a grandiose bridge and private harbour were constructed. Up until recently, the harbour included a small shelter, rendered mythic by its classical portico, but this has been demolished. The bridge itself with its walkway strung between two elegant towers, has been allowed to fall into disrepair and access is fenced off. Lawless, appropriately named in his younger years, had fallen in with Lord Edward and was imprisoned for sedition in the Tower of London in 1798. He fled to Europe upon his release and settled for a time in Rome. Ultimately he reconciled himself with British authority in Ireland, becoming a Viceregal advisor and a magistrate.

This is the end of the line for the coastal path, though it resumes shortly past Seapoint Dart Station. In between, we must return towards Blackrock station, overlooked by the elegant Idrone Terrace to our left, and climb up to Blackrock Main Street. Our route takes us through the village and along Newtown Avenue and Seapoint Avenue.

The main street is busy, with several coffee shops spilling onto the pavement. Blackrock Market is entered through an archway where it opens into a sizeable maze of stalls offering a cornucopia of fashion, furniture, arts and crafts, food and drink. While many such markets have been squeezed out of the marginal properties they occupy, Blackrock has clung on since its establishment in 1986.

I take a pint of Guinness at Jack O’Rourke’s, the brew being a malty response to the changing of the season. And very good it is too, savoured in a slice of sunlight that chanced upon the lane to the side of the boozer. Blackrock’s bars also include the Breffni, the Wicked Wolf, Flash Harry’s and the Ten Tun Tavern. There is little concession to the drift towards al fresco in the bar trade, though you can perch on the pavement outside the Ten Tun at the southern end of Main Street.

Near the top of the town, there’s a 9th century cross. This was probably a burial marker to begin with, becoming a property marker and then from the eighteenth century the focus of a tradition marking the boundary of Dublin City. Every three years, the Mayor of Dublin and his Sheriffs would journey here formally acknowledging the cross as the southern limits of the jurisdiction of Dublin Corporation.

Main Street divides into Temple Road and Newtown Avenue. Along Temple Road, the right hand fork, we come across Blackrock Dolmen. This sculpture by Rowan Gillespie is evocative of ancient days and teeters near the entrance to the Church of Saint John the Baptist. The church was built in 1845 on land donated by Valentine Lawless and designed by Patrick Byrne, an early example of Gothic Revival, inspired by Augustus Pugin. The interior holds stained glass windows by Ireland’s two masters of the form, Harry Clarke and Evie Hone.

The left fork is Newtown Avenue, which keeps us to our coastal route. The Town Hall was completed in 1865 with the formation of the Town Commission a few years earlier. Next to the Town Hall, and forming a unified three piece, the Carnegie Library and Technical Institute were built in 1905.

Newtown Avenue leads to a sharp dogleg right, to avoid running into the front porch of Newtown House. Blackrock House from 1774 is adjacent, distinguished by its two storey brick porch. The next sharp left takes us down Seapoint Avenue. There’s a narrow laneway leading to Seapoint station. This opened in 1860 when it was called Monkstown and Seapoint. To access the coast, take the next laneway on the left which leads down to Brighton Vale, a pleasant row of bungalows nestled on the shore. A few yards further on is Seapoint Martello Tower, overlooking the popular bathing place. From here the walkway curves along the lower lip of Dublin Bay to its end.

The next station is called Monkstown and Salthill. Salthill Station dates from 1837, closed in 1960, but was reopened with the electrified Dart service in 1984. This was the site of the original terminus before it moved farther east to the current location of Dun Laoghaire station in 1837. On reaching the West Pier, we begin retracing the steps we trod on South Dublin’s Rocky Shore. So, it is possible, and very enjoyable, to walk from the Liffey estuary, all the way down to beautiful Bray, County Wicklow. From Raytown to Bray town; and beyond.

Granada After the Rain

Posted on by
4

It’s on my mind, these days, to walk again in Europe after the rain. There are places to go and others to revisit. Granada in Andalusia, in southeastern Spain, is one that is calling me back. When I go back to Granada I will have a night in the white city of Sacromonte and listen to the strumming of Flamenco guitars. Last time I was there, it was a silver springtime, the Sierra Madre spiked with snow. It was cold, very beautiful, but not very conducive to flamenco nights. I explored the Alhambra and roamed through the various sectors of the city of Granada, high and low. There were even times where I could bask in the midday sun, with a drink and, as is the custom, a tapas; free, gratis and for nothing. The scattered sunshine was well seasoned with showers. Afterwards, the city gleamed anew.

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion

Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart, of Scottish band Eurythmics, wrote this song in 1983 as rain swept over Manhatten. It captures the melancholy and optimism that crackle in a rainy street. I might be singing, softly, in the rain.

I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

In this painting, I am crossing a small city square after a nighttime stroll, and a few stops to shelter for refreshment. The hour has grown late and I am making my way back to my hotel. I know the way ahead through the backstreets. There are places I might stop, such as Hannigan’s Irish Bar, or save for another day.

You might notice a nod here to Vincent Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night. I have it at home in a set of tablemats. Not the original. This is more lonely, the streets washed clean by the rain. But I sometimes think that the reflections beneath my feet, on nights such as these, are persistent echoes of the city tunneling back through time. Who knows, maybe I will get a more Mediterranean night to sink into this city, if ever I go back again.

The official anthem of Granada will be ninety years old next year. It was actually written by Mexican composer Agustin Lara. Jose Carreras fair belts it out in the original Spanish. There are English versions by Frank Sinatra, Frankie Laine and Catarina Valente.

When the day is done and the sun starts to set in Granada
I envy the blush of the snow clad Sierra Nevada
For soon it will welcome the stars
While a thousand guitars play a soft Habanera

Dublin’s Rocky Road

Posted on by
3

From Sydney Parade, Aylesbury Road heads west through the posher parts of Dublin 4. On a sunny autumn day the tree lined avenues are a slice of heaven. Veering left we’re on the Merrion Road with the Merrion Centre on the far side. The walk to Blackrock keeps to the coast for three and a half a kilometres, a forty minute walk, or four minutes if you take the Dart.

St Vincent’s University Hospital occupies a large campus at the junction of Merrion and Nutley. Mother Mary Aikenhead, founder of the Sisters of Charity in 1815, set up the original hospital at the Earl of Meath’s town house on Saint Stephen’s Green in 1834. It moved to its current site in 1970, and became associated with UCD who had moved to Belfield, just up the road, in the previous decade. It is a training centre for nurses, doctors, physiotherapists and radiographers. Ownership transferred from the Sisters to the State in 2020. Further on, Caritas Convalescent home was also established by the Sisters of Charity. It occupies four landscaped acres and the main convent building was refurbished at turn of the century.However, it has fallen victim to the Covid Pandemic and a liquidator was appointed last year, 2020.

Our Lady Queen of Peace church lies this side of the road. Its free standing spire is in the style of a Celtic round tower. Inside there is a magnificent rose window. The church was opened and blessed by Archbishop John McQuaid in 1953.

At the Merrion Gates we are poised on the cusp between city and suburb. Coast, railway and the hectic thoroughfare of the Rock Road converge. The landward side is well peppered with modern developments. To our left is mostly parkland and marsh with the Dartline along a narrow causeway and Dublin Bay beyond.

Booterstown is appropriately named. The Irish, Baile an Bhothair simply means the town of the road. Booterstown is said to be part of the ancient highway system of Gaelic Ireland. The routes connected Tara, seat of the High King, with the various kingdoms. Sli Chualann, connecting with Cuala, in south Dublin and north wicklow, is said, by some, to have passed by here. In later times it was a notorious spot for highwaymen. These days it is humming with traffic. The Rock Road practically rocks with the volume of it. Where are they all going? Where are they all coming from? The surge of metal and migrant is so constant, so everlasting that the beat becomes a bodhran, You could practically sing to it.

In Dublin next arrived, I thought it such a pity
To be soon deprived a view of that fine city
Well then I took a stroll, all among the quality
Bundle it was stole, all in a neat locality
One two three four five
Hunt the Hare and turn her down the rocky road
And all the way to Dublin, Whack fol lol le rah!

The Rocky Road to Dublin was written by Irish poet D.K. Gavan in the nineteenth century and popularised by English music hall performer, Harry Clifton. The story is about a Galway man who seeks his fortune setting off on the road to Dublin, bound for Liverpool. It was re-energised during the ballad boom of the sixties, particularly with performances by the Dubliners and Luke Kelly solo. It has, the details of its theme notwithstanding, transformed into something of a theme for Dublin Jacks. And for emphasis, Dublin has three syllables.

Something crossed me mind, when I looked behind
No bundle could I find upon me stick a wobblin’
Enquiring for the rogue, said me Connaught brogue
Wasn’t much in vogue on the rocky road to Dublin
Whack fol dol de day!

The ghost of identity with the ancient Sli Chualain might have inspired the naming of The Tara Towers Hotel. Considered a modern highrise (no, really), it cast its seven storey shadow over the coast until 2019, when it joined the rubble club. When I tied the knot with M in 83, we considered the Tara for our honeymoon night, but thought better of it, choosing the Montrose at Belfield instead. A new hotel, the Maldron, is under construction. With 4 stars, 140 rooms and 60 apartments, it will rise to a dizzying eight storeys. The Seamark Building next door also tops out at eight storeys. Like a long and shiny snake, it masks out the vista to the north west.

Booterstown Marsh emerges on our left. Defined by the building of the railway in the nineteenth century, the southern end was landscaped into Blackrock Park in 1870. Here at the northern end it remains a brackish marshland. An Taisce maintains the area as Booterstown Nature Reserve, particularly as a sanctuary for birds. While the Rock Road is the human highway, the Reserve is likened to an international airport for avian visitors. Brent Geese migrate in winter from the Canadian Arctic via Greenland while Swallows come all the way from Africa to summer here.There are Grey Herons, Kingfishers, Oyster Catchers, Coots, Mallard, Gulls and more. A small green area with benches allows you to admire this wild enclave. However, it’s best not to trample all over the wilderness itself. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a wilderness.

Next door, Booterstown Station is an original station from the 1835 Dublin to Kingstown railway, standing aloof on the causeway linking Merrion and Blackrock. Across the road the house, Glena, has an interesting heritage. John McCormack died here in 1945. Born 1884 in Athlone, McCormack was Ireland’s top tenor of the twentieth century. His fame spread across the water, bolstered during the Great War by his renderings of such patriotic British ditties as Keep the Home Fires Burning and Long Way to Tipperary. He was keen to project his Irish patriotism too. His repertoire included The Wearing of the Green and other folksy numbers as well as a sizeable chunk of the songs of Thomas Moore, including The Harp that once Through Tara’s Halls and the Minstrel Boy.

His first farewell concert was in the Albert Hall in 1938, but with the outbreak of WWII he resumed fundraising concerts for the Red Cross and the war effort. Poor health forced him to retire to his house by the sea. Perhaps he sank a few a couple of doors up in the Old Punchbowl Pub which dates from 1779. It was opened by William Skully and played host to the local lords of Merrion and Pembroke, to notorious highwaymen and, most likely, their victims. There’s Traditional music sessions on Tuesday and Bluegrass on Saturday. The atmosphere is welcoming and warm, so no need to bring a heavy sweater, although Christy Moore has played here.

Past the Dart station, there’s treasure on the wasteland, twice a year. The Circus Field hosts Duffy’s Circus in Summer and Fossett’s in late Autumn. One winter, late in the last century, we took our wide eyed youngster to Il Florilegio, performed by Circo Darix Togni, an Italian Circus who were touring. We walked a guard of honour of performers, clowns, giants, grotesques and golden winged angels. We were enthralled, if in a strangely strange sort of way. At least, myself and M were, my young son less so. Looking up he wailed: Why did you bring me to this place? At least I knew that he was never going to run away to join the circus. Mind you, all fear evaporated during the performance which was a weird and wonderful trip in time, and to a different realm.

Il Florilegio alludes to a collection of flowers, in a literary sense, a miscellany. Founding father, Darix Togni, was a major circus star in his native Italy in the forties and formed the Circus with his brother in 1953. He died in 1976, aged only fifty four, but his sons and nephews revived Circo Darrix Togni which tours internationally. That night we were part of a medieval carnival, along with performers who merged theatre and spectacle across a spectrum of moods.

From here there’s respite from the road with a linear stretch of parkland leading on to Blackrock Park. Along the way is Williamstown Martello Tower. When built in the early nineteenth century it was lapped by the sea until cut off by the railway causeway. The construction of the Park to the south further marooned it. Its rather stubby appearance results from the fact that the ground floor is now largely buried. The tower is backed by a small estate of period redbricks, Emmet Square. There’s a good looking old style bar and a take-away on the main road, but behind the busy front, neat terraces are gathered around cobbled squares. This is a small, attractive estate with the aura of a close knit community. With posh Blackrock College right across the road, it looks like something of a working class enclave.

Blackrock College is a leading secondary school for boys situated on over fifty acres of parkland. It was founded in 1860 by the Holy Ghost Fathers. Besides its high achievements and regular supply of the topdogs in politics, culture and commerce, Blackrock is possibly most characterised as a renowned rugger school. It is for this aspect of its image that its denizens, indeed most everyone in the general locale, are roundly slagged in the Ross O’Carroll Kelly books written by Paul Howard. In the media, these are the people responsible for the Dartline accent. Mind you, Howard lives in Greystones so he hardly needs to take the Dart to mine a rich vein of bourgeoisie accent and attitude. Apparently the pupils regard Ross as their hero all the same. Student boarders stay at Williamstown Castle. This was originally an eighteenth century pile whose gothic flourishes were later added by Daniel O’Connell’s election agent Thomas O’Mara. Past pupils from these pages include Bob Geldof, Flann O’Brien and Robert Ballagh, and of course Brian O’Driscoll. In BOD we trust.

And on to Blackrock Park proper and the prospect of a good day in Blackrock. But another day.