Monday, August 11, 2008
Damien Enright suggests we slow down and enjoy life.
LAST week, I sent off my column commenting on the absence of butterflies a day before deadline and next morning found a magnificent Red Admiral sunning itself outside my work room door.
Had I waited, I could have opened the piece with a positive whoop (like Gilbert White celebrating the arrival of the first swallow) such as "Vanessa atalanta on my doorstep, the first of summer!".
The following day, I saw a second Admiral, plus a Peacock butterfly, perched on the buddleia, but only the two where there would normally be dozens.
My friend, the midnight angler who complained not that he was bitten by midges but that he was not bitten by them and was worried about where these myriad irritants of summer had gone, sent out emails to his numerous contacts in the angling and birding fraternities and received many replies. The consensus was that this summer hadn’t provided enough warmth to stimulate the usual hatches, but may soon do so. So we may yet get eaten alive around our garden barbecues.
This week, festival fever was raging in my local village as it always does at this time of the year. The cool weather didn’t reduce the temperature of the revellers who wandered through the days — and nights — from one event to the next, each more heart-warming than the last. Bonhomie was abroad and there wasn’t a face to be seen but it was smiling. The children were running mad about the place in their little groups, all having a wonderful time. One evening, I saw a group, 20-strong, doing handstands and leapfrogs on the beach in the soft rain; never mind the rain, they were meeting friends they hadn’t seen since last year, or making new friends who hadn’t been in Courtmacsherry before. It was a family festival in the best and inimitably Irish sense of the word. The regatta was, as always, a highlight, with the village thronged and cars parked for half a mile in both directions.
I count myself enormously blessed to live in Ireland despite the forecasts of economic gloom. If I can survive here, I can think of no better place to live, and I have tried some nice ones. The values are the character of the people and the still largely natural character of the land. To enjoy these costs nothing, and there is no finer enjoyment.
For a mad decade, we had Catheen Ní Houlihan riding a Celtic Tiger until now the inevitable has happened and she has fallen off. Perhaps our feet will now be back on the ground, and values more abiding than material possessions will prevail. Perhaps we will be rescued from the brink of an unneighbourly, acquisitive society, laying waste the land in pursuit of ephemeral wealth.
My father used to recite us a rhyme when we were young, a cautionary tale about self-regarding young girls and tigers. It went: There was a young lady from Niger, Who smiled as she rode on a tiger. They returned from the ride with the lady inside, And a smile on the face of the tiger. Certainly, some amongst us profited beyond the dreams of Croesus in recent years, but before long even they may have a bumpy ride or a hard fall back to earth. I would not wish it on them; I am glad to see that, in the boom, my friends and neighbours built homes that offer comfort unknown before, and many invested wisely and modestly in a superior but sustainable lifestyle. But my heart goes out to those young couples who bought into the dream that now brings indebtedness of such magnitude they must sell their lives and leisure to pay for something they never needed from the start.
In time, perhaps the rewarding values of friendship and fresh air, the husbandry of money, the conservation of nature, the use and re-use of material goods rather than their wasteful disposal will compensate for the loss of shiny cars and shopping holidays.
Now that Ireland is returning to the real world, the majority of its citizens may be the happier for it. The culture and spiritual awareness that sustained us through hard times and engendered a character and a national literature that is the envy of the world may again prevail.
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