Classy and complete

IT’S A dark and moonless night on the west coast.

The Atlantic is thrashing about in the blackness, and I’m winding through Doonbeg Golf Course with my high beams on, trying to figure out which of the pearly orange lights are my home for the night, and which are mischievous jack-o-lanterns, intent on seducing me onto the windswept fairways.

I’m smiling, though. I’m smiling because nights like these make the cosiness and the end of the road all the more appealing. Pulling under an archway strewn with fairy-lights, I drive through the temporary chalets of a Christmas village, and pull up outside a stone lodge. A turf fire beckons behind glass doors. It feels like the beginning of a short story.