McCourt takes a nostalgic stroll through the ashes

AUTHOR Frank McCourt has revisited the places of his wretched Limerick childhood.

And the writer of Angela’s Ashes disclosed he will have to rewrite his blockbuster, which sold nearly seven million copies.

“I left out an awful lot and I would like to make myself look better next time,” he said.

“Some day, I will write the real book about Limerick — and then look out.

“I will write about what happened to me since Angela’s Ashes, which I didn’t expect to be an international bestseller.

“It gave Limerick international attention and maybe, a lot of people said, for all the wrong reasons. But people came here and spent money. Money is money.”

McCourt took a party of 14 US friends on the Angela’s Ashes walking tour of his native city with guide Mike O’Donnell, who has been conducting the walk since 1998.

He recounted to the visitors how times have changed.

“We had no traffic lights in those days until they put them up at the corner of O’Connell Street and William Street.

“It was the big entertainment to go down and watch the lights changing as we couldn’t go to the Lyric cinema.

“I read where Limerick has the highest rate of single mothers in Ireland.”

Sin, he quipped, is now rampant. “There was no sin in my day. Limerick has changed utterly as Yeats said.”

He lamented the closure of the Franciscan and Jesuit churches. “It is sad to see institutions disappear. They gave people great comfort on the spiritual side,” he added.

The visit was organised by New York tour operator Anne Marie Victory, the tennis partner of Frank’s wife’s. “Frank and Ellen have come on cruises I organised. Frank is so generous with his time and now I plan to organise a Frank McCourt Ireland tour every year.”

One of the visitors, Bobbie Plummer travelled from San Antonio, Texas. The 88-year-old said: “I am just loving this walk around Limerick with Frank. I adore his book.”

As he headed off towards the old Leamy’s school building, which he attended as a boy, Frank joked: “Anne Marie talked to me about doing a Limerick visit. The next thing it was being advertised in the New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal.

“I was dragged into this kicking and screaming, walking around with Mike O’Donnell, getting my nose rubbed in my own life.

“All those here today have read the book and are looking for the deeper meaning and that is why they are here. If they find a deeper meaning they will get a prize — as I have never been able to find it.”