Croagh Patrick, Westport, Co. Mayo, Ireland.

 

Croagh Patrick, Westport, Co. Mayo, Ireland.

Knock Airport, Co. Mayo is claimed by proud locals to be the foggiest airport on earth; it is remote, built on a hill and, reassuringly, has a large statue of Jesus at the beginning of the runway. Once safely alongside, we walked across the tarmac, rain beating down, to find the door into the arrival lounge locked. After several minutes of waiting in the drizzle, an airport official eventually obliged and somehow raised laughter when he probably deserved complaints, by declaring, in lilting, West of Ireland tones, “It was a surprise flight, we didn’t know you were coming!”

Soon though our party (my wife, two daughters and mother) were zipping along country roads on the way to the wedding of my niece, Anne. We also looked forward to an extended three-day break in Mayo, the county of my father’s birth. The MPV toiled admirably with six of us on board and far too much luggage. When we eventually reached Westport, it was getting dark. We knocked on the guesthouse door to be met by a friendly, unashamedly ‘left-field’ landlady, dressed in floral apron,  tweed dress and a sixties beehive hairstyle.

 “Come in, come in,” she said, “I’ll make some tea. Why wouldn’t I?” 

Completely unable to answer her question we smiled broadly.  And they say it is just the English and Americans who are divided by the same language!  But we immediately felt at home here, like putting on your most comfortable slippers.

 “Where have you all come from?” she asked as she busied off to the kitchen.

 I explained that during the day we had all travelled from four separate UK cities, to which she replied:

 “Jeez, I’ll bet ye feel murdered!”

Five minutes later we were feasting on Irish soda bread and strong tea, while the landlady  explained that a ”widow woman” up the street had died that day and she was now “away to the wake”. I detected more than a slight sense of eager anticipation in her voice.

 “Just leave the crockery and help yourself to whatever you want – sorry I have to go.” And with that offer the dear woman headed for the door.

 You just don’t get that sort of hospitality in the chain hotels, even if duvets had not yet replaced eiderdowns and the owner’s cat gave us a menacing John Wayne stare.

The next day, Anne was married, romantically (Pierce Brosnan got spliced there) to Seanin at Ballintubber Abbey: that most iconic of Catholic churches, where priests had fled by boat across the lough at the back of the abbey when religious zeal consumed Cromwell.  Later we feasted, sang and danced to fast, Irish music. What a difference to English weddings, I thought, where there is a reluctance to start off the dancing. Here just about every table emptied as guests rushed to the floor. The next day, fortified by a full Irish breakfast, with black and white pudding, we strolled past the pretty blue and pink buildings, lured by the sound of the wild Atlantic hammering onto the rocks in the harbour. On our way, we counted six Guinness tankers piping the black stuff into the cellars of the countless bars as nuns strolled by.  The secular and the sacred seemed to co-exist very comfortably in this beautiful little town and the general ambience of the place was most attractive.  

The next day, I sat alone at the top of Croagh Patrick, a sharply pointed mountain, which in excess of 25,000 Catholic pilgrims climb on the last Sunday in July: Reek Sunday. I looked down on the town, the majestic Mayo countryside and the distant specks of my closest family. I felt humbled by the fact that my father had come over to Manchester all those years ago to toil and sweat to help build the city’s skyscrapers. It had been nearly thirty years since his death but we sat together on the top of the mountain that day and the pieces of my life seemed to fit together in an unusually clear and comforting way. His was not a perfect life and nor has mine been, but in my heart I heard my dad say that there is no future in the past. The chance to make the most of the years to come was what mattered more.

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