An Invitation

It¡¯s a pleasure to invite you to join me to share my experiences in running a seasonal thirty bed roomed hotel somewhere in the coastal rural west of Ireland. Most of the stories are based on fact but were written up in retrospect, they have been disguised for obvious reasons. During our time bigger and better surrounding hotels in the region became bankrupt and I still wonder why and how we managed to survive. We had emigrated from Dublin to the West with no knowledge of the Hotel business. It was the early eighties when a serious depression gripped Ireland and Blinki that is my wife and two young girls and I, suffered culture shock appearing to move back in time by thirty years. We had to adapt to a new way of life, speech, culture and people, which is pretty much what these stories attempt to do and to open a window as to how it was then, in a place that has since changed utterly and forever.

Continents

Introduction

1 Cliff hanger

2 Viva visa

3 21st birthday

4 Room 31

5 The battle of Ardgran

6 The pharmacy four

7 The green man

8 The circus

9 A killing wind

10 Eamon and the stone

11 An Orphan

12 The bottle

13 My field

14 Gannets

15 Accidents on water

16 An unsecured ladder

17 Casino Jo

18 Celebration

19 Sean P and the dancing

20 Nil Noblis Absurdum

21 Two dogs

22 Hurricane Charlie

23 Seal of approval

24 The Countesses¡¯ pidgins

25 Money in the air

26 Danger cows crossing

27 The Russians are coming

28 The lost lotto ticket

29 Dancing with Hitler

30 Good bye Aunty

1

Cliff hanger

I once owned a small hotel in the west of Ireland, where winters were long and clients in short supply .I tried to manage the hotel so that each day we hosted some kind an event no matter how small. For example, the local Irish country women¡¯s association (ICA) met on Thursday evenings in a small room next to the bar although they did not pay much for the room but were often thirsty after their meeting . The Irish farmers Association (IFA) could also be relied on to bring business , better still occasionally we had multiple bookings .One Thursday in late February during lent ,the IFA booked a meeting to educate the farmers on the use of salt licks for sheep. The presentation was by a Scotsman who I shall name Hamish Mac Nab a retired sheep farmer. Ours was a hilly area where were sheep were in plentiful supply and offered a good opportunity for salt lick sales . The IFA booked the meeting and a couple of bed rooms for the presenters plus a dinner for committee members and guests. The Scotsman and the local IFA representative were first to arrive to organize the dining room for the meeting to accommodate three hundred people; I enquired from the Scotsman if our seating plan was suitable and we agreed to some small changes, which allowed me to make the acquaintance of Hamish Mac Nab. He was strikingly tall, ramrod straight and wore a highlands tweed suit and deerstalker hat which covered a head of long gray hair , he had a lovely soft lilting voice .As I showed him to his bedroom he informed me that he bought his whiskey by the bottle rather than by the glass; we agreed a price per bottle and he ordered a bottle of Paddy whiskey to be delivered to his room immediately.

Dinner was served in our residents lounge next to the small meeting room used by the ICA, Blinki my wife did an extra good job on the food and nothing was spared on the drink, even if it was the holy season of lent. Farmers arrived from every ocean inlet and mountain top of the peninsula , transport varied from modern jeeps to battered vans with bull -wire fasteners and one old boy even arrived by pony cart. This was a mountain community, which wore hair wild, had inquisitive eyes and saw no reason not to appear in their farm clothes to meetings , generations of them had survived the torments of invasion, famine and the attentions of the revenue men; these were a tough people for a tough environment and the salt of the earth too. However, collectively in the bar they became nauseating by a combination of unwashed bodies and animal aromas.

Our bar accommodated up to four hundred people at a push and was divided in two by a stout whitewashed walls with a central arch with an opening large enough to accommodate an old piano against the wall with room to spare , the ceiling was high and had a pitched pine sheeting,. Each division had its own till and distinctive décor. One side had examples of the old ways of commercial fishing, the other featured old farming artefacts all of which were of interest to touring guests .The patrons were lined up ten deep to be served by six bar staff. I served a number of farmers who had a similar behaviour. ` Yeraboy`, they would say to me, " throw up four orange squash there, and I¡'ll pay you in minute`, settlement was always made at the opposite till ` Out of sight of their comrades , they would instruct me to `shlip' a double (whiskey) in this boy as he offered his half empty glass of orange, and then I¡¯ll settle with you". Other old boys informed me they were`` off the drink`` and I was to serve them large sherries instead of their usual pints of Guinness, which they swallowed like they were poison .The meeting commenced an hour and half late, the clients departed for the dining room except for Hamish, who and been well entertained by the locals in the meantime as he waited to deliver his lecture. He buttoned holed me, before he gave his talk with an instruction to deliver him a stiffener consisting of a half pint of whisky from his private bottle during the break.

The late start to the meeting resulted in the regulation 11.30 PM closing time to be flouted. The countrywomen¡¯s meeting had also finished late, which seemed to make the ladies as thirsty as the farmers, so the two groups became one. It was a very busy evening, at about 1.00AM I took a tour of inspection, to make certain my clients were comfortable ; I looked out the widow of the sun -lounge which gave a view of the long Hotel avenue. I saw the local police car driven towards the hotel at speed its beacon flashing. I assumed some disgruntled wife had complained to the police about our closing time. I thought quickly and locked and bolted the front door and all side doors and ushered the bar staff into the kitchen, leaving a wall to wall thirsty clients in the bar. The staff and I sat around a trestle table taking a cup of coffee, when the policeman arrived through the kitchen door which I had omitted to lock.

Mick, burst through the door and left it swinging on its hinges, he was red faced and sweaty. His Garda uniform was more dishevelled than usual as he stood in front of us, his six foot form rocking backwards and forwards in his boots. He addressed himself to me.

"Are you coming with me or do I have to arrest you?"

"Mick for Gods sake give me a break, I have closed the bar, what else can I do?"

"Boy, that¡'s not the problem, are you coming or not?"

"OK then, I¡'ll come quietly."

As we left the kitchen, Mick shouts back to Pat my manager "If you don¡¯t give that mob in the bar drink soon you'ill have a riot on your hands, and I will not be held be held reasonable. When we reached the car; Mick asks me if I had a long rope, as luck would have it, I had the mooring rope handy from my sea- boat Blinki christened the black bucket. I collected the rope from the upturned boat and threw it on top of another in the boot of the police car. I was guided into the front passenger seat, and we drove down the avenue I was warned against the use of a seat belt, as we were not going far.

"What do know about cattle" asked the policeman

"Enough to keep away from them?" I replied.

"That will do, because Mrs. Murphys little heifer is stuck on the cliff on the North road, and I can't lift her off by myself".

"For Gods sake Mick, there are 300 farmers in the hotel, why did you not get help from them?"

"Are you stupid or what? They will have had so much of your drink by now; they are no use to any one".

We reached the North road and climbed the winding path through a spinney of ancient oaks to the cliff top with the aid of a full moon. We looked down at the unfortunate heifer trapped on a narrow cleft ledge and making an awful lot of noise.

"You will have to go down and tie the rope around her" said Mick

"You're joking; you¡'ll need an army to pull her up"

"No problem". He said

Mick was gone for about twenty minutes as I watched over the animal, he had stopped enough people in cars to do the job. Others parked too, curious night revellers including some of my own returning clients, no doubt on their last warning from their wives. Everyone joined in, so there were more than a hundred people. Luckily, on the cliff top there were a couple of stout Oaks growing, each rope was given a couple of turns around each tree, the two ends were then tied to my waist and the free ends placed in my right hand, and I was lowered over the cliff edge by two teams of rope men, until I was dangling parallel to the animal supported from above by the helpers with the oak trunks acting as a brake and everyone working under Mick's commands. The idea was to secure the heifer by the ropes in my free hand by tying them around her belly , then the teams of rope men and women were to pull the animal to safety .In fairness , the idea was good, that's provided you were not the one at the end of the rope . It took a great effort to secure both ropes by bowline knots .Eventually, I managed to attach the ropes to a very nervous heifer. The teams pulled vigorously upwards, but they forgot the more the heifer rose the further I descended into a large blackthorn bush below. Naturally, I complained loudly, which resulted in the heifer being returned to cliff, and I removed from the bush .The heifer was back on the cliff again, and I was again parallel to her. She was not amused and began to kick narrowly missing me. Naturally, I complained to the rope men again, who pulled me clear of the animal, unfortunately they pulled unevenly, as one team was stronger than the other this caused the heifer to dangle vertically its hind legs kicking wildly now only inches from my head. The more they pulled the rope tighter it became around my waist almost dividing me into equal parts, and so I had to again complain. Then, Mick came up with` a master stroke which was` To have me straddle the animals back and so the heifer, and I were lifted together, which amazingly worked .The heifer by now was covered in a lather of sweat as were the rope people. The heifer and I arrived safely at the summit to my great relief , then there was a great a cheer from the crowd and the heifer got such a fright she jumped back over the cliff. Luckily, for me the brake men were experienced trawler men and had the ropes still secured to the oaks which stooped her further downward movement .``Thank God" said Mick ` As the little animal was escorted to safer ground our job is done, and I have kept my promise to the widow Murphy , and by the hokekey she gave me a hundred pounds for a drink for everyone who helped and now is the time to have it. He looked at me and we will be going back to your place now to have it, and so they did all hundred of them.

There was a great cheer as we entered the bar; reports on progress of the rescue had been relayed regularly to the gathering. The site, I had on entering the bar was Hamish seated playing the piano surrounded by farmers signing songs in Gallic on one side him and the country women doing a local set dance with farmers on the other side. Alternately, my staff came from behind the bar to either dance or sing as the night turned to morning. I knew the only sure fire way of closing the bar would be a phone call from Blinki whom we all feared, with instructions to clear the crowd. Hamish did not check out until late in the following afternoon. I enclosed a gift wrapped bottle of whisky for his journey, I will not tell what his drink bill was, and remarkably he was seemed perfectly fit. We had made sufficient money that evening to allow us to survive until the spring.

Sometimes guests are not so much fun from a hotelier point of view, but I got an early lesson on how to get by own back by a slight bit of trickery!

2

Viva Visa

Viva Visa sounds festive and in the Hotel it became a code by the staff, for " a party"! .The code was first used on a bank holiday Monday the busiest day of the year by a waitress called Ann. The dining room was full to overflowing with just enough room for the staff to serve the customers, it was a beautiful evening, all the windows were open and music from the Town fair floated across the water from the pier where a fun fair was in full swing. The music was the overture from Die Fliedermaus, the weather was calm and a blue sky sat on top of the hills that surrounded the little semi circular port, trawlers were decked in bunting. It was also the day I enjoyed playing the Maitre de Hotel , where one became a resident expert on :- Island ferry times , mass times , bus time tables , walks, best climbs up around and down the mountains , the secret site to find peregrine falcons , best beaches for surfing ,fishing and bait as well as the best pools for brown trout, white trout and salmon ,where to find - babies bottles ,disposable nappies, soothers , camp sites , restaurants ,swimming beaches, wild flowers (especially orchids ) , boatmen and the countries most scenic touring routes . So you can understand my tour around the thirty tables could take me some time. It was always a great experience to meet the customers, but it could have its downside too.

I had made my way through the tables and was talking to an American gentleman, a Mr. Rodgers, who had a party of six to dinner and is also the subject of a later story called the Orphan. We discussed his family and how happy he was now living on the peninsula with his beautiful young wife. I left his table and made my way to the final table of twelve in the room, the host, whom I did not know was talking in a very animated way, he barley waited to hear a reply from his friends. He was pasty faced with red eyes from too many drinks , he had a bull neck which extended to a corpulent stomach which was covered in an expensive suit ,under laid by a silk shirt adorned with a large gold necklace with attached gold cross. It was difficult not to notice sweat stains which soiled the ensemble rather badly , as sweat drooped from his brow and welled up from under his arm pits, which no aerosol could seal . The others five men and six women were dressed suitably for a formal occasion on the summer¡¯s night, the ladies with their bare shoulders and floral dresses and all the men in short sleeve shirts with their suit jackets hanging on the back of their chairs. However, not Mr. Peter Harris the host, who insisted on wearing his jacket and became a living breathing sauna manufacturers dummy.

"Well Sir, how is your meal?"

"Come on now, you first Darling."

"You said your fillet was tough a moment ago"

"No darling, look at my plate, there is nothing on it."

"Daphne, you said, your fish wasn't fresh isn't that so?"

"Peter, I said, no such thing, don't embarrass the gentleman, the Hake It was beautiful, the nicest I have ever eaten..."

"Dora, sorry it was you said the fish was bad wasn't it?"

"Peter, how can you do this to me, the black sole is not only finished, but so are the vegetables, it was a lovely meal thank you "

"Miriam, was your roast lamb not a little overdone and look at your plate, you have eaten nothing."

"Peter, excuse me, I have already told you that I am not feeling well, and I can¡¯t eat a thing my head hurts and my stomach is in a mess."

"I am very sorry Madam, can I give you a painkiller..."

"O! Please, can you, no one at the table has any and Peter wouldn't ask the waitress, for some reason."

"Certainly Madam , here you are you have a choice of :- Aspirin , Anadin strong weak or feeble , Neurophen , Ibuprofen , Paracetamol, fast slow or speed of light , Panadol soluble non soluble ,Codeine , Solpadine, Headex , Galveston ,Milk of Magnesia, Rennie, Lem -sip ,Actifast, peppermint, strawberry, raspberry, and orange , Vick or Venos ,and Madam the best cure of all is a long glass of ice water ."

"O yes, I have tied that, but may I please have the Solpadine tablets."

"A pleasure Madam "

"Come on Clara, you complained about your red mullet!"

"Peter, you are most unfair, I said I did like the taste of it, not the quality of the fish."

"Can I bring you something else instead Madam."

"No thank you, I just will never order red mullet again, that's all"

"Sal, what about you, you said your portion was small is that not so!"

"Peter I said no such thing, everyone is looking at us, you are ruining the evening. "

"Now men, the wine, you all had something to say about it, now's your chance to complain, you first David "

"Peter, what I said was each wine should be served in a separate glass, but you insisted on the buying the wine, a bottle for everyone, which is very generous of you. But for Gods sake, six red and six white and every one a different brand would mean if we tasted each wine separately we would need twelve glasses each."

"I see Sir; can I get some more glasses?"

"No¡­ That's all for now Waiter; I¡'ll call you personally if I need any more attention. "

"Very good Sir, please do not hesitate."

It's hard to keep a beaming smile, when you want to catch someone around the throat and keep squeezing until life is extinguished, but hay, this is the hotel business. I made my way back to Mr. .Rodgers table and acknowledged him as I passed. My right arm began to ache; caused by this huge hand attached to the muscular arm of Mr. Rodgers, which had me in a vice like grip.

"Ok, buddy you're coming with me" He said.

He lead me out of the dining room , through the front door and down the fifty meters to the waters edge ,right beside a sea holly , which I marvelled how tall it had grown, and it was now over fifteen feet . I supposed this wasn't a bad place to go swimming as I expected him to throw me into the water.

"Buddy, you can't keep this up, if you behave like this you'll be dead in a year, you haven't a clue how to manage a restaurant have you?" He said

"I am very sorry Mr. Rodgers have I offended you in some way, ­was it your meal or the service,or ...?"

"There you go again, listen, I ran a restaurant in the Big apple; I take no truck from no one. "Are you listening young fella". I saw you taking to the sweaty guy and watched you carry his ego on your shoulders for ten minutes ,as you listened to all that dribble, it would put any man in an early grave . In future this is what you do."

I thanked him for the advice and returned to the kitchen with an insight on how to manage an objectionable client. Ann who had served Mr. Harris's table was in tears, and I had to console her. I collected the Harris bill which she had made out , as per my new instructions, which were to add thirty percent to it (although we did not have a service charge) knowing that if I was queried , I was to explain that we had to supply a third extra service for him . Mr. Harris handed me his gold visa card to cover the bill including the extra eighty pounds service charge which I was instructed by Mister Rodgers to inform the staff we would drink later that night in the bar and toast Mr. Harris .. It was then that Ann pipes up with "Viva Visa Boss", there after the staff knew the more awkward the customer the bigger the service charge and the better the party. There again hotel owners can put under fierce pressure trying to accommodate clients and staff alike , even doing something as easy like booking a twenty first birthday party .

3

She was one of those people who had always been around the hotel, I didn¡¯t know her very well but she had been directed by one the staff to look for me in the grounds next to Room 31. This room was always a problem, not to make to fine a point of it, it had a terrible smell in it that came and went randomly. I had spent a lot of money attempting to solve the odour problem but to no avail .One evening I was walking in the grounds when I saw a dog badger exiting from beneath the offending bedroom which was built on concrete stilts leaving little clearance between the ground and the floor . Now I thought, I have the source of my problem, all I need to do is get underneath the floor and find the set and persuade the badgers to find new lodgings. When I tried to get underneath the floor at the rear of the bedroom I found I would not fit so I had to find someone a good deal smaller. Who would be better than young Johnny, who doubled as my Gardner and my daughter¡¯s boy friend? I must admit it took a bit of persuasion to get him to crawl under the bedroom and to make his way through the partly removed soil to the centre of the room, where he was to look for the set. He found the set as I suspected right in the middle of the room. Unfortunately, the badger was at home, and it decided that he would investigate what was happening on his doorstep and scared the life out of the young Gardner. Johnny got such a fright he went forward to escape rather than backwards so the badger was now between him and his exit. He shouted blue murder and eventually arrived underneath the bedroom overlooking the lawn. Unluckily, Johnny could only manage to get his head out under the concrete while the remainder of his body was trapped. I had to get a spade to liberate the young fellow, and it¡¯s fair to say he was not very pleased. I was not long digging when a young lady called to me across the lawn. She came straight over to me to inform me she wished to book her twenty first birthday party in the Hotel in two-weeks time, and I knew I could not say no as her father was one of the principle Skippers and owners in the port and a good client .I looked across the harbour, were her fathers boat dominated the pier, and I thought I saw him in the wheelhouse.

"I am Caith, and Father told me I am to book my party today with you to day. There will be three hundred people a sit down meal, live music and Disco later." She said

"Look here Caith; you may have noticed that I have a bit a problem here right now, could we talk about this later"?

"Daddy said it was to be booked now, and he is waiting to go to sea and insists that, we agree everything immediately".

"Look here boss, get me out of her."

"Shut up Johnny, sure haven't you plenty of time for playing silly games" she said

"Now I want a nice meal, with wine and plenty of drinks at the table.

"My necks hurting"

"First things first, I must go and get the diary, you keep your eye on Johnny"I said,

OK, so let's get this over fast."

"O thank God"

"It's to be on first of April at eight o'clock, vegetable soup, well done roast beef and baked Alaska plus red and white wine"

"Boss the pain is going to my shoulders, and I think I am going to cry"

"If you shut up for just another minute, and I will invite you to party Johnny" Said Caith

"Will you really invite me? I would love to come; really, I would but hurry up."

"Now about the band, we will want a meal for them too and don¡¯t forget the disco man"

"I don't like beef Caith and the pain is going down my back "

"What do you like then Johnny¡­ lamb?"

"Yes",

"So do I, change it to lamb." she said

"Would you mind if I did a bit of digging, and you can write in the diary?"

"Boss, careful, with that spade you're getting soil in my eye"

"Close your eyes and stop being a baby" she said

"So vegetable soup, pink lamb with two vegetables and baked Alaska it's all written in the diary."

"I don't like pink lamb; no don't stop digging either a bit more around my chin, I can't speak that easily."

"OK Johnny anything for a quiet life, we will have it medium".

"Stop fidgeting, how I can free you if you keep moving; come on start pulling yourself up."

"Now about the band, they want a power point, and drink is to be brought to them on regular bases."

"Keep digging I am nearly out."

"Just ease me a little under my chest"

"Daddy said he will phone you from the boat, to confirm everything, thanks a lot, good bye Johnny see you at the party".

"Give me your hand, well done you are out".

"Well I am not going to me to be a miner when I get older that's for sure", Said Johnny, "but it was worth the fright to be invited to the birthday party of the year."

Room 31 not only suffered from badger problems, but had a reputation for magical powers that became known to some of my clients with quite extraordinary results¡¡

4

Room 31

There was nothing, particularly special about room 31. It had a comfortable new Alexandra bed, the usual hotel bedroom furnishings with bright orange Curtains and its own toilet arrangements. The immediate view from the ten foot square picture window was of a small beach, on the right was a cherry tree perched on a slight hill and in the spring between the room and the beach is a mass of daffodils and in autumn clumps of orange monbrcia. Beyond the beach across a 100 metre channel is Gearr Island, where trawlers land fish and take on ice. To the left, a metal leading light painted green with a flashing beacon, guides fishing vessels safely into port from miles out in the Atlantic by day and night. Normally, I would not refer to any room in particular, but the happenings in room 31 are bizarre. Perhaps it was while the hotel was being built that it was said that it was constructed on top of a known fairy fort.

The case Mr. & Mrs. George Bennett

I received a booking for room 31 by name from a Mrs. Bennett for a six-day stay and she added that she had heard of the rooms' magical powers from a friend. When the couple checked in, I recognised them as well known socialites, he a footballer and she an heiress, they looked a classic couple in their late twenties, radiating health, tall, bronzed and judging by their stylish clothes and the car they drove very wealthy. I meet them that evening in the bar, before they took dinner; I could not but notice how uncomfortable they appeared to be in their own company, actually almost awkward. I thought no more of them until a few days later, when our housekeeper arrived in my office in an embarrassed state. When, I enquired as to the problem, she informed me "that the base for the Alexandra bed was in matchwood and left outside room 31". In my head, I composed my best apology, as well as quickly ordering a new bed from our supplier. Later in the day Mr. Bennett arrived at my office and asked if he could speak to me privately .As it was a beautiful sunny spring day I suggested that we would sit in the garden. Immediately, I began to apologise to him, but he raised his hand to silence me. "About the bed old man" he said, blushing crimson, "I want to pay for it". "I muttered something incoherent."I will "that's and end to it". He went on and shot a quick look at me and then stared out to horizon line .He went on¡­ "Last night during dinner my wife and I fell out rather badly. We returned to our room to sleep, but it never came to either of us. Eventually, she said. "I can't take any more I want a divorcee". Normally, I can't speak quietly in these circumstances, but I can shout. Then something happened, instead of shouting I told her how much I loved her and how I wanted her children. She said I spoke for an hour with stopping, and then it was her turn, is anything more wonderful for any man, than being told ''how much his wife loves him''? He tuned to look at me keenly, to check he had my full attention. Well, to be honest, although we are married for more than two years our marriage had not been consummated. Two years of pent-up emotions were all expressed in one night of unrestricted passion, which have led to my current embarrassment. I was afraid that by morning, the magic of the night before would have worn off, but no, our love is even greater now, even in the light of day. I am saying this to you, so that you understand why, we must go home at once, as I must stop divorce proceeding that I have initiated, unknown to my wife, and she must do the same, unknown to me."

I never saw them again. However, later I read in our guest comment book a one word comment¡­ "Healed". Later just before Christmas, I noticed in a national paper a birth notice "to Mr. & Mrs. George Bennett, with Gods bounty a daughter Alexandra Cherry 6lbs".

The diary of Miss Virginia Denner

It was mid summer when, I received a phone -call from Miss Denner requesting room 31 for two nights, and she asked that I would collect her from the bus terminus. When I found her, I discovered that she was completely blind. Unexpectedly the next day she checked out, and I never saw her again. I would have known nothing more, had the housekeeper not arrived with a diary, which she found in Miss Denners' room. I brought it to my office to find a return address; by accident, it fell open on the only used pages. I could not help but read the content, written in a spidery large hand in pencil.

Written under 15th June. "Familiarised myself with my room, must have been very tired and fell asleep. I dreamt, I had prayed to God and that he granted me one day in which I might see again after all these years from my car crash when I lost my sight. As I had not closed the curtains I woke with the rising sun shining on my face, my sheets were covered in sweat and were in a ball on top of me. I thought I could see a flashing light. I jumped out of bed; I clearly saw the outline of the room. Then the room suddenly exploded into light as the sun rose higher and my eyes ached from the brightness. I looked up at the ceiling, I could see a cobweb where a spider was eating a fly, and I could hear the beat of the flys wings as it died. I looked at the uninteresting pictures on the wall; I could see dust on the tops of the frames. I looked out the window; I saw a small beach, littered with rubbish from the port, a diseased tree with canker obstructs my view. I step back from the window further into the room and experimented walking around, when I walk towards the door, I loose my sight again but if I return again to the centre of the room it returns, quite extraordinary! Then, I look at myself in the long mirror. I gaze at my reflection and see a hideous, thin, old woman, with wrinkles, greying hair, fat and out of condition .Then, I cryed and cryed; I just want to go home. It's too much; I don't want to see what time as done to me and to the environment.

The faith of Bishop Mac Thomas

It was deep winter when Bishop Mac Thomas came to stay with us. He asked for a room, which would be well away from any noise, so I checked him into 31. He was short, tubby and baby faced, he was not genial, nor did he socialise in the bar with any of skippers or their wives. He ate well and tipped badly but behaved as though he had no problem on earth.

One morning about nine thirty, the local Parish priest arrived in my office in a state of shock. He had gone to take seven o'clock mass and found Bishop Mac Thomas dead at the altar rails of a side chapel of his church .I asked the Cannon, did he know what happened. He hesitated but continued; "I heard his confession last night". He said "that room of yours has strange powers". The Bishop he said had lost his faith; but he prayed earnestly that he might see God before he died. He dreamt that he must go to the church and pray all nightlong and his wish would be granted. I found him dead with the most radiant relaxed smile I have seen on any man on this earth.

The confession of Doctor Bruno Vandergitt

Doctor Vandergitt arrived one stormy day when it was raining heavily in mid October. He asked if he might have a room for a week, where he could see the pier on the Island. He had business on the pier, and it would be a convenient way for him to observe it from a distance. I never saw him much during the week and he nether drank or ate in the Hotel .One afternoon a police sergeant, phoned me and asked if he might speak to me privately and was shown into my office. I am here to see Dr Vandergitt he said. However, first I must alert you to what has occurred. We went on, "He came to me during the week, in a most troubled condition. He spoke of how, when asleep at night he would have dreams of hell and damnation, which even continued during the day .He decided his choices were to make a confession or face hell and damnation . It transpired; he was a murder of five people all from outside the state. He was also a drug dealer in a process of a big deal. The drugs are on the Island now where he can see the comings and goings from his room. He has made a clean breast of it to me, and we are about to make the biggest drug haul in the history of the state .He has been most co-operative and named each one of his Irish contacts. We then went together to room 31, I knocked on the door, but there was no reply. I used my passkey to gain entry and found Doctor Vandergitt, hanging dead from the electrical cord attached to the ceiling rose in the centre of the room.

The next three stories all involve the police, in one way or another, the first was told to me by an elderly gentleman who was brought to the hotel bar with his wife by his daughter as respite from his retirement home.

5

The Battle of Ardgran

At three o'clock each Wednesday afternoon Mrs.. O'Sullivan brought her parents to our bar. She would join them for one drink, leave and later return to collect them about five and bring them to the geriatric hospital where they resided. Her Dad, who was in his late eighties was a tall man ,bowed with age and had greying long blond hair and you could see even now how well proportioned his body must have been as a young man . Before she left the bar she would warn him about drinking anything other than half pints of Guinness. Her fathers name was Sean Murphy and his wife was Kathleen and a nicer couple you couldn't meet, but Sean never took a blind bit of interest what his daughter preached to him and immediately set about ordering some high octane drinks, such as a brandy and port. One day when he was on his third drink, he asked me to join him; the bar was quiet as was usual for that time of day and year, so I sat down with them to have a chat. But it was not to long before the drink was talking to me. Sean asked me, had I ever heard of the battle of Ardgran? When I confessed that I hadn't, thinking it occurred in the ancient past, but I was wrong and he looked me straight in the eye, all the while sipping his drink and went on to relate the story of what he said was, the epic of the battle of Ardgran.

" In 1970 two IRA volunteers, were on leave from active duty in the North of Ireland where they had given protection to the Catholic community on the Falls road for about a three month period. But they over stepped the mark there and had to leave the North in a bit of a hurry and became installed in a safe house in Cork City. Their names were Taidg og Brosnan and Willie Jimmy Mc Sweeny. Taidg was, over six feet with an ugly thin face which had a lazy chin attached and a patrician nose with vacant eyes set deep in his cheeks, and he spoke only when spoken to. Willie, on the other hand, was dumpy with a round face and had extraordinary eyebrows, which were fixed in the shape of an inverted U that stretched from the base of a bulbous nose to his upper cheek. They wore city shoes, brown corduroy pants and checked shirts all of which needed a good cleaning. They had been holed up now for six weeks and were bored, short of cash and in needed for some sort of sport. It was Wille who came up with the idea to visit our peninsula to combine all their objectives. They would steal a car and raid the post offices on the peninsula which is seventy miles long and had post offices every ten miles. The plan was simple they would raid the post offices on a Tuesday morning the day the childrens allowances were paid, they would cut the phone lines, (at that time, there were no mobiles phones and all calls were non dial and operated through the post office only), so there would be no possibility to summon help once the lines were cut and anyway there was a very low police presence on the peninsula with almost no chance of being caught while raiding".

"They stole an old Ford prefect car, early in the morning and set off for the peninsula armed with two pistols. The weather was a beautiful mid June day with no rain or wind and high white cumulus cloud .They arrived at the first post office at ten am, cut the phone wires, made their raid, tied up the post mistress and escaped with £1000. At the next post office, they repeated the performance; but the postmistress was more spirited and put up a bit of a fight. Taidg had no scruples. He tied the old woman to a chair, put a gag over her mouth and then savagely kicked her right leg so that it broke and hung at right angles to her knee, held only by skin. The raiders escaped laughing with the pleasure of the entertainment plus a further £1000. I happened to be passing the post office on my motor cycle on my way to Ardgran, I noticed the post office door was closed which was most unusual. As it was my Aunts shop I stopped to investigate and found my relation in a semi conscious state. I summoned help and then went in search of the raiders who I found in action ten miles away at the next post office. I passed them by and went directly to Ardgran, to alert my other Aunt who was the postmistress of Ardgran village. We quickly assembled a posse of armed volunteers to deal with the situation. The plan was one armed man was to stay with my Aunt in the post office; who was to lock the door after the raid was complete. The other members of the party would hide outside the post office and disarm the two botuns.The raid went as planned ,the door was locked behind the raiders and ten shot guns were aimed at the surprised raiders ,who offered us no resistance ."

"I knew if we handed them to the police, they would not get the justice they deserved. I suggested a coursing, you know what I mean, to hunt them the way we would a hare with hounds.(the raiders were to be the hare and our posse the hounds). The raiders were first disarmed and relieved of their booty .We marched them to the lake behind the post office which is about quarter a mile wide. We ordered, them to swim across the lake, they laughed at us and refused. A shot rang out from my gun over Willies head, and he was in the water swimming for his life, Taidg was slower to enter the water, to help him I placed the shot gun on his thigh, informing him that the injured postmistress was my Aunt, he got the message and entered the water and quickly swam after Willie. Two of us followed them in a small rowing boat. The remainder of the hunters walked around the lake to await the swimmers who took about a half hour to cross. It looked very dangerous, but in fact, the lake was quite shallow. We rested them for fifteen minutes and allowed them to wring out their wet clothing. The Bandits were then ordered to the foot of the mountain to climb a gully. It was steep and hand holds were needed to make the accent up the gray shale sandstone which could crumple to a heavy touch. Each time they stopped a shot rang out over their heads. They pleaded for mercy, so did my Aunt was my reply, they understood and didn't bother to ask any more, resigned to their fate. We reached the ridge a thousand feet above the village overlooking the Dingle peninsula and the Islands where the monks preserved and gave the learning to Europe years ago. Half our gun men went home to rest and the remainder coursed the botuns or as you say 'blunders' across the ridge which ran in a circle of more than ten miles and was well known to the gun men who were all sheep farmers on their own commonage. The heather was waist high and in the early evening the chuffs could be seen wheeling over head issuing their plaintive cries. We all moved more slowly now as the raiders had long ago lost their shoes and their feet were cut from rocks, to make matters worse their corduroy trousers were chaffing their bodies until they were red and blistered .After two hours, we rested and the gunmen were relieved by our colleagues who were to drive them across the remainder of the mountain in the dark, with the aid of a full moon and short night .In the morning, they all returned to Ardgran village. The raiders were more dead than alive when we tied them up and put them in a horse and cart and drove them the twelve miles to Castle Madre police station there I explained what had happened to a sergeant. He looked at the raider¡¯s condition and then arrested all of us, raiders and protectors alike. We were all held in the police station until a Judge could hold a court which he did that afternoon. At the court, the raiders threw themselves on the Judges' mercy and gave a full account of the fourteen hours they were hunted across the lakes and mountains. The judge was so moved by the raiders' condition that he released them on bail and to appear at another court in two weeks time, and he bound the protectors to the peace with a stern warning never to take the law in their own hands again".

Needless to say we were not happy leaving the court, but our compensation was at hand. When the judge had completed his duties and went to find his car to drive the one hundred miles home, he discovered that the two botuns had stolen his transport, to make their way back to Cork. The Judge soon organized a road block where the police quickly arrested the culprits, and he reconvened his court especially for them, we all there to watch and cheer the Judge, as he metered out very stiff sentence then and there."

The next story occurred a lot closer to home which caused us to some amusement at the time, but only in retrospect.

6

The Pharmacy four

It was Blinky who discovered it at five thirty on a grey November morning. She was due to go on holiday with me to London later that day; Blinki is an exact woman what she lacks in stature she makes up for in determination. When she entered the office with the tills and takings from the previous two days in her hand, she was forced to do a double take. Carefully, she closed the door and then reopened it and looked again with her eyes wide open this time, but it was no good, our safe was gone. We had been robbed. There was no staff or police on duty, except for sympathy from a police station forty mile away by phone when they offered "yeerah sure I am sorry for you "crater". Things might have been worse though, we had a busy Sunday lunch trade and the evening was good too with people dining and the bar going until early morning with a classic poker session. Blinky decided to do our books early in the morning rather than at night when I would normally write them up. So the Crooks for all their work had only got about £100 in small change, but they also took the previous ten years books of account with them. Later after a protracted phone call with the local police, a sergeant appeared at ten AM. He wore horn rimmed glasses and a full brown beard, he was of slim build but his uniform seemed too large for him, the jacket housed two very long arms that spent a lot of time in his trouser pockets and for some reason, his face retained a permanent and most disconcerting smile, as if it were frozen to his face. He sat in our sun lounge that over looked the harbour taking notes. The fishing had been bad and all the boats were tied up for the past six weeks, which made for a hungry town including the gulls that were used to a free meal ticket from the trawlers. The sergeant commenced his investigation.

"Now Mrs., how big was it "

"What"

"Now Mrs. what do you think, the Safe of course "

"Well it was about four feet wide, four feet long and four feet deep "

"Was it heavy Mrs."?

"It must have weighed a bloody ton and was painted green, by the way "

"So it was heavy "

"God, yes it was, very heavy "

So they listed the missing contents and parted company, The Sergeant phoned her an hour later, to ask if we had a trailer, which she confirmed that we had.

"Check if it is on the premises please Mrs. ", he said

She looked for it everywhere, but it was missing.

"That's good, because we have found it dumped in a river , surrounded by used cheques like confetti at a wedding , but the trailer's fine, Mrs. "

"By the way, the way we found the car that pulled it too".

It was the church Vergers"!

Later that evening in London when Blinki related the story to me, I could hardly believe our good luck, to have the safe stolen without serious loss and all the books of account gone as well. As luck would have it, we were due to have a dreaded audit by the Revenue in three weeks time and one never knows what they will find that might cause embarrassment. But now we had a police certificate to cancel a Revenue audit, I could only "God bless those crooks and Amen".

When we returned home the Verger, phoned me and asked if I could speak with him, he arrived shortly afterwards.

He was a tall fat man with round rosy cheeks who wore a cassock for most of his working days.

"Thomas "I said "what can I do for you "

"Sure don't worry about it, sure we hardly lost anything, at tall a tall "I said

"It's not you, I am worried about, but 'tis me self, the Sergeant didn't tell you then, did he? "

"Well No, he did'nt mention anything "

"I must swear you to secrecy Craigie, do you swear? "

"Of course "

"The night you lost your safe, they stole my car from my own front door too,brazen Devils that's what they were",brazen Devils. But it was a real pity I left the key in it to make it so easy for them .It¡¯s the embarrassment you see. They drove the car to your hotel, and then used a carpet to pull your safe out of your office and on to your trailer there had to be a good number of them because of the weight you know! They got it on the trailer and drove off up to the West road and then dumped everything in the river. By the way, you might have had a better safe; sure the back of it was only a piece of light tin. "He said

"What's the problem for Gods Sake Thomas; sure don't I know all this"

"That's just it, you don't, sure didn't I mean to go and lodge the money in the night safe from the Saturday and Sunday collections, like the Cannon told me, but sure somehow the crack was too good in your bar on Sunday night and I thought, "Mussa " I'll do it first thing Monday morning "

"I never heard of any Church money was missing"

"O God there isn't even a penny missing, but can't you see if the Cannon ever found out, that there was four thousand pounds in the boot of my car that night and that crooks never bothered to open it. Sure the whole town knows the boot hasn't locked for the last ten years. I will surly be sacked again by the Cannon "

I assured him his secret was safe with me and we agreed that the criminals did not get to many marks for efficiency either. But this was not quite the end of the matter!

Later at the normal the two monthly Court which was held in the Hotel residents lounge, three women and one man arrived in hand cuffs. It was suggested by the sergeant, I might like to attend the court, to learn something that might be of interest to me. The first case was the hand cuffed clients. The Judge asked the sergeant who stood in front of a table to present his evidence. "Justice, can I read directly from my note book to the court".

"We had been keeping an eye on the accused for some time. We became very alerted, when we heard strange voices on our police radios, which don't work all that well here with the mountains and all that. There was a crackling sound that made the radios almost unusable; headquarters sent a young technician from Cork to repair them. What he found was there wasn't a thing wrong with the radios, but we were being monitored by someone when we used them. So the repair man listened out on the radio for a full week and discovered the plaintiff's plan , by listening to them talking to each other on our own wave band , they forgot if they could hear us we could hear them too. They planned to break into chemists shop, which is on the main street, to steal anything that they could find. He continued ¡­

"12.30 AM ¨C "the pigs, are all off duty and gone "

1.00 am ¨C "We are making our entry through the pharmacy sky light "

- "all clear, no traffic (except for Michel Pat, who is too drunk to go home yet."

"Roger that "

The sergeant held the table a little tighter now with beads of sweat falling into his beard from his brow ,Justice ,He said "we knew where, when and how they were going to strike the shop, and we were waiting for them, me and two of me men . We heard them climb the roof and go through the sky light and drop into the upstairs storeroom, and then of course it was too high for them to escape, and we captured them red handed".

"So here we have another fine example of the efficiency of Castle Madre police at work which I am sure the Justice will be passing on complements to the powers that be , together with the four of them waiting for the Justices pleasure. "

The Justice then asked the accused if they had any other offences they wished to be taken into consideration, before he sentenced them; they asked that the theft of the hotel safe should also be considered, much to my surprise. Thereafter, the gang became known as the Pharmacy four.

The next story, I get to meet the green man but please don¡¯t read this before sleeping or eating or if you are a squeamish

7

The Green man

After two oclock, the night often seems to take on a life of its own. On one such occasion after a long session in the bar I was returning staff members to their homes by car. I had turned the vehicle at the end of a double terraced cull de sac of a hundred houses to let my passengers out. The moon was full and it was an hour before dawn in early May. I watched as an endless procession of bats appeared to cross the middle of the full moon and take sanctuary in a derelict house nearby, the young staff members' ears ached as the bats chatted to each other, on their way home, they were the lesser horseshoe bat, and I commiserated with my young passengers who were terrified by them and all the horror stories they had heard and worse still believed. I wished them all a good morning and headed for home. I had not travelled fifty meters when a man ran out from a nearby house and almost threw himself under the wheels of my car to impede my progress. He gave me one hell of a fright I can tell you as he opened the passenger door and jumped into the car uninvited. He kept repeating,the police, the police over and over¡­ The sweat poured from his brow his lips trembled, his hands shook, and he smelt of rotten fish. I could get no sense out of him, so I drove him the police station and thought I had better accompany him to the door. I knew the station would be closed at that time of the morning, but that it was serviced by what is known as " the green man this is actually a radio positioned in the middle of the front door and painted green. It connects that station with a duty station for emergency calls, I indicated the machine to my passenger and explained to him how it worked, demonstrating by speaking to a sergeant on duty at the other end. My passenger spoke very quickly to the green man , his tall figure leaning heavily over the machine ,but he did not press the transmit button correctly " which caused the sergeant to ask me to speak to him on his behalf , repeating for him what he had said to me".

Speak slowly and tell me everything you know said green man

"What is your name "­

"Sean Patrick Mc Guire"

"Youre Address "

He gave it.

"what has happened"

"He's dead" 

"OK, who's dead"

"My son "

"How do you know"

"I saw him .­..I saw him, I saw him "

"Where is he?"

"In my house"

"What happened to him"

"He shot himself "

"Did you hear the shot?"

"Yes "

"Did anyone leave the house?"

"No, nobody, but myself"

"Youre sure he's dead"

"Yes"

The sergeant's voice trailed off, while he thought what to do next. Then he asked me if I would return with the man to his house and "would you mind taking a look for yourself at the body ", he added, and I will send a car to you as soon as possible.

We retraced our route and found the house and joined the neighbours in the small kitchen which was full of cigarette smoke. I could hear hushed voices, older people were sitting and the younger ones just standing around ,some of the women had children fast asleep in their arms ,no one looked at each other ,all eyes were on the floor . I asked Sean Patrick were his son was and permission to look at him. I climbed the narrow stairs and crossed a landing and entered a small bedroom with two beds positioned against an unpainted wall with photographs of naked women and a Duran Duran poster on it for decoration. The acrid smell of powder from a high velocity bullet was overpowering. The light was not switched on, but I could still see quite well by moonlight. On one of the beds lay the long body of a young man in his early thirties; he wore jeans and a checked shirt, on the floor beside him was a 222.50 mm rifle I looked at his deathly white face, which was turned black as any native Africans by the gun shot , he had a very small hole in the side of his left temple with a small trace of blood, when I looked at the other side of his head, half his scalp was missing .Blood had soaked down his neck and had congealed, bone and hair were splattered across the other side of the room on to white curtains, which had turned an awful deep blood red and then dripped on to the carpet . As I was about to leave and return downstairs, I heard a whimper, close to the window. I found a twelve year old boy in the foetal position, slowly rocking backwards and forwards emitting high pitched squeaks, not unlike those of the bats I had heard earlier, He was covered in his brother¡¯s blood and bone, and he had also had lost his reason. Somehow, I got him out of the room and brought him downstairs where I washed him and changed his clothing out of sight of his family. The shock for the family and neighbours was devastating .I set about making strong sweet tea for everyone in the house and did my best to comfort them; my efforts must have taken a long time, because an hour had passed before the police car arrived. I was asked to direct them to the scene which I did. Almost at once a very young and very white faced Garda rushed back to me and pulled me by the arm back up to the bedroom. He pointed to the victim's head, which I now inspected at close range in broad day light. Two and half inches of the skull were missing, but I knew where each bit was , I could see both halves of the brain quite clearly now as they gently throbbed expanding and contracting inside the torn sack that contained them. Now that dawn was broken and the electric light was switched on, I could see to my absolute horror the lad was slightly alive.

The police rushed to the hospital to alert the ambulance crew, but the darn ambulance wouldn¡¯t start as its lights were left turned on from its last mission and needed a tow from the police car to get it running. Eventfully they returned to the house to get the young man to hospital,, but because of the narrow stairs and landing, we had to transfer the victim from a stretcher to a canvass carrier to get him into the ambulance, an awful process for the watching family. He died next day at noon, and I think a little of everyone who was present that terrible early morning died along with him. However, perhaps the worst feature of the night before, was that the victims¡¯ ex girlfriend was to be married in our hotel later that same day which had turned the night before and the following day into a circus of activity, as we juggled the previous night's events with the problems of the next day, as we tried to avoid offending the town and our customers by being judged to have done the wrong thing by staging the wedding which did anyway, but upset a lot of people in the community.

But speaking of circuses, a visiting circuses is the subject of the next story and in particular their absence of navigational skills

8

The Circus

One is often forced into doing ones own building work in a hotel business because of the cost and standards forced by the authorities which are imposed without any thought if the hotelier has the cash to carry out the work. This is insisted on, by customers, revenue (you must spend your profit or to pay its tax ), the fire-officer, and the health inspector and so on. So it¡¯s important to keep in touch with a building team to get work done quickly, my team were the brothers O¡¯ Sullivan Paudie and Joseph. We had some refurbishment work to do in our bedroom wing after the tourist season and prior to the herring season, a gap of about a month. There was quite amount to be done and the pressure was on. I had discussed the forthcoming works with Paudie the older brother who was in his late twenties and a skilled craftsman. He was a tall, heavy ponderous man in movement and thought and a stickler for detail. I thought we had agreed the work on hand and its completion date, when he asked me, if "I had planning permission, before he got started, andHe didn't mean from the county council either, but rather from Blinki, who had rounded on him many times for listening to me, rather than the pure reason from herself, so he was understandably nervous about following my instructions. I assured him I had her full agreement, and he mumbled that he would have to look into it, but he would chance starting straight away anyway. Joseph on the other hand, was an unqualified builder and really acted as a labourer to his brother. He was younger and in his mid twenties, he was a wild man and very keen on drink and women in that order. I came upon them late on a Friday evening in October while they worked away in a bedroom. I could hear raised voices.

"No, it won't do Joseph, either you pull self together, or we split up."

" God almighty Paudie were you are ever young? I swear you never enjoyed yourself, not even for one night out."

" No more, I have said my piece, and you must live by it "

" All right Paudie, I am sorry you're now looking at a reformed character"

" Well I am very glad to hear that "he said.

At that point, I walked in on top of them, both of whom had flushed faces and the work had hardly progressed. They apologized to me that they had to go to get supplies, and I didn't see them again until the following Monday.

It was after midday when I met Josef as he walked across the hotel car park, he was in a very agitated state , I enquired, what was the matter with him, and he immediately launched into a monologue. He told me that a circus had come to town over the week- end and that when they had completed their performances they left town early in the morning. Unfortunately, they either had no map, or they took the wrong direction or both. They had gone South rather than North on our peninsula ;where the road runs further out into the Atlantic and reduces to a doubtful single vehicle track. The upshot, was their wagon train would no longer fit the road with its ever narrowing stone walls that met at a farm house on one side and farm building the other side of the road. With no hope of the cavalcade progressing through the gap." You know the place at Murphy's where it over looks the sea" he said. "Where the cliffs are thirty feet high and the sea swell can rise twenty rose and more. That day the sky promised more wind with herring bone clouds that stretched as far as the eye could see the remains of last weeks' storm. Because the road had narrowed to such a degree, the motorized vehicles could not even attempt to turn around." " I was already late for work and suffering a hangover with a desperate taste of sour porter in my mouth when I drove into this mayhem. The Circus management had removed the performing elephants from their cages to help turn the caravans and trailers around to go back to the road they had come on. Not to put to fine a point on it, it was a scene of total chaos; I was surrounded by wild animals of all sorts. So, I could nether go backwards or forwards, I decided to help them to extricate themselves from their predicament. I was given four zebras and six chimps to hold by one of the clowns who still had a red nose and a full makeup in place, until one of the bloody chimps took a dislike to me and bit me. I was bandaged by an attractive young red headed ring master and God do I adore redheads of any shape or size, which overcame my discomfort quickly. I watched while an elephant tore down a stone wall of a little field overlooking the sea, to allow access to turn the vehicles. I watched in amazement, as how gently the large animal removed the stones and stacked them so neatly, I just happened to be look out over the Atlantic and what did I see? But the spout from a blue wale no more than the quarter a mile away, and I thought no one will believe me, that I was in the in the presence of the worlds two largest mammals simultaneously in one of the most remote parts of Ireland . Sure, I had to help the elephant and its trainer out by organizing the field entrance where my building experience came in handy. It took me two hours and in the end I had the thanks of the circus management, especially the red head. By the way, I had to laugh , sure all the while I was working the Murphy¡¯s made cups of tea for the circus personnel and in return they were given a performance by the acrobats in their own farm yard. When I set off for work delighted at how I had been of service to the "craters" and even the promise to meet the Red head later after her performance that night. My problem now is I have to explain to Paudie as to why I am late for work."

I gave Josef plenty of time before I ventured up stairs to see how the work was progressing, but in reality, I wanted to hear Josef's explanation as to why he was late. When I arrived, the voices were even louder than the Friday before.

"But Josef, you promised, in your own words"I am a reformed man, you said

"For gods sake Paudie, what could I do, I was surrounded by animals, front and back of my van. Sure I had to help the craters, did'nt I ,I held zebras and chimps in my hand and smelly things they are too,while the elephants worked away opening a wall to allow the trailers into the field to turn , it was fascinating to watch them . Mrs. Murphy even made tea for them all and God how my head ached.

"Joseph this is too much, how can you expect me to believe you, you need urgent help and the smell of drink from your breath would run any engine for the week."

"Please Paudie, ask the Murphy's, they 'll tell you, sure the acrobats even did tricks for them in their own yard "

"Joseph, look at the time and look into my eyes and tell me the truth for a change"

"Sure there is only one way, come down to me van Paudie ."

I followed them down to the battered van, where Josef had three plastic bags thrown into the back of it.

"Put your hand into the bag Paudie."

Paudie opened the bag a little to examine the contents which were massive droppings and still had steam drifting upwards and a very strong smell.

"I kept this elephant shite for Mams roses" said Joseph and here these are, these are for you, and he put his hand into his inside pocket and gave him a hand full of circus tickets, and look at the bandage on my arm ,that's where a bloody chimp bit me."

"Well Joseph, sure I suppose I couldn't beat that for a story anyway, said Paudie laughing. Not even with a stick said Joseph laughing too!

However, sometimes the Atlantic is not always in such a tranquil mood like in the next story.

TU:PK

9

A killing wind

The Pesca Verdi steel hulled beam trawler Stella Marris out of la Corona (Spain) was built in Holland in 1981. On the eight of December 1987 she was two hundred and fifty miles off the South West of Ireland. Stella Marris was 407 gross and 122 net tones, forty meters long with a beam of nine meters and draught of five meters and powered by a reliable 3608 hp Caterpillar diesel engine. On board she had all the latest radar, sonar, as well as satellite communications. Its propeller was two meters in diameter driven directly by a single shaft from the engine, but it had no gear box. To reverse the engine it had to be stopped and restarted by the on board air compressor in a reverse direction, a procedure which took about two minutes by an experienced operator. Stella Maris had the latest safety and security systems and was a fine vessel for skipper Juan Paulo Fernandez first command. At the age of thirty five, he was one youngest skippers in the Pesca Verdi fleet, he was not tall, but was muscular, wore a black untrimmed beard, had a cropped head, has callused hands from years of fishing, he wore a yellow storm cloak over dungarees and rubber soled leather non slip boots; he had very little interest in anything else in his life other than fishing. With his crew of seven he had fished successfully for the past two weeks for a mixed trawl of fish. A major storm was forecasted, the barometer registered twenty nine point eight Hectare Pascal¡¯s and he was ordered by Pesca Verdi to cease trawling and ride out the storm at sea. The clouds had long ago turned black and lighting lit the wheel house almost continuously, the wind was whipping up the ocean to a cauldron. He steered the ship into the wind to a steady 235 degree, he set engines to quarter speed to ease the ship through the gradually threatening waves of more than thirty feet, and he ordered the crew to their bunks. The engineer was in the engine room making adjustments to his equipment; he completed his engine check and climbed the metal non slip stairs to his quarters. The ship was suddenly hit by a broadside wave sending him backwards into the hold, where he was found unconscious with two broken legs. Fernandez now had no option but to head to port with the injured seaman, in urgent need of medical attention, and he radioed the fact to Pesca Verdi.

The eight of December is the feast of the assumption and also the day our Hotel played Santa to the community. Five hundred children were expected in the Hotel over the day together with their parents, a fee was charged to visit Santa and the profit given to the children¡¯s play ground to fund its insurance. On this particular day Santa was to arrive by helicopter, which was on business in the area and its pilot stayed in the hotel, but the weather forecast was so bad, all flights were cancelled and Santa had to come by fire brigade instead. A car driven by a girl guide brown owl drove past the aero plane, which was kept under the watchful eye of the pilot from the sanctuary of the Hotel sun lounge, he had tethered each of the four lifting blades of the machine and even still the thirty five foot blades rose and fell more than six feet, worse still the helicopter would suddenly lurch into the air, so that he could see day light under one its landing skids. The Brown Owls car stopped at the front door of the Hotel in pours of rain and storm force winds from the South West, she ran to the hatchback to collect articles for a bazaar stall and opened the door, which was immediately blown from its hinges and flew over the roof of the car and into the tide and terrorized the poor woman. The wind was so strong that the hotel front door had to be locked, allowing entry only from the lee of the wind at the rear of the Hotel. So parents and children when they entered the building looked over to the harbour where all the ships were safely tied up and each of them issued a silent prayer that none of their vessels or men were at sea that day. The kids and parents were either in the bar or dining room enjoying themselves, where they left an even trail of an eighth of an inch of potato crisps across the hotel carpets, as well as paper from the children¡¯s presents strewn on the floor. By mid afternoon, it was dark and the wind continued to blow even more fierily, I examined a picture window at reception which I was told was under extreme pressure from the storm, it was ten feet square and to my absolute astonishment the glass was flexing up to an half inch at its central point which I measured it by laying a timber lath across the pane, shortly afterwards electric power was lost, the electric clock had stopped at exactly five o'clock. The hotel had to transfer to emergency lighting and not long after the loss of power, our chef informed me that we had no water either. So that was just great ,a thousand people on the premises with no power or water. My friend the pilot and I went to investigate the water situation with the aid of a flash lamp. We found the twenty ton water tank had been blown more than fifteen feet from its mountings and water was pouring out of it. We retired from the awful weather to consider the position, the pilot did his sums and informed me that the wind speed to dismount my water tank was a minimum of one hundred and twenty miles per hour, but it was more likely to have been a severe gust of one hundred and sixty miles per hour, that caused the problem. In the meantime, I had I found our plumber with his children in the hotel who lucky had tools with him and he managed a temporary water reconnection for me.

The beal na port light house on Innish an Egg is fifteen meters high and flashes every fifteen seconds, and is built thirty meters above the cliffs, giving a total height above water of forty five meters. It is one kilometre from Innish an Egg to the main land , fifty meters on the port side of a ship entering the harbour are the drummer rocks, consisting of the base drum rock, fifteen feet, the kettle drum eight feet and the snare drum four feet above the water at low tide . The light is strategically placed where its 4,500,000 candle power beam can be seen even in poor conditions for more than ten miles. The light is powered by mains electricity, with a backup generator system which has a two minute built in delay change over time from one power source to the other. The Stella Maris was a quarter a nautical mile from the harbours mouth and following the letter n Morse code radar signal beam that emitted from the light house as best she could in the huge seas. Fernandez looked through the one foot diameter all weather visor which rotates at one thousand rpm, but it made little difference to the disability and the ship depended solely on its radar heading for navigation. The ships wheel was covered in leather to give it better leverage as Fernandez hung on to it with grim determination; he visibly relaxed when they were a quarter a kilometre from safety, the time was now exactly five PM. The leading lights could be plainly seen indicating the route to the inner harbour and the drummer rocks were well illuminated by the light house. Cross winds gusted at more than a hundred and sixty MPH as indicated on the ships Beauford meter. Just as Stella Maris was past the point of no return to the harbour, the beam from the light house was extinguished, now the boat had no radar signal and no light and was blind, at the same time the cross wind accelerated as Fernandez desperately tried to calculate a new course correction in his head, allowing for the cross wind. He hailed a crew member to the engine room to make an emergency engine reverse, when he realized he was being driven on the drummer rocks. The engine stopped and the sea raised the ship well above the base drum rock which the ship passed over without incident, it hardly scraped the kettle drum, but her stern was ripped opened by a hole four feet square, as she dropped heavily on the little snare drum. The engineer had managed to reverse the propeller. Fernandez was thrown from the wheel and into a corner of the wheel house. Stella Maris headed back out to sea backwards now; the reliable Caterpillar engine at full revs, accelerating the ship all the time as she slowly sank. It was more like a submarine now ,as the lights went out one by one ,the glass in the wheel house exploded from the water pressure, shortly afterwards the ship settled gently on the calm silver sand on the sea bed , more than two miles out from the coast and in over four hundred fathoms of blue sea water.

Inish an Egg light house light flashed again every fifteen seconds illuminating the drummer rocks and the leading lights clearly showed the way into the inner harbour The only evidence of the Stella Maris was the two empty life rafts which launched automatically by explosive bolts from the deck of the stricken vessel. Next morning the yellow life rafts were seen from shore by a walker as he exercised his dog, from the cliff above the drummer rocks. An hour later they were towed past the hotel into the harbour where they were viewed by a small crowd of on lookers who crossed themselves for protection as they prayed for the souls of Captain Fernandez and his brave crew.

Nevertheless, life must go on no matter how hard it is, just as the terrible sight had passed us by, to go and tie up in the harbour, I was called to the telephone. It was a cycle tour operator who wanted to book dates to stay in the hotel during next summer season.

10

Eamon and the stone

Selling bed rooms in volume was vital to survive in the Hotel business; I learnt quickly that outdoor group activities like hill- walking and cycling were best suited to our location. Early in our ownership I had the good luck to make the acquaintance of a young economics graduate while he was setting up a cycle- tour business; he has since become a well known politician and is a very nice guy too. He brought groups of up to forty people ranging in age from eighty six years to six months to out-of-the-way parts in Ireland, and we were lucky that he chose our Hotel as one of his destinations. His clients arrived at the starting point where they collected a bicycle, a map and a group leader with a van, which carried the client¡¯s luggage. The leader would have their luggage waiting for them in their bedroom on arrival at their destination. The group always had the choice where they would eat, of course we would encourage them to dine with us in the Hotel restraunt , Often they would stay an extra day which was a bonus for the Hotel . Cycling tours became an important part of our turnover, so we made an extra special effort to accommodate them by giving complementary tea and coffee on arrival and dry their clothing if it got wet. In the evening, we would provide traditional music in the bar which was appreciated by Eamon¡¯s clients who were mostly from the USA and continental Europe.

On one trip Eamon arrived just after lunch, and we fitted names to rooms. I t was not a particularly big tour, about twenty five people, but I noticed Eamon puzzle over one particular suitcase in his van, he told me he had to collect it in the freight department of the local airport that morning, and it was delivered to his van by forklift .He asked me if we had a ground floor room? We did, in fact, have one, and I asked if the person requiring the room was disabled in some way, which I thought did not quite square with riding a bike. I always tried as far as possible to give the cyclists' rooms that had views of the harbour or the bay; as they were always appreciated by city people, no he said "they not disabled, it's just that one of their suitcases is a little on the heavy side, and I can't move it by myself", I offered to help him , but both of us could make no impression on it . I had to phone a friend in the local fish factory to borrow a fork lift and a pallet -truck to deal with the problem suit case. We loaded it on to the pallet -truck and then pushed it on to fork lift ,which we drove to the ground floor room and laid cardboard on the new carpet to protect it from the dirty pallet -truck wheels ;eventually, we got it into the bedroom, much to our relief and returned the borrowed machines to the factory .

They were a lovely bunch of people on the tour, and they had enjoyed their ride that day and went to have baths, relax and later take dinner, and they had a good time in the bar and so to bed. They had an early breakfast next morning to get a good start to the day. I made it my business to meet the customers of the down -stairs room with the amazingly heavy suitcase. They were Mr. and Mrs. Abraham. Goldberg and I could not resist asking them what on earth was in the suitcase, before making arrangements to return the offending case to the van.

"Mister I sure am sorry about the suitcase, Eamon told me about the problem, here¡¯s a small recompense" and he handed me $100 note for my trouble. You are not often offered that kind of money which I thanked him for and told him I would place it in the staff tips' box. So he went on with the story ¡­

"We were in Israel before we joined this tour". He said "In New York our relations asked us to bring them home a piece of the Promised Land. We had the great fortune to be in Jerusalem soon after it was captured by the Israelis. My cousin David Goldberg is a Major in the army, so we got to visit the Wailing Wall with him, as you probably know it is one of the Jews holiest sites and was once part of the original Temple of King Solomon. We were some of the first Jewish people to be allowed to visit it. There were bits fallen masonry all over the place, so we went to a near by leather shop and bought the largest suitcase we could find, to take some of the stones home to our family. David organized the soldiers to collect the suitcase and send it by freight to Ireland, where was collected yesterday by Eamon¡¯s van. It cost $ 3000 in transport, but, Hay think of the profit, one ton of rock selling at $50 an ounce, did you work it out yet man! Yea that¡¯s right $ 1,408,000 right man, even allowing for the free bees for family and synagogues this is going to be a nice little earner Buddy".

Not long afterwards another American came to stay with us in a visit which ultimately changed his life his life.

TU:ER

11

The Orphan

The ancient soggy wicker basket dripped water over the reception floor; it was evening in the second week of September and the tourist season was practically finished and the herring fishing had not yet begun, so the hotel was quiet. The stocky man held the basket in the palm of his right hand and a grip in the other. He was in his early forties, a little stooped for his age, with a high forehead, and he sported a cropped dark grey beard and matching set of bushy eye brows. . He was as wet as the basket he carried, although he had only walked from his hire car to the hotel front door in a down pour. He was concerned about the few sheets of discoloured writing paper in the basket which had dissolved into blue smudges. He cried softly to himself at his carelessness and cursed the weather. He handed me the basket and asked me "if I could carefully dry the contents", I said "I supposed I could "he asked me if I had a room for a couple of nights, and I checked him in as John Michel Rogers Sullivan of 2010 ,5 , 200 ,NY,NY , and showed him to his room. I brought the basket and papers to our laundry and switched on a dehumidifier which I hoped would restore the legibility of his documents. I didn¡¯t see him again him until dinner time when I did my duty walk around the dining room. He asked me to sit with him and have a drink. The hotel was a quiet, with plenty of staff on duty, so I sat down and returned his basket with the ruined pages. He thanked me for my trouble, the basket was now dry, but the paper was still illegible. I asked if he had any idea what information they contained before they got wet. He said "they were the last records of his family origins in Ireland, and that he was a lone orphan from the age fifteen. He had become morose and depressed as he spoke, as he was so alone in the world "sure of course he had friends", he said "but what I want is a family, I have no one, you don¡¯t understand what it like, not even to send or receive a single Christmas card. I am a successful business man now, I once ran a restaurant in N Y, and now I am vice president for a large US company, and spend most of my time working in Europe. I decided on this visit, instead of over flying Ireland, I would look for my roots, after a total failure by internet, e mail and postal searches". I asked why he came to our peninsula. "O that's easy" he said "I am here, firstly, because I heard my father speak that the largest town to our family home was called castle something somewhere in County Cork, but I had no more information , except for the family nickname . So I have been visiting all towns that begin with Castle or have Castle in the name like your town here Castlemadre. Secondly, I am here because of the green line". I enquired, what on earth he meant by the green line." I'll show you " and he opened a map of Ireland and pointed out the only coastline in the country that was totally surrounded by a green line, was our own peninsular, the legend on the map indicated an area of outstanding coastal beauty , which I thought was true, but I had never noticed it on a map before . He had a dejected look, his eyes were sad and the lines on his forehead seemed to deepen as he spoke of his failure to find any trace of his family. We adjourned to the bar for a few drinks, the rain was still pouring and the wind howling outside and the bar was almost empty. He told me that he had only one piece of hard of information given to him by his father. He was just about to give me the family nickname when three people came in the bar all of them dressed in rain gear. You could barely recognise them as Padraig and Tina O'Murphy with their daughter Grace, who was introduced to us. She wore a fashionable rain coat was slim and of medium height and stood away from her parents and smiled briefly at us her sun tanned dimples deepening, her long black glossy hair, was and thrown over one shoulder, as she took down the hood of her coat. Padraig was one of the town's skipper owners and a larger than life character, a rough man of the sea and the kind of guy you heard before you saw him. He ordered drinks and asked me where his mother was? In fact, she was sitting in an alcove out of sight. They set off to join the old lady.

Grace had opened her hand bag to remove her handkerchief to blow her noise and accidentally dropped a ticket on the floor; John Rodgers Sullivan picked it up and examined it, it was a ticket for a Mozart concert in Geneva dated for the following month. He crossed the carpet, went under the arch to the other division off the bar where the family was drinking. He returned the ticket to Grace, she thanked him in French for his kindness, and he continued the conversation in that language, He asked her, why she spoke French to him and she explained that she worked in the UN and has been based in Geneva for the past five years, he asked about her interest in music and he expressed is own devotion to the Mozart and how he played the violin. When he returned to his seat, I reminded him to give me the family nickname as he promised, I knew most families have a nickname to distinguish families from each other. All he could remember was that it was a horse, and I said "by any chance would it have been Capall". "Ah, He said that's it Capall that's right, horse in Gallic. "Give me time to think", I'll ask around and make a few calls and let you know at breakfast" I said. Next morning I had found there was a family with that nickname in the western parish, and it was suggested to I send my guest around the pubs that day in the area. I gave the information to John, who set off for the village of Ardgran straight away and I didn't see him again until later that evening in the dining room. I sat down with him again and asked him how he had got on with his enquiries.

"I have drawn a blank, all the pubs were closed except one and there was nobody in the pub, except a little old man wearing a greasy cap and drinking a half pint of Guinness. He sat in a corner and kept himself to himself, the only other person was the young bar man, the son of the owner aged about sixteen. I asked him about the nickname Capall the boy was less than helpfull , when I suddenly remembered my great grand Fathers name which was also my fathers was Aiden O Sullivan , he still had no interest " .

When he was finished speaking, I was called to the phone, by a staff member. It was Padraig O'Murphy.

"Is that Yank still with you "Craigie?

"Yes"

"Was he in the Western Parish today "

"Yes"

Was he in Mickey Dan's pub?"

"Yes"

"He asked about Aiden Cappall Ban "

"Yes "

"Will you ask him, if we can come to talk to him, this evening?"

"Yes"

I returned to the dinning room, to inform John, he was about to have visitors. Later that evening, the O'Murphy's came to the bar, all three of them. Padraig immediately held court; all four of them sitting around a table. Padraig was not known for beating about the bush ,

"Mickey Jo Mickey was in the pub today; He's a shy kind of a man and doesn't speak to strangers, his son telephoned me this evening under his instructions. He had overheard the conversation between yourself and young Sean Og in the bar."

"So "says John

"Well don't see, it means my great grandfather and your great grandfather were brothers, everyone thought he had died in Montana without any family, when the money stopped coming home. Single handed he had saved the family from starvation during the famine and when the money stopped the worst of the famine was over and the family survived and that's how we are all here today. "

"No that's not what happened, he had a bad accident in a mine and never worked again, he was unable to speak properly either and there was no way in those days my great grandmother could have of got in touch with home ."

"So we are related", John Michel Rodgers Sullivan said.

"Not only are you related to me, you are related to nearly everyone on the peninsula and we all owe our lives your great grandfather"

"A but we are only distantly related "whispered Grace in French "only very distantly"

That was when the party started, phone calls were made to every parish on the peninsula, and people arrived to celebrate the lost family member. Even if it was over one hundred and fifty years late, nobody had ever forgotten the story of how the Yankee money had saved the Sullivan Capall bans .I watched as Grace and John Michel , moved to a corner of the bar ,as the drink began to flow and the songs of long ago were sung and dancers moved accompanied to instruments which they had brought with them to celebrate the homecoming in a true West of Ireland style . Grace and John went deeper into the corner where the light was dim , they mirrored each other's movements , flashes of teeth were attached to broadest of smiles with full lips and blushing cheeks and unconsciously stroking of each other hands, they were in a world of their own, and the stranger seemed to be younger by ten years in the space of an hour, their conversation low, intimate and the tongue French . They got married soon afterwards the reception was held in the Hotel, attended by the entire community to wish them well and lasted a full week. They have since bought a holiday home in the area but live and work in Geneva.

Bars are often the focal points in hotels as in the last story and also in the next, which is somewhat unusual.

12

The yellow Bottle

The bottle was on the top shelf in a deep alcove on the business side of the Hotel bar. On one side of it was a foster mother which had ( 'nil is agum written in large letters, which means I don't know in Irish hanging from it) , it was written by one of the bar staff ,who was sick of being asked by customers as to its origin, which was in fact used to feed orphaned lambs , on the other side was a stud fixer for securing clothing used by soldiers during the first world war to make running repairs on their uniform. These artefacts were part payment of a debt together with a fox head and a painting of some obscure part of Devon, all of which found their way into the bar. My yellow bottle had a 4 inch square base was ten inches tall and was made from smokey yellow glass, one face had raised Chinese writing covered with a red paint, another face had an embossed dragon also out lined in red paint, the two remaining sides had paper labels ,which I could not read as they were written in Chinese , But I think they may have indicated some kind of guarantee. I had bought the bottle while on a visit to Hong Kong. It caught my eye in a busy street bazaar, where information was offered on the various bottles for sale, it seemed as if there was no ailment that could not be cured if one made the correct purchase. I decided to buy a bottle for impotence in men, mainly because it was the only bottle that contained a snake pickled in some sort of rice wine, other bottles contained rats, bats, tortoise and so on. I paid something like a pound for the concoction and thought very little more about it until I gave it the place of honour in the bar on my return home. Strict instructions were given to the staff,that the bottle was not part of our stock and was for decorative purposes only.A senior staff member, asked me one day as,what did the Chinese use the bottle for and I told him that it was a sure cure for impotence in men.

Later, I noticed that strangers came to the bar and sat at the counter and just looked at the bottle , as they drank a half a pint of Guinness .One day I noticed that the bottle was no longer sealed and some of the liqueur was gone , under the bottle, I found a one pond note . None of my staff admitted to selling the drink, so I did the only thing I could, which was to throw the pound in the till and re fill the bottle with vodka. Clearly, the word was out, and I soon had to refill the bottle at least once a week, it was fast becoming the most popular drink in the bar, even if it was not even on the menu. The money for the drink was always found under the bottle and the staff continued to swear that they never sold any of the contents of what was by known now as 'my magic bottle'. On one occasion during the winter when things were really quiet, a wild looking man, who I did not know, came into the bar and sat for ages drinking a glass of Guinness and looking at the top shelf. I asked his name, which was Murphy, Sean Murphy. He stared at the bottle if it was an icon. I noticed he was shaking, eventually with only the two of us in the bar, he said that he had heard about the bottle that never went empty and how it had solved a lot of problems in his area of the mountain in which he lived. He pleaded with me let him have a shot from the bottle. I took it from the shelf and gave it to him to pour into a glass that I provided, almost at once he handed me a pound which he heard was the standard rate .I had noticed that the number of christening parties had increased over the past couple of years and God new only too well that our population was in decline, and we needed the business too.

I didn't see Sean Murphy for almost a year, when he came to book a large christening party. After the event when he came to settle his account with me. He slipped me an extra pound that's for the bottle he said , the explanation he gave was that he regretted that he had short changed the bottle on his last visit, in that he poured a double " just to be certain", and it had provided him with fine twin boys .

The next story also involves the bar, where I got to overhear the conversation between two old friends one a pilot and the other his old ground staff as they recalled, an event which caused them a great deal of grief.

13

My field

My field, is it? .The priest told me "it was only good for bullocks, brambles and bachelors but there again it's a backward priest who never got a parish. But it¡'ll still feed ten cattle with the gate open or five with it closed and it's mine and it nestles into the west of the Bui peninsula the closest point in Ireland to America.

A narrow road from the town of Castlemadre lands straight into it and often I find lost tourists have to drive onto the property to turn their cars. An ould hay shed is on the east side along with a stand of yellow gorse; below it is a drop of thirty feet which leads to the roaring Atlantic. Out to sea, I can stare at Inish An Egge, three miles away. By the way, they call me Fleet as I 'm a bit too inclined to wait for the hurry to go off me.

Inish An Egge is a mile long and a mile wide. At the southern end of the island the deserted land rises slowly to about 250 ft .with a lighthouse on the top. The island is surrounded by 40 ft cliffs in the lower parts. On the north side, steps were cut by monks in times past, to allow access from the sea. I can tell ye, they're not used much either. In the middle of the island is a wreck of an ould house, abandoned since the owner died fifteen years ago. He was a man we called the 'Prince'.'God be good to him'. There's nothing living there now except birds, thousands of them, razorbills, guillemots and gannets. 'Bad luck to them all', for they have all the fish gone. . The island is now owned by his three sons, it's been up for sale for years. Nobody around here would want to buy it, anyway.

One day in the spring of 1970 a man from the Irish lighthouse Service, known to us as 'The lights' came see me. The technology, he told me was changing and they wanted to use my field as a helicopter base. The helicopter would take the crews off the Island every four weeks , like the contract said instead of only twice a year ,if they were lucky . I was to be paid for the use of the field and offered casual work. Well, could ye believe yer luck? With farming awful and the fishing in Castlemadre gone to hell entirely, any man would have jumped at it but not around here, where things are done more slowly but after six months, we had a deal.

'The Lights helicopter, a blue one with two booming engines that would have waked the dead, arrived. It was a big specialist machine for dangerous work and it could fly in all weathers, land on tiny heli- pads on the remotest rocks and was the saviour to shipping and a blessing for the lighthouse crews. It would show up every four weeks to take the men off the island and bring their replacements for their tour of duty: as well as supplies of oil and rations for the men.

My job was to help direct the pilot and load the nets to be attached to the bottom of the helicopter, this was called slinging and it could take up to four days, if I was lucky. There was prosperity now in farming and fishing, everywhere except here of course. So the extra income meant a lot to me.

One summer's day I was working by myself loading nets, when I saw a car park in the field. A blocky, pompous ¨C looking man jumped out of the passenger side. He was dressed in a blue business suit and a city complexion. As fast as the Spalpeen Mc Carthy, the auctioneer from Castlemadre, could get out drivers door they were over to me. Spalpeen introduced his sidekick as Cahal Proud, a Dublin businessman. He had immense piercing eyes and a regal bearing, he was well named Proud!

Spalpeen asked in his slow, high ¨C pitched voice when the chopper would return from the island. They had an appointment with the pilot to bring them to Inish An Egge. Although I had no phone in the house, I could speak to  the pilot by radio, "They 'll be back in half an hour" I said. That was my first sight of the new owner of Inish An Egge and the real beginning of this story.

The island inheritance of 'The Prince' O Sullivan had been left with three sons was sold. I was told later it took about as long as it takes five men to swallow a bottle of whiskey. I will never know the price, I don't really care. Cahal the Dubliner was the new owner of the island all right.

Work on the house began within the month, to catch the remains of the summer and the labour continued into the winter so there was more work for meself, 'Praise be to all the saints'.

When Cahal (who was now called 'The Prince 'by the locals , by the way) came to view the work in the following spring , he told me to expect a special delivery. He said that he would hold me personally responsible for its safe- keeping too and he would make it worth my while. Later I heard what happened. Outside his big house up in Dublin stood a fine walnut tree which was 50 ft high with a 6ft girth, a fine tree by any standards. But didn't a gale come from the west and fell it, Cahal was upset with the new hole in his landscape and struggled to decide what to do with the tree. Firewood didn't appeal but he came up with a plan,Sure, I 'll make the tree into a table for my place in Inish An Egge.

A master carpenter came to view the fallen tree and to turn it into a work of art, a walnut table fit for a king. It was completed £6000 later, a fine solid, one ¨C piece walnut table big enough to seat twenty people, a masterpiece of carpentry which was shown to a delighted Cahal and this was what I was warned to guard with my life.

Later that year the table arrived in the field perched on a low ¨C loader along with four workmen. There was only one flight remaining with the vitals for the lighthouse and I noticed Con look at the table on the low-loader and turn white. "What weight is it, said Con standing to his full height four feet six inches. (I think pilots have to be short to get the job by the way).

"Weight, said the driver of low ¨C loader. "How the hell would I know?"

"Right", said Con. "We can lift a ton and not an ounce more".

I said, I had the weigh docket of an unsold bullock from the market in Castlemadre and it was exactly 10 hundredweight. "If we reverse the low- loader into the hay shed, put a rope over purling, put the bullock on the low- loader , along with the table . Attach one end of the rope to the table, the other to bullock, push the bullock off and whichever is the heaviest will stay on the ground "The bullock won!

At last we were ready. The four workmen had to go to the island first to open a hole in the gable of the dinning room wall. The table had its slings fitted one to each corner and the helicopter two engines roaring, hovered ready to make the lift. Con said on his return, he never wanted to do that again.

The storm when it hit, almost blew the ragwort out of the field and I think my ould shed is on loan to someone in America. The next day, who landed on top of me, but Spalpeen McCarthy, and him in charge on the island nowadays.

"Did you hear, Fleet,"

"Hear what? "Said I .

"The palace. Sure, in the gale last night, didn't the roof over dining room fall in everything is in wrack.

"What of the new table? I said.

"God help us, it was destroyed ", he said. " A team of men are coming today to fix the damage. I am under orders to get the table back to Dublin for repairs. Con will be here in the hour. Will you go up to the field?

"I will said I.

The system went into reverse. The table was flown back to the field and placed on the low-loader. Con swore he never fly that fecking table again and I 'm sure he was paler on that trip than the last, but there again the light changes very quickly around here.

Life went on as always, for a year. One summers day, the Spalpeen arrived with the the Prince (handsome as ever). I was hard at with the helicopter, the job was going fine but then I heard a rumble down the road and God and I saw the bloody low ¨C loader was coming back. The table was on the back and riding behind were the crew to open the dining room wall again.

Con retuned from the island, saw the set up and the table and groaned. The Prince was his charming self as ever and persuaded him to fly himself and the workers to the island whilst Con the driver and myself were to load the table for the helicopter and to take it over later.

All went well with the lift; the wind was light and from the south. It was only a fifteen minute flight and normally I would go back to tidying up after the day but the devil got into me and I watched the as ungainly flight took place. As the chopper approached the island I saw a black cloud cover the sun. I watched as it banked left and was hit by wind. The table turned in circles, gyrating like some young girl at a ceilidh and then a splash . Con had to let go the table and in sight of The Prince and Spalpeen. What can I say?

Con arrived back with the party and no one spoke much, nor did they wait long before they drove off leaving myself and Con alone. "I never had to use that lever before Fleet" , he said. "Never in all my career".

"What happened? I said, knowing damn well ,but wanting to hear the story anyway. "As I was coming around the head, I was hit by a blast which near brought me down, Fleet".

"I saw that. Said I.

"I had to jettison. No option Fleet!"

"Will it be covered by insurance?

"No way!" this was a private job . No cover!

Con gathered all the slings and nets and put them in the hold of the chopper and flew away.

I was alone again for another month and all I could think of was the beautiful lost table. What had it cost? I wrote down what I thought the figure might be on the back of an empty John Player and son.

Tree to table £6000

Delivery £3000

Helicopter £5000

Workers £4000

Repairs £2000

My commission ¡­ (Sure, I couldn't tell you that).

Total £20,000

I said to myself then, my darling Prince, sure you spent the price of two fine houses on that table. I 'm sorry for you 'Crater', but then pride has always come before a fall."

Helicopters also figure in the next story that relates a journey that I made to one of the Islands and encountering a flock of gannets in the process.

TUSO

14

Gannets

A gannet is a greedy bird that can spot a fish from a great height, it will dive at speed and to catch an unsuspecting fish but this process causes the birds to become prematurely blind. At breeding time gannets live in great colonies on remote Islands, my one and only time to view them closely was quite a scary affair.

I was sitting behind my reception desk one day in April, watching the waves break over the rock in the harbour that supported the leading light that gives ships safe access to port. The cloud ceiling was high with a mixture of cumulus and very dark stratus cloud scudding in very fast from the South West. In front of me and to my right and about thirty yards away was a blue coloured helicopter which was used to ferry maintenance personnel to light houses. The ends of blades on the chopper rose and fell four feet in the strong wind, I thought of how the whole weight of the machine rested on them while it was airborne, and I also knew that the blades were only made of paper. Shamus the pilot appeared at reception and asked if I would like to come with him to Innish Tarbh and added it would be a journey to remember,we are just within flying tolerances', he said, now who could resist an offer like that? We collected the maintenance personnel at the helipad and then with an extra three passenger all dressed in survival suits, we set off. We rose slowly into the air and followed the mountain ridge that divided the peninsula in two; the hills were still brown, as yet there was little growth. We departed from the main land at about 1000 feet , in front of us was Innish Tarbh which rose from the sea ten miles away , on its western side was an 800 foot high rock face which tapered to either end of the Island and protected it from the worst of the south west storms . Innish Tarbh is about one and a half miles long and half a mile wide , in a valley in the center of the island, I could see a house secreted and surrounded by Atlantic blue cedar trees ,the light- house was at the South Western corner which had two helipads for the pilots use depending upon the prevailing wind at the time . As we flew towards the Island to my surprise the aircraft climbed to more than 3000 feet, Shamus pointed out a small beach mid way up the Island on the eastern side, at its rear on the cliff face, steps had been dug out of the rock which ascended the two hundred plus feet to the top and was the only possible landing point by boat. "There was archaeologist on the Island for more three months Shamus said. He discovered that monks at one time inhabited the Island during the dark ages, and that they were expert Black smiths and traded with the Vikings, who brought them ore and hard woods to use in their furnace; the Monks made shackles to support the Vikings ships masts, and of course they excelled in the manufacture of weapons such as swords. Perhaps the most interesting thing was that they had wrestled the secrets of magnetism from metal to make crude compasses, and they shared their knowledge with the Vikings and this explains in some way how Lief Erickson and Saint Brendan the navigator discovered America, and by the way, the cedar trees which you see below, have their origins in Nova Scotia and were thought to have been delivered there also by the Vikings for the use of the monks . We had taken almost an hour to complete the normal twenty minute journey because of the head wind, but why have you climbed so height I asked Shamus when I thought we should descend on our approach to the Island? "All will be revealed was his reply". I could see beneath me through a glass panel on the floor of the helicopter a pocket handkerchief of a helipad. Shamus made preparations for the descent. It might have been noisy, bumpy and downright uncomfortable before, but now he had every rivet dancing on the machine as we descended, we dropped a thousand feet very quickly, when suddenly the sky became a dense jersey cream and white Colour with patches of black. Thousands of gannets had taken to the air in a truly amazing experience as we descended, we had created a cylinder shape through them, as I looked up through the glass inspection hatch of the chopper, and the birds had allowed us a corridor for our descent and did not enter it. Each bird had in its beak a small wisp of grass for nest building, and they collectively got such a fright from the noise of the machine that they released the grass simultaneously, so that it was, what I imagine it would be like flying through a hay cock. Nevertheless, the birds kept their distance, and we made a safe landing, we disgorged our passengers and |I was again back behind my desk in less than ten minutes, just as if I had never left it.

When you fly over the Atlantic at low attitude you can see and feel the force of the elements as they buffet the aircraft to point of where you hope that the manufactures specifications are correct and that its OK to be up there, but sometimes that same water can be a cruel place that can and does affect a whole community almost annually.

15

Accidents on water

There was nothing better to keep the Hotel solvent than a good arrest, which usually involved the Irish naval service and normally a Spanish fishing boat. I don't know why but arrests seemed to follow a pattern occurring between the tourist herring and mackerel seasons. The arrested ship was escorted to town by the navy; the boat was then impounded until a fine was paid. The crew was then returned home but in the meantime they needed to be accommodated, fed and watered somewhere, which was often in our hotel. Later a court was convened, luckily for us the hotel also doubled as a court house so lawyers and barristers had to be accommodated too, which was great, so with a bit of luck the process could take up to three days and generate an income out of thin air. That was not the end of the story either; the boat was laid up until a fine was paid sometimes three years later. The ship would then require the attentions of marine engineers who were nearly always Spanish and they too had to be accommodated, sometimes for up for three weeks. So we enjoyed the fruits of an arrest for a long time, but there were other times when we got up close and personnel to the Spanish fishermen.

During the winter unconsciously, one would listen to weather alerts with more than passing interest. One would hear of a trawler usually a Spanny three hundred mile off the South West coast and sinking. Next there was the drone of a RAF heavy rescue helicopter as it came in low over the Hotel to land in the lights' station a half mile across the bay, to take on fuel for the treacherous and dangerous journey to collect the endangered crew . A ships agent would phone enquiring if we had accommodation for up to a dozen survivors in two-hours time. The agent was first to arrive with black plastic sacks, a bus would follow him with the survivors, I could smell them before I saw them, as they were often covered in black oil and smelt strongly of diesel. They seemed shrunken in stature, with eyes in the back of their heads, faces ashen; they shivered uncontrollably and were silent as the grave. They came into the tiled reception area, two staff members stood on either side of the inside door with a plastic sacks in their hands. One by one the crew removed there clothing which was placed in a sack for them, all that covered their bodies were their shorts. We got them in to bed rooms quickly as we could, where their priority was a bath to get clean again. In the mean time a draper arrived with new outfits for the crew for the journey home, which might take a couple of days to arrange. The men were always well fed and looked after by the agents allowing those important phone calls home. They seldom spoke to us or even among themselves as often they would have left behind a colleague on the ship or in the water who was not rescued. We could only imagine what these men endured; again sometimes tragedy stalked closer to home

If you live on an Island there is nothing for it, but to cross water to go home, sometimes with dangerous consequences. One-winter evening a couple set off home in their own boat for the Island returning from a Christmas shopping trip on the main land and were within sight of their house when a rope fowled the propeller of the boat, which was within seconds washed up on rocks and the husband and wife and the mother of thirteen children were lost. Like so many families in the area insurance was considered a waste of money, which left the children to be taken over by the authorities for their upbringing and welfare. It takes a tragedy of this magnitude to change an attitude to insurance and authorities role in a local society, what made matters worse for us was , one the children was also one of our lovely young waitresses . To the credit of the inhabitants, they fund -raised from former emigrants of the area who had formed clubs where they settled right across the globe. A substantial fund was quickly established to deal with not only these families problems, but it was rolled over so that it is now a general private disaster fund for the area. So good often can come from an awful occurrence. However, sometimes a community can be shaken to its very foundations.

I must have walked across the Hotel sun lunge a million times and watched the Island ferry cross to or from the Island. I think I remember crossing the lounge on that fatal morning as the ferry made its normal route to the island not hundred yards from where I watched; had I continued looking, I would have noticed that there was a fully loaded thirty ton county council lorry with a driver in its cab together with an electrical supply board lorry crossing to do repair work on the Island, the passengers included a school teacher, a farmer and his daughter who had taken shelter in the passenger cabin. The weather was not too bad a brisk south west wind and light rain more like mist, which is common in November .The ferry made its way a further fifty meter and out of my sight where it encountered stronger wind, the young ferry master became alert that the load was not balanced on the ferry, the wind had exacerbated the problem, and he decide to return to the quay to rectify the situation. He had made half a turn, when without warning the ferry flipped through a hundred and eighty degrees .The result was within a hundred meters of land three people drowned and six had a miraculous escape.

The day of the victim's funerals was one of the most traumatic I have inured in my life, the ferry masters' sister was to be married later that day in the Hotel. The Bride and Groom came to see me before the wedding, with the intention of having a meal only with no dancing or party afterwards. I remember saying to them how if they were going to get married it must be the best day in their lives, or if they wanted a wake that to was fine too, but not a combination of both. The funerals were attended by the whole community, we had to cater for funeral parties prior to wedding with a sit down meal for one party and soup and sandwiches for the other. The situation was made worse as it was the young hotel barman's father and sister who were two of the victims of the accident. When the wedding party came from the Island they would always try to have it coincide with the high tide so that the ferry would land on the hotel lawn. The vessel would be decked out in bunting, and you could hear the singing a half a mile before you could see the boat. But not that day there was no bunting and no songs, as they stepped from the boat to the lawn no one spoke. The meal was eaten in hushed tones. I thought that everyone would be gone home in the hour or worse take to the drink, as if there were no tomorrow. I spoke to the band before they played for the dancing and explained the problem and asked them to play like they never did before which they did. The mood of the people changed and the wedding day was saved, so the dancing and singing continued until dawn .

Almost all accidents involve at least three points of carelessness to which I am not immune to it myself to my great shame.

16

An unsecured ladder

A leak in a hotel roof is not only an embarrassment it a distinct disadvantage when a wedding is to be staged in two days time, with a forecast for heavy rain. If there is not a lot of money in the pot one has got to do one¡¯s own repairs flat roofs are disasters when they leak, as it was difficult to determine the source of the problem, so I decided to recover the entire roof. I carried about twelve rolls of torch on felt to the roof which was about twelve feet above the ground the work was almost complete, only one role remaining to be fitted. I was feeling well and progress was good. I stopped to admire the view overlooking the harbour, the sky was blue with only a small black cloud high and beyond the semi circle of mountains that protected the bay. There was a slight breeze that washed small waves against the empty pier, even the inshore thirty footers were missing. I lifted the final heavy role on to my shoulder and mounted the ladder and pushed the felt onto the roof , it must snagged something so that the more pressure I placed on the felt unknowingly the more pressure I exerted sideways on the ladder, which to my shame was not secured . In an instant, the ladder swivelled to the right and I was dismounted. I crashed to the ground hitting my head on a windowsill on the way down and knocking myself out. When I came too, I could not see as I was. covered in blood from my head. I was cradled in the arms of a young priest who had come to speak to me about arrangements for the forthcoming wedding. He talked to me constantly and restrained me if I moved, which he convinced me was not a good idea. A doctor was called who asked me how I felt. Well I knew I wasn¡¯t going to run a mile, but apart from that I thought I was grand. The Doctor persuaded me that I should attend the hospital for a check up. I had a bath and clean up before I set out in our car driven by my distraught wife the thirty five miles to the nearest hospital , I looked out the car window at the coast line as we drove the boggy roads ,each bump almost making me faint with pain . I could see where black clouds had brought a strong south westerly wind, waves crashed on the light house I could see about a mile away When I arrived at the hospital I could no longer walk, unless one has actually experienced the felling, the shock can only be imagined, especially as a favourite Uncle of mine, was wheel chair bound for the last thirty-six of his seventy four years.

One of my first visitors was my brother in law and my sister, who cheered me up by informing me, by the time I would leave the hospital that trees would have lost their leaves. Blinki had fought the establishment to get me a private room, which meant some doctor had to de camp his room, he used as an office to give me a slot next to the wards, for this, I will always be grateful. All I could see from the bed was part of a chestnut tree, underneath it grew briars, which eventfully yielded black berries, and I was able to watch birds come and feed from them, these were the only nature observations I could make during my stay , so I treasured them, that is except for the occasional screech of a peacock which I never saw. My room became known a Heineken suit; even my post bore that address. The explanation was there was a tradition in our area that whenever anyone visited the neighbouring town, they would call to the hospital and visit all the patients of our locality, and they were very often customers of my own, even though we only among them for the past two years, their generosity was remarkable and inevitably they would leave a six pack of beer under my bed unbeknown to me . Of course I could not see the increasing stocks, and it was not until space was at premium did it become an issue and my bed had become very lumpy. Blinki made the two hour drive to visit me twice a week she was so exhausted when she arrived that she would often climb on the bed beside me and fall fast asleep, and I would have to wake her up, so she could get home in time to cook dinners for hotel guests, it was no joke for her to look after our daughters, staff, guests and the business of the hotel.

Fran, a friend of mine happened to be incarcerated at the same time as myself under unusual circumstances. He was the fisherman and had attended a Dentist. A new development at that time was a Dentists directive to use disposable gloves which perhaps the Dentist were not used to doing, with the result when he injected my friends gum the needle slipped off the syringe and into his throat which obligingly he swallowed and thus became my neighbour. He for some reason or other was not allowed to eat, but nobody said anything about drinking and for about two weeks we worked seriously on reducing my beer stock. In the end, they gave up on him passing the needle and removed it by surgery when it got embedded in his appendix.

Time passed and I was allowed to leave the bed. It was a huge shock to discover that I had to learn to walk again. The first thing I did when I got out of bed was to look out the window of my room, the chestnut tree was bigger than I had imaged and the remaining leaves had turned to a burnt gold, I spent some time watching the peacocks as they picked their way around the grounds beneath me, I managed to make the toilets which were a mere twenty yards away, but it took me almost an hour there and back, much to the amusement of my family. On my first day home, the sun was shining with not a cloud in the sky, all the forty or so trawlers were tied up against the pier and there was a lot activity as fish was unloaded , supervised by a huge flock of resident sea gulls . I decided to walk the length of the hotel drive, normally a five minute stroll each way , it took me over an hour to go one way, and I had to borrow money for a phone call for someone to come pick me up and to bring me home. Nowadays, when I go walking on some of the highest mountains in Ireland, I can only thank God for his mercy to me.

Touring is well known phenomena observed by hoteliers in the west of Ireland, it is where a person will take one drink in a bar consume it and leave almost immediately and visit another, and they might do this all day long. The next story relates to one such character and surprisingly the main story line is actually a true story told to me by one of my neighbours.

17

Casino Jo

Ballydub glistened in the watery early afternoon sun which reflected off the multicoloured buildings dazzling the few tourists and locals that were out and about, while a light north wind kept the remainder off its only street, it was a Thursday late in September. Shades of brown decorated the hills that surrounded the little village on three sides, immediately in front of it a massive bay stretched as far as the eye could see. To the east, a narrow road wove its way from the market town of Greenan following the deep winding inlets of the coast all the way into the village. To the west, the road turned abruptly left to the Bui peninsula. The first two miles of the road were hacked from solid sandstone until it stretched itself out for the lonely and desolate journey Castlemadre the capital town in Bui.

A new and high-powered dark blue BMW drove down the hotel avenue and on to main street Castlemadre, the driver casually looked for a parking spot but settled for double yellow lines outside the bank. In his mirror, he noticed a policeman with an open note book about two hundred yards further back down the road, who appeared to take a great interest in the cars parked in the no-parking zone, but the driver decided to chance parking anyway. A stylish pair of high healed pointed shoes attached to well shaped ankles and a body to match alighted from the parked vehicle. A voice said from within...

"It 'ill be okay, if you¡¯re fast. But those bills can't wait."

"Right Rob, I  'ill be as fast as I can."

Cindy glanced towards the policeman, shook her silky long blond hair in vexation and ran into the bank. She was lucky; no one was waiting to be served.

Mell arrived in the bank and stood behind her. He was a slight man in his late thirties, five foot six with all the toughness and intensity of a whisky alcoholic. He wore an almost clean check shirt and slightly greasy black pants. He had often been described by the locals as ¡'a little ripe' when it came to body odour and to have the overall predisposition of a travelling rat. Cindy was glad when the cashier called her to a vacant booth it was nothing special, but had a life-boat collection box on its left side and the usual pens and forms on the right. She presented her electric and phone bills together along with her plastic visa card for payment. The cashier seemed to take forever to swipe her card. Eventually, the card and the stamped bills were returned to her hand. These she laid on the counter. A pre-written cheque was quickly torn from her book and passed to the teller. She heard the distinctive BMW horn hoot a warning, and she moved from one foot to the other in an agitated way. At last she was given her money which she placed it in her handbag, but as she did so her hand bag pushed forward forcing the plastic visa card under the model life-boat. Hurriedly, she picked up the remaining papers and fled back to the waiting car, clutching her handbag under her arm. The car¡¯s front passenger door was already open and its engine running. She got into it and they drove off and the policeman didn't even get to lick his pencil.

Inside the bank Mell had missed nothing. Now it was his turn. He passed his social security cheque to the teller with his left hand. He placed his right hand in his trouser pocket and removed a few coins. These he then deposited in the lifeboat collection box, which he simultaneously moved forward to expose the mislaid visa card. As quick as a flash his left hand had the card securely in his pocket. He put his cash into his wallet, walked slowly out of the bank, down the street and mounted a waiting bus bound for Ballydub.

The signal-red 1960s Mustang, with a steers horn mounted on its bonnet, made its way around the square in Greenan and turned onto the Ballydub road. The driver was a distinguished, tall, lean man in his early seventies, sporting a small spade beard. He drove his open top car at break-neck speed, ignoring the sharpness of the early afternoon wind which blew through his long white but thinning hair. He was known to all as Casino Jo. Nobody knew for certain why, or the origin of the nickname, but there was a rumour that he had fought at the Second World War battle of Casino in Italy and survived, against all the odds, as if by some magic or other.

It was not long before he had his Mustang parked in Ballydub. At the same time the bus from Castlemadre stopped outside the Myrtle Tree bar. Mell alighted from the bus and headed towards the bar. He entered it and turned left to the public bar, found a vacant bar stool and climbed on board. He ordered whiskey. Jo looked around for a suitable place to wet his whistle and choose the Myrtle too. He crossed the street and turned right through the porch into a massive new lounge with not a sinner in it. He closed the door quietly and then opened the door to the public bar. He noticed Mell sitting at the counter, sat down beside him and ordered a pint. Horse-racing blared from a large television above their heads.

The horses could be seen in the parade ring being led around by their grooms. Mell had bought a paper which lay open in front of him at the racing page. He fancied the favourite in the two o'clock race. He studied his horse, which now had its jockey. The combination looked good to his experienced eye. He then disappeared around the back of the bar to use the public telephone. He looked up the local directory and dialled the number of a book-maker in Greenan, as there was no turf- accountant in Ballydub. He placed a bet for £10 on the favourite with the mislaid visa card he had pocketed earlier. He gave the details, name, number, expiry date and returned to his place in the bar where Jo too had been studying the horses. A conversation sprang up between the two men.

"I know very little about horse racing," Jo admitted to Mell, "but the funny thing is, I can usually spot the winner in the parade ring." Mell, on the other hand, spent most of his time studying racing form and considered himself a bit of an expert.

"Right, what 'ill win the two o'clock?" Jo looked at the horses again as they left the parade ring for the race track, but he had already chosen a horse.

"It 'ill be the jockey in the blue with a red band."

"That 'ill be right." Said Mell, consulting his paper. "Sure that's a no-hoper at twenty to one.

The horses made their way around the course. Mells horse was taken down on the second to last fence from home. The blue suited jockey with the red hoop cantered to the finish. The jockey didn't even bother to look over his shoulder.

Mell¡'s interest was aroused. The horses paraded for the two-thirty. There were only a handful of people in the bar who were either happy to watch the racing or just drink pints so Mell and Jo looked at the list of runners undisturbed. Mell again fancied the favourite at one to four, not great odds. Jo looked at the screen in politeness to Mell, rather than any great interest in the race.

"There! That's the one." He said pointing to a horse without a jockey. Mell waited as all the horses were mounted and ready to go to the start line. Eventually, a jockey ran towards the rider less animal and was thrown up onto the horse in an unceremonious fashion. Mell could now identify the horse as 'Try-my-best'. He excused himself and ran for the phone and dialled the same number.

"£10 on Try-my-best!" The clerk recognised the voice.

"The race has started. I can't' take the bet."

"Okay, okay! I 'ill make it worth your while. Make it £50 each way!" Mal could hear the conversation in the background.

"Take it then. We don¡'t often get fifty quids on a definite no-hoper."

Mell returned to his seat. The horses made their way around the course. Try-my-best lived up to his name with a good second place. Mell was pleased with himself.

"There," he said to Jo "you got that one wrong."

"That's odd. It seldom happens."

"Have a pint." Said Mell ordering a whisky for himself. "Better still, we 'ill have a pint and a double."

"Sound." Said Jo, beginning to settle.

The horses were in the ring for the three o'clock.

"What 'ill do it now, Jo?" Mell looked at his badly creased paper and thought that his favourite jockey was worth a punt. The horses paraded. Jo said nothing. "Come on now, Jo. No need to feel down because you got the last one wrong!"

"I think I see the winner." Said Jo pointing to the smallest horse on the screen as it walked assertively around the parade ring. It had the biggest jockey that Mell had ever seen. He consulted the paper a Fifty to one shot. He excused himself, went to phone again out of sight of Jo and placed his bet.

"£200 each way on 'I am weary'." The clerk said she would have to consult. She came back and confirmed the bet details and added,

"It must be your lucky day!"

"Why's that?" Said Mell.

"Your horse in the three o'clock has just been awarded first place after an objection."

Mell did his sums quickly. More than six hundred and a loss of only £10. He returned to see Jo finishing his pint.

"I 'm off." Jo said. Mell pleaded with him to have one for the road. "Okay then, but my round." Said Jo. "You know what they say about drink?"

"What's that?"

"Well," says Jo very confidentially. "One drink is nice, two drinks are enough and three drinks aren't half enough."

"That's true, Jo." Said Mal ordering pints and doubles, anyway.

The commentators voice rang out from the television. "In front a bunch of five horses, ten lengths clear of the field. Cat Bush, Missed, Lady Hanger, I am Weary and Kissing Time. Coming to the second last fence, Lady Hanger, Missed, Kissing Time and I am Weary. They race to the last, I am Weary, Missed, Kissing Time, Lady Hanger, Cat Bush. I am Weary, I am Weary, and racing up hill is going to win followed by Missed and Lady Hanger."

Mal was gob-smacked; almost £20,000. He never had a win like this before. He got up from the stool shouting "I am Weary, I am Weary!" To an astonished bar but none more so than Jo.

"You! You 'ave been betting!" he screamed. "I know you have. How could¡­how could you?"

Jo caught Mell around the throat. It took the barman and ten of the customers to pull him off. The incident happened so quickly. Jo moved to a bench seat under the window and began to cry. Deep sobs that got even deeper and deeper, and then he ran to the corner of the bar, crouched down, put his hands over his ears and started to scream.

"It's starting! It's returning again!" He cried out in obvious agony but nobody could see what was wrong with him. Mell had only the one cure for everything. He bought Jo a large whisky and gave it to him to sip.

"What ails you, Jo?"

"You betrayed me. You used my sacred gift; A gift which saved my life so many times during the war. I 'ave never told anyone before what happened there."

"Tell me all about it, Jo." Said Mell as tenderly as he could still nursing his ever reddening neck.

"Mell, I could see it on their faces, don't you understand? I could see it on their faces."

"What could you see?"

"The men, the men, the men."

"What men, Jo?"

"The men that were about die. I could see on their faces. I kept away from them, I can tell you. That's what kept me alive. We were under constant attack and bombardment for three months, Mell. I tried; I tried so hard to save my men. No matter what I did they still died anyway. I even saw it on my best friend Harold. I pleaded with our senior officer to give him time off behind the lines, together with six others who had the light on them. I thought I had the curse broken. They went that evening in a jeep, all six of them to the safety of the rear of the battle. On the way the jeep hit a land mine and they all died. It was then I realised I could see the future. Only for maybe a second or even part of a second but I have never used it to my advantage except to stay alive." He downed his whiskey in one gulp, stood up and deliberately caught Mell in a vicious stare. His eyes glazed, he exploded and attacked Mell again with a terrible fury. The two men struggled in a dangerous fight until they both fell exhausted on the floor. The barman, by now had enough and threw them both out in a heap on the street. Somewhat more sober now, the two men headed off, supporting each other as best they could to find another more congenial watering hole.

"Let's stop for petrol." Said Rob. They had arrived in Dublin's south side. "Put it on your card, Cindy." Rob commenced refuelling the car. Cindy got out and walked to the pay booth. She opened her handbag to get her credit card. It was gone, nowhere to be seen. She ran to Rob to tell him. "You had it this morning to pay the bills. You can't have lost it!" Said Rob. Cindy emptied her handbag onto the passenger seat but still no sign of it.

Rob took his own card from his wallet, gave it to Cindy, and he swore softly to himself, something about women. They got home and searched again for the card but still sign of it.

"Okay, we 'ill have it cancelled." they both agreed.

Cindy phoned the credit card company; the assistant thanked her for prompt attention, took the details and cancelled the card. Cindy was about to hang up but asked for the balance on the card instead. She listened and then slammed down the phone, trembling.

"Rob! O Rob! Have we got insurance on the cards? I am so sorry! I am so sorry!"

"No afraid not!"

"It's your entire fault! If you hadn't rushed me in that brat of a town in God-knows-where''... Why can't you park a car like any normal person. If you did, we would't be in this mess!"

"True. Nor would we have the phone or electricity either, he said. For God's sake pull yourself together. Tell me the worst!" She mumbled the figure. "It can't it can't be that much! Sure, our limit is not even half that amount. The limit, that's it! That's all we can be liable for. What¡¯s that number again?"

He rang the number, trying to keep as calm as he could, but ready to fight his corner too. He gave the details and explained about the joint card. He then got straight to the point. "The balance." he said in as strong a voice as he could manage.

"£19100." the voice said.

"It can't be!" wailed Rob. "Our limit is only £5,000!"

"But Sir, I will explain it to you...

Debt Credit

Craigies hotel £550.00 Greenanne turf £19100

Greenanne turf £10.00

Your visa account is in credit for £18500.00, she said ...

TURF