Boomtown

Roundstone

Twenty years is a long time, for cities and with love. I came here first with Karen and the girls. Galway is recognizable, though a little angry at the edges. Local graffiti says ‘fuck the bankers’. I turn on the TV to a docudrama on the ongoing clerical child abuse scandal. The race week revellers though, don’t seem to mind. It is raining – that soft, soaking Atlantic rain. The weathergirl says ‘the jet stream is low this year’. Signs and portents! We were here before the boom. Now, everything is bust.

Carraroe

Anna hired a car; a black Toyota with banshee brakes. The AA failed to exorcise the spook so we’re screeching our way around Connemara. There is an art to getting lost. It’s almost a spiritual discipline, like prayer and fasting. From Galway to Roundstone, Carraroe is the wrong way for efficiency. The ‘right way’ though, wouldn’t have taken us to that famous coral strand. I wonder if the beach will outlive coral itself. It’s a fetching place, but a few too many visitors for solitude.

This isn’t a travelogue or a retreat, but the patron saint of word processing must be watching looking out for us. I’m working on a journal, something I haven’t done for years. Every holiday should have a little literary companionship. Mark Patrick Hederman is the Abbot of Glenstal Abbey and the reading is Walkabout. Our car has haunted brakes but this is a banshee book. I can’t decide whether Hederman is inspired or delusional. Perhaps, he’s a little of both but I’m still a touch too English to know the difference.