The wonder of a great holiday

This column appears in this week's INM Irish regional newspapers.

By Michael Commane

It’s holiday time.

As a child, I spent my holidays on my granduncle’s farm on the Kilkenny-Tipperary border.

Looking back on those days now, it was idyllic.

Before we set off from our home in Dublin, I remember tidying up the car, Dad checking the oil and tyre pressure. Mum would have a picnic prepared for the journey. Sometimes we stopped on the Curragh to have our meal, on other occasions leaving it 'til later.

Usually, there would be some sort of dispute as to who would sit in the front: my brother wanting the prime seat, so, too, did my sister. Being the youngest, I was always in the back and in the middle. I was able to stand on the cover of the transmission-rod that ran back to the wheels. Standing there, it gave me a better view. In retrospect, I’m sort of baffled as to why Mum was not always in the front. That’s mothers for you.

They were great holidays: bringing in the hay, collecting eggs from the henhouse. While my brother and sister learned to horse-ride, I never managed it. Instead, I played about in the farmyard. On one occasion, my sister on a pony, I on a bicycle, went to the village of Crosspatrick, where we bought four Woodbine cigarettes. Later, we lit up in the henhouse. I was 10. My mother appeared and caught us at it. My first and last cigarette. Thank God for that: my mother was a smoker, later developing cancer of the larynx.

One day, I carved my name on a tall birch tree. Is proof of my delinquency still to be found?

In the late 1960s, the farm was sold to the Land Commission for approximately £20,000. A fabulous house with over 150 acres. All gone. At least, gone, out of my family.

50 years later, on my weekly rail-trip to and from Dublin, my mind strays back to those halcyon days as the train speeds through Thurles, Templemore, Ballybrophy. Now, watching people heading off on holidays, I’m always curious where they ‘re going and what they will be doing.

50 years ago Dublin Airport was a quiet spot – generally known as Collinstown. Today it’s the gateway for large numbers of people heading all over the world, whether on holiday or business. A short 20 years ago, it was unthinkable for most of us to go to Rome or Berlin for a weekend. These days, at work on Monday, I often hear people talking about a weekend in Milan or Paris. The summer holidays mean many head off for places as far away as Vietnam.

Maybe it’s a sign of getting older, but I’m less inclined now to fly off and away. There’s so much to see and experience at home in my own place. Last Friday I called on a friend, who lives in Limerick. On the Saturday morning, we went on a walk around the city. We retraced the streets Frank McCourt writes about in Angela’s Ashes. Later we went around by the Treaty Stone and visited the old Dominican priory, St Saviour’s in Barrack Street, built in the 13th century. It was my first time to see the monument recalling the Limerick Soviet in Clancy’s Strand overlooking the weir at Curraghgower.

While we were there a man was about to go fishing in low tide. The Shannon is tidal as far as there. A beautiful spot. I wonder what he was thinking. Looking at the man in the distance, with his fishing rod and wearing waders, it was clear he had a purpose. His was a stride, not a step. He knew what he was about.

Though too-cold a day for the end of July, it was great to be free, simply having the time to saunter, visiting out-of-the-way places I'd never seen before. It’s intriguing to observe people. I’m often tempted to stop and talk to strangers. I wonder what people are thinking, doing. What the hell it’s all about.

Of course it’s great to observe other cultures and people. But it’s fascinating to take a snapshot of our own people; of how we think and behave. I’m forever amazed how it  -  we -  all hold together.

It does. We do.

That’s the wonder.