Ten years ago my daughter and I were en route to Ardara Co Donegal, passing a field of cows and taking about how they had their back to the wind indicating rain. The car wireless was on. Suddenly there was a report, sounded serious the way the presenter broke into the programme. I don’t remember what she said save: ‘Seamus Heaney has died.’ It was a shock, sudden and unexpected. We got to the town and the chapel bell was tolling the Angelus but I thought it was for the much loved poet. In the queue for the bank I told a woman beside me the news – she was shocked and called out to everyone ‘Seamus is dead.” It seems to be the outpouring of grief has lasted ever since.
I met the man many times, I interviewed him for a four minute slot on UTV news when he won the Nobel Prize falling foul of the waiting BBC crew when we talked on for 25 minutes. He asked for the full camera tape afterwards and I blush that it included my romantic thoughts after the BBC captured him and I was giving a windup to camera. I apologised to Marie afterwards and she said her husband loved it! He also invited me to Ballaghy at the opening of some community event and I wrote to thank him telling him of the full moon guided me home only to hear that my daughter Susie had been involved in an armed raid on the village shop in Swords. He wrote back a most comforting letter sending Susie his best wishes.
At a party in Dublin hosted by my late friend Harriett Duffin he sent a large bottle of champaign with his wife Marie and we toasted his health several times during the evening’s fun.
And I remember my son Michael and four of his school friends coming with me to Glenties to hear Seamus speak of his poems and one of which he read impressed the boys – Digging. On the way home their chat was all about the night when Ian said of the poem they were studying at school, “Now I understand what he was writing about, he told the story so I could understand it. I can’t wait to read it again.” The others agreed.
Seamus had been a teacher at one time and his understanding of words has marked him out as Ireland’s greatest poet and figure of world respect and love. On this mornings ‘Sunday Miscellany’ on RTE Radio 1, Marie read a poem of their growing relationship in Belfast. I’m not ashamed to say it brought me to tears.
There have been countless tears shed in the South of Ireland over the deaths of so many in the last weeks. Apparently 127 road accidents have claimed lives of adults, teenagers, ever toddlers. It’s now top billing on news and current affairs programmes with promises of something being done to stop the carnage. Sooner rather than later please God
Culloden Hotel is renowned for many things and the people who have stayed in this gracious dwelling built by William Robinson 1876 and named for his wife Elizabeth Jane Culloden. However, there are strong connections with Scotland as the sandstone was shipped from there to Portaferry and hence carried by horse and cart to the Co. Down site at Craigavad. Since those days of gracious family living it’s been a bishops palace and a five star hotel developed by Sir Billy Hastings. Such an hotel that people from far and wide come to stay, the famous and the infamous, footballers, politicians, actors and entertainers and people wanting a touch of that gracious living that has always been associated with the building. And now perhaps the most famous of all has come for a short stay, the Dutch spy Mata Hari and you could meet her this week as she graces the lawn overlooking Belfast Lough.
Even in bronze she is a character who stirs emotions and the title Seven Veils sums her up. An exotic dancer, this Dutch courtesan was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War 1. But was she? In October 1917 it was too late to challenge the accusation as she stood before a firing squad of 12 French soldiers; standing proud, refusing to wear a blindfold or to be bound, apparently she blew a kiss to the firing squad and it was this image that intrigued sculptor Paddy Campbell. The result can be seen at the Art + Soul exhibition at Culloden mounted by Olive Gormley and his family.
His figure catches the woman in her death throws, stretching up and back, about to fall riddled with bullets. When I talked to the sculptor he told me that when he began fashioning Mata Hari initially in wax it was during a very hot period of weather and in the heat she began to sag backwards and about to fall. It gave him inspiration and the beautiful figure of the woman known around the world now celebrates her memory. It’s sad to think that, as Paddy explanted, there was no evidence to say she was a spy, He seemed to champion her life story and has obviously put a lot of love into his work of this 41 year old woman who, as she lay dying apparently was shot in the head by an officer who pulled out his revolver and shot her to make sure she was dead. Her lifeless body was never claimed and was used for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept in the museum of Anatomy in Paris but it was stolen probably in the 1950s and remains missing.
There are many beautiful exhibits to view, I’m saving for Bob Quinn’s Best Night Ever two elegant ladies on their tipsy way home and you wonder where they’ve been. Ian Pollock’s The Champion caught my eye, a boy footballer holding aloft a cup and when I saw it I hoped the English girls would be celebrating too but sadly not to be.
The exhibition of 250 items, runs until next Sunday 10th September and includes sculptures ranging from £2500 to almost half a million pounds and inside Culloden, walls boast top class paintings. The Banksy shows Dorothy with her dog Toto having her basket searched by an American cop probably in Kansas, Damien Hirst presents enamel paint on handmade paper, a series of dots in blues, reds, yellows and green – not for me although Salvador Dali has painted a lovely elongated elephant and another of a slender Alice in Wonderland, perhaps for my shopping list but having said that, give me Northern Ireland painter Stephen Forbes Rink, a drone type shot of brightly coloured skaters swirling around on the ice or Eileen Meagher’s Mountain Stream set in her home place in Connemara.
It all goes to show beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the bank balance! This exhibition is a wonderful chance to see international work never to be seen again and to wander through the rooms of Culloden to view the exceptional art work and then have afternoon tea and discuss your preferences.
More at www.gormleys.ie.
Culloden details at cullodenestateandspa.com.
True Or False
Like a lot of others, I believe this story is worth talking about, if true it’s powerful. A professor is shopping in a New Jersey supermarket. He notices an elderly lady stretching up to reach a jar of jam. He offers his help and passes her the jam she wanted, Bonne Maman raspberry preserve. She explains why it was her choice. During the Second World War as a child of the Holocaust, she says, the family who owned the company hid her family in Paris.
But there are doubts. What is accurate is the report: ‘there were posters on the walls from the Nazis and from the collaborators and they said that if you are found to help a Jew, a freemason, a communist, a socialist, or a pervert, you will be shot on sight.’ Anyone who shielded these terrified men, women and children were the bravest of the brave.
The problem is that this 90 year old woman talked about being shielded in Paris but the company was based in Biars sur Cere southern France and the dates don’t match so did she know what she was saying? Professor Michael Perino is convinced, as are many who endured those tragic times. Bonne Maman have been asked but told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the family ‘prefer to maintain privacy and does not comment on inquiries about personal matters.’
Not surprising the sceptics have jumped on the band wagon suggesting the little old lady was an actress going through the motions and setting up the professor who fell for the story and posted it in detail on Twitter. Was he an unknowing part of a brilliant PR campaign which has brought this tasty jam to the fore? I hope not.