After all the trials and tribulation, treachery and torment of the past week in Westminster, I fancy a peaceful weekend away from it all. And what better place for that than an island?
I’ve a few bees in my bonnet about islands at the moment.
Firstly, islands off the West Coast of Ireland. Our book circle have just read Roddy Doyle’s Smile, The protagonist, now in his 50s, looks back to his school days and among other things recalls having to read the autobiography of Peig Sawyers at school. This book, written in Gaelic, was compulsory reading for all Irish school kids in the years after independence. Not a cheerful read. Misery, pain and suffering on the Blasket Islands.
It was all so OTT that it inspired that wonderfully amusing writer, Third Policeman Hitmaker, Flann O’Brien, to write a parody of it; The Poor Mouth. It “ relates the story of one Bonaparte O’Coonassa, born in a cabin in a fictitious village called Corkadoragha in western Ireland equally renowned for its beauty and the abject poverty of its residents.” His satire got him into a lot of hot water.
No doubt about it. There is something very unique about those » Continue Reading.
