Thanks for staying with me as I recount tales and share life-lessons from my two week trip to Ireland. If you missed the first three instalments, read here, here, and here where we covered the first seven of 15 things.

8. Walking will always be my escape but it’s a little different in remote countryside 

The Irish Writers Retreat was at an Inn in County Donegal, an area of Ireland so far north no-one I met in Dublin has been. Because the 2 km road to the nearest shop - a patrol station - was accompanied only sporadically by sidewalks, you left your umbrella in your bag to get a better view of the grills of oncoming buses, cars, and lorries barrelling around tight corners at breakneck speed, seemingly without a thought to foreigners who might like a rainy ramble. Despite the danger, people in our group would head down to grab water, toothpaste, or just to get a break. On the two outings I made, I was grateful when I rounded the last corner to see the Teac Jack, our hotel. Safe again. 

Although that route had its dangers, I made shorter treks every day, averaging 7.7 kms over the week. Being as northerly as we were, I was able to go out at 10 pm, decompressing from whatever evening event we’d enjoyed, still with enough light to feel safe. I met local dogs, unaccompanied, this being the country where leashing is less a concern. I took endless photos of foliage unfamiliar to me, or growing in ways that wouldn’t happen in the drier and hotter climate of Toronto. And on at least one occasion, I gave myself a low-grade freakout by imagining danger ahead. Hard to know what danger it might be -there was no-one out for miles to accost me and I was raised to stay well-back from any precipice, real or metaphoric. Nonetheless, the feeling of solitude bubbled up reminding me that occasionally it is good to let someone know where you’re going, even though one of the significant advantages of being single is not having to. Something to ponder. No harm done though, other than creeping myself out!  

9. I need vegetables and I need good coffee too 

Regular readers will know I enjoy cooking and eating good food. I also regularly consume junk food - who doesn’t enjoy the odd bag of chips with wine after a gruelling day of work or a burger & fries lunch with colleagues? Eating seven days of pub food, though, tested my fried-food limits. 

Breakfast began at 8 and I was there ready to start the day so I could get in a walk before our 10 a.m. session started. The Irish Breakfast was one of the options available, including a treat for this Canadian — black pudding and white pudding, its bloodless sister. A bit of each of that along with two eggs, toast, mushrooms, sometimes sausage and bacon, and a grilled anemic tomato. All great, but for the tasteless tomato.  

My first evening meal was fish & chips, and it is the first time I’ve ever not finished an order. While delicious, it was a meal that likely could serve four regular people (I ate half). I didn’t imagine that by the end of the week, the dull green mushy pea accompaniment would seem like a serving of vegetables, in the absence of any other. Their caesar salad reminded me of my late husband’s Polish-inspired approach to food - if it’s cold, call it salad - as it was primarily composed of chicken, bacon, and dressing. 

By the time I reached my stepson’s house nearly Galway and then Dublin later still, I was so vegetable starved I would have eaten an undressed bowl of kale. Instead I hoovered down a Dublin toastie, named Asparagorgeous.  

And now a word on coffee. I have no views on the proper temperature or the level of foam, nor do I add pumps of anything to it or have alternative choices regarding milk. No, I’m not a coffee snob or even self-styled aficionado. However, please do not call instant coffee coffee. It is thick and bitter and disgusting and surely it wouldn’t break the bank to get a Nespresso machine. Just saying. 

10. Irish people don’t know about heavy traffic 

Since the pandemic, Torontonians have added complaining about traffic as a new favourite topic overtaking their usual one, weather. My car-commute across the city from work has gone from 55 minutes to about 1 hour and 20 daily, so much so I’ve actually used transit once or twice. 

So, imagine my sense of wonder and superiority when, on my five hour bus odyssey from Donegal to Galway at the end of the retreat, we encountered a 30 minute delay in the Donegal town of Letterkenny which was hosting a leg of the Donegal International Rally. As we drove bumper-to-bumper through the town, the bus driver conducted a series of panicked calls with his fellow drivers, strategizing about how to minimize delay. I sat behind him, amused and bemused, contemplating a simpler time when I could say with confidence I’d be at X location at X time, as this driver was accustomed to doing. 

11. Irish culture is not just about classic literature (by male writers)  

Most writers and aspiring writers would know Ireland for its great literary tradition - James Joyce, WB Yeats, Bram Stoker, CS Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, and so on (hey, all men! Shocker). Newsflash - my reading has been pretty light on classics and so when I arrived in Dublin, instead of going where the giants went so I could let osmosis do its thing, I sat in parks reading contemporary Canadian novels and working at my own jottings. 

And I opened my eyes to some contemporary Irish culture. Sally Rooney is a 33 year old Dubliner with a few novels to her name, including the one I read while in Dublin, Normal People. It’s not my first exposure to Rooney - I read a novel of hers on my last trip to London in 2018. I like her writing. Her characters and the world she creates for them are believable. Her language is accessible. Her plots are interesting. Reading Rooney doesn’t feel like work and that is so welcome in the world of literary fiction where some writers are only happy when they have you reading and rereading their lengthy, dense paragraphs trying to catch their meaning. 

My trip home on Aer Lingus provided a window into Irish film. I began with the Irish award winning film about a friendship between a retired middle-aged woman and a 16 year old sex worker called Verdigris. I loved this film. It was dark and funny and sad and touched on so many aspects of being a woman in a modern world where social class still matters. Buoyed by that successful choice, I nosed around further in the Irish film section and found a film starting Olivia Coleman. I first saw her in Broadchurch and since then she’s been in, well, everything! Series like The Crown, great movies like Empire of Light, crappy movies like Wonka, weird TV shows that I couldn’t get through like Flowers, and this little Irish jewel, Joyride. Coleman is convincing as a single middle-aged lawyer who’s trying to deliver the unwanted baby she’s just borne to her sister and acquires another child along the way. Anytime Coleman does comedy there’s a strong message between the laughs and this is no exception. 

Both films are written by contemporary female Irish writers. I don’t really think I need to read Joyce. But let’s keep that a secret between us. 

Stayed tune for next week’s gripping finale to my 5 part series about Ireland! 

(photo above: Me against just another Irish landscape; below: with my new book along with various landscapes, some traffic, and food offerings)

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