The Parish (9 page)

I
n an ancient graveyard at the end of our village stands an old tower dating back to 1225. Early Huguenot settlers, who brought the linen industry to Innishannon, had built a little side chapel on to the church and later some of them were buried there. Over the years the tombs and headstones were covered in bushes and briars and the gate into the graveyard could not be opened as there was a tree growing up through the gate pillar and tangled through the gate. This forgotten graveyard was a prisoner behind a rusty gate crying out for attention.

Early in the summer of 1983 a small group of us came together and began to hack back the smothering overgrowth. We put in long hours of dogged hard work, so much so that one cynical man decided that we must be getting paid for our efforts. “No one in their right mind,” he told us, “would do all that for nothing.” The cleared debris was piling high beside the gate and one night we set fire to it. At the time, there was no legal restriction on bonfires but there were other forces at large.

An irate lady who lived nearby almost set fire to us with her hot tongue and dire threats of legal proceedings. One of our workgroup was a very genteel clergyman whose ears had never before been assailed by such a verbal onslaught. He there and then decided that the living could render looking after the dead a very dangerous undertaking; he quickly withdrew to the safety of his own residence. Some of us, however, were more accustomed to local hazards, and were prepared to weather the storm. We continued with the nightly effort and uncovered the tombs of the early Huguenots and then began to clear out the side chapel. Having wheeled out many barrows of earth, we finally reached ground level. There, to our amazement, were inscribed flagstones over the tombs that had been buried for decades. It was a strange feeling to read the inscriptions on the long-obscured vaults; we felt a little as if we had discovered hidden treasure. It was the burial place of one family and many of those buried there had been very young.

Some of the tombs around the graveyard had also collapsed and bones were scattered at the entrances. One night when putting old bones back into the tombs we were joined by a group of young people on holiday. The following day, I met a bewildered mother who wanted to know if her teenage son was having her on when he told her that he had spent the previous evening putting bones back into old tombs. It was a bit difficult to put a normal face on this unusual activity. I think that the woman decided that she had come on holiday to a rather strange place.

After the clean-up of the old graveyard we moved on to clearing out the woods. Innishannon is surrounded by beautiful woods with wonderful walks, but these had become blighted by some unseemly sights. As a Tidy Towns project we decided
to do something about it, and we appealed for volunteers. The key elements of a good voluntary turn-out are phone calls and knocking on doors, and we reaped our reward in the form of large teams of people from all ages spending several weekends working together to clear the woods of rubbish. We came across all kinds of strange objects, including one bundle consisting of a pair of large pink knickers, a bra and an ancient corset wrapped up in an old towel.

“Do you think,” one man asked, with the corset dangling off the end of his finger, “that someone threw discretion to the wind in here some night?”

Dozens of bags of rubbish and a collection of miscellaneous objects were dragged out of the woods. Then the local farmers with tractors and trailers brought them to a central point at the end of the village for collection by the council. In our parish the farming community with their machinery and expertise are a vital component in any undertaking. The coming together of all facets of the community is the lifeblood of any parish. On the last evening of the clean-up, hundreds of bags lined the roadside. Passing motorists slowed to view the array. One exhausted worker had taken time to place a large sign on top of the rubbish bags asking, “Is any of this rubbish yours?”

A week afterwards, when all the bags had gone, the grass was cut and everything was in pristine condition, a black bag of rubbish appeared on the same spot. The word went around the village like lightning. A crowd gathered. We could not believe our eyes! The strange thing was that before the big clean-up the same bag could have lain there for a week and nobody would have even noticed. But now we were on high alert. We investigated the bag and discovered that it belonged to a French woman who was renting a nearby house. She told
us, “I see much rubbish so I think that is the place for it.”

It was into the village and the approach roads that we put our greatest effort. Soon we had both sides of the main road into the village landscaped and looking well. But then the National Roads Authority (NRA) undertook roadworks that left it in the condition of a ploughed field. A large team of volunteers was rounded up to tackle the problem. After a few hours, one disgruntled man pronounced: “This is bloody slave labour. No voluntary group should be expected to do this.” Another man who had arrived in his brand-new car finished up so caked in mud that he had to walk home to hose himself down and then come back for his car. A group of teenagers who had come to help for the first time went home covered in mud and after that experience we never again saw them. We went back to the NRA to demand that remedial work be carried out, but the NRA had subcontracted the job and so claimed not to be responsible. We then had a prolonged battle with various statutory bodies, and because we refused to go away we eventually got things put right.

The night before we were due to be judged for a “Pride of Place” competition, disaster struck. At the end of the village a motorist in a hurry forgot to round the barrack corner and shot straight across the road and down three steps, spinning four large flower tubs into the air and then ramming his engine under an ancient flower-filled farm cart. The resulting debris covered the entire corner in a carpet of battered flowers, earth and smashed tubs. It was testimony to the solidity of the old cart that it had refused to budge and remained unshaken by this modern monster rammed between its shafts. Our crazy motorist, meanwhile, had reversed out of the war zone and gone merrily on his way, unaware that he had disturbed the
arm of the law in the barracks across the road, who went in hot pursuit.

The following morning, when the chaos was sighted, an SOS went around the village. We gathered to survey the scene. Speedy action was required, so we quickly got to work with brushes and wheelbarrows. New tubs and shrubs were procured and paid for by our speeding friend, and by lunchtime all was well. We were once more ready for inspection, and with new tubs and new shrubs we were better than ever. One of the nuns in our cookery class in school had always told us that the secret of success was to turn a kitchen disaster into a
dining-room
triumph—a lesson to be applied to all walks of life!

In the fight against litter, Cork County Council set up the Litter League to select the cleanest town and village in the county. We struggled manfully to take the award, as the cash prize would help buy plants and trees. But keeping clean and tidy a village through which 30,000 vehicles pour daily is no mean task, and of course we also have our own litterers. My husband Gabriel was the stalwart of the litter-pickers and did a round of the village early every morning before taking in the post and beginning his day’s work. During the day, others did shifts in the village and along the approach roads. Every morning, on my shift, I found an empty packet of a certain brand of cigarette in the same spot, and if it was missing, I wondered if the smoker was all right—there is a set pattern even to litter. The Celtic Tiger was to be met daily in our midst when we picked up unopened tins of beer and full bags of crisps.

Picking litter can have its funny side. One day, as I was going up the hill behind our house, a woman smoking a cigarette came towards me. Suddenly she waved her cigarette
in the air and announced loudly: “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t throw a butt on the ground within a mile of Innishannon!” We had declared a public war on litter and the news had travelled even beyond the parish boundaries. A young girl very seriously told me, “I always threw my rubbish out the window of the car. I saw nothing wrong with it until the Litter League began. But now I take a bag around in the car for the rubbish.” So at least we were creating awareness. In the first year of the competition we came second in the county, and in the second year we came first.

The Tidy Towns is a combination of slave labour, dogged determination and occasional diplomatic skill. One night after a particularly depressing meeting I discovered that another component was necessary. The night in question, as we walked up to the annual meeting in the parish hall, I felt that this was going to be a great meeting. We had enjoyed our best year to date, having won the National Landscape Award and come first in the Litter League. But I was in for a rude awakening. One member started to
cnáimhseáil
. This in English means whining, but the English word only half conveys the meaning. There are some occasions when we have to resort to the native tongue to convey true clarity of meaning.

The strange thing about a meeting is that, if it takes off in one direction, it is very difficult to turn it around. The sheep element in us comes to the surface and we all follow the leader out the gate. But on this occasion it was down a moaning road. By the time the meeting was over, I felt like lying down under the table and crying. We came home, Gabriel having taken it all in his stride, but I was grinding my teeth with frustration. I sat in the kitchen, simmering with bad temper. Mike, our eldest son, who unlike his mother never uses two words where
one will do, breezed in and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw my face.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

“I’m fed up with bloody Tidy Towns,” I snapped.

“But you’re the one with the big dream of beautiful Innishannon,” he protested.

“Not tonight,” I told him grimly.

“So the dream is after getting a bit of a rattling,” he said, with a grin.

“It’s dead!” I declared. “Dead, dead, dead.”

There was a thoughtful silence and then Mike pronounced: “If you have a dream,” he began slowly, “you must put that dream on the very top of the goalpost and play above the shit.”

Our bridge at the western end of the village was shrouded in a thousand shades of mud and dust. It sorely needed a new coat, but first it would have to be washed, which would necessitate getting a tractor—or preferably two—with power hoses on to the bridge to give it a good wash. The problem was the traffic that thundered relentlessly over the bridge. To avoid causalities, we would have to plan the entire enterprise like a military manoeuvre. It was decided that the early hours of a Sunday morning would be the quietest time. But that would not apply if there was a big game on in Thurles, Croke Park or any up-country venue; if that was the case, every GAA supporter from Beara to Bandon would be on the road. So, after consultation with all sporting bodies, we chose our morning carefully. It was decided we would commence operations at 4 a.m. on a Sunday in August. Two reliable farmers, Paddy and Ted, would bring their tractors, water tanks and power hoses, and Donal, our local garda, would take care of traffic. We would round up the usual slaves!

That morning, as I walked up the village at four o’clock, the dawn was breaking and I could hear the tractors already in action. As they moved along slowly, the workers behind were power-hosing down the iron rails of the bridge. It was a slow procedure as the rails were corroded with years of caked mud and grime. The odd passing motorist slowed in amazement to see what on earth could be going on at that hour of the morning. Donal kept them informed and moving at the same time.

The lads worked in shifts and slowly the bridge came out from under its coat of dirt. To fortify the troops we had turned the stone wall at the far end of the bridge into a breakfast counter and dished out rashers and sausages with cups of tea. As we dined on our stone table it was lovely to see the rising sun send rays of light up the river and to watch the Bandon valley fill with light as the mist rolled along the top of Dromkeen Wood.

Early one evening the following week, a team of about thirty volunteers lined out with cans of paint. Some had never before wielded a paint brush but were there for the craic and finished up colour co-ordinated with the bridge, which before darkness fell glowed a burgundy red. One volunteer brought along an American visitor to help and she found it highly entertaining that a whole village was out painting a bridge. The project had been a marathon that was hugely enjoyed by the young, and on the next occasion that the bridge needed an overhaul the young farmers of the local Macra na Feirme club took it on board as their club project.

Tidy Towns is a testing organisation and there are occasions when you ask yourself why you bother, especially when you are out picking up other people’s litter. You could be forgiven
for thinking that it’s a bit like trying to keep out the tide. But it stimulates pride in one’s own place; friends meet up on a regular basis, and it gives newcomers an opportunity to get to know their neighbours and to integrate into their chosen community. If young couples come to live in our parish from places like Kenmare, Lismore or Clonakilty, they are a great asset as they have grown up with the pride-of-place ethos.

Over the years, many trees have been planted in the parish but the biggest planting project was the Millennium Grove—
Gort na Mílaoise
. As the millennium approached, we felt that there should be some permanent landmark on our landscape to record that big step in time. We appealed for sponsorship for trees, and the money came in freely from all over the parish in support of the project. Outside the village, by the side of the main road, was a long strip of waste ground that had become a dumping area. We hired machinery to have the ground cleared and levelled. Then we brought in loads of good topsoil to create a deep bed for the ball-rooted deciduous native trees that were going to move in and rest there for many years. In tree planting you get only one chance to give your young trees a rich, comfortable bed.