BATS AND BORROWED TIME

I like bats. They were a regular feature of my African twilights, skittering through the dusk while the most intrepid of my many cats crouched on the spine of the roof, hurling herself up into the air time and time again in the vain hope of catching one, only to crash back down, batless, onto the corrugated iron with a noise like the pots of Hell clanging.

There were bats in Fermanagh when we were there a few weeks ago, but it was a lot more peaceful. In fact, there were signs on the trees exhorting us to silence for fear of disturbing them. Bats can live for anything up to 30 years. I am an old bat myself now, having just turned 70, and now that my biblical three score years and ten have been accounted for, obviously I'm on borrowed time, so I'm planning to make the most of it.

With this in mind, we started off our 70th birthday/ 3rd anniversary celebrations with 4 days in Fermanagh, at the Lough Erne resort where Councillor Kate and Fearless Fergal got married in March. We had a 4-poster bed and a circular balcony with a splendid view; we also had a double jacuzzi in which we almost got stuck  - and imagine the shame if you had to ring down to Reception to say you couldn't haul yourselves out! Mind you, they're such nice people, they'd probably make you feel all right about it.

A bat can consume 1200 mosqitos in an hour - it's one of the reasons I like them: I had malaria only once and who knows how many bouts I might have had if not for helpful bats? They are also eaten themselves in some places. Luckily we didn't have to eat bat; we had apple and cauliflower soup and pan-fried hake, and pork and duck and Prosecco, and pear and lemon and raspberry sorbets in the Catalina Restaurant - and if I died there, I'd die happy: the food is sublime. We also had lunch in the only Greek restaurant that I know of in the north - Dollakis in Enniskillen. Lovely friendly people and wonderful chicken souvlaki and Greek potatoes. We did a tour of Castle Coole and were ferried up the lough from Castle Archdale to White Island by a lovely young man whose father had skippered the ferry before him. We were the only passengers so we had the island with it's ruined church and ancient carved stone figures all to ourselves - apart from a few cows. It was wonderfully quiet and peaceful. 

On the other side of Lough Erne, the Lough Navar Forest Drive will take you up to what must be the most spectacular view in all of Fermanagh. From the Magho Viewpoint you can see the whole of lower Lough Erne spread out before you, from Donegal Bay and the Bluestack and Sperrin mountains all the way down to the eastern islands. I urge you to go and see for yourself, only don't rely on sat-nav: the shortest route is not the easiest, in fact we gave up on the first attempt after landing up in someone's back yard at the end of a rutted track half-way up a mountain. There were baying dogs and looming trees and it was all a bit Deliverance. Follow the signs on the road and you'll be fine.

Professor Gloom inspecting map

I took a pile of novels and opened none of them. Instead I read  the Irish Times and the Guardian, and an old paperback copy of The Children of Green Knowe. I don't know if any modern child would read it but Tolly and the ghostly children he plays with in his grandmother's old house took me straight back to long-ago childhood holidays. And set as the story is in flooded fenland country, it was perfectly suited to Fermanagh.

Now I'm back in Holywood and the youngest of my grandchildren has come to visit. He is only 3 months old, but he has dozens of books already and his mother and father read to him several times a day. In fact, this could just turn out to be the first child to be read to too much. I'm pretty sure I saw his eyes glaze over as The Very Hungry Caterpillar was opened for the umpteenth time, and I had a sudden vision of him in a few years time pulling up his little hoodie and fleeing down the garden path as his parents pursue him crying, "Omar Patrick! Wait! You have to listen to this one more time..."

A WEDDING IN CLONES

On Saturday 3 March Kate married Fergal in a little church in Clones, and even the unbelievers, the unobservant, and the deeply unsentimental (disproportionately present on the bride's side) were reduced to a quivering mush. Outside the snow (which had prevented quite a lot of people, including one of the two bridesmaids, from getting there at all) lay thick and white; inside, the congregation let out a collective sigh as the bride, attended by the one original bridesmaid, plus a heavily-pregnant sister (co-opted at the last minute) and a tiny, exquisite flower-girl, drifted down the aisle towards the groom. There was a fiddle, a flute, and a girl with one of those Irish singing voices that floats you up to the ceiling.

Which is probably enough of the wedding fervour. But what I will say is that I was never at a happier wedding, and the reception that followed at the Lough Erne resort was the best of all possible parties. Put any of our Irish, South African, Greek and Indian families in one room - not to mention the several other nationalities present - and you're bound to end up having a party, but this one was brilliant. Professor Gloom and I faded away before the dancing got properly going, but at a certain age there comes a point when a warm bed and a long sleep in the deep silence of the snowbound countryside trumps every other prospect.

Now it's 5 weeks since the wedding, and 4 since the last of the guests flew back home - after which Gloom and I lay down for 2 days with cold compresses on our heads. When we got up again, the house was eerily quiet. Apart from small hand-prints on the windows and a few plastic toys carefully buried in the houseplants, it was as though they'd never been here...

It's a good thing there was Kelly McCaughrain's book launch to cheer us up: I defy anyone not to be cheered by the Belfast Ukulele Jam - out in force to support one of their own -  and if you haven't read 'Flying Tips for Flightless Birds' yet, go and buy it NOW. You don't have to be a Young Adult to enjoy it; you can be a grumpy old person and still be seduced.

There was also lots of work waiting to distract us: scientific papers, novels at various stages of composition (or possibly decomposition) never mind the disordered house, disgruntled cat and neglected garden. And sadly, the endless, inescapable and polarising coverage of a local trial. Too many people have talked and written about this already, but I'm starting to think that hurling abuse via social media is the modern equivalent of putting people in the stocks. And that maybe actually throwing rotten vegetables and the contents of your chamber-pot is a bit braver than flinging dirt from the safety of your laptop.

So, what with one thing and another, we decided we needed another holiday, which is why we went back to Lough Erne. And what a good decision that was: the snow had gone, but the days were still sharp and bright as knives, and all that peace and space restored us.


We ate, drank, walked, slept, explored the countryside and were wonderfully well looked after by the hotel staff. And we had plenty of time to read. I finished the - to me - surprisingly enjoyable 'Essex Serpent' then started on Tea Obreht's 'The Tiger's Wife' - which I'd been meaning to read for years and am glad that I finally did. The tiger of the title assumes strange supernatural powers, in the minds of the locals; Sarah Perry's novel features an ancient winged serpent supposedly lurking in the marshes. Which might be why, very early one morning, I was almost certain I saw a long, dark, coiling shape breaking the surface of Lough Erne...

I also packed the most recent edition of Slightly Foxed. I love Slightly Foxed. It bills itself as the 'independent quarterly that introduces its readers to books that are no longer new and fashionable but have lasting appeal. A bit like myself, really.

Unfortunately, there's been a shameless amount of eating and drinking since Christmas, and in my case the wages of over-indulgence are gastritis, so I'm currently living on green tea and rice cakes, which is much the same as eating lightly-salted polystyrene. I even had to shun the Easter eggs. Still, the honeymooners came home on Easter Monday - Gloom was torn between joy at their return and disappointment that his vicarious travels had come to an end: he much prefers getting endless photos of foreign lands to all the bother of going there himself - and in May there'll be a new grandchild to look forward to. Plus, the days are getting longer, and I think I might have found a way forward, at long last, with the book that's been haunting me for months.

And one last reason to be cheerful: this weekend it's Greek Easter! I think I might treat myself to a little bit of chocolate, and  a glass or two of champagne. Not exactly what the doctor ordered, but what the hell: it's not how long you live that matters, but how well you live.

Καλο Πασχα everyone!