Historia

There was a small announcement in the local rag informing us all that the local hysterical society, sorry historical society was going to conduct a tour of the above mentioned village (the name has been changed to protect the innocent). It was within a 30 minute drive from where we lived so I thought I’d give it a go. Two o’clock sharp it was to begin, on the last Sunday of September before the cold and dark season began to set in. It’s an old village, and as I have a fascination for old places and stuff I thought I might as well mosey on down there and inform myself of all the village historia. Apparently it’s about two thousand years old so I was intrigued as to what they were going to reveal. They once found a stone that looked like it could have once been the shape of an axe head. Carbon dating revealed that the ‘rock’ was about 80,000 years old, so that’s apparently certain evidence that cavemen, apes, fish, or blobs in the lake existed here a long time ago. They say that the rock in now housed in some museum of natural history. Maybe, in a box behind the shed, in a box marked ‘rocks and stuff’. So this could indeed be intriguing I thought. The folks began to gather about 1.45pm. They  all wore kegouls, had scarves around their necks, notepads in one hand, walking sticks in the other, completely armed should anything exciting happen. The weather was such that it had not rained for at least an hour, and talk among the assembled was that an Indian summer was highly possible, at least this afternoon. We would have happily taken this had the expectation been realistic, being as we had not even had no Irish one. And to be frank we had had no Icelandic summer either, nor an Alaskan summer, nor a Greenlandic one. Why a late summer is called an Indian summer is a mystery to me as I am led to believe that summers in India are unbearably hot. If a real Indian summer was ever to happen in Ireland we would simply all die. End of. But never mind, I digress. I was becoming a little bit suspicious of the group that began to gather. I was the youngest one amongst them, and that by a country mile. The standard colour of hair for those who had any, whether chin whisker or on the head, was white, snow white. For the men it was the same. Something told me that it seems most people seem to gather a great interest in all things belonging to the past shortly before they themselves join them. Which is a bit sad really.
 

Shay 

Our tour leader called for everyone to gather round, so we sort of did, and he announced to all and sundry that his name was Shay. Good to know in case any lawsuits should come out of this. I totally doubted it but you never know. Shay, wore an orange cap and yellow high-vis jacket just in case the fifteen or so people he was escorting should lose him or they simply forget who the man in charge was. Not unwise here in Ireland as people here really couldn’t care less who is in charge, so it helps to try and show least some visible sort of authority. As we stood there someone asked Shay how long the tour was going to be and would we be back in time for three as he was meeting the wife and some friends for dinner in the nearby restaurant at that time. Shay assured him that he had planned with one hour and fifteen minutes. He was satisfied with the response and grinned from ear to ear. ‘80,000 years of history in one and a quarter hours?’ I thought. Interesting. Anyway at 1:58 a dark blue Vauxhall van pulled up with dark windows, and it wasn’t long before I began to believe that Mr Grin’s 3.15pm lunch appointment was in serious doubt. The driver who was wearing a white coat, white pumps and white baggy orthopaedic pants got out and opened the two back wing doors and fastened them securely to the sides of the van. During this time a middle-aged woman dressed in exactly the same way had climbed out of the passenger seat and was helping a few seniors exit the side doors and then, when they had all steadied themselves on the balustrade of the graveyard steps, she dished out the walking frames. What happened next was the reason why I firmly believed lunch at 3.15pm was not going to happen. Two ramps were pulled out from under the floor of the Vauxhall van and were affixed firmly just above the tow bar. Slowly but surely, protruding backwards out of the rear of the van like some mega digger protruding out of the rear of a Thunderbird 2 pod, was a mobile wheelchair housing a slightly overweight gentleman with white hair, of no fixed style, who was hanging on for dear life to a drip, attached to his nose, and also on wheels. At the front was a cockpit affair with all sorts of whistles and bells but which I suspect only played music from various radio channels, because the thing certainly couldn’t do anything other than move forwards and backwards. Perhaps it had a dashcam, or a kerrs system, I don’t know. Anyway, it was a mammoth thing which should have had its’ own number plates. And I wondered if the driver had a licence to drive it, or even a racing driver’s permit. Anyway, not my problem. The real problem started when the driver shouted into the group “Will they be alright then?” A gentleman in short trousers with a camera around his neck, clearly a tourist, said “yeah, no problem”. The driver couldn’t believe his luck. The ramps were packed away before you could say ‘hey hang on a minute!’ and they were gone in a puff of smoke. The tyres screeched as they shot around the corner like they had just robbed the local Bank of Ireland and were making their getaway. Like them mini’s in The Italian Job. Clearly the home for seniors had decided that this was a perfect day out to Killbodmin for the dear residents. Cosmic idea. 
 

Everest 

Well there we were, all gathered at the bottom of the graveyard steps. And guess what the first port of call was? The top of the steps. Or to be more precise, the graveyard itself. Some of us immediately proceeded to help the senior seniors carry there walking frames up. We felt like Sherpas. One of the dear old ladies was so frail and petite that Seamus, one of the larger and younger seniors in the throng gave her a piggy back up the steps. Piece o’ cake. In five minutes we had all scaled the stairs up to the top, planted a flag there and beamed down with pride at the mobile wheelchair down below. Four guys were doing their best to see if he could be lifted. Not a prayer. ‘You’ve got to be joking’ I said quietly to myself. No one heard. I proceeded to announce (truthfully) to the assembled throng that I possessed a slipped disc and would not risk sharing in the lifting of that thing up the steps for all the chips in Ireland otherwise I would be exchanging places with him before the tour was over. They all muttered ‘yeah’, and ‘aye’ and so we stood at the top, hands in pockets watching the goings on below. After to-ing and fro-ing for about five minutes the drip detached itself from the guy’s nostrils. He started to complain about the sticky plaster that was doing anything but stick, so the fitter ones among us left Shay in charge of the old ladies at the top and descended Everest once more to take a look. After lots of pushing and shoving it became clear that it was not going to stay of itself up his nose, so Padraig, whose car was parked closest to the graveyard steps, said he would fetch a roll of plaster from the first aid kit in his car and they set to the job at hand. It was not a work of art but it did the trick. He asked if anyone had a mirror. Thankfully all the ladies, not stupid, said no. They had to, if he’d have seen it we were never going to get on with it. Anyway, the guy was so grateful, one would have thought Paddy had saved his life. So. Fifteen minutes into the tour we were all back at the top of the steps except for the man in the wheelchair. Somebody had made the helpful suggestion that there was another entrance to the graveyard on the other side. As the graveyard sloped considerably, (it had never been flattened because it was concluded that generally speaking, dead people really don’t mind being buried on a slope, and rarely complained about it) there were no steps on the other side. So off he goes. Just as he was out of earshot someone mumbled “but doesn’t he have to go on the main road to get to the other side?”  “Too late now, he’s off” someone replied, but at least the tour could finally begin. The first gravestone we stared at was a certain Oisin O’Donoghue. Born, who cares when (1700 and something), and died long before any known descent today cared enough to tend his grave. Added to this it had clearly become a permanent home, or at least the resting place, of local bird kinds. They were in the throes of painting it white, with thin streaks of yellow, and doing it quite badly. What made this grave so famous was that it’s the oldest known grave in the graveyard. Outstanding! We had to write that down immediately! However, one of the group, Mrs Hogan, pointed to another gravestone about two rows away that clearly looked older, said so, and asked him whether or not his information was in error. “Ah”, said the tour guide, happy to answer this obviously going-to-be-asked question, “but we don’t know the age of that gravestone. The date has worn off.” His eyes began to open wide and he smiled smugly as he was revealing this incredible snippet of stuff. So wide we swore we could see the two or three brain cells currently functioning, bouncing from eyeball to eyeball like table tennis balls. We stood there speechless. Here was a gravestone, between two and three hundred years old, clearly younger than more than half the graves in the yard (field actually), and it’s claim to fame is that it’s the oldest one we can read the date from, at the moment at least. Not sure how readable it will be when the birds have finished their painting and decorating job.  We looked at each trying to read each one's minds. "Is he serious?" "I think he's serious." "Is he from the same planet as us?" "I really don't think he is." A conversation, spoken without a single sound, but with mouths open wide, had between most of us.

Hysterical

Anyway, he was about to tell us about another fascinating gravestone when we heard the sound of rattling gates and someone shouting rather nasally. It was the wheelchair guy trying to get in through the tradesman’s entrance. But it was Sunday. It was always locked on Sunday’s. Everyone who knew about that had unfortunately forgotten about that. Some guy who knew someone else who had worked for a locksmiths wife, tried to pick the lock. Heaven knows why. Anyway, as expected, the attempt was unsuccessful and so he had to go back. The same guy who had murmured something before murmured something again, “Wonder how long his battery lasts?” There were one or two responses of “Aye”, and “good point” and away we went again to be gobsmacked with the mind-blowing information akin to the next gravestone. I was stood at the back. I heard Shay telling us all that this was, would you believe it, the tallest gravestone in the cemetery. He told us that the family needed planning permission for it and laughed hilariously at his joke. “I’m just kidding of course” he said, slightly embarrassed that no-one had laughed. We all knew the joke. We’d heard it on ‘Only Fools and Horses’, I mean we weren’t stupid. We looked at each other and with tones unuttered, shared the same silent conversation as we had shared before. But when he had said ‘I’m just kidding’ some of us started to snigger.  As I said, I was stood at the back of the crowd. Believe me, it was the best place to be. It was only a matter of time before the Formula 1 wheelchair would arrive again at the bottom of the steps of Everest, so I decided to have it away sharpish. I went down to the nearby lake where I had previously parked my car, (a walking distance of about five minutes) and sat there watching the ducks. When the outside temperature began to sink somewhat, I sat in the car reading my messages and answering them, it now being too far away to watch the ducks. The time reached about 3.15 and I was intrigued as to how things were going on with the hysterical society so I drove in to the village and pulled up. Half of the group were still in the graveyard and the other half were assembled, hands in pockets at the bottom. Probably without Mr Grin, who was nowhere to be seen and who I suspect had also abandoned ship and went to eat. I got out of the car, walked up to the group and asked if all was well. “Aye” said one of the guys, “but we couldn’t find the wheelchair fella. We went looking for him and found ‘im in his wheelchair on the road. His battery had run out. He was trying to move himself forward like one of them hobby ‘orses but wasn’t getting anywhere. Then the drip fell out of his nose. Anyway, four of ‘em from the hospice are pushing him back now.”  Historical.