Been There

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Image source: Disciple of Knowledge.

I got to thinking recently about how I love to come to a new place and just walk the walk. Looking at everything. Taking photos. And speculating on what might lie behind the façades. The history. The human stories.

I got to wondering had I missed a vocation as a travel writer and that reminded me of an author whose travel writings I so enjoyed in my youth. He seemed to happen in on places and make them come alive.

He had so sunk into my subconscious at this stage that it took me yonks to remember his name: H V Morton and his series of travel books "In Search of ..." everywhere.

Had he influenced my curiosity about the places I found myself in? Had his intimate and loving descriptions of his travels given me an affection for my places too?

So, in a spirit of nostalgia I decided to check him out.

What a shock.

Far from the avuncular traveller of my recollection he turns out to have been a complete gobshite. To quote Max Hastings:

The shrewd, amiable lone traveller of Morton's narratives emerges in real life as a thoroughly nasty piece of work - vain, cynical, misanthropic, deeply anti-Semitic, with a penchant for grotesque sexual adventures.

Apparently Morton even made up loads of stuff in his books. And here was me, when I got home from a walkabout, madly surfing the net and checking out everything twice over for accuracy. What a disappointment.

His biographer, Michael Bartholomew, apparently had similar emotions to what I am now going through. Hastings again:

The best of Morton's writing displays great shrewdness, descriptive power and charm. He brought to his books the qualities of an outstanding Beaverbrook journalist of his period: masterly understanding of public taste, deployed in a moral void. Bartholomew is so disgusted by the revelation of Morton's nastiness and deceits that he finds it hard to be charitable about his books, though he struggles manfully.

Ah well, so there never was a golden age. But perhaps the thought that there might have been makes the present that little bit more bearable.

And you can check out my places on this page.

The Brendan Voyage

Brendan Cardiff is proud to be a Northside Dubliner. Unlike that other "northsider", Bono, Brendan has not ensconced himself in a southside mansion. In fact he hasn't ensconced himself on the southside at all. He has, however, had an exciting and distinguished career on both the Irish and international stages.

His childhood stories resonated with me. We are, after all, both Dubliners and from the same generation.

Before I mention a few of them, and in order not to detract from the more weighty considerations of Irish economic development in the latter half of the twentieth century and from our tunnel visioned relationship with Europe, I should say that I have commented on these in my review of Roots on Amazon.

In the 1950s British sweets were a luxury, probably as much due to their scarcity value as anything else. A visit to the UK always ended with a ritual purchase of the unavailable at home, such as Spangles. Brendan mentions a visit to Northern Ireland in the 1950s when he couldn't buy the sweets because post-war rationing was still in force there and he didn't have a ration book. Well, maybe nobody told him where to get one. My family visited the North in the 1950s and we were directed to the coupon distribution centre to pick up our ration entitlement. Having used this up during the first week of a fortnight's stay, we went back for the second week's coupons only to find that we had already consumed our two week allocation. An early onset of Lent followed.

Brendan very wisely defines the difference between clothes and presents. As a child I sold raffle tickets for the Franciscans in Cork and, as was usual in these matters, there was always a draw for the promoters. I won six dozen of stout. However, as there was a rail strike on at the time and the stout could not be got to Dublin the Franciscans sent a cheque. That was fine by me. I know where the stout would have gone. I had the cheque spent in my head long before it arrived only to find, when it did, that my mother requisitioned it to buy me clothes. Much needed I'm sure they were. Presents they were not.

He reminds us of the time milk was delivered via the tilley out of the churn, only to be replaced by the new fangled bottled milk. He mentions the extra drop out of the tilley to make sure you weren't being short changed. This was the first time I heard tell of a baker's dozen of milk. I wonder does he remember the cutting-edge-of-technology foil-milk-bottle-top opener distributed for free by Hughes Bros. Round piece of plastic with a bump in the middle. Worked a dream.

While we're still on the milk, he mentions the transition from horse drawn to motorised delivery. He doesn't, however, mention one of the downsides to this bit of technological progress. No more manure. I remember well following the horse drawn carts down our road with a bucket and spade gathering manure for the back garden. Maybe they didn't do that on the Northside!

Joshing aside, this is a fascinating book. Apart from the purely personal stuff, Brendan has recorded his experiences in the early days of Irish economic development through his work in the private and public sectors, both in Ireland and abroad. He was in Uganda, representing the EU Commission during Idi Amin's reign, and this, among other things, has given him a deep and no-nonsense approach to development.

He is an inveterate traveler and the book contains wonderful cameos of his favourite places along with some beautiful, and very professional, photos from his own camera.

Significantly, the book is published by Liffey Press, a Northside publishing house, headquartered in Raheny, Dublin 5.

A backseat on the Brendan voyage is yours for the asking. Try it. It's a worthwhile trip. Available at good booksellers or, in extremis, from Amazon.