By Alex McDonnell

Part Two.

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Paidi Quinn the owner of the Ventry Inn had more luck with Michael and on our last day in Kerry he took Michael for a drive across the cliffs and seascapes of the Dingle peninsula, calling in to Paidi O’Shea’s on the way. Paidi O’Shea is the coach and one-time star of the Kerry football team and his pub is festooned with mementoes of his glorious career. One evening we all arrived down to the pub en masse and instantly the average age shot up. Although the peninsula seems sparsely populated and the tourists had all gone home, Paidi’s pub was packed with young locals who made room for us. We sang songs and Paidi posed for photos and signed autographs. The local pub is still central to Irish cultural life at home and abroad and no one could ask for more friendly and welcoming hosts than those of Ventry. Paidi Quinn and his wife Sheila invited all 30 of us to the Ventry Inn for lunch one afternoon and often brought out meals for members of our group, like Michael who were in there during the day.

Another Michael, we’ll call him Mick, had been on our last trip to Wexford. Originally from Kerry, he maintained that he did not want to go back, believing he had no family left in Ireland and there would be no point. It was 37 years since he had last been home and he had long lost contact with his family. Over the last year it had been on his mind and this year he decided to go back and have a look around, out of curiosity more than anything else. In the meantime we had found out that Mick had a brother still living in the family home and we made contact. Mick had three brothers but one had died two days before we arrived in Kerry having lived for years in Willesden in north London, very near to Mick. The body had been brought back for the funeral and Mick’s other brother had also arrived home and a happy/sad homecoming took place in the family home in Faranfore. Kathleen is a traveller from Listowel. Many years ago her husband died and she came to England never to return. Kathleen travelled with us on our various excursions and visited her husband’s grave in Mallow. In Killarney Kathleen became confused and said to John in some distress, ‘Daddy , please don’t put me out’. Possibly referring to her fear as a young girl of being left to fend for herself.

Another remarkable chain of events led to a reunion with a long lost family. Liam had lived the life of an itinerant drifter around the pubs of north London. Like many he thought that family life was behind him and then Anna, a daughter he had never known, traced him by asking around the Irish pub circuit. Anna is a nurse and while working in London she became curious about her father and by tireless legwork and clever detective work traced him to Kilburn. She found him worse for wear, suffering from illness, alcohol dependency and depression. She gave him a new lease of life, finding him a flat and putting him in contact with the Irish elders group at the Irish Centre. She also traced her three half brothers in Tralee, Co. Kerry. So Anna referred Liam to Aisling and through the trip to Kerry this year Liam met his three sons numerous grandchildren and also a great grandchild. There were other family meetings on the agenda

‘Where’s my wife?’ said Steve to the French woman behind the bar in the ‘Wrestler’s’ bar in Sneem, Co. Kerry. She looked bemused and so she might. This wasn’t the usual tourist on the Ring of Kerry looking for light refreshment, nor was he one of the locals. She’d never seen this tall, thin, belligerent man before, nor had she a clue who his wife was. The Kerry accent was difficult enough to understand but this man talked in a hybrid all of his own which bore the mark of every port on his emigrant travels. London, Liverpool and Yorkshire tones shared company with his native Kerry, sometimes all in the same sentence.

Twenty-four years after walking out on his wife, family and pub Steve had come back. The pub, which Steve had inherited was named after the family’s sporting traditions and now had a ‘for sale’ sign outside. Steve wanted to know what was going on. The family are a legend in Sneem with a statue of Steve’s uncle and namesake ‘the Crusher’ (world all-comers wrestling champion eight years in a row) taking pride of place in the town and the pub is a living museum to the famous family featuring a long line of boxers and wrestlers – ‘The toughest family on this earth’ according to one newspaper cutting proudly displayed in the bar. Steve’s wife was nowhere to be seen but his mother was, looking more like a sister to the worse-for-wear Steve. His son and daughter, a lawyer and a teacher respectively also arrived. So began a riotous homecoming afternoon as extended family members and local people turned up at ‘The Wrestler’s’ to hear tales, tall or just stretched, of Steve’s 24-year lost weekend. We had our own itinerary of other calls to make out on the Atlantic highway and although Steve obviously intended to stay longer his mother had other ideas and he was cajoled onto the minibus before his missus turned up. He would return later in the week and hopefully make his peace.

Steve and his brother ended up in London after working from one end of Britain to the other never thinking much further than the next shift or the next drink. The toll of this life has caught up with him now and, although he stands tall and is reasonably fit that is more a testament to the legendary family constitution than his lifestyle. The flat he shares in Kilburn with his brother contains a unique feature of interior decoration undreamt of by TV makeover artists consisting of many hundreds of empty cider bottles reaching, in a pyramid from the skirting boards to the ceiling.

Many of our emigrants have taken a few knocks on their travels, working hard in dangerous conditions, drinking hard and living in hard environments. Jim was a boxer in his time and although he is now in a wheelchair and his body has shrunk significantly you can see from his frame and the size of his hands and feet that he was a big powerful man in his day and it is no surprise to hear that he was a light heavyweight in his prime. His broken nose and the scar tissue over his eyebrows tell their own tale. Jim used to live in Arlington House but he was relocated to a residential home in Kentish Town a year ago, where he receives a higher level of care. He has also cut down massively on his drinking and won’t even go into a pub these days. Liam too won’t go into a pub with us and has withering disdain for those who do. Some have their own ways of protecting themselves: Gerry is from the beautiful sub-tropical island of Valentia off the Kerry coast but in Camden Town he adopts a northern Irish accent possibly as a measure of protection from the hard men on the streets. While in Kerry, Gerry visited his sister and her family and called in to see his father who is in a nursing home on the island. They have all had their scrapes over the years, some from the fight game others from the school of hard knocks. Charlie, who spends more time than the rest of us dealing with the health care needs of the returnees, sums up the challenges of Aisling: broken dreams, broken homes, broken hearts and broken bones.

Earlier this year a specially convened task force on emigration from the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin visited London to gather information about Irish emigrants and their experiences. The task force was led by Paddy O’Hanlon, barrister and founder member of the SDLP. On one of their visits they came to Arlington House where they met with some of the residents and got first hand accounts of life for some of the less fortunate emigrants to have come out of Ireland. For some reason many Irish men and women have ended up in hostels or other temporary accommodation in London. The Irish make up less than 8% of Camden residents according to the 1991 census and yet they account for between 30% and 50% of the homeless population, according to surveys carried out by Shelter and the Simon Community. The task force was very receptive to the different Irish community organizations that they met and the report that came out recently carried some far reaching recommendations to the department. At last the Irish government is responding to the needs of the community abroad. It is up to the community now to make sure that these recommendations are delivered on. While in Kerry we met with the mayor of Tralee plus housing and development officers from the town and the county. Before the meeting Joe McGarry, Aisling chair and manager of a hostel for the homeless in Limerick did a street outreach survey in Tralee and met with the seven men and one woman who are street homeless in the town. At the meeting we discussed the possibility of opening a hostel for Aisling returnees and the local homeless. The council officials were very interested and we hope to return soon to look for suitable premises.

The night before we left Ventry was a big night in town. The Ventry Inn was host to the Kerry heats of the ‘Culchy of the Year’ competition, the winner of which would go to the final in Tipperary in October. Four of our gang thought they had a good chance after having spent a ‘culchy sensitive’ week with Aisling and Donie was first up. The competition is run a bit like Miss World but less politically correct. The emcee was a local comedian who was looking for every opportunity to squeeze his own jokes in but Donie was a match for him. He said his dream date was a four-legged blonde and your man was speechless when the penny dropped. Steve was next, then Pat (dream date: Mary Harney in a hay shed, ‘I’ve heard she’s progressive’) and then Keiran in his geek disguise with false teeth and glasses. The only local who came forward after that was a very shy butcher and he wasn’t even able to sing a song but was given the title as our boys would be in London when the final takes place. The next day as we headed for London and as we passed the Ventry Inn, Paidi, Sheila and the whole bar were there to wave us off.

As a postscript, others who profited from the experience since we returned to London include: Tom who stayed on with his family in Fermoy for a week, Donie who has gone back to Glenbeigh to stay with his mother and Feichin who is now in rehab.

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reports on other Aisling trips