Explaining the name

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/42737896

When I was a child, and into my teenage years, we used to spend a week or two of the summer holidays messing about in boats on Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, in the South-West corner of Northern Ireland. We would rent a motor cruiser and travel up and down the lough, mooring at small public jetties, or in the reeds and bull-rushes around one the small islands along the way. There are two loughs: the wider, rougher Lower Lough, North of Enniskillen, and above the lock gates, the Upper Lough, which is more a series of streams and tributaries than a lake. It is a incredibly beautiful place: serene, untroubled—a tad melancholic perhaps on an overcast day, too quiet for many, but one of the places where I have been the happiest in my life.

It is now a mental refuge, a place to retreat to, and to reflect. I shall forever be grateful to my parents for bringing us on these holidays, particularly to my mother who never loved the roll and sway of the boat, the cramped cabins and galley, and limited washing facilities, and who—as a non-swimmer—always feared for our safety, as we kids would jump on and off the boat to tie up, or row off round a corner in the dinghy to spot herons, or swim in the muddy brown water on the very rare days when the sun broke through the clouds.

The blogs are named after islands or shorelands on one of the two Loughs. Devenish island and Inismacsaint are both religious sites, dating from the 6th Century: Devenish is, as Wikipedia states, one of the finest monastic sites in Ireland, and probably in the world. Yet, in contrast to Glendalough for example, it is virtually unvisited: on most days we spent there, there was perhaps one other boat tied up.

Virtual Visit - Devenish Island Monastic Site - Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland

In nearly fifty years, I have never spent time in a more special place.

PS. If you are interested in following my stories after Devenish, check out some of the other island jetties on the Upper Lough.

Turbulence (Thanks for all the fish, and more)

[Note: this piece is not about about my family, nor does it involve literary or musical criticism. I’m not anticipating any attractive illustrations or other lures, and no musical accompaniment either. So if that’s what you came for, look away now. There will be more such articles in the future, I hope, but this is not one of them. You have been been warned.] Tokushima Naruto Whirlpool (Shikoku Excursion) Events of the last few days have left me, both literally and figuratively, in a painfully disordered state of mind. In plain English, I’m stressed, and my head aches. Actually, it twinges, rather than aches, but the precise description matters little; at all events, the pain ‘comes and goes’, as they say. (Where pain goes to, when it goes, is a puzzle in itself. I have this anthropomorphised image of Pain, like some peripatetic poison dwarf, doing the rounds of the neighbourhood: “Hi, Nigel didn’t want me this hour, so I’ve decided to drop in on you for a while. Don’t worry thoug...

Remembering Dad (Thinking about Madeleine II)

Over the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about my father, Gordon Duffield, who died earlier this year, far too soon, before we had a chance to talk. You might think that in nearly fifty years, we would have had a proper conversation, but though I told him about myself (too much at times, at times too little), and though he always listened, he only rarely shared his innermost thoughts, his personal beliefs as a man apart from his parental role, as a father and breadwinner; even then, when he revealed anything of himself, it was only in writing, never in conversation. My father was the kindest man I have ever known, the most forgiving of others, the hardest on himself: in all my life, I only once saw him lose his temper, and it was not with me. (If I can get through a single day without berating one of my children, it is a rare achievement.) He was a good man, without a trace of self-consciousness, generous and tolerant to a fault, and—until his last weeks—optimistic b...

Cambridge Blues ('Foundationed deep')

"I" Staircase, Trinity Hall, Cambridge This weekend past, I returned to Cambridge with Ayumi, Julian and Justin for the first time in seven years. The occasion was a college reunion dinner, marking approximately 40 years of life since matriculation (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 entrance years): about half of us (~50) from each annual cohort turned up to compare notes, reminisce, squeeze our sagging frames into formal evening wear, and report biographical highlights. It is worth noting that this was a self-selecting group: those with sufficient time, opportunity, income (it wasn't a cheap weekend break), self-regard and retained affection for their alma mater to trundle up; as bushy tailed and 'Hail fellow, well met', as age and misanthropy might allow. Sic transit gloria iuvenum. I didn't have a great time, nor yet was it a disastrous waste. This is hardly surprising, since the curse of middle age is profound ambivalence about almost every extra-familial event or ...

Devenish

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