It was 20 years ago today – A Day in the Life

Forget Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, or on second thoughts don’t, because it’s a pretty good album, and includes the tracks A Day in the Life and She’s Leaving Home which relate to what I’m about to say, but let’s at least put it aside for a moment.

It was 20 years ago today that I left Ireland. It wasn’t the first time that I had physically vacated the island - I had already been to ‘the continent’ (which in Ireland means mainland Europe) half a dozen times. I had even been to Africa on three different occasions.

But this time was different. This time I wasn’t going back. I was following in the time honoured footsteps of my forefathers and joined the denizens of the immigrant horde leaving Ireland to work in London. But no cattle ship to Holyhead for me – I took an Aer Lingus 737 bound for Heathrow.

I didn’t know at that stage that I would never live in Ireland again – how could I have? But if, by some gift of precognizance or clairvoyance, you had told me so, I would have easily believed you -partially because I had no qualms about leaving Ireland per se (except for one, which forms the second part of this bi-decadal memoir) and partially because I was a naïve and gullible 21 year old who would have probably believed anything you said.

In the intervening years I’ve travelled the world and South America and Antarctica are the only continents where I haven’t set foot. Yet. Not that the icy wastes of Antarctica hold much appeal to me, despite their stark natural beauty. But South America…

Twenty years ago today Ireland was in the midst of an economic recession and the running joke was – what do you say to someone with a university degree? Answer: A Big Mac™ and fries please. No one really laughed. It wasn’t all that funny. Twenty years later you can dust the same joke off and tell it again. In the intervening years the Celtic Tiger grew from cubhood to roar proudly, then yawn complacently and finally whine ineffectually.

I missed it all. Meaning simply that I wasn’t there, not that my heart was pining for my motherland. It wasn’t. Rarely did I miss the old sod, thoughts of which evoked for me school bullies, the smell of wet wool, long wet winters and equally long wet summers. Almost anyone I had ever known had joined the Diaspora and having no e-mail or mobile phones to keep in touch we soon lost track of each other.

At one stage the entire male side of my family lived outside of Ireland – my brother, my cousins, (except one who worked in a bank) my uncles, my grandfather. Twenty years on, some of them have returned and ‘made good’ during the years of affluence. Some of them, like myself, will probably never go back, except for occasional nostalgic visits. Some of them are dead.

On the 5^th of June 1989 an unknown man, wearing a neat white shirt and black trousers stood alone in front of a column of armoured tanks on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

On the 5^th of June 1989 I was a fresh faced graduate with a Hotel Management Diploma in my cardboard suitcase and probably, well no, let’s be honest here, definitely, more than a little wet behind the ears. Jason Donovan was number one in the charts (amazing what you can find out on Google) and the music packed in my case (definitely not Jason Donovan I assure you) was all on cassettes.

On the 5^th of June 1989 Maggie Thatcher was still running the show in England and after a spate of bombings the Irish were none too welcome. There was no Celtic Chic back then. I was destined to be just another ‘facking paddy’.

It wasn’t really like leaving home. Home had already got up and left me three years previously when my parents announced out of the blue that they were emigrating themselves. With hindsight I can understand the financial imperatives that lead to their decision, but at 18 it felt like abandonment.

In fairness I had an adequate monthly allowance and the Department of Foreign Affairs (such a sensually evocative name) paid for annual return flights so I could holiday with the rest of my family in the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho in southern Africa. For the rest of the year in Ireland I had all the freedom an 18 year old could hope for. But I had never been a rebellious teenager and at 18 I didn’t even have my parents to rebel against.

By the 5^th of June 1989 I had managed to graduate, make one or two good friends and break a couple of hearts – though that didn’t become clear to me until literally minutes before I left the country.

Part 2

Veronica San Martin Pedera was the sexiest woman I knew. I mean, I’m sure there were movie stars in my mind or whatever, but I knew Veronica personally. Veronica was from Argentina (there’s South America again), Veronica was 27, Veronica spoke Spanish and fluent French and Italian and Veronica was beautiful. She had been a friend, well really more of an acquaintance, of the woman to whom I had lost my virginity a year earlier. Well not exactly lost - lost sounds accidental, careless - it was nothing of the sort - and I certainly never went looking to find it again.

I hadn’t seen Veronica for a couple of months when I bumped into her by chance one cold and windy day near the top of Grafton Street in Dublin. It wasn’t long since I had broken up with the other woman. The Stephens Green shopping centre was still a noisy building site with cranes hauling girders through the cloudy sky. The tip of her nose was red and her dark eyes were shining with the cold as she explained that she needed to improve her English. My French was already pretty good and I wanted to learn Spanish. I would have loved to have studied languages, and I have collected a few over the years since, but back then I thought that a qualification in languages would inevitably lead to a McJob at best and I wanted to get out of Ireland. By studying Hotel Management I figured I could work in hotels anywhere in the world and learn languages in situ, which is partially how things panned out. On that noisy, windy street corner we made a deal. We would exchange lessons, one hour for one hour. We agreed a time to meet in her little apartment just off Morehampton Road.

I arrived with the usual student satchel filled with paper and pens and a fresh note pad and a few books I thought might be useful and, I admit a mind full of lustful thoughts. I was 19 she was 27. She wasn’t a shy teenager, she was a real woman. We had a cup of tea and then spread the books and notepads on the kitchen table. She sat very close to me. My heart was pounding. Ten minutes later I was on my knees and she was half sprawled across the kitchen table with the notepads and the books, her skirt hitched up around her waist and her knickers hooked dangling for a moment on her ankle. I had never heard a woman make so much noise while in the throes of rapture - bear in mind my experience was very limited at that stage. I feared she would pull the hair from my head out by the roots.

Spanish Lessons became a euphemism for our weekly trysts. She was an adventurous woman and I learned things I had never suspected, though in terms of Spanish I only learned a few important key words. In the 20 years since, I have rarely met a woman who enjoyed herself and her own sexuality with such freedom and abandon. I can still feel the touch of her hair on my abdomen.

Though our relationship was firmly rooted in lust soon I found I was falling in love with her. As well as being beautiful she was also a lovely intelligent humorous and articulate person. Hopelessly enamoured I realized that I couldn’t let my true feelings show or I would jeopardize the delicate balance of our affair. She didn’t want commitment she said. She wanted the freedom to see other men and gave me the freedom to see other women.

The open mindedness of our arrangement was liberating. There were plenty of opportunities and I took them and enjoyed myself with little or no thoughts of the consequences. I played safe though. I was part of the first AIDS generation that took the full impact of the awareness campaigns that bombarded my teenage years - plus I wasn’t interested in parenthood. I was a student surrounded by plenty of young women. Winters in Dublin are long and cold and dark and dreary and there were plenty of lonely girls up from the country looking to break free of the strictures of their narrow rural lives. I helped broaden their – ahem - horizons with my newly learned skills. None of these relationships lasted in any meaningful way, principally because I wasn’t prepared to commit emotionally since, unbeknownst to her, I had given my heart to Veronica. My weeks rotated around our meetings and I must confess that I wandered along Morehampton Road more often than was strictly necessary, hoping to provoke a chance encounter. As far as I can remember, our affair lasted a little more than a year and a half - right up until the day I left the country.

20 years ago today Veronica was there at the airport. She didn’t have much of a choice - she worked at the desk, making flight announcements in half a dozen languages. My recently returned parents had just seen me off and I was beyond the perfunctory passport and security checks. Veronica had access to the passenger areas. I had never seen her wear her bright red uniform. It suited her black hair and dark eyes. If I had known, I would have suggested she wear it for Spanish lessons. There was a ladder in her stockings on the inside of her knee.

We sat in the corner of the departure lounge and she gave me an envelope, telling me to read it on the plane, and a small gift-wrapped parcel – socks, because she didn’t know what to get me and had wanted to give me a farewell gift. She asked me to think of her when I wore them. I thanked her and said I didn’t need socks to think of her – that I would think of her anyway. I would think of her every day. I meant it. I think she saw that, and maybe started to understand the true nature of my feelings towards her at last. Perhaps that’s why she said that she would tell me what was in the letter.

She held my hands as tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her face. She told me she loved me, that she had fallen in love with me on that cold windy day on the top of Grafton Street. She told me that she had been in love with me while she knew that I was with other women. Women – they were girls. She was the only real woman I knew. She had been jealous, but was happy that I would accord her at least one afternoon a week. I wanted to tell her that none of the other girls meant anything to me, that she was the one I thought of every day, that our Spanish lessons were so impassioned because it was the moment I waited for all week, that those precious hours with her was the centre around which the rest of my life revolved.

I looked out at the runway trying to hold back my tears. I thought of the boarding pass in my pocket, about my parents making their way to the car park or possibly standing by a window to watch my flight take off. I thought of the job I had waiting for me in London, the contracts I had signed. I threw my arms around her and buried my face in her silky black hair and whispered the words I had never told her. I love you. She whimpered and told me not to say that. I looked in her eyes and said it again and then said it’s true and I saw in her devastated expression that she believed me.

I could have turned back. I could have torn up my boarding pass and decided to stay in Ireland. Go, she whispered when the flight was called.

We kissed one last time, a desperate hungry kiss as if trying to take in as much of each other as we could in the short time that remained. The tears flowed down both our cheeks and she silently mouthed the word - Go. I bit my trembling lip as I showed my boarding pass at the gate and when I looked back I saw her red uniform and her black hair hurrying away.

On the flight the air hostess recognized me from college. She told me that there was plenty of room up in first class and served me bitter champagne all the way to Heathrow while I read and re-read Veronica's letter.

20 years ago today I didn’t feel like I was leaving Ireland. I was leaving Veronica. Leaving the woman I had secretly loved. 20 years ago today.

post scriptum

At first I saw Veronica off and on for a bit over the years since I left. Then we just lost touch. There was no e-mail or mobile phones back then - when someone moved house you could loose track of them completely. The last I heard, she was battling with cancer 10 years ago. I only found that out a couple of months ago. I've tried to Google her. She may as well not exist. Maybe she doesn't. May she rest in peace if that's the case - she was one helluva' woman. I'm missing her something powerful this morning and still twenty years on there are tears in my eyes. I could have torn up the boarding pass and stayed in Ireland - but as you know, I didn't.

The song of Roland - fact or fiction?

If the weather was reasonable during the hours when the refuge was quiet , I sat by the open doorway of the refuge de la Breche de Roland breathing in the fresh mountain air and soaking up whatever warmth the sun was willing to afford me while all the hikers sweating off their breakfasts on the mountains. Staying by the door I was within earshot of the telephone and could see any potential customers approach. I also had a direct view on the Breche - that other open doorway to Spain in the south. I spent a lot of time contemplating this dramatic rectangular opening in the rock face – this empty space, defined by the absence of matter. It is undeniably one of the world’s most spectacular border crossings, rising more than a hundred metres tall and forty metres wide. I knew its contours and relief by heart. But Roland’s Breach is much more than just a space - it is an invitation, a promise of adventure and the exoticism of the Iberian lands beyond.

Legend says that the Breche was hewn open by the mighty Roland, wielding the sacred sword Durandal. Nowadays it is more commonly accepted among historians that Roland perished in a less dramatic landscape near Roncevalles in the Basque country. But the history of the legend is almost as interesting as the legend itself.

In the year 777 Charlemagne was the Emperor of the Frankish Empire, an empire that extended well beyond the borders of modern day France. He was an innovative emperor and was the first to introduce schools in an attempt to educate the population. Even today, French schoolchildren still sing songs about him. Every emperor must have an empire and he was eager to extend his.

Soliman ibn al-Arabi, the governor of Barcelona, encouraged Charlemagne to take the city of Saragossa. The disgruntled governor was rebelling against the oppressive authority of the Caliph of Cordoba, Abd al Rahman and promised to engineer a popular uprising to coincide with Charlemagne’s arrival. The ambitious plan was to seize control of the entire north of Moorish dominated Spain. However, the Caliph got wind of the governor’s treachery and Charlemagne’s planned invasion. Al-Arbi’s promised rebellion and reinforcements never materialized. When Charlemagne arrived at Saragossa with his army, he found battalions of Moorish forces deployed ready to defend the city. Meanwhile, news came from much further north that the hitherto subjugated Saxons had revolted and were marching on Cologne. Charlemagne and his army were obliged to retreat and return to France.

They took more or less the same route they had taken on the way, passing through the town of Pamplona. Charlemagne had counted on the spoils of battle from Saragossa and was loath to return to France empty handed. Morale was low after the humiliating stand off. On the outward journey, Charlemagne’s army had been welcomed in Pamplona and heralded as defenders of Christianity, but on their way back they sacked and pillaged the town taking what they could, where they could, because they could.

On the fifteenth of august 778, as Charlemagne’s troops made their way back across the Pyrenees, their rear guard was ambushed in a pass. Rocks were rolled down onto them from above, crushing many of the soldiers to death. The survivors were charged upon and forced into a narrow ravine, where they were almost all mercilessly and savagely slaughtered. Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew and Duke of Brittany, was amongst those killed. Most historians place the scene of the battle as the valley of Roncevalles in the Basque province of Navarra.

The Basques claimed responsibility for the ambush, justifying their actions as retaliation for the sacking of Pamplona. (Though some accounts say that it was just the work of some opportunist bandits.) The next time Charlemagne’s forces crossed the Pyrenees they took Basque women and children as hostages to ensure their safe passage.

Those seem to be the facts, but the legend of Roland tells quite a different story. It originated as a tale aimed to galvanize the spirits of those battling in Hastings in 1066 and in the tale Roland is idealized as a hero, with aristocratic blood and God on his side.

In 1130, Sancho de la Rosa, the bishop of Pamplona, claimed to have seen the ambush of Roncevalles in a dream. The story was spread far and wide and the church played an active role in resurrecting Roland as a folk hero. Forty years later, in 1170, an anonymous poet allegedly wrote the 4002 verses of the Song of Roland, (though apparently the original text was only unearthed in 1832).

 The Song of Roland was widely diffused by the church, particularly along the pilgrimage route of the Saint James’ way. Statues were erected in Roland’s honour, sermons were preached in his name, and some four hundred years after his death, the memory of Roland was alive again. The church was having difficulty finding recruits to fight the holy war for Jerusalem and funds to finance it. Those seeking salvation on the Saint James’ way were promised that heavenly deliverance if they joined the Crusades. The Song of Roland was an elaborate, though admirably poetic, exercise in propaganda.

It tells the story of brave and pious Roland, who carries a magical sword with sacred relics concealed within its hilt. The sword is called Durandal. Retreating from Spain, Roland and his army are caught between a rock and a hard place. Faced with the impenetrable barrier of a sheer cliff wall and the pursuing enemy hot on their heels Roland sees death and defeat close at hand. Gone are the disgruntled Basques of Pamplona and Roncevalles. In the legend they are replaced by another enemy – the Saracens, cruel and infidel by both nature and inclination. But never fear – social rank, God and true bravery are seen to gain victory over the hordes of Islam.

Roland is loathed to let the sacred sword to fall into impious hands. In an act of desperation, in order to break the blade, he strikes Durandal against the rock. 

Rollant his stroke on a dark stone repeats

And more of it breaks off than I can speak.

The sword cries out, yet breaks not in the least

Back from the blow into the air it leaps

Destroy it can he not; which when he sees,

Within himself he makes a plaint most sweet.

"Ah! Durendal, most holy, fair indeed!

Relics enough thy golden hilt conceals:

Saint Peter's Tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile,

Some of the Hairs of my Lord, Saint Denise,

Some of the Robe, was worn by Saint Mary.

It is not right that pagans should thee seize,

For Christian men your use shall ever be. 

It is not Durandal that breaks, but the rock. Our hero hacks an opening in the mountain and through this newly hewn doorway, his army escapes north into France. And thus the legend explains the geological oddity that is the Breche de Roland, Roland’s Breach. 

Even if Roland didn’t escape through the Breche, plenty of others have used it as a passage between France and Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, many of those fleeing the excesses of Franco’s regime came this way. It the Second World War, persecuted Jews made their escape southwards from German occupied France, en route to ships harboured on the Portuguese coast that would then carry them to America. Generations of contrabandists have plied their trade over this border crossing, meeting with their Iberian partners at the foot of the mountain aptly named the Descargador, just south of the Breche. Though it is not the most common route, it is still occasionally used as a passage by hardy pilgrims on the St. James’ way to Campostella in Galicia.

Refuge de la Breche de Roland VIDEO

This is a slideshow of some photos I took during my three years working at the Refuge de la Breche de Roland in the Pyrenees National Park. Photos can never do justice to such an impressive landscape but at least they give some sort of idea of what life is like "la haut".

Count Henry Russell

Roland might not have broken the rock, but Count Henry Russell did. Or at least he had others do it for him. Upon his request a cave was hewn just a few metres to the west of the Breche on the northern side. It is still there, cold and damp and unwelcoming. Occasionally a few hardy or thrifty mountaineers will forsake the relative comfort of the refuge and spend an uncomfortable, though doubtlessly unforgettable night in Russell’s cave.

                                                            

Russell didn’t approve of the visual impact of refuges and was an ardent opponent of any building maintaining that they spoiled the natural harmony of the mountains. He was a colourful character without whom any account of the Pyrenees would be incomplete. He was a gentleman of leisure and means, though a most intrepid and determined one. He had the luxury afforded to the independently wealthy of doing as he pleased with little thought for social convention. Old photos and sketches of Russell show him as a tall elegant, gaunt faced man of angular build, sporting a moustache and goatee. His detractors say he was completely mad, while his admirers insist that he was merely very eccentric.

He was was born in 1834. His mother was French and his father was from county Down in Ireland. During his youth he briefly attended Clongowes college, a Jesuit school near Dublin. As a young man, he traveled the globe. He explored Canada and the American far west in his early twenties and spent time among the Native Americans tribes. He trekked through the Andes in Peru. He crossed the frozen lake Baikal in Siberia, and made his way through Mongolia. He crossed the Gobi desert, eventually following the ruins of the Great Wall all the way to Peking. On the same trip he visited Japan, Macao, Hong Kong, Sumatra, Australia and New Zealand. In Melbourne he set out to conquer some peaks in the neighbouring mountains and in the attempt almost died from exhaustion, dehydration and hunger. He sailed to India, docking first at Ceylon, then on to Madras, Goa and Bombay. He became very ill in India (believe me, I empathize) and stayed for some time in a sanatorium in Darjeeling, a hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas famed for its tea plantations. Eventually he returned to France by way of Suez, Constantinople, Venice and Marseille.

He did all that before he was thirty years old. With his wanderlust thoroughly sated he settled in the South West of France and for the next four decades rarely ventured far from the Pyrenees. He bought a house on the rue Marca in Pau (not far from the castle) and another on the coast in Biarritz, which was a fashionable watering hole for the aristocracy at the time. He dedicated his time to writing books abut his travels and cataloguing the mountaineering exploits that filled the rest of his life. 

At 3298 metres the Vignemale is the highest peak in the French Pyrenees. This was Russell’s mountain. It was in 1861, shortly after his return from his odyssey, that Russell made his first of at least 33 ascensions of the mountain that became his obsession. On a clear day I could see the summit from the kitchen window. Nowadays he would hardly recognize the receding glacier, a shadow of its former self with its yawing crevasses; another victim of global warming.

 In August 1880 he ascended the Vignemale and had his porters bury him in the rock and snow with only his head exposed to the mountain air. As night fell he was caught between cold, tiredness and fatigue. His hair, his eyebrows, his moustache all frosted over. He drifted in and out of hallucinatory dreams and mystical visions and for a moment attained “Union” with the “palpable presence” of God.

After this experience he wanted to spend more time and longer periods on his beloved mountain. This was when the cave digging started. The first cave was called Villa Russell and was inaugurated in July 1882. Then, in 1885, came the Grotte des guides.  The aristocratic ladies he lured up the mountain had to have their own quarters so the following year the Grotte des Dames was completed. Next came the Bellevue at an altitude of 2378 metres. His final cave, named Paradis, was just 18 metres below the summit.

In contrast to the cave at the Breche, Paradis had the advantages of facing south and being dry and was carpeted with straw. Obviously motivated by the glacial cold, Russell is credited with the invention of the sleeping bag, having had one made to his own design out of lamb’s fleece. At one stage he considered the idea of having animals brought to his caves to examine the effects of altitude on them. Among the matters that aroused his curiosity was whether cocks would crow at over 3000 metres.

In 1889 Count Henry Patrick Marie Russell signed a contract with the Syndicat de Bareges  for the rental of 200 hectares of the Vignemale for a duration of 100 years, at the most reasonable sum of 1 franc per year. The only condition imposed was that he didn’t have the right to bar access to the mountain. He had a red door installed on the Grotte de Paradis and keys forged with his initials on them. He had become the self-appointed keeper of the mountain.

For ten years he spent extended periods in his caves inviting ladies and gentlemen of the gentry to join him for sumptuous dinners served on bone china crockery, accompanied by fine wines served in crystal glasses. After dinner, the men smoked cigars and Russell entertained his guests by playing the cello.

The summer troglodyte was a winter dandy and attended high society balls, concerts and dinner parties. He was a flamboyant dresser, given to cloaks and canes and wearing the colourful costumes he had gathered on his travels. When speaking French he was said to affect the slightest of British accents. When he spoke English, his accent was more Gallic in tone.

In 1904, at the age of seventy, he made his final ascension of the Vignemale. He spent 17 days there alone. He died five years later, in the milder climes of Biarritz, at his residence, the villa Christine and his remains are buried in a cemetery in Pau.

Nowadays, almost unnoticed by the roadside at the entrance of the village of Gavarnie, is a statue of Russell - a copy of the original that was melted down by German troops during the occupation in the Second World War. His long limbed form is immortalized in bronze, depicted sitting semi-reclined with crossed legs. One hand rests on his knee while the other supports his jaw as he gazes wistfully towards his beloved Vignemale.