Not Drowning And Not Waving

My cousin D has moved into a cosy little mews in Greystones, Co Wicklow. I spent the night with him on Saturday. A few drinks in the local (with another cousin, P) then we sauntered around the corner into an area very much like my own south Dublin avenue: high hedged driveways, tree-clouded streetlights, the kind of expensive privacy and quietness that always made me feel (financially) woefully inferior to the other residents. D's house is in his landlord/lady's backgarden, accessed by means of a muddy rural lane and a sturdy door (that needed a key) in a high wall. Standing in the lane while D unlocked the door, out of the glow of the streetlights, the sky was suddenly gritted with stars, breathtakingly clear and sharp, a high-res image you'd never find in my own suburb, perpetually backlit by the sodium-daubed glow of the city .

We talked till around 1.am and then headed for bed, wryly agreeing that we'd come a long way from our youthful scrabble games and covenings well past the small hours. I slept well in the very comfortable guest room.

Next morning, after breakfast, I headed off, but took a detour to see Greystones beach, where I came across this lone swimmer. He (or she, perhaps) reminded me of Stevie Smith's marvelous poem, which I've linked to, for those who may not have read it.

Greystones will always remind me of my mother and grandmother: afternoon tea with them and my aunt Nuala in the Copper Kettle during my childhood/adolescence. Or we might partake of the same ritual in the La Touche Hotel, which is now apartments I've heard. The ineluctable and utterly erased past. It made me feel a bit mournful, walking on the sand then driving home through the town, whose main street is still more like a village.

But even when my mother and grandparents were still alive and relatively well, Greystones aroused a kind of nostalgia. It seemed, in the 1970s, to someone who grew up in a Dublin suburb, a cut-off place, dreamy and semi-retired. Of course, I'm sure it was always more lively than it appeared to (dreamy and semi-retired) visitors such as myself, and it must certainly be so now, with vast new conurbations within the town and on the outskirts. I wrote a little poem about it in my early 20s, something that was far closer to a self-portrait than anything else. Not worth quoting in full but here's the opening and closing lines:

Always,
the sun glides on a corner.

[...]

They might rest, old ones,
on wood benches,
waking every now and then
to the certainty.