The Kettle's Boyled: Two reasons for cutting the National Herd

When I was growing up, success for an emigrant meant getting a job driving a dumper so that you didn’t have to be down in a hole with a shovel. One local émigré even brought the dumper home with him when he returned to these shores, and for years afterwards it served as his tractor and his car, bringing him everywhere from the bog to Mass on Sundays. We were all agreed that driving one for a living would be like getting paid for doing nothing, a pinnacle to aim for.

Nowadays our emigrants go not because they have to, but because they want to. They go armed with in-demand skills, and with the kind of self-belief that only comes from living in a prosperous, first-world country. We know we are just as good as anyone else now, and that’s huge progress in itself.

Most of our emigrants nowadays do well, but a small few manage to rise to the very top of their game, and last week I had the privilege of crossing paths with two of them while on a quick trip to London to see Conor McPherson’s ‘The brightening air’ at the Old Vic theatre. The title comes from the Yeats poem ‘Song of the wandering Aengus,’ in case you thought it looked familiar.

The play is set in Sligo in the 1980s, on a small farm where a brother and sister struggle to make ends meet. The return of other siblings, land ownership issues, and the arrival of a defrocked clergyman uncle with housekeeper in tow, all add to a chaotic and highly entertaining mix. Boyle actor Chris O’Dowd plays an older sibling arriving home with a questionably young girlfriend on his arm. He plays the sleazy Dermot to a completely believable level, and gets the biggest round of applause at the final curtain.

Staying in London can be a lottery when it comes to hotel standards. In the case of the huge 1,100 bedroom Park Plaza Westminster Bridge Hotel though, the quality and standards are top class, unsurprising given it is run by another Boyle man, the affable James Clarke from St Patrick’s Street. With thirty years’ experience in hotel management including prestigious venues like the Waldorf Astoria and the South Bank Hilton, James has risen to the very top of the hotel industry. He is also chair of the Master Innholders Association, the body representing British hoteliers.

I would recommend that you go and see ‘The Brightening Air’ before the run ends, and maybe treat yourself to a stay at James Clarke’s fine hotel. If money is scarce, sure just sell a cow. You’ll remember the play, and the stay, when you’ve long forgotten that bad-tempered, kicking bovine. And you’ll be helping reduce the National Herd, because we all have to help with this global warming stuff.