Ireland

Lying by the rooftop pool of the Hotel Sun in downtown Lefkosa, I felt like a cowboy about to stir from slumber beneath his hat to cause a scene. I had turned into someone in an Elmore Leonard story. My view was a mountain range in full panorama with one hill entirely painted in the red and white flag of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The poolside music was country and western. Several times a day it mingled with the call to prayer coming from the minarets along the main drag. In this frontier society where West meets East, I felt like anything was possible. I lay by the pool, watching the scene from under my baseball cap, listening to ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ and ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’, the first song I loved as a child.

The Germans stampeded into the house, overwhelming me with the element of surprise. ‘Incoming!’ I shouted through the main staircase window into the farmyard to alert the builder boyfriend, who was haying the horses. A car was unloading two couples – double the amount of guests I was expecting. They came at me all at once and piled up the stairs, and I ran behind protesting that there were too many of them. ‘It is no problem! They sleep with us!’ said the woman who had booked, as she and her very tall husband and their two friends crowded into Room 4. An en suite double, Room 4 is very comfortable and rated five stars, but I doubt you could fit two extra Germans in there. Two extra Chinese maybe. The BB came running and looked fit to burst.

I don’t know how many readers have visited the grave of Dobby the house-elf, but any who have should immediately be sectioned and have their subscriptions to The Spectator canceled. This strong course of action occurs to me after reading one of those stories that can make you laugh, cry and smack your head into your hands all at once. It relates to a “memorial” which apparently sits on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The area is run by the National Trust – a charity which used to look after the UK’s heritage sites. The beach in question was where filming took place for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I don’t know how many readers have visited the grave of Dobby the house-elf, but any who have should immediately be sectioned and have their subscriptions to The Spectator cancelled. This strong course of action occurs to me after reading one of those stories that can make you laugh, cry and smack your head into your hands all at once. It relates to a ‘memorial’ which apparently sits on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The area is run by the National Trust – a charity which used to look after our nation’s heritage sites. The beach in question was where filming took place for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Sea Isle City, New Jersey It’s August 3. My mother’s birthday. Standing in the surf, my youngest son this morning said to me: “What would you do if you could breathe underwater and live there under deep pressure the rest of your life?” “I would eat more fish, I think.” “You could explore the Mariana Trench,” he corrected me. My brother-in-law Matt came down with his two sons to join us. The boys splashed and hollered in the rough sea. The red flag was put up by the lifeguards today. The fathers talked about how much easier it got each year.

The French socialist must have burst her bladder getting a litre of percolator coffee down her to stop the Dutch couple getting any, but she managed it. She was more than a socialist, actually. I think she was one of those continental communists. ‘Why can’t we all just ’ave what we need an’ live in peace, uh?’ she asked me at one point, with the obvious answer, ‘Because you hate everyone and pilfer everything,’ but I couldn’t say that and I didn’t want an argument with her because she was pretty feisty. Pretending to be Irish for two weeks was wearing me out but I kept it up because I feared she would boil over if she found out I was Crème anglaise.

The French couple did not speak much English so I rattled on in my best French, thinking I was doing a fine job. She asked the usual question, how long had we lived in this lovely house? And I assumed she was assuming we were Irish and it had been in our family for generations. Guests always like to think this and I don’t like to completely disabuse them of it. They’ve come to West Cork for an authentic experience so I massage the Englishness out of the BB and me as best I can, on a customer service basis. My usual shtick poured forth, therefore, in my best French. And my best French ought not to be too bad. I once lived in France, in a village near Orléans. I was 18 and had fled home at the first opportunity, as young people used to do in those days.

Ireland is in the midst of its own "George Floyd moment." At least, that’s how a string of international headlines have portrayed the death of Yves Sakila, a Congolese shoplifter who was pronounced dead in hospital after being restrained by security guards, one of whom appeared to kneel on his head or neck. The circumstances of the 35-year-old’s death are being investigated, but, as yet, there is no evidence it resulted from racism or excessive force. Court records show Sakila had a history of theft, and a post-mortem reportedly found no signs of foul play or visible injuries on his body. That has not stopped activists and parts of the establishment from co-opting a personal tragedy to fuel a campaign of racial grievance.

‘Can I go now?’ said the farmer I was talking to over my gate, and he looked so scared I felt a bit ashamed of myself. I had flagged him down as he went by in his rickety blue tractor that’s so old it looks like Noah used it to load hay onto the Ark. I told him I hadn’t seen him for a while. He usually waves or comes in for a chat. He has been our favourite neighbour since we moved to West Cork. As he owns the land above us where our water well is situated, that’s all to the good. We went out of our way to befriend him from the get-go, but after deluging him in home-baked fruitcakes and offers of dinner, for he lives alone, we realised he was our sort of person anyway.