Melissa Kite

Ireland’s best-kept secret is a stretch of toll road through its capital city that was about to ensnare me again. The M50 Dublin toll is located between Junction 6, Blanchardstown, and Junction 7, Lucan. And this is aptly named because the bit where they apparently demand payment is so invisible it is worthy of the name Lucan in every sense. The last time I was caught in this ingenious money trap, I vowed I would never fall for it again The last time I drove to the UK and back on the ferry, Holyhead-Dublin, I was caught in this ingenious money trap and vowed I would never fall for it again. On that occasion, I drove at night off the ferry and into the tunnel leaving the harbour, where I dutifully tapped my card on a toll barrier.

The priest said it would be a short service because he wanted to make an important announcement. After rushing through the Mass so quickly he missed out most of the good bits, he solemnly declared the following: he urgently needed volunteers to say prayers over the bodies. The builder boyfriend agrees with me, but it is possible that the BB and I have gone mad together The number of funerals in this small corner of West Cork has now got to the point where one priest cannot handle the arrival of the coffins at the funeral home opposite the church, where, in Irish tradition, the business of praying begins. He said they also needed volunteers to do the same in the next village. He sounded like he was at his wits’ end.

The oil man topped our tank and said his next drop was to the Ukrainian refugees in the next village who were getting their tank topped for free. I could hear him and the builder boyfriend chatting about this for some time and then the BB came back into the kitchen and put the pink of the invoice into my hand. I looked down to see that I was being charged just over €1,000 for a tank of oil. I don’t want to feel grateful to the EU. It might make me hate it less The electricity bill for the winter pinged into my email barely a few hours later – nearly €700. ‘We’re migrants,’ I told the BB. ‘I wonder if I should ring to place the order from an area of the house where there’s bad phone reception.

The plumber and the builder conversed at top speed, making a combined sound that was so strange it seemed likely only bats or aliens from outer space could make sense of it. The chap who had come to price our new bathrooms was gabbling in a thick west Cork accent, giving absolutely nothing away to me, while the builder boyfriend was machine-gunning him back in extreme cockney. However, while it sounded to the untrained ear like the two men were speaking different languages, it quickly became apparent that they were, in fact, completely in tune with each other and understood each other perfectly.

‘Thanks for calling Tesco bank,’ said the voice, before rather lavishly promising to get me to a member of the team who was going to help me. This wasn’t quite how it turned out, although I would say, up until the moment I asked to change my address I was a very satisfied customer. If any of these questions did not suit me, I would be allowed to object, he said, as though reading me my rights This credit card has a very reasonable interest rate, and a nice big limit. However, it has decided that I do not have the security clearance to change my address because I have never logged into its website. I haven’t felt the urge to. I pay by direct debit and receive a letter each month which is perfectly adequate.

‘What’s wrong with your lot?’ asked the blacksmith as he was shoeing our horses. And we had to admit that we really didn’t know.  Don’t be telling an Irish blacksmith that he might not be good enough for you and your rescue nags We came to Ireland to get away from liberal lunacy but the other English people who come here seem to be intent on bringing it with them. The blacksmith shook his head. He said he had just been to an English lady further down the peninsula who wanted him to trim a few old donkeys and llamas. When he arrived, he got out of the car and she wafted up to him in a kaftan. The blacksmith looked baffled as he explained it.

The plumbers come and go, but mainly go, and I am now so desperate for a bath that I will do anything for a man carrying a pipe wrench. If only I had more Botox in my face and my highlights done, I found myself thinking, as we sat at the kitchen table one night rowing about the seemingly impossible problem of trying to get tradesmen who are also farmers on EU subsidies. Most plumbers walk into our crumbling country house, look horrified and tell us we’re mad The bathrooms in this old Georgian pile are so cranky they might as well not be there. In fact, it would be better if they weren’t. The heating and plumbing is a death trap.

When the clouds come down and the mountains disappear I feel myself disappearing too. As long as I can see the beautiful scenery I never regret coming here, but on days when a white-out envelops us it’s no consolation that the horizon is still out there somewhere. I feel trapped and lonely and lost and disorientated. The frightening things of the world are overwhelming. ‘I need to get out. I can’t sit here all day,’ I told the builder boyfriend who came through the French windows beaming with the satisfaction derived from cutting out old stock fencing to make way for the all-weather gallop he’s promised me.

The mountain spring that feeds our house froze during the first ground frost, and we had no water. The builder boyfriend filled a bucket from the fountain in the garden so we could flush the loo. This really is living in faded grandeur. I spent the evening worrying about how we had cursed ourselves by drinking and bathing in holy water We are waiting on various tradesmen to turn up and do things to the plumbing in our run-down Georgian pile. We know we might have to drop a bore hole. But until then the water coming out of our taps is from a ‘holy well’. The stream pools into a grotto on the lane, a shrine with rocks around it that occasionally attracts a pilgrim who comes with a bottle and fills it from the waters.

We were riding the two cobs down the lane when I heard the car roaring its engine behind us. I had seen it pull out of a long, winding driveway coming from a house perched on top of the highest point of the hillside, a few hundred yards along from our place. It went the other way for a few seconds, then I could hear it screech, turn and start to hurtle back towards us along the long straight stretch of lane it was evidently using to get up speed. We only had a few yards until we reached the back gates of our house. I looked behind and waved at the white car, expecting the driver to slow because, after all, he was our neighbour. The car revved its engines and kept coming. I shouted ‘Slow down please!’ because Duey was starting to jump about, and he’s fairly bomb-proof.

The funeral drinks at McCarthy’s bar was splendid, and towards the end we got invited to another one. I was sitting at the bar with a bowl of soup and a plate of neatly cut cheesy sandwiches, while the builder boyfriend drank a pint of Murphy’s, when the bar owner leaned over and told us that the next one was at a different bar, so when we had all drunk up and the sandwiches were eaten everyone was going to be heading off down the road, if we would like to join them. I’ve never known so many people say it’s just a coincidence that so many people are dying In truth, I would have liked to go, for I had so enjoyed this wake I would have followed them to the second of the day.

‘The vet’s here and he’s 12,’ I called over the farmyard gate where the builder boyfriend was waiting with the injured cob. I don’t think the lad heard me as he got out of his car. I hope the Irish ones don’t faint, I thought, because we had a nice gory cut for him. The best you can hope for with horses is that your six-monthly freak injury is a near disaster. So when the smaller of the two black and white cobs reared up into a tin roof it was cause for celebration that he nearly had his eye out. You’ve only got two options with horses. Either they nearly bugger themselves up or they bugger themselves up.

The skip man laughed as he took pity on me, the daft English blow-in who was taking the EU rules on rubbish disposal literally. ‘You put so much concrete in that skip that if I weighed it in properly it would cost you a thousand euros,’ he said. I told him I really didn’t mind paying the going rate. He said he wouldn’t hear of it. ‘If you’ve got land you can always get rid of concrete blocks by filling holes with them,’ he said. ‘Don’t be putting concrete into skips.’ We ordered a skip and the company boss was appalled that we put lots of stuff in it we could have fly-tipped The builder boyfriend, hard at work clearing the farmyard and barns, was aghast as I trotted outside to tell him his rookie mistake. ‘I don’t want to fly-tip on my own land!

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I whispered, almost in tears, as the priest finished his horrible homily. Standing at the altar in front of a stained-glass window showing Jesus with his arms outstretched, this priest was telling us all off for what had happened in Dublin, three hours’ drive away. I suppose we expected a bit of a lecture, going by the speeches about Palestine that we had been subjected to in previous weeks. We did so want to fit in by going to Mass, which had been noted by our Irish neighbours as a good thing. The priest told us how un-Christian we were being for listening to social media gossip But this was too much. We couldn’t be doing with an extended political manifesto extolling the virtues of Leo Varadkar and open borders on a Sunday morning.

‘Have you ever eaten breakfast at the Hilton before?’ shouted the woman on the door of the restaurant, as a guest attempted to gain entry. She told me I could help myself to coffee and I said I would, because I had As he mumbled something, she shouted: ‘And how are you this morning?’ He mumbled something else, and looked scared. I was already sitting down, having dodged the Cerberus of the breakfast bar because, when I entered, she had been marching around the diners shouting, ‘Anything else? More coffee? No?’ and I managed to help myself to what I wanted from the buffet and choose a table. This did not go down well. When she worked out that I had breached her barriers, she marched up and shouted: ‘Room number!

The light does such magical things on this hillside that, as I walk the steep narrow lanes between fields, I can’t take my eyes off a distant, golden-topped mountain range. At night the sky is so clear I wander into the garden and stare at the northern star, bright and low. I saw in the local paper that we got the northern lights the other evening: streaks of blue and green over the harbour. Everything seems such a riot of colour and flavour here. I look around me and despite the views, I also see the funeral cars going up and down the lanes The food tastes precisely of itself, to steal a phrase from Nancy Mitford. I’m peeling potatoes so dirty my hands are covered in mud by the time they reach the pan of tap water that comes from a ‘holy well’.

In the pitch dark, we stormed from the house to the pick-up truck and screeched out of our farmyard with me shouting: ‘Come on! This is our only chance! If we don’t get there now we’re done for!’ ‘They won’t sell to us because we’re English. It’s like those stories you hear about idiots who move to Wales’ It was nearly 10 p.m. and I had just scored something on the phone so elusive on this remote hillside that I was physically itching from the desperation of trying to get it. The dealer concerned had answered his phone after I had rung him repeatedly, on the hour every hour, like a stalker. When it came to it, I burst into tears. ‘I’m desperate,’ I sobbed. ‘Please help me.

‘We’re waiting for the llamas to turn up,’ said the lady selling lottery tickets from her car in the supermarket car park. She had accosted the builder boyfriend as he walked by, shouting: ‘I want a word with you! We’re all very worried about what you’re going to be doing to that old house up there…’ The BB assured her we don’t have the money to do anything. Aside from tidying it up, we have no fancy plans, and we like old houses. As for llamas, yes, she had that right in terms of what most English people would be putting on the land. But we had brought our horses. The good lady seemed reassured and within a few minutes she was selling him a lottery ticket from the village pitch and putt club: weekly members’ private lotto draw, jackpot €500.