AH, lads, what a week we’ve had with ‘moving’ pictures, amateur drama and the Oscars!
You know, if fate hadn’t decreed that I pursued farming as a career, or way of life, I often think I’d have loved to be an actor of some sorts.
Unfortunately, my inability to ‘learn off’ lines in a script would probably have meant I’d always have been simply an extra playing a part with little or no words. Be that as it may, my love affair with matters dramatic has never dimmed since I played the part of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood in a local pantomime nearly six decades ago.
No point crying over spilt milk, as they say, shure, I’d have liked to be a politician also - maybe it’s not too late yet! Oh yes, and the thirty-four million dollar question - what have John Arnold and Cillian Murphy in common? Yes, what have Oscar-winning Cillian Murphy and five foot eight inch farmer John Arnold got in common?
One clue - it’s not our shared acting ability! Fair enough, I have a dozen East Cork, five County and one Munster trophies for acting in the GAA Scor Competition - many acquired before the bould Cillian started National School in Ballinlough!
Anyhow, I’ll get back to that question later.
We had a hectic week with eight nights of brilliant three-act plays in the West Waterford Drama Festival, two referendums, followed on Monday by a GAA Club meeting.
On Tuesday, it was back down the highways and byways of half a century when I attended a gathering of former pupils of St Colman’s College Fermoy. We attended our Alma Mater from 1969 to 1974 when we sat the Leaving Cert.
The years have thinned our numbers. We had about 120 starting off in the autumn of 1969 and over 20 have departed this life.
It was great to meet lads, older men now, that had learned, laughed, cried and played together all those years ago. There’s a Table Quiz for Marymount Hospice tonight, Thursday, in Páirc Pádraig Ó Caoimh, camogie matches and parades at the weekend... never a dull moment - and of course farming as well!
We lit the fire in the room last Sunday night for the first time in nine days as we’d taken the well-known dramatic road to Ballyduff for over a week. The crows must have thought summer had come and there’d be no more fires lit in the grate - hadn’t they started building a nest in the chimney!
God bless their optimism, but I’d say the summer hasn’t yet officially come to Bartlemy!
In the early 1990s, we went on a summer holiday for three days to Scotland - I’d say ’twas 1992, just after the Post Office here had been callously closed down.
Anyway, the second day we were walking along the Bridle Path in the Fairy Glen just outside of Inverness. Going against us was a tweed-clad dapper man wearing a Tam O’Shanter hat. As we passed, he greeted us and stopped, looked at me and said: “Are you not the man that was on the Late, Late Show with Gay Byrne concerning rural Ireland?”
“That’s me,” says I, kinda surprised.
Well, I can tell ye I was more surprised when I looked up and realised that the man in our presence was none other than Sean Connery - yes, the famous Scottish-born star of stage and film. (This meeting may or may not be true, I’ll leave it for the reader to decide!)
I was chuffed he recognised me. He’d often been on the Late, Late with Gaybo over the years.
Born in Edinburgh, he told us he regularly came back to Scotland where many relations still lived.
Nearby was a kirk with a café adjoining so we sat down for a dram of tae and a haggis sandwich - a local speciality.
Now, eating sheep’s heart, liver and lungs was not something I ever longed for, but as they say, ‘when in Scotland, do as the Scots do’.
Sean was a great conversationalist. He asked me about acting and I opened up in regards to my hidden desire to star on the silver screen.
At the time, Connery was finished starring as James Bond and he told me Roger Moore was packing it up too to concentrate on breeding short-haired donkeys in Peru.
One thing led to another, and Sean suggested to me that I had the rugged, weather-beaten look that might suit a new version of James Bond. He thought my foxy hair and freckles might attract a completely new female audience.
When he informed me that the locations for filming the next Bond movie the following year were St Lucia and Barbados, oh boy, was I drooling!
Then my dream was shattered. The amiable Scotsman told me casting and filming would begin in late August and continue until October with no break. Heartache, heartbreak, I felt - how could I miss the All Ireland Finals in Croke Park in September? Never, I just couldn’t.
Connery asked me to reconsider but he knew nought of my gra for hurling and football. We parted then with a warm handshake. As he set off down the Glen, I knew and he knew my latent Hollywood career was over.
It’s just a thought now, but with All Ireland Finals switched to July (against my wishes), could that cloud have a silver lining? They say God never closes one door without opening another.
Maybe a new generation of Bond fans might fall in love with a balding, very rugged, slightly rotund Irish farmer? Hope springs eternal!
Talking of politics, I suppose if I decided to stand in the forthcoming Local Elections I’d be a Democratic Republican Independent candidate with Fifty Shades of Blue.
If my film career never really took off - well, not yet in any case, should I go forward for public acclamation based on my past history or, like so many others, should I reinvent myself and produce the ‘new me’?
Sure, they’re all at it these days from the American Trumpet to the Royalist family across the pond.
People regularly say to me, ‘John, you are living in the past’ - maybe so, but I’m comfortable with it and history and local lore has satisfied my quest for knowledge all these years. I suppose I’ll abide by that oft used maxim ‘leave well enough alone’.
Anyway, the County Council elections are on in May. Hopefully, I’ll spend some of that month in Athlone at the All Ireland Drama Finals.
Ballyduff’s The Ferryman will be there - it’s absolutely brilliant, ye can see it in Rossmore tonight and in Holycross next Monday night.
I suppose in fairness I was never cut out to be a film star or a politician but I can still dream!
Well done to Cillian Murphy, a great ambassador for Cork and Ireland. A humble man despite his fame. He’s also a man, like me, who stays ‘offline’ - no WhatsUup, Whosup, Spitify, Tic Tac, or other such anti-social media yokes.
People stop and people stare and tell me: ‘John, get real, get with the times - get connected’ I’m happy that I’m in tune with all around me, with nature, with books, and that’s enough to be carrying on with.
Yes, it’s true, John Arnold and Cillian Murphy don’t have social media; maybe, like me, he just has a small little black Nokia phone that makes and takes calls and send texts to people - what more do myself and Cillian need?
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