The summer of 1992 was golden. I spent two weeks of it in Castlegregory, in Co Kerry, hanging around the shops, playing music in the little pool room around the back, and running free on the wild beaches with friends I had just made. The stars at night — the absolute blackness of the night, the absence of street lights — revealed a night sky I had never seen before.
The stars were right on top of your head. We used to lie on the beach at night and watch the incredible lights of the Big Dipper, Jupiter, and little flecks of moving balls of light that were satellites whizzing overhead, which we took for alien spacecraft. Walking back from a dance in Castlegregory to Anchor Caravan Park, in Aughacasla, was as beautiful as it was terrifying.
The stories of ghosts, banshees, and murdering madmen who roamed the wet landscape made me a little jittery coming along the dark road. It was a magical time. It was even more special because I had a crush on one of the girls.
This was the second big crush of my life. The singer of 99 Red Balloons , Nena, was the first. Apparently, she was dating the bass player, which broke my eight-year-old heart.
But being a young lover, I recovered and moved on. And I was back on the proverbial horse. Those two weeks are a time I still reflect on 32 years later.
There was something special in that time that I find myself thinking about. When I returned to my house in Douglas, Cork, in the autumn of ’92, the girl I had just met in Castlegregory wrote a letter. I remember the excitement I felt opening the envelope, seeing my name on it, the handwriting, the stories of life down in Aughacasla and how I was missed there.
Be still my beating heart. Now I had to write one back. Dear lord, mild dyslexia be gone.
I hated my handwriting. I tore up draft after draft, because the squiggle on the page was that of a child’s handwriting. I needed WB Yeats for this endeavour.
I tried ‘tread softly because you tread on my dreams’, but thought it too needy. Shakespeare’s ‘the course of true love never did run smooth’ was too pessimistic. My handwriting killed any creativity I had.
I even thought about asking my brother to write it for me, but, thankfully, I mustered up the courage to put my dyslexic heart down on the page. Well, not quite my heart, maybe my sense of humour and cool indifference. We wrote to each other all that summer.
One letter told of a new young fella who had arrived in the caravan park. Hello, heartache my old friend! There was so much learning that summer. But as I look back now, it was receiving those letters and writing responses that I smile at the most.
This was a time before the smartphone, before we compared every little thing we did with each other. There was something so wonderful about reading a letter from someone you had just met. They had taken time to write it, buy a stamp, and post it.
Also, at 15 years of age, I had never really received post before, so it caused a stir among my brothers that someone out there in the world was taking time to write to me. The reason I’m recalling this romantic adolescent encounter is because recently my daughter Lizzy was down in Kenmare with her great Cork friend, Ava Tuohy. The two of them are as thick as thieves.
I love watching my children with their friends. You know how important and meaningful those relationships are going to be as they grow older and reflect on their childhood ages and ages hence. Last week, as Lizzy was sitting watching television, the postman dropped a few letters through the door.
There was a letter for Lizzy Hogan. The excitement of seeing her name on a letter written in children’s handwriting was lovely to witness. She ran into the kitchen and opened it.
She read it with a huge smile on her face. I don’t think Santa has brought as big a smile as that letter did with all his fancy presents. Once she had finished reading it for about the 10th time, she got about the business of writing her own letter in reply.
It was lovely to see her sitting at the table, Alexa helping with her spelling (how I wish Alexa was around in my day) and writing all the news from Dublin and how she missed her Cork pal. Walking to the post office and dropping it in the box was another special moment. A letter is special.
A text message never creates the excitement a letter does. We are in the age of instant communication. Everything is abbreviated and instantaneous.
Getting children to write letters is a wonderful gift. They learn to articulate themselves through words, while also learning that someone values them enough to take the time to write a letter and post it. What an incredible message for a young person to receive.
I have not received too many handwritten letters since those days in Castelgregory, but they were a magic time..
