AS LONG as I can remember, our family have been going to Connemara, in the west of Ireland, and now I find that if I don’t go there two or three times a year, I feel uneasy. Ireland has become very urbanised, and Connemara is one of the last places that is still silent and desolate, and gives you that restorative feeling of wilderness. You could walk or drive for a long time and see no shops or lampposts, no hint of humanity at all.
It is a stony, elemental landscape that isn’t beautiful in the way English countryside can be; actually, it looks as if it’s been hit by an earthquake. Because it’s close to the sea, it has the crisp coldness of the Atlantic and the smell of the peat, which you never get in Dublin, and occasionally you hear the Irish language being spoken, which carries you to another world. When I was a child, we used to stay in the same place as my father when he was a child, and I expect my own children will go there too.
My parents separated later on in our lives, unfortunately, but I still have happy memories of our time there as a family — more than I have of Dublin. My sister Sinead goes all over the world, but she still manages to get there.
I always feel energised by Connemara, and the only other place that I love as much couldn’t be more different: downtown Manhattan, where I feel totally at home, where I also try to go at least once a year. I love the noise, the buzz and the energy. I love the clichés and the clashing music of the place and all the multicultural colour. I even think the abrasiveness has its own charm. The first time I went, I didn’t know anybody there, and I was trying to finish a book. I thought, “I’ll rent somewhere, the phone won’t ring and I’ll get my book done.” But although New Yorkers have a reputation for abrasiveness, I found them amazingly friendly. Within a week my phone was ringing all the time, I got no work done at all, and it was a fantastic experience.
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My mother died in February of 1985. My grief was such that I wanted to go somewhere where I didn’t know anybody at all. I was a student at the time, and my friends and I had always said that, one day, we’d all go to Nicaragua, and how wonderful it would be — knowing, of course, that we’d never go. But I went — just as Reagan’s economic blockade had begun to take effect, and the country was in the grip of civil war. I could actually see the country crumble. It wasn’t a holiday from hell, but it was a far remove from the slogans that I and my leftie chums would chant.
You’d see people in rags on the road selling a box of fruit; one day you’d get into a taxi and there’d be no windscreen, and the next week there’d be no door. Lifts stopped working, and suddenly there was less food and no soap in the shops, and life became a Soviet nightmare.
Last summer, we rented near Nice for a month, for one of those holidays where you don’t do specifically holiday things, but you’re trying to get some idea of what it’s like actually to live in that country. While we were there, we had a heat wave. It was so hot, you couldn’t go out of the house. We’d get up praying for rain, which is an odd thing to do on holiday, and watch these little planes go up to spray the crops with water. But my oldest son, James, seemed oblivious to the extreme heat. He’d scamper around the place, totally relaxed, so maybe our feelings about heat and cold are learnt.
When James was six months old, we had our most disastrous holiday in Galway, just after his first Christmas. On Christmas Eve, the people who owned the cottage we were to stay in pleaded with us not to come because of the weather. We thought this was wussy, so we drove in a blizzard. It took us 11 hours instead of five.
When we arrived, we were halfway up a mountain, in a desolate part of Galway, waiting for the snow to melt. It was a week-long nightmare and, although it was very beautiful, there was nothing to do. It’s the closest my wife and I have come to divorce. This year, we’re not going to go on holiday — with a small child and infant, it may be more restful.