The second night of the Rose of Tralee is always when my cynicism retreats and I drink the red lemonade.
I ooh as the Tipperary Rose plays the spoons before whipping off her dress, Bucks Fizz style, in order to jig; I aah as the London Rose risks ripping a hole in the space-time continuum by reading Dáithí Ó Sé’s tea leaves; I oooh again as Ó Sé risks a diplomatic incident by speaking Mandarin at the behest of the New York Rose.
Before the day’s rehearsal I ask Ó Sé whether it’s true he doesn’t drink for six weeks before the festival.
“Is that what he told you?” executive producer Michael Kealy says with a raised eyebrow.
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“Usually by the time yer man is singing the second verse of the Rose of Tralee I’m drinking,” Ó Sé says. “I think I had a few pints before we were off air one year. Last night the ice was for my knee.” He recently injured his knee. “Tonight the ice is for the white wine”.
“Last year I was going to bed around 2.30,” Kealy says. “The last thing I saw was Kathryn Thomas being swung around the dance floor.”
I meet Thomas much later, when she is being made up by two RTÉ make-up people.
“It takes a village,” she says before explaining how they divvied up the live interviews. Certain physical tasks “couldn’t be done by Dáithí because of his ... old age”. She coughs. “I mean, his injury.”
At the rehearsals the final 14 Roses rehearse the evening’s show act by act. They are all very self-assured, but, after weeks of meeting and greeting, sometimes their confidence falters. Thomas and Ó Sé are protective.
“I’ll help you through that,” Thomas tells a Rose who has a sad subject to discuss. To another she says: “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get to everything.”
In a ballroom at the Meadowlands Hotel, the Roses, their families and their selection committees eat lunch and take part in a table quiz. At one point they’re competing to see who can dance most enthusiastically to Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight). They hold champagne flutes aloft, wave napkins and whoop. One man is standing on a chair doing a suggestive arse wiggle. Eventually the judges’ team, Don’t Judge Us, win the whole quiz, and they do an extravagant victory dance for many minutes.
It’s overwhelming to spectate at the Rose of Tralee, never mind participate. I overhear a Rose say, “I’m feeling emotional today,” as a friend hugs her.
“It’s a bit of a marathon,” says Stephen, brother of the Sydney Rose, Ashling Heneghan. “We’ll have to go back to real life eventually.”
An 88-year-old man named Brian wanders in, hoping for a ticket.
“In the old days, if I saw O’Gara he’d sort me out,” he says, referring to the festival’s chief executive, Anthony O’Gara, who recently had heart surgery, so isn’t as involved in this year’s festival.
I complement the escort of the year, Barry Lysaght, on his excellent moustache.
“The moustache seen around the world,” he says in a croaky voice. An escort’s job, he says, is to provide a friendly ear and comic relief, as well as “pockets full of safety pins, bobbins, mints, lip gloss and blister plasters”.
When he was receiving his award, on Monday night, he forgot to turn his phone off, and it started buzzing with messages while on stage.
“I wasn’t sure if it was my phone or heart palpitations.”
The Dublin Rose, Casey Harris, tells me about her tattoos. She has a tattoo of a diamond because her mother calls her “a little diamond”. There’s a tattoo featuring the handwriting of her aunt who died of breast cancer. There are the words “Be safe”, because that’s what her mother always says to her before she goes anywhere. Having tattoos nearly stopped her from entering the competition.
“I thought, ‘They’re never going to pick me. I’m a musician. I’m from Finglas, I’ve got tattoos.’ You don’t hear a lot of Dublin Roses from Finglas.”
She dislikes the way Finglas is sometimes depicted in the media.
“I am very proud to be representing Finglas at its best.”
The Cavan Rose, 20-year-old Grace Farrelly, is an English and sociology student in Maynooth and has an as yet unfinished tattoo of some Harry Styles lyrics on her arm.
“I told my dad it was just henna,” she says.
She was working as a cleaner at Cavan General Hospital when a woman who had just had a baby told her she should enter the competition. It turned out the woman was the Cavan rep, scouting post childbirth. At 20, Farrelly is the youngest Rose.
“Someone just said I’m the youngest Rose ever, but I’m not sure about that,” she says. Ger Dillane, a veteran volunteer, names younger Roses from previous years. Farrelly laughs. “Thanks, Ger, for taking that away from me.”
I am so distracted by the Irish harp of the Florida Rose, Molly Ronan, that I forgo questions in order to get a lesson. She shows me how to play some chords. Her relationship with the festival is musical. Her dad sang The Rose of Tralee to her as a child and would change the name Mary to Molly. Entering the Rose felt like destiny.
The Rose of Tralee changes, but it does so slowly and largely just by reflecting the lives of the participants. This year’s Roses seem like kind, capable people. Many work in education, healthcare or social work, though they also include a Nasa researcher, an attorney and an anthropologist.
Alongside the self-aware kitsch that goes with much modern Irishness, and the sincere community pride, there are moments when women talk openly about mental-health issues and tragic bereavements in ways that would have been inconceivable 50 years ago.
Thanks to technology, Rose alumni are more connected than before. Formerly the festival couldn’t always keep tabs on them. The 1972 winner, 74-year-old Claire Schmid Furrer, nee Dübendorfer, was mythologised after she supposedly jumped on the back of a motorbike after her ceremony, never to be seen again.
A few years ago the journalist Majella O’Sullivan tracked her down in Switzerland (she contacted a man named Dübendorfer who happened to be Claire’s cousin), and she’s now very pleased to be plugged back into the community.
At a press conference she bursts one bubble after another.
Did she really leave straight after winning? No, she stayed on to celebrate with her fellow Roses.
Did she leave on the back of a motorbike? No, a friend was touring Ireland on a motorbike at the time, but she didn’t leave with him and she reckons she stayed in Kerry for a few days.
She has had a very full life. Her partner died of cancer exactly 30 years ago. She has a “patchwork” family with her current husband: two children and three grandchildren each. (She hopes one of them might one day enter the Rose.) She had a fabric business. She taught textiles. She has an art exhibition in Zurich soon. She’s bemused to be considered a mystery.
“Because it wasn’t a mystery for me. I had a very intense life.” She laughs. “There’s more than just a festival.”
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