After the wettest September in history, once again a glorious October, amber seeping up the last of the sap and into the drying leaves. Soon they will be gone, and we will be into winter's stark cycle; but in the meantime, we have the great banquet of the countryside in autumn, the briefest season but the most beautiful, and blessed this year by quite breathtakingly beautiful sunsets.
Watching such a sunset recently, I heard once again the sound of children laughing. It is not a common sound in the countryside, but it is where I live, overlooking Barretstown Gang Camp, which in the summertime gives holidays to children whose lives are threatened by serious illness. But of course, summer is gone; so what was this laughter? It was the sound of child-participants in a bereavement programme; for as our seasons go by, so do lives come to an end, leaving behind the grieving, the baffled, the overwhelmed.
Laughter in grief
But humans are odd beings; even in grief we can find laughter. Funerals can be strangely joyous affairs. The dark weeks and months which follow death are the true winter of the soul; yet it is seldom so deep as to steal joy from the heart completely. It still burns in unseen embers, awaiting the warming breath of a friend, for the chance to flash into flame again. This is what the Barretstown programme helps do for children who have lost loved ones; it puts them back on childhood's tracks.
Barretstown has a little image problem; people think that because some very rich people were associated with it at the outset that it is a millionaires' club and the support of plain people is not needed. It certainly received the support of some big names in its early days after it was founded by Paul Newman; and some large companies give lavishly towards the running of the place. But the actual cost of funding the children's holidays is an annual challenge made good by the contributions of plain people. As the Vatican can tell you, those pennies carefully gathered can in time build St Peter's. Is there a better use of charitable money than the lifting of childhood terrors in a holiday these children will remember all their lives, no matter how long those lives may last?
What is nigh-on unforgivable is that we still have not devised a tax-free means of giving to charities. It is not difficult to do. The Americans do it as a matter of course. The British have the Charities Aid Foundation; you can make post-tax donations to that, and they issue you with a cheque book, which you can use to write cheques to registered charities. They in turn can claim back the tax paid by you to the taxman: so that in the bizarre tax regime in this country, to give, say, £500 to Barretstown you could make out a cheque of about £270; and the Revenue Commissioners, those straight and trusty fellows who treat us all - banks and paupers, widows and orphans - just the same imburse the charity with the tax you have already paid.
Charity laws
It would be splendid if such a system worked here; but of course before it could, we would have to overhaul the slumland of our charity laws. In the meantime, charities must beg; and if you feel disposed to make regular contributions to Barretstown (which you can, tax-deductibly, if you are a limited company) you can ring Joanna Duffy at 045 864115.
But it is often the case that children who contract cancer never reach Barretstown - not because they didn't make it that far but because they're off playing elsewhere. The illness which might have stolen their lives away was diagnosed in time, and treatment restored their life and their lives. One of the foremost institutions in the fight against childhood cancer is Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, which urgently needs a Cytofluor 4000, which is some complicated piece of technology for detecting cancers and other illnesses.
Kildare bash
A new charitable organisation in Kildare, The Hidden Agenda, is organising its first event - modestly entitled "The Last Big Bash of the 20th Century" - to raise the £25,000 outright needed for this machinery. A masquerade ball featuring flame-throwers and jugglers and sponsored by Hibernian Assurance, it will take place in the Strand House Hotel on the Curragh on October 24th. Many prizes are being auctioned or raffled, including a bottle of port apparently worth £25,000; hard to believe, but there you are.
And there are some other very Kildare prizes, such as a date for your mare in Coolmore. Do make sure her eye-liner is right, that she's dabbed her best Christian Dior deodorant in all the right places, and her skirts are straight before you take her there. Stallions, you know, can be quite fickle creatures; and nothing is quite so depressing for a girl as to return from Coolmore uncovered. Fillies are easily depressed at being rejected; moon in their stables and won't eat their hay, et cetera.
If you're interested in helping Hidden Agenda raise the £25,000 to fight infantile cancer, contact Jane Hickey on 086-8066000. Happy to hear from you in any regard.