THERE is a heap of paper in the corner of The Irish Times newsroom which is alternatively known to as Slieve Leitir, or Ben Bruscar. It is one of the most awesome sights in our offices it takes about a day to walk around its circumference and there are regular avalanches on the more exposed northerly slopes, which become impassable during the winter months.
Large footprints found in snowdrifts have led to talk of Abominable Journalists. You certainly can't get sherpas to accompany you there at night and there are strange howling noises at the full moon which cause our more timid members of staff to hide under their computers and call for their mothers.
Tis nothing. Tis merely me waking up. Ben Bruscar or Slieve Leitir is merely the desk of the diary, the quotidianic logbook's workplace, with unanswered letters going back to the Crimean War, when I was but a nipper.
Lost invitations
Many of the unanswered letters I can do nothing about now I am quite pleased I lost Lord Cardigan's invitation to join the Light Brigade. On balance, that unit promised poor career opportunities.
Equally, I feel no sorrow that I mislaid Dr Livingstone's suggestion that I join him in taking the Bible to darkest Africa. He was a kindly old cove, no doubt, awfully well meaning and so on, but I rather draw the line at native bearers cutting your heart out and trotting half way across a continent with it in a hessian sack.
No long term good can come of that class of caper. Look at Livingstone. Never heard another word from him again. And then there was nice Captain Oates, said he and his friend Captain Scott had a spare place going on their Antarctic jaunt would I care to join them?
I intended to, but alas I mislaid the letter. They must have been right miffed, because I never even got a postcard from them. Got a nice one from a mundsen, though. If Scott and Oates had contacted me, maybe they could have told me what a mundsen is. It's certainly not in the dictionary.
On the other hand, I regret not answering the letter from Captain O'Shea's wife asking my advice about the advisability of taking lunch with his party leader. In the absence of the firm negative a crusty old puritan like myself would most certainly have proffered, I fear she went ahead and had her bowl of soup and a sanger with The Bearded One, with results we know too well.
Similarly, I regret not answering young Pearse when he sought my advice on the suitability of his candidature for a new Cistercian monastery being established on the windward side of Rockall.
The monks were to be allowed 2 oz of seaweed every second day, and would be permitted to bid good morning to one another on the first Tuesday of every second decade provided it was not past 4 a.m. and provided you had not eaten anything in the previous month.
I thought it was a splendid idea, the very thing for an ardent young man like Patrick to be doing, but I neglected to tell him. His letter remained unanswered, and he sought to satisfy himself with certain military ambitions which brought him alas to a sticky end.
Myself, I think he would have got more joy amid the puffins and kittiwakes and might be with us yet, chanting his crepuscular dirges into the howling gales that sweep from Iceland.
Nothing I can do
There is nothing I can do about such inquiries. Kitty, as we know, soiled herself and her good name on the Bed of Dishonour and Patrick went to almost as unpleasant an end himself.
But there are others for whom I feel a pang of anguish, who are with us yet, and my failure to reply to their letters, now profoundly mislaid in some gully or ravine in Ben Bruscar, burns me deeply.
One name which comes to mind is of a man named McCormick or McCormack. He might be from Wicklow town, I think. He was a friend of Jerry Shiel, about whom I was writing last year, at the time of the 50th anniversary of the ending of the last World War.
Jerry was from Meath and was one of the last Irishmen to be killed in the war in Europe. My correspondent McCormack or McCormick people are very persnickety about that final vowel told me that he had served with Jerry with the 51st Highland Division which, to judge from the letters vanishing into Slieve Leitir could well have been called 51st Ireland Division and he had many fond memories of him.
Of course I intended to reply but when I wasn't quite concentrating, the McCormack letter took a hike into the foothills of Ben Bruscar and has not been seen since.
This would be a grave discourtesy anyway without my compounding it by promising Jerry's son Anthony, who is a publisher in London, that I would forward the letter to him.
Anthony was a baby when his father was killed and understandably was anxious to hear something about those years when Jerry served in north Africa, Sicily, Normandy, Belgium and finally Germany, where he was killed by a land mine just days before war's end.
A plea to write again
So, a plea if anyone knows who this McCormick or McCormack was, or if the gentleman concerned actually lowers himself sufficiently to read this column, might I ask that he write again to the Ben Bruscar on my desk? I promise him that I will blow the mountain up rather lose another of his letters to Mount Tiphead or, if he feels incapable of the necessary trust required to enter into fresh correspondence, might I suggest he writes to Anthony Sheil, at 43, Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LF?
Another piece of paper which mislaid on my desk contained the name and telephone number of a woman who left her name and phone number on the voice mail my poor bloody employers installed simply because written letters were not being attended to.
She wanted to speak to me about the Leinster about which I was writing recently. But the note is missing in Ben Bruscar, and I have wiped the tape. Would she be good enough to contact me again by means of a cleft stick, perhaps?