Sneem, in Kerry, even in the rain, even when a bit crowded with travelling buses, couldn't fail to retain so much of its own individuality. With its two neat village greens, its river with the most extraordinary rock formations, its tidy, painted houses and shops and an efficiency and courtesy of its own.
It is remarkable, though it shouldn't be in the Kingdom, to walk into a newsagents and find, beside the Irish dailies, and the Kerryman, of course, and the London Times and the Daily Telegraph, copies of that day's Le Monde and a German paper, from memory the Deutsche Allgemaine Zeitung. Just there as a matter of course.
what lovely man, Cearbhall O Dalaigh, former President, former holder of many high offices, came to this district in retirement with his wife. His memory had been richly endowed. With Vivienne Roche's memorial on the grass of the south square; a stainless steel symbolic tree on the north square, presented by the State of Israel and unveiled, some will remember, by President Chaim Herzog in 1985. And there is the Peace Panda, China's tribute to the late President.
Before he rose to high office, Cearbhall was Irish Editor of The Irish Press. His saintly brother, Aengus was the news paper's librarian. Long before Chad Varah founded the Samaritans in England, Aengus, bless his heart was constantly gathering people with troubles into the library of Burgh Quay.
Everyone with worries in that organisation, too, knew where to go for solace and active help, and a laugh.
But you can't be in Kerry without noting and doting upon, the vegetation. What? No arbutus mentioned so far? No, there was only a perfunctory at the quaintly named Laoes' View. (The ladies, according to a notice there, were ladies in waiting to Queen Victoria. That prospect would be over real arbutus territory. But it is sufficient wonder to patrol the short walks around Parknasilla. To see all the crabbed trees or the slopes, and many very find ones in the grounds. To see, for example, bilberry plants, no eight or ten inches high, but in bushes of two feet, and many with the flowers going and the green fruit formed and swelling. So contrary is growth everywhere this season.
And, probably, most striking, in the hotel grounds, the huge bushes of shining yellow azaleas, the air heavy with their scent, and loud with the sound of bumble bees.