A moment, pensively denying the passage of time, in the height of an Irish summer, more self-effacing than its English counterpart, which never hesitates to outstay its welcome before it is even wanted. No, the sun here sheds light on a blessed nation rather than highlight its pimples; Eire’s reasoned summer allows the wind of the nation, as conceptualised from within this enclave anyway, to convey a paradoxical cocktail of melancholy and joyous potential to the house.

It’s always hard, well almost impossible actually, to let people in on goings on to which they themselves are not privy, and it’s not a result of linguistic or descriptive shortcomings, although I’m sure that others may do a better job than I of describing the goings on. What it boils down to is the subjective character of experience and our inability, as of yet anyway, to impart that onto others. Perhaps there will come a time when that is possible, but for now the task is for me to give you a sense of what was going on, so that your mind may evoke the images as I describe them. If I have been a good conduit, then the closer the images you evoke will be to my own, as I saw them that day.

Sitting in the study, spaciously fitted between an authentic recreation of a library belonging to an ancestor on one of the innumerable female lines, whose representatives hang in self-conscious, yet necessarily tentative, pride, throughout this cognisant house, a living entity enveloped by its own successes and failures, and a surprisingly modern, at ease, yet originally ornately constructed, all-purpose room, most commonly used for watching the TV; usually the BBC, seldom, but if feeling consciously Irish, the RTE, or, if feeling particularly radical, the UTV. The adaptable room next door is also home to some of the more controversial paintings; controversial in the sense that they are out of keeping with the effortless antediluvian aesthetic permeating the rest of this carapace. Conscious yet effortless? Does this work? Another paradox. Is it possible to actively project an image and yet, simultaneously, remain unstudied? Yes. Good. That is this tribe summed up; the tribe to which I somehow belong. A tribe which has, it seems, been the source of many of the neuroses afflicting the various living entities to whom I happen to be genetically and culturally related.

The desk, one of those lovely pedestal desks, this one from the turn of the 19th century I suspect, positioned by the window, this time its draughtiness is welcome as it discreetly admits some of that wind, facilitating a subtly refreshing and liberal undercurrent, for those who seek it out. Not that much will change as a result; the zeitgeist the wind carries is consciously filtered, as though it were a piece of wartime correspondence, on entering the demesne. Still, it’s nice to have a cool house; it seems more authentic, whatever that means. The old fireplaces, one of which is conveniently adjacent to the desk, perhaps it’s the other way around, acting as inanimate ambassadors from a by-gone era with the smells they seem to retain and give out, this, our scent, a residue of burnt wood and turf, our proverbial rose-tinted spectacles, perhaps, subconsciously sheltering us from the modern world, diluting the awful intrusion it sometimes makes when we are subjected to the sinister TV ads, their wholly repugnant promotion of the consumerist ephialtes that has and will continue to ensure that most of us remain chained in our mental caves in one way or another.

Looking out at the wood, once considered to be a plausible refuge for insurgents, now a wall between us and the rest of the world, allowing us to remain in splendid isolation, free from the gaze of road users three hundred yards away: a gaze, at best, evoking feelings of wonder, deference or calm, and at worst, feelings of disdain, anguish or humiliation. To avoid uncertainty, we’ll remain isolated thanks. It is safe here. None of the sudden surprises that burdened those who went before us, thankfully. At one point, they weren’t even surprises but expected episodes of chaos. Owing to our evolved seclusion, not many people know we even exist to countenance inflicting sudden surprises on us, and most wouldn’t even consider us worth it; relics standing atop of a slowly but surely falling sandheap. We’ll be gone soon, and then they can continue with their lives, even more securely than before. Trees. Yes, trees. Calming, bringing us back to the earth. Here planted formally by humans, yet representing something that eventually triumphs over all humanity. A brief glance sideways to a landscape hanging above the fireplace, a somewhat forlorn – ‘stodgy’ says grandpa – scene depicting cows in a field below the clouds, by Hone the Younger; typical of him, so says everyone unaware of his works done on the continent and beyond. Nature. Nature. Indifferent to us yet an inextricable part of us. We say it looks stodgy here, but what is it really? Not analysable in human terms? That could be. We tend to react, as a matter of course, inaccurately, to our surroundings in a manner that conforms with our hare-brained worldview. Would the most authentic life involve going with the flow, unreflectively? It seems not to me, but maybe I am conditioned and our need for logos is silly; something tells me that it isn’t. Anyway, it’s up to us to decide what our logos is, and the best ones, say I, will involve some form of modesty in the face of nature. As in Thomas Cole’s painting ‘Desolation’, nature always rises where humans fall.

I am hopeless when it comes to botany, dendrology and many other such disciplines involving the intellectualisation of the natural. A bad quality to have in a family where so many are able to magnify the minutiae of life. Perhaps I will get better one day. Looking past the landscape to the slowly, but not unnoticeably, deteriorating bookcase, I notice, staring me right in the eye, almost aggressively, one of the books written by our polymath, one of many so it seems, ancestral uncle, on the flora of the county. At any rate, he can’t have been /that/ much of a ‘Great Man’, to draw on Carlyle, as his widow famously danced over his grave with joy once his subjective being had left this world.

Ancestral voices have full control of our ears here if we aren’t careful, like the Sirens, of the earthly variety, of Poseidon, of persuasion, directing us towards some path; though voices or not we are seemingly confined to what we shallowly regard as our facticity. Perhaps, as living ghosts, we must be exorcised from this place for our own good, only then, when we see the full, unabridged light, will we be free.

But then that’s the same for everyone. It does seem particularly pronounced here, though I’d do well not to assume that our ways of life are the template for everyone else. Nevertheless, a faster pace may do us good from time to time.

Interrupted. What was I going to articulate in my head? I was going to..-

Damn. It’s futile now. They’re here. I see their arrival before the others, despite the affected omniscience that seems to characterise my ‘elders and betters’, spurring on their collective anticipatory and restless perambulations and proclamations, the direct cause of my interrupted train of thought, a vacant collection of words that seemed as though they were made for me. Well, this motley crew of words are stuck in my head now, trespassing against my mind, almost purposefully.

Our guests swoop round the side of the house, in full view from the study, on the subsidiary track, as instructed, that takes one from the roadside to the stables and, for some reason, carries on round. No need to open the main gates and let the rhododendron garden impart itself, beautiful at this time of year; in terms of formality, it’s a hybrid lunch: they’re in the confusing position of being almost but not quite family, and, owing to the jumbled nature of things nowadays, perhaps for the best, almost but not quite our betters, for such things were once thought about and remain on the tips of our tongues, here, in this time capsule, at least. He, funnily enough, a tree enthusiast and an historian to boot, she, an independent lady of intellectual bearing, are looking forward to an almost but not quite lunch, and I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Get up, leave the study and stand around, looking suitably occupied but not too occupied so as to give the wrong impression, waiting for them to be shown in and for the rituals to be completed before commencing our more human interaction. Now standing at the foot of the staircase, in the light, under the magnificent rotunda dome, I turn and look upwards at a portrait of an 18th century predecessor, elegantly dressed, with an ambiguous look about him. None of the portraits around the staircase are by particularly esteemed painters, but whoever painted this one did a good job of depicting the subject as an enigma. Positioned underneath two crossed swords, a reminder of our not so peaceful arrival here, to this, our hinterland, I wonder, was he aware that all is one great act?