Let there be space in our togetherness

Last Friday night when I realised the serious pressure local newspapers were under with the collapse of commercial revenue in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic it got me to thinking of my local paper.

I was reared in a small shop and sub-post office in North Longford. I grew up with the Longford Leader and the Longford News.

In the Leader Tommy O’Brien kept me up to date with sport, Eugene McGloin wrote great columns and in later years the man from the next parish the late Eugene McGee was the epitome of local journalism standing loud and proud for those beyond the M50.

The ‘News’ was more idiosyncratic, in the image of its founder Vincent Gill. Many days on my way home from national school in Ennybegs in the 1960’s the man with the white beard, the dog and the camera pulled up alongside us to get a picture for the paper.

My grandmother once recollected to me the scene in our kitchen in Esker every Friday night. The ‘Leader’ had to be read, the neighbouring men had gathered and led by my grandfather the stories were read and re-read, told and discussed and more often than not embellished! All went home happy.

Local newspapers, their journalists and contributors in Longford, Westmeath, Kerry and Cork have made me what I am.

I’m a martyr for Longford GAA. I’m fortunate that I was present and remember the significant victories against the all-conquering Galway ‘three-in-a-row’ team in the 1966 National Football League Final and a couple of years later claiming the only Leinster Senior Football title against Laois. So that’s the pedigree, history and tradition.

These days I mostly follow the ‘Blue & Gold’ on social media. A few Sundays ago, just before the last National Football League match against Tipperary the team was published on Twitter.

The half forward line was Daniel Mimnagh and Michael Quinn (Emmet Óg Killoe) my native club and Dessie Reynolds (Sean Connollys) from Ballinalee our neighbours and sworn enemies on the football field. I posted a note on Twitter saying that it was great to see the local rivals ‘manning’ the 40- yard line.

This was a far remove from my childhood when before a local derby Big James Maguire – a relative- who lived in the townland of Soran, right on the border of the two parishes, was called out from the sideline when one partisan spectator told him ‘to go home and take his turf shed out of Killoe!’

Thinking about it, in the present climate, social distancing should be second nature to us.

It was always good natured, mostly confined to the football field, though it occasionally spilled over and in general the rivals and protagonists would always do each other a ‘turn’.

Wherever I’ve lived or worked the north Longford rivalry prepared me well. I still have to fight the Longford corner in South Westmeath. When I first came to work in Athlone in 1980, I soon realised that no matter which side of the river you hailed from the other side was always ‘the far side!’

I worked in Kerry and Cork, so I saw both sides of the turncoat. Living now in Mount Temple a weather eye is cast to Moate and Castledaly and as for Maryland there could be a bit of space there!

As a lifelong supporter of Leeds United I’m probably entitled to consideration for a knighthood for my contribution to social distancing!

In the midst of the present universal virus I noticed several posts on social media attempting to describe and illustrate social distancing and I remembered a quote from a Lebanese American poet Kahil Gibran who wrote of relationships ‘Let there be space in your togetherness.’

It is a long time since I first encountered Gibran but these lines stayed with me and many times over the decades I’ve invoked it professionally and personally when I found a situation where people need to give each other ‘a bit of space’.

So here just after the Spring Equinox, in the season of Lent, in the middle of a pandemic, gloved up, masked and at least two metres apart with what can we fill the spaces?

As a people I think we’re fortunate that we keep any eye out for each other. There are times when we could be accused of living in each other’s ears but isn’t it better than not having a clue who is living beside you. We’ve had it all in the last few years, digging each other out of the snow, sandbagging against the rising Shannon waters or sharing the fodder after a harsh Spring.

So now we’ve no drama festival, no football matches, no Mass, no pubs, no school, no Grand National, no Eurovision and everyone is out walking!

There are things we’ll still do like I did this week. Wave to the couple walking on the other bank of the canal in Ballymahon, salute the farmer heading to the mart in his jeep or talk over the ditch to the neighbour clipping a hedge.

We could use the time to write that letter that we always meant to, but we never got around to. To make a phone call for a chat, do you remember when phones were used for talking rather than texts or scrolling on forever!

To hang a bag of ‘goodies’ on a neighbour’s gate or take someone’s dog for walk. To buy a paper, read a book, listen to the radio, explore the county or find that neighbour who is a nurse, a doctor, a paramedic or a healthcare provider or a frontline worker of any kind and say ‘thanks.’

I always thought my friend Gibran reckoned that the ‘space’ in the togetherness was always an opportunity to grow and discover and then together to enjoy and celebrate.

The truth is that this will pass. Beyond 2020 we will go back to school, jobs will be restored, you will sympathise at another funeral, Longford or Westmeath might win a championship and never again will you forget to wash your hands!