Comedian Julie Jay fell head over heels during the COVID-19 pandemic, and her life hasn't been the same since. Here, she writes about the infatuation that changed her whole life - her love affair with West Kerry.
We came to West Kerry the Christmas before lockdown, and at the time I can remember packing up our lives in Meath and heading for Brandon whilst listening to murmurings of something happening in China on the radio.
My partner Fred landed in from a gig as I was finishing up scrubbing the toilet like our deposit depended on it (which it did) and I can recall telling him about lockdown in the city where my cousin taught English, how people were trapped in their houses and schools were closed, how sorry we felt for them, how lucky we were.
Fred and I Febrezed our way out of that little apartment in Meath - any longer than 6 months spent in a studio space and it all starts feeling a bit like an Emma O'Donghue novel - and embarked upon the next adventure.
Driving to Kerry on that December day filled me with joy, not just the joy at finally getting Fred to move from the Heritage county to the Kingdom, but I was also so excited at all the work opportunities that were coming my way.
I had nearly sold out my little tour (50 seater rooms, so not the London Palladium or anything, but still, they were sold). This had been such a boost for me, especially as it was the first year I had decided to focus on the comedy full-time, to really make the commitment and give up the day job. My timing, it would come to pass, was nothing short of 'chef’s kiss’ impeccable.
Of course, landing into West Kerry on the night of Nollag na mBan we had no idea what was to come. The 5th March was our D day for returning to Dublin, we were going to use these three months to write and recalibrate and plan our next move.
The Edinburgh Fringe Festival was only around the corner, and we needed to get ready. We could face into a January on the side of Brandon mountain only because we knew there was an end point, that this was a social experiment, an undertaking in solitude and quiet, one that would not last forever.
The house we came to belongs to my auntie. Standing, facing out onto Brandon Bay, the views are fantastical, and access is only through an exceptionally steep mountain road which has recently become popular with hikers and hill-walkers. It is a stunning place to live, but it is a place I have never really known, despite my dad hailing from this side of the Conor Pass.
My knowledge of West Kerry has generally always been confined to Dingle and that side of the mountain, so to be landed in a new community in the depths of winter was a strange but not an unwelcome experience. As is the way in life, we never viewed this as a permanent move. Three months, we said, and three months could be done.
My auntie built the bungalow over twenty years ago, and it had never been lived in. She had intermittently rented it out for a couple of weeks every year, but really it had been sitting vacant, and as such though it is comfortable, when we arrive into it it does not feel like a home. Not just yet.
We look for graters, and mixing bowls, and wrap up a worrying amount of porcelain kittens and china cockerels, and ask no questions as we open a box in the garage to find even more porcelain kittens and china cockerels and which is labelled 'just in case'.
I suddenly decide we need an avocado peeler, STAT, and it sits unused in the cupboard of shame for the duration of lockdown. We have come here without many clothes, given that we are hunkering down for only three months. Three months, we said, and three months could be done.
And then lockdown comes, and nearly two years later we are still here, with our West Kerry baby, still planning our next move. I have joined a swim group, and though I spend most of my time saying things like ‘I would have gone this morning but I couldn’t find a hair bobbin’ they still ask me to come.
When the people in the local shop say ‘Hi Ted’ our 14 month old claps his hands with such excitement it is as if he is auditioning for a Eurodisney ad, while Fred has metamorphosed from somebody who made Driving Ms. Daisy look like a pre-cursor to 2 Fast 2 Furious to complaining about tourists stopping suddenly to take photos on roads.
Where we live, we live not by the sea but with the sea, and that is such a comfort to me: the constant presence of it, the reassurance that comes with it, the frame it has always put on my life. My absolute favourite thing about Brandon though is that it is but twenty minutes from Dingle, a place which is home for me. A place I can never leave behind.
To be able to drive and stand in Dingle, without driving from coast to coast is such a luxury. I never have to miss it anymore, because it is right there, if I need it. Fred always knows when I am heading to town because I make sure to don matching socks and double-check my leggings are not the ones with the hole in the crotch.
Should you fail to do so I, as a trained statistician (a little known fact about me is that Good Will Hunting was loosely based on my own brief dalliance with maths in Trinity) can confirm that there is an 85% increased chance of bumping into your ex in the post office.
West Kerry, at this time of year, is magnificent. The light on the mountains moves and changes all the time, and walking past a window without stopping to pay attention is an impossibility. It makes for a lot of ouchie moments as you walk into tables - a rarely discussed downside of living here.
The other day we passed the local school here in Cloghane, and Fred commented how hard it would be to concentrate as a pupil in a school with a view like that. Daydreaming, even, is hampered, because to look at that sea, and the mountains, and the sky, to look at all that you could not but be present, your thoughts could not but be consumed by all that beauty. It is a spectacular, humbling thing.
Living in West Kerry becomes part of your personality. You find yourself saying things like Limerick is only two hours away; Cork city is only down the road, have you gotten a flight yet? The flights are great, only twenty euro to London, plenty of people commute. The pace of life here does not just suit me but suits so many, even the friend who came during the summer and landed in Brandon horrified at what she saw as the arduous journey I voluntarily undertook to Dublin on the regular: ‘It took me five hours!’ She exclaimed. ‘I am positively jet-lagged!’
By the end of the week she was on daft.ie, looking to relocate, convinced that spending two days in Dublin getting work stuff done was absolutely doable, and that she would live the rest of the week down here. The mountains had consumed her.
The long commute had become half the charm, and even when justifying her desire to move here she had assumed the local narrative when it came to journey-times: Sure Limerick is only two hours away; Cork city is only down the road, have you gotten a flight yet? The flights are great, only twenty euro to London, plenty of people commute.
Something extraordinary happens here. The air is full of alchemy. There is a reason why people come and don’t leave, ‘a tarrac siar’, something magnetic pulling you back, something you just can’t shake. We are far, it is hard to get here, but sometimes the difficulty in coming is part of the reason you do.
So often in my life I have felt the presence of Kerry, the need for it. The yearning for it. The words of Sigerson Clifford in his poem I Am Kerry have come to me in moments of urbanity often, and not necessarily at times when I am feeling melancholic, but often at times of happiness, when grief and loss tap you on the shoulder and remind you they too have been invited.
To be of Kerry is to be of a Kingdom, yes, but it is not a place of kings or queens and hierarchies. It is a place of people, and it is the people, not the mountains, nor the sea, nor the light - it is the people who make it so hard to leave it behind. But you never leave it behind, really.
To be of Kerry is to be of magic, and artistry, and mountain. And to be at the mountain, you must come to it.
I am Kerry - Sigerson Clifford
I am Kerry like my mother before me,
And my mother's mother and her man.
Now I sit on an office stool remembering,
And the memory of them like a fan
Soothes the embers into flame.
I am Kerry, and proud of my name.
