Dau.I and Dau.II are now bracketing 30! Right now they're living city centre in a tiny flat where neither the bathroom, nor the kitchen has a window. It's okay, it's how millions live, but it's different from how / where they grew up. For reasons, and without consulting them, we chose to buy a remote farmlet, where the nearest inhabited home was 300m away; where the nearest shop was 3,000m distant and things like theatres 30,000m over the horizon. It might be short on amenities but it is long on wildlife, fresh air, . . . and chores. I was away working for much of those early years at the turn of the century, so it was on The Beloved to facilitate all the off-site stimulation that seemed desirable: the HomeEd meet-ups; the ballet classes; the tin-whistle, piano, saxophone lessons; the trips to the beach; the Speech & Drama sessions. So many car-miles, so much carbon foot-print but then again - so many audio-books, so many round-the-universe discussions, so many rice-cakes.
One of the regular tours was down to the Talbot Hotel in Wexford for afternoon sessions with Red Moon Children's Theatre. That was a 90km! round-trip which was tolerable for a twofer. But after one season of
imagine you're in a balloon Dau.II dug in her heels, folded her arms, and announced that Drama was a drag and she was
not going to do it. Figuring that the 90km might be part of the issue The Beloved spoke to Red Moon and asked if they'd consider bringing Moonhommed to the Mountain. The colonization of Co Carlow was agreed in principal, a date in September was fixed, Rathanna Community Hall was booked and The Beloved started a One Woman campaign to get small bums on seats for the first session. She knocked on every door in three townlands and thereby got to meet all the neighbours, some of whom had small children and some of whom offered money to the venture. It was hours and hours of work and A Lot of tea.
Michael and Eileen Red-Moon came on a scoping site-visit. Michael looked through the kitchen window at the back of the Hall at the truly spectacular view of the southern cwm of Mt Leinster rearing up from the flat fields and hedges to the craggy summit. Cripes, he said, I'd come and work here for free just to catch the changes in that view every week. Eileen told him to stop his romantic guff, this was work for, like, money.
On the day of registration, Dau.I (who was invested) and Dau.II (who was willing to help) were setting out chairs . . . so many chairs.
Michael: that will be enough chairs.
Dau.I: nope, we need 30 kids to break even, and the Mammies may want to sit.
And it was so! That first year 30+ kids from 2 different age groups committed to paying €5 each to imagine they're in a balloon. That was the same group size as the mighty metropolis of Wexford could muster. The creativity and energy of children is an enormous resource for the tapping.
Things moved on. After a tuthree years, there was a putsch and Red Moon were replaced by a younger theatre chap from Kilkenny. After a couple more years, Dau.I and Dau.II (who did participate) out-grew the after-school classes demographic. The Beloved performed her Exit Strategy: handing over the purse to one Mam, the bookings to another, registration to a third.
A few years ago we were in the Post Office in Borris (12,000m distant and at the edge of the RathannaDrama catchment). One of the original Mammies from 2002 recognised The Beloved and saluted her for starting it all way back when. It seems the venture is still chuntering on. It is just possible that the first cohort, mammies in their turn, are enrolling their kids for September 2024.
The reason I'm remembering this now, and it's possible that I've told it already, is because of a similar story at the end of Hilary Cottam's book which I reviewed on Friday. When Participle set up their Circle experiments to empower and engage The Olds, the business model was a Club with each member paying a Sub. Some bystanders were knee-jerk outraged: these Circles delivered so many Good Things for the community that surely the local authority should be picking up the tab. It smacked of Co-pay which is an invidious idea allowing those responsible to weasel out of the full cost of service provision. Not so: neither for Cottam's Circles, no more for Rathanna Drama. It is an absolutely certainty that, if funded by the CoCo, The Drama would have been eliminated in the post-crash austerity [prev, last para]. By handing the reins of the cart to Mammies people invested in the success of the venture, it could not be obliterated by an anonymous bean-counter in County Hall.
