After a day’s house-hunting in West Cork, I texted the builder boyfriend to say that we were too late. The vegans had landed.
This was my second trip to view farms in Ireland and I fell even more in love with the rugged, sometimes desolate landscape punctuated by friendly market towns with bunting strung across the streets. Unfortunately, so had everyone else.
Two agents had confirmed that my nearest neighbours might be a pair of unwashed British hobbit people
The London lefties have made it to the Emerald Isle. Having laid waste to Devon, Cornwall and Wales with their llamas and yurts and mental ideas about everything rural from farming to hunting, the liberal elite have set sail for the west coast of Ireland, or rather they have got on a Ryanair flight. It’s one hour from London to Cork.
Whereas it’s a seven-hour drive to Wales and the Welsh Assembly has quite rightly brought in a savage second home tax to make sure the Islington lefties sell up and leave. Devon and Cornwall seem to be battling it out more philosophically, by refusing to serve second-homers in shops, or being rude to them, that sort of thing. I wish them luck.
Of course, neither I nor anyone should ever write about house-hunting in Ireland. We will all of us bear some responsibility when the first sabs start throwing themselves in front of horses at the Irish derby.
I was sitting in my car outside a long, white farmhouse, donkey in the front paddock, gypsy caravan out back, when a friend texted me the link: ‘Why Brits are ditching Cornwall for the west coast of Ireland.’
I looked out over the herds of cows for beef and dairy grazing in fields sweeping impossibly green towards the brown and purple mountains, the wind whistling, the chickens squawking, the sun peaking momentarily through moody grey clouds and I thought: ‘No! No no no no no!’
It was like a nightmare. It was like a horror film, when the monster you are sure is somewhere else suddenly rears up in front of you. How can this be happening?
When the agent turned up to show me the ramshackle farm, I asked him how business was going and he confirmed that the majority of his farm sales were to Brits. The agent at the previous farm had told me the same but I had pushed it away, not wanting to believe it. He had been very cheerful about it. ‘Returning Brits’ he called them because he had convinced himself they were once Irish, or linked to Ireland in some way. Perhaps this was how he squared it with himself. But when he told me the leading offer on that place, a house nestling in a valley beside a ruined castle, was from a British couple who wanted only six of the 50 acres so their children could ‘keep a pony’, deep down I knew.
When the second agent told me I had better be quick with an offer I said: ‘Listen. These people are going to ruin your countryside. Oh, I know I’m one of them, in a way, but really I’m not. I’m rural. These people, they’re… vegans. They’re anti-farming. They keep llamas I tell you!’
He looked at me with his mouth open as I continued. ‘They complain about the noise of crop guns, the smell of silage…’
‘Oh, we wouldn’t like that,’ he muttered. ‘Well, that’s what you’re getting!’ I cried. ‘I’ve had them up to here for years in Surrey and now because of home working they’re everywhere. They cannot be contained.’
I looked at the old black donkey munching happily in a paddock fenced with old roadworks barriers. ‘They’ll ring that in!’ I said.
He nodded, sagely. He knew what I was trying to tell him. But for now, the agents are making a lot of money. The house was too small for us, and there wasn’t enough land.
But the main thing that wasn’t right was that two agents had confirmed that my nearest neighbours might be a pair of unwashed British hobbit people with a couple of feral children called Willow and Sky.
The BB texted me the link for another farm that had caught our eye, in a location we had decided was so far from anything that we didn’t know how we would cope.
It was midday and I had to be at Cork airport for a 4.50 p.m. flight home but this other place looked reachable on the map. How far could it be when it was in the next county? I put it into the satnav to see if I could make a round trip but the answer came back that the drive to Roscrea was three and a half hours.
Turns out it really is a long, long way to Tipperary.
If we do manage to get our house under offer, maybe we’ll go there.
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