So, there is this young man, single, an architect, with a taste for the arts, the outdoors and a cosmopolitan lifestyle. And an American, a veteran of the rag-trade battlefields of New York. And a young, Dublin chef on the look-out for a clientele with a taste for kangaroo and wild boar. And a London-born geologist who likes to throw pizza parties. And a student looking for a laid-back summer of music, money-making and stacking up memories.
Where do you think people like these end up - Paris or Bucharest, perhaps? Latvia or Estonia?
No. Try Westport, Co Mayo.
Westport? On no account should you reveal astonishment. This will merely confirm your fatal ignorance of social trends, your predilection - once again - for missing the property bargain of a lifetime, your lifelong designation as an idiot from the Pale. Why?
Well, it's obvious. Ask Michael Ring, TD, vote-catcher extraordinaire and a man who never draws breath.
"Sure, all you've to do is stand in Bridge Street any evening and you might be in New York or Amsterdam. You'll hear more languages than in both put together. And why? Look around you. Just look around you," he implores, flicking a hand towards Clew Bay, Croagh Patrick, Westport House, the Olde Railway Hotel. "I mean, jaze, where would you see the like of it? There's nowhere. Nowhere."
But don't just take the word of a politician.
"It's like walking through Temple Bar without Dublin around it," says Judy Parker, the American rag trade veteran. And hark to a Californian, five years in town, eyes gleaming, as the rain - "health spa rain", she calls it - belts off a pub window. "It's just a magical, romantic place. That's all. What you have to do is stand on the bridge in James Street and look at the moon across all the bridges in town. Jon and I often do that," says Khriss Shackleton. Right. So let's hear from an Irish voice of reason.
"For someone like me in a nine-to-five job, McGing's bar on a Friday night is like UCD campus all over again - without the lecture series," says Simon Wall, a sober, Dublin-born architect. Right.
So he's a child again, wild again. . .? Well, not exactly. "But I was attracted to Westport because it's so cosmopolitan. A lot of people from mainland Europe and the UK come here looking for an alternative lifestyle. They're an artisan, Bohemian crowd. And they're a lot like students because though they're looking for an alternative, they can still be aspirational. So what you're hearing is a lot like the talk you hear in a university college bar."
You want cosmopolitan? The arts committee boasts two Germans, one American and a Frenchwoman. Scan the shelves of Don McGreevy's newsagents and the papers range from Le Figaro, L'Equipe, Liberation and Le Monde to La Repubblica via Die Welt, USA Today, El Pais and the Herald Tribune. He'll sell 40 copies a day of the Irish News, the Belfast paper, from now until the end of September. A bureau de change manager is said to be "staggered" by the weight of German marks and US dollars flooding the place. Flights between Zurich and Knock are booked out to the end of August. Don McGreevy reckons that three-quarters of them end up in Westport for a spell.
So why would Simon Wall want to return to Dublin? He got married a year ago to Sinead, a former art history lecturer at UCD, and neither of them has a notion of going back. Last week, a bonfire blazed to welcome him and the rest of the crew on their return to Rosmoney Sailing Club after an unsuccessful stab at the Round Ireland Yacht Race. "You wouldn't get a bonfire in the Royal St George," he remarks with a grin. Nor could an ordinary Joe become a member of the Royal St George for under £100 a year. That's what it costs to join Rosmoney. They also find time for fishing and surfing, and Sinead, to her great surprise, has tripped into a flourishing visual arts scene. No fewer than 50 artists live within a stone's throw of the town.
"In Dublin I was working with the National Gallery and in Newman House, but even though I was working within that area, getting to know artists on the ground was always difficult. There was a sort of atmosphere surrounding that whole social life, almost staid, certainly not as accessible as here. Here, I'm in touch with artists who are really making strides. That's one thing I never anticipated."
For them and many like them, Westport is their town of choice, the place where they've put down roots and can't believe their luck. Few celebrities appear to disturb the harmony. The political set hasn't over-run it like Ballyconneelly, in Connemara, or so many towns in west Cork.
In this far west corner of Ireland, these blow-ins have found a thriving, sophisticated, ages-old community blessed with a solid core, a working brain and graceful manners. Here, among the most astute, hardworking business people anywhere, they find acceptance, a means to make a living and a sense of community many believed no longer existed. "Five years ago we came for a visit. We were here 11 days and got four hours of sunshine - and I still felt it was worth a try," says Judy Parker. "I don't know why I'm here but I'm glad. They tell me `you're settling in well' but what they don't think of is that someone has to move first to give you a spot - it's like, will they let you sit down?"
That's her way of saying that even without a hint of an Irish root, Westport has given this strong, laconic, New Yorker "a spot". "There isn't anything you need that isn't in Westport. It's a gentle, little Irish town with a charm, an easy smile, a quick wit. . . There's an easiness about it - you can see it."
This "easiness" with visitors and foreigners may have its origins in Westport's past, when as a port, it was accustomed to strange faces drifting through. Or it could be down to the mass emigration of Mayo people over the centuries, which opened them up to other cultures. Mayo people still go away. The joyful difference today is that now they come back again, bringing with them a vitality and a pride in community so coveted by outsiders. Caraiosa Kelly, a 21-year-old graduate home for the summer, talks affectionately of a childhood where a young one like her could simply walk into a pub with her bodhran and join the traditional musicians for a jam. Her summer job is in the lively and informal Friday's Bistro, the seven-week-old brainchild of Keva Lawlor, a Dubliner who reckoned that Westport was ripe for kangaroo, wild boar, enormous field mushrooms, old Irish bread recipes and recipes hot from her travels in the Far East.
"It's a town, I've noticed, where the people are still lovely to tourists and the old Irish charm is still there. That's important because the kind of tourists who come here aren't on a quick kind kind of holiday." These are "mature" tourists who just want to relax, go fishing and walking, enjoy good food, listen to good traditional music in Matt Molloy's pub and others, climb Croagh Patrick, go to Westport House.
And appearances alone suggest that there are plenty of them. Hang around Hewitt's - an Aladdin's cave for outdoorsy types - or Bourke's deli where they smoke their own ham and salmon, and watch the succession of Germans, Dutch, French and English salivate over the cheese or a venerably dusty bottle of wine.
"There is something in this town which makes me feel not a tourist," says a Dutch man hesitantly, trying to define its appeal. "I have seen Kinsale and Killarney and I felt a tourist there. Here you feel there is a real life going on and that these people allow you to be a part of that, even for a short while. And this town is so beautiful but not too much pretty. . . I do not like this type of town too pretty."
In fact, what is happening in Westport, under the guidance of passionate Westport-lover and county secretary, Padraig Hughes, and the town's UDC, is almost a miracle. A story that goes all the way from dereliction to rebirth in a few years, involving beautiful Lacken stone from north Mayo, decorative lamp fittings and flowers, carefully considered paint colours, controlled signage and traditional shop fronts in virtually every case. On the Mall, the Olde Railway Hotel, Connaught's oldest they say, is being restored to glory under the hand of Karl Rosenkranz. Boffin Street, an attractively higgledypiggledy row of distinctively painted houses turns out to be a local authority scheme.
After a while in the town, it dawns that what is absent is as significant as what is present. No international supermarket multiple to suck the life out of the town centre - and no burger chains (clever bye-laws forbid such trading after midnight).
At the Quay, the old Customs House is soon to be resurrected in the shape of a public art studios facility (with everything in place but the £30,000 local sponsorship) and there is universal approval for the apartment development nearby which has helped to revive the whole area. But high above the once-derelict warehouses, is the Upper Quay housing development. And here the renaissance story turns a little sour.
Because this development is one of many that have accompanied the town's explosion of prosperity and rebirth. "What has happened is that because of the tax incentives of the renewal scheme, 10 years' development took place in two," says Sean Staunton, UDC councillor and editor of the Mayo News. The resulting frenzy of housebuilding, soaring property values, and conditions attached to the scheme (no house to be let for longer than two months at a time) has resulted in general dismay at the outcome. In developments far more suited to family living than holiday-letting, house after house stands dark, empty and sterile for up to nine months in the year.
Michael Ring points them out with some vigour. Monastery View: a development of 12 fine houses, only one of which was bought to be lived in. Westlands: 53 houses with only a third or so
To Weekend 2