Trapped memory, when released, is a double joy. Not only have you remembered something, but since it nearly always happens by accident, it has the effect of handing you a bit of your past as if it were new.
My latest memory release came from reading an interview in The Irish Times with Brendan Parsons, the former UN senior official now back in his home, Birr Castle, as Earl of Rosse. You see, Lloyd George didn't exactly know my father although they did once meet, but I knew well, at least I met a couple of times - the current Earl's mother, whose other son is Lord Snowdon, sometime husband of the late Princess Margaret.
In the 1950s in Athlone, where I grew up, my father was the inspector of taxes. A few times a year his job required him to go to Birr, Co Offaly, for appeals hearings. They started about 10 in the morning and were generally over by mid-afternoon. As a treat for the youngest in the family, Dad, Mum and junior squeezed into John Monahan's taxi and headed for Birr. As Dad went to work, mother and son began the day with a coffee in Dooley's hotel. Mother loved it. I hated it because I had to leave it to cool down and then it got skin on the top which stuck to my lip with every mouthful.
The real treat for me was walking in the grounds of Birr Castle next door, where the grounds were huge, full of trees and every imaginable flower and shrub, and darting squirrels and a huge, black leather-covered cylinder which appeared to be supported by a flight of steel steps as it pointed towards the heavens. This was the castle's internationally famous telescope, still in use to this day.
There were no signs saying where you could and couldn't go and we rarely saw another soul - except one day, when we were playing a gentle game of hide-and-seek and I was the seeker. Momentarily, Mother was nowhere to be found but a tall lady in a blue summer frock beckoned to me from a nearby path: "I think your Mum is behind that tree over there!" She was. Triumph. My emerging mother was mortified for she recognised at once the countess. She apologised and was told there was no need. We could wander where we liked - and would the little boy like to see the telescope? The little boy didn't really know what a telescope was but up the steps we all went while the countess explained that if only it were dark we'd be able to see all the stars and the moon.
A few years later Brendan Parsons's half-brother, Tony Armstrong-Jones, married Princess Margaret. It was 1960 and Ireland was watching the last twitches of an IRA Border campaign, one that had murdered Sgt Ovens of the RUC and had lost volunteer Seán South from Garryowen, temporarily eulogised in one of those hideous pro-IRA songs.
The press would descend on Birr Castle whenever a whisper of Tony and Margaret arriving flew around Dublin. Dooley's would be packed, with some reporters sleeping on the couches in the bar and others doubling or even trebling up in the bedrooms. And it was the tree story, of which it has to be said there are many versions, which gives the best memory from those days. It happened after a tree was felled across the driveway into the castle. Now not a lot of people know that Dooley's telephone number and the castle's number have the same last two digits, only the other way round! This was to make a star of one of the Daily Express's Dublin correspondents. I seem to recall it was Séamus Brady.
There were no mobile phones, fax machines, telexes, never mind computers. The best the reporters could do would be to try and get through by phone to Dublin, which would pass on their stories to London if necessary. When news of the fallen tree went round it was a Godsend: something to report. Queen's Sister in Tree Drama/ Princess Margaret Forced to Make Detour. . . you know the sort of stuff. One evening Brady was lurking near the manual telephone exchange in the hotel when he saw the phone ring, the little yellow half-moon on the wooden backdrop going click-click, which signalled an incoming call. The porter was serving behind the bar so Brady, who knew how to work a small exchange, answered.
He heard a voice : "This is Buckingham Palace here. Would it be possible for Her Majesty the Queen to speak to her sister please?" Thinking he had nothing to lose, Brady went for it: "Certainly, if you just put her on I'll go and find her sister at once." How lucky can one hack get in life? The next moment Brady hears the queen's voice saying hello. "Hello," says Brady, "Her Royal Highness is just coming to the phone. Are you worried about the couple, what with this tree business?" There was but a small pause and the queen: "Oh! Not at all! I'm sure she's perfectly safe and having a happy time!" Thinking quickly now, Brady recalled there was actually a line from Dooley's to the castle and he managed to connect the palace and quickly put the phone down.
The next day the Daily Express, then a broadsheet, went to town with an exclusive which splashed the news that the Express and only the Express had led the world with an interview with Her Majesty the Queen of England! Heady days!
Brady had to put up with plenty of teasing for the rest of his journalistic life but, what the heck, he spoke to the queen.
One of the newspapers of the day ran a cartoon which showed two shifty looking characters either side of the fallen tree which had blocked the royal path. One fellow is addressing the other : GO ON, GET YOUR OWN FECKIN TREE! I asked Brendan Parsons where that cartoon is now. "Ah! We have boxes of cuttings from those royal visits here at the castle but that one was framed and it's now in my brother's loo in his house in London!"