There was no dancing during my 60^th birthday celebrations, so this piece of writing is as close as I will get to the Nabokov simile which I heard three times at the Borris Festival of Creative Ideas and Writing on day six of my birthday celebrations. On the birthday itself, I felt prickly and anxious. My stomach was a kaleidoscope of different patterned beads. Dancing was not an option. I was more concerned that old age might come barrelling out of a corner, hunch backed, wart faced with 300 dernier flesh coloured stockings. However, when I glanced in the mirror,  I looked the same as yesterday, maybe a little paler. What did come barrelling out was a worm, inveigling its way through my intestine, slippery with what felt like a lascivious grin on its face. However, with a taut lip, and a determination as grim faced at Teresa May’s, I started baking cakes and experimenting with cocktails in preparation for the start of the celebrations. There was certainly no dancing with strangers.

On the day of the party, I discovered that cocktails and cakes are good ingredients for a celebration. Gluten free flour is less successful (my beautiful cakes crumbled), but what did work was the limited number of friends who, because they all lived in the same county, knew each other, or of each other, and were happy to chat and gossip. My hostess skills were not necessary and, very quickly, I found myself surplus to requirements. I was able to retire to the outer ripples of the party and enjoy the Sangria amid the hubbub of natural chatter and laughter.

The next day, however, not wanting to risk the sudden appearance of the wart faced, hunchback with flesh coloured stockings, I followed the last guest out the door and hot tailed it for Limerick.

Limerick is a licorice all-sorts kind of city. I love the wide, elegant Georgian streets that rise out of the chill of the narrow alleyways. Giant, foreboding, grey stone warehouses overhang and shadow the flower laden bridges. Tiny red bricked terraced houses line up to the grandeur and rotundity of St John’s Castle. It is a city with no airs and graces and is full of fluidity and light. I love the splendour of the Shannon, the fast pace of the Abbey River; the way water  of the rivers and canal weaves itself around the flow of the city. It has few pretensions. Limerick combines ancient with modern and thrives on itself, its history and seems to have no need of the outside world.

We walked in Clare Glens for the first time, climbing up alongside a gushing, rushing, swirling river and through swishing ashes, rain laden oaks and birches. The rhodendrums shimmered a purple haze. We got back to town just in time to go to hear a Brahms and Beethoven recital at a lunch time concert in the ancient,atmospheric St Mary’s Cathedral. Then off for Pizza and back for an official tour of the Treaty Beer brewery in Nicholas St, except it wasn’t the brewery. It was more a show house ( a very fine one with a beautiful, 13^th century ‘Rembrandt’ wall). Steve, the proprietor/showman, stood at a classic walnut and cherry bar and, declaimed to Joe and myself, the glory of Limerick, his ancestry and the history of Treaty Beer. Great craic. Other Limerick highlights were the young women in the Social Democrat branch meeting I accompanied Joe to. They were excited, enthusiastic, and committed. In the pub after, we discussed setting up work plans, goals, how to reach further into the local community. Meanwhile, the young Social Democrat men huddled together, over pints discussing stats, data, and political gossip.

The Borris Festival of Writing and Creative Ideas was next on my celebratory schedule.  Joe drove me across rolling pastures of sheep, elderflower and hawthorn, past sombre mountain ranges, through small towns and villages with strange names and odd ancestry, deeper into a lush green unknown. As we were using Google Maps, I had no reference to where we were passing through, or what the mountains were. However, eventually, Joe and Google dropped me off (“Dada will pick you up on Sunday, have a good time, have you got your sandwiches?”) and waved me away, no doubt relieved to have fulfilled his filial duties.

I began stage four of the celebrations listening to William Dalrymple interview Simon Schama, sitting on a damp chair, in a mizzling rain, outside the Borris Ballroom for 25 minutes. I haven’t read any Simon Schama books, and I couldn’t see him, but he obviously hails from the upper English class as his talk was littered with Oxbridge, and art or literary references which flew between the quadraphonic speakers over my head. After a while, shivering, I felt ready to go to the Step House Hotel for ‘A Living Hell’, a discussion about Yemen between Ben Anderson and Lindsay Hilsum, two war correspondents. It was an aptly titled session (but, happily for us in a warm, comfortable surroundings). I was impressed by the knowledge, and passion of both journalists. In a sense, their dedication reflected the grim determination of both the Huthis and the Saudi backed men and child fighters, to fight to the death despite the cholera, famine, death, starvation, and homelessness that is wreaked on their family and peoples. War is a terrible thing and seems to be the corollary to man.

In contrast, the Julian Barnes session next was like listening to liquid gold. Instead of the crude bang of land mines and bullets, there was English reserve, understated, gentle humour, and a deft handling of the interview with Alex Clark. I liked his idea that a novelist will never know all the sources of their writing, even when the book is finished. Writing is like memory, as time passes, it changes complexion and colour. Both Barnes and Hisham Matar (The Return), who I saw interviewd later, referred to the importance of changing perceptions and imagination in both fiction and non-fiction.

Borris is a great combination of politics and literature, and I like mixing and matching the two. The MisInformation Age session featured Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame, Misha Glenny, the ubiquitous Simon Schama and Fintan O’Toole. It was an interesting discussion on the Mexican narcos, corruption, globalisation, Trump, Brexit but the male hormones were flying up on the stage, and it became a bit of a pissing contest as to who knew the most. Also, at the end of it, I felt that I had listened to the gloom and doom of this subject matter long enough, and wanted to hear more about possible alternatives.

I had, by now, met up with my partners in crime and we ended the day picnicking with pizza, wine, olives, hummus, crisps sitting in foldable picnic chairs, drinking out of wine glasses, in the shelter of the car. They had come prepared.

I went to Afghanistan and Libya the next day with Christina Lamb (war correspondent) and Hisham Matar who were discussing non-fiction. Both authors felt that non fiction writing was motivated by the need for truth, but Matar felt that imagination was absolutely crucial to non-fiction as non-fiction is a selection of life, coloured by enthusiasm. While Christina Lamb nodded, she felt that her books were underscored by the rhetorical questions of ‘why do people have to die and for what?’. She reflected on the question that is never considered by any army, what happens next?

‘Heightened emotion’ is a core ingredient in every piece of writing, fiction, non fiction, reportage, but it is particularly so in the gothic novel as discussed by Joe O’Connor and Sarah Perry. I was intrigued by this discussion as I hadn’t really thought about the inversion of right and wrong in gothic writing, the bargain between the individual and the other, the multiplicity of selves, the fluidity of identity, the exaggeration of the rhythm and the spotlight of the tone. I’m going to read both Joe O’Connor and Sarah Perry’s latest books, Shadowplay and Melmouth, respectively.

Donal Ryan and Nicole Slattery were both charming and fluid and provided a relaxing interlude to the war torn realities and heightened emotion of the writers that had made up my day so far. The whispered, undulating vowels, soft consonants, the gentle praise and the pretty surroundings of the chapel had a lovely soothing effect. I was also interested that Nicole Slattery perfects each paragraph before she moves on to the next, as indeed, I discovered does Hishmar Matar. When I dance with my total stranger, I step on toes and twirl in the wrong places. Only after getting the feel of him, do I get his rhythm.

Martin Amis and Julian Barnes were in perfect rhythm discussing Christopher Hitchens. Between the two and fro of them, they drew a wonderful caricature of the once editor of the New Statesman and supposed life-long Trotskyist. Hitchens came from the British upper class, attended Oxford, was loud, acerbic, arrogant, a brilliant thinker but, apparently, a terrible writer. He believed he didn’t have the musicality to write and that it was ‘frivolous’ to invent someone who wasn’t real. Julian Barnes thought it was more because he probably couldn’t write women characters. His female descriptions would have been more in the PG Wodehouse mode of ‘fragrant’. As they discussed Christopher Hitchens and regaled us with anecdotes, it sounded to me like Hitchens was like many well educated, upper class men: arrogant, cruel, witty, and irrational. Amis agreed that he took positions that were difficult to justify – like being an anti abortionist on the premise that his mother had had two abortions, one before he was born, one after. Apparently, Hitchens railed “It could have been Hitch!” Both Barnes and Amis agreed that he was a ‘self shackling Houdini.”

On the last day of Borris, I discovered a new heroine in actor, Fiona Shaw. She was interviewed by Olivia O’Leary. I found myself gazing up at her in the Ballroom, mesmerised by her humour, wit, intelligence, vivacity and I was totally engrossed in her anecdotal stories about rehearsals, props and accents. She has given me a template to take me to my 70^th birthday: props need to be done away with and if you are engaged with what you do, your heartbeat goes up, and so does your audience. Also, Shakespeare doesn’t work with a Cork accent.

So, finally, that afternoon Dada did pick me up and took me home. Great 60^th celebrations and I want to thank everyone who shared them with me. If you travel with me to the 70^th, look forward a racing pulse! I’m looking for dance partners. I hope you feel highly emoted.