My Holiday

Susan O'Keeffe, Labour Party Senator

What’s your earliest holiday memory?

We used to rent a summer house in Magherabeg, Co Wicklow. It was a special peaceful place, just an hour from Dublin yet like being transported to paradise.

We’d go out early to fish for trout with my dad. We’d catch them with our hands. When we’d get ice-cream I’d bite the bottom of the cone. I remember fighting with my mother because it was dripping out but to me it always tasted better from the bottom!

What was your worst holiday?

We used to go Achill Island a lot when the kids were small, a beautiful place. One year we had a week of constant rain and the midges came out in force. There are photos of us going around with towels over our heads. Every time we went to the door we were either soaked or bitten. Entertaining small children was hard as there is only so much cooking you can do with children and there was no television. It stands out as a week of misery among many wonderful years at Achill.

What was your best holiday?

Last year in Perpignan and Paris. We had always promised the children we would go to Paris. There was something really magical about being there with them and enjoying the bigness and bustle. The kids loved the food and the pace of the metro. We were real tourists; taking a boat, visiting the Louvre and Eiffel Tower and trying snails!

If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?

I’ve always wanted to go to Bhutan. It has an interesting matriarchal culture, wildlife that’s largely intact and has a very small population which is mainly Buddhist. It’s one of the last bastions of the world that’s not globalised.

If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?

Holidays are all about my family. But if not my family I’d pick Shirley Williams, the MP and daughter of Vera Brittain. I’d love to have a conversation with her about being an early woman politician. She didn’t end up in the Margaret Thatcher mould and didn’t sell out her values as a woman which is very difficult to do as a woman in public life.

What’s your favourite place in Ireland?

Culleenamore Strand, near Strandhill, Co Sligo. Strandhill is a stony beach with majestic waves but you can’t really swim or walk there. Around the corner is the vast expanse of Culleenamore, it’s just magical. You have the Atlantic in front and mountains all around. It has that sense of real Irish magic to it – wild but not completely wild – and beautiful without being bleak.

Your recommended holiday reading?

I always bring a book of poetry with me. Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney are the ones I go back to. I am just starting Bill Clinton’s biography, I find it fascinating that at the age of 14 he was sure he wanted to be president.

Where will you go to next?

It’s been a long hard year, with junior and leaving certs, general and Seanad elections and no water in the house for 27 days from before Christmas to January. So while I would like to have gone to Kerry I am not risking it because of the weather. So we’re going to Montpellier: it has good art galleries and we’ll enjoy the heat.