Senator David Norris In conversation with
GENEVIEVE CARBERY
What’s your earliest holiday memory?
Going to Killarney and Ballybunion in a car with my father in the 1940s. I remember visiting Blarney Castle, being held by the legs and kissing the Blarney stone. It was a terrifying experience and I was afraid that my father would drop me on the head.
What was your worst holiday?
After school and before college I went to Lincolnshire to pick peas with my best friend and lots of other kids. The way out was great. On the train someone had a transistor radio and I remember it playing The Temperence Seven’s Pasadina, which sounded so jolly. But as evening fell I saw smelt works in places like Scunthorpe which, with its dark satanic mills, was a vision of hell.
The work was slavery and the hostel had fungus on the walls. I lasted three days before I went home with my tail between my legs.
What was your best holiday?
I went away with the same pal at the end of university. We took a banana boat from Liverpool to the Canary Islands. We went in a bus right up the vertiginous side road to Cruz de Tejeda. We also went to Las Palmas. Now it’s like Miami, but it was totally different – there was a post office, a place you could buy lemonade, a bus stop and the rest was sand dunes as far as you could see.
If budget or work were not a restriction, what would be your dream holiday?
I’d love to go on the Trans-Siberian express from Moscow across Siberia into China. Even more than that is the Silk Road from Europe all the way to China; to visit places with names like Samarkand, Bukhara; to see the palaces of Genghis Khan; the whole oriental thing of spice and mysterious strangeness and the exotic whiff of danger.
I’d take a detour to Nepal as I was only there for 24 hours but it was a magical place.
If you had your pick, who would you bring on holiday with you?
I would take Nora, a friend in Cyprus. She is older than I am but has the most adventurous spirit. She will go anywhere, will sleep on railway station platforms and won’t grumble. She is interested in everything and always finds ways of getting places. She has travelled all over Africa, the Orient and Arabia. She speaks so many languages and connects with people. The joy she has in life is something you need in a travelling companion.
What’s your favourite place in Ireland?
I love Wicklow but I also love my own little bog in Co Laois. I often stay in Roundwood at the Slieve Bloom Mountains. It has connections with my mother’s family for many generations.
Your recommended holiday reading?
Books by Gyles Brandreth are great fun. He writes mystery novels in the characters of Oscar Wilde and Conan Doyle (Oscar turns out to be a great detective).
Where will you go to next?
I hope to go to my house in Cyprus after Christmas. I’ll watch box sets of A Touch of Frost or To the Manor Born in front of a blazing fire. I’ll take lovely walks as the house is way up in the hills above the snowline, the air is crisp with owls calling and you can see wisps of smoke over the village.
* David Norris is an independent senator and is seeking a nomination to become president of Ireland