"IT'S BEEN raining since we got here. There is never any shortage of rain in Ireland," said Frank McCourt in Limerick yesterday. KATHRYN HAYESreports
The Angela's Ashesauthor revealed that he plans to write a book about the "real Limerick" as he led a group around his childhood haunts. The 77-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winner took his wife Ellen and 14 Americans on the Angela's Asheswalking tour - the first time he has joined the tour, which has been running since 1998.
Richard Harris once claimed the Angela's Ashesmovie should have received an Oscar for rain effects, so it wasn't surprising that most people arrived armed with umbrellas.
Retired schoolteacher McCourt, who lives in New York, says he always feels emotional when he returns to his native city. "The minute the plane comes out of the clouds and descends to Shannon airport it gets to me . . . Some day I have to write the real book and then watch out!" McCourt, currently writing a novel about New York, says he has to write about how his life changed since he penned the best-selling memoir of an impoverished Catholic childhood in 1930s Limerick. "Because if I was an ordinary teacher in New York I wouldn't be here. Nobody pays any attention to teachers," he said. Historian Michael O'Donnell, who guides the tour groups, said he was absolutely terrified when McCourt agreed to come on the walk. Later, he said the author seemed to be fairly pleased with his efforts.
At Barrick Hill yesterday, McCourt saw the row of townhouses which have replaced his childhood home. "It looks like California," he said. Nobody replied, but perhaps that had something to do with the weather.