WANDER around any supermarket here you will see a large range of waste disposal bags, garden sacks, dustbin liners; nearby you will see a range of soap pads; look at the wine section and discover some excellent Spanish wines; in the food section you can find honeys and olives, sardines and health foods, and in vast and varied abundance. Malachy, McCloskey, the founder of Boyne Valley Foods and one of the truly distinguished men of Ireland, is responsible for all you see.
Malachy was the first man to bring peanut butter, aubergines and honeydew melons to Ireland. He founded the first major honey business in Ireland, which has diversified into one of our most enterprising and vigorous food companies. Concerned about unemployment, and unnecessary imports he started Killeen plastic products. He wondered where else he could go, and choose to compete with Brillo. His Irish made soap pads are now the market leaders here, and he exports them round the world. In exchange, he imports the Don Carlos range of produce, including quite superb wines.
Centre of cultural activities
In his spare time, he collects maps and books and has become an expert on the Battle of the Boyne. He and his wife Ann have a delightful family and their home outside Drogheda has become something of a cultural centre. His parties are relaxed, easy going affairs, but often aided in their merriment by some very serious musicians indeed.
I am not a great friend of honours systems. Titles in Ireland still cause most people discomfort, perhaps because of the folk memory of uncouth and swaggering Cromwellian sergeant majors from Birmingham receiving baronies and baronetcies over acres which were strange to them and people who were stranger. Honours based on merit soon degenerate into rewards for whores and hush money to knaves. Yet we could have an honours system for a day just to give Malachy McCloskey the title he deserves.
What would that title be? Keeper of the Stone; Guardian of the Light; or Lord of the Woodland? For in addition to his multifarious commercial interests, he has a great love of the cut stone buildings in which his native Drogheda was once heavily endowed. One of his many projects was the conservation of lovely wrought iron conservatories. He planted thousands of trees.
Or, as viewers to RTE on Tuesday night will discover, he (could with equal justice be (termed Minder of the Millstone and Earl of the Turbine. Malachy's latest project is now come to triumphant conclusion he bought over the great stone mill in the middle of Cavan town and turned it into the headquarters of Lifeforce Foods, his latest venture on the supermarket shelf.
All over Europe, people are discovering cut stone buildings. The heresies of the 1960s, the love of concrete and plastic and fibreglass, had been exposed. Stone was back. But what has been made of the old stone buildings which have been so carefully restored? They have been turned into lifeless theme parks, sterilised, Disneyfied versions of history, where the stone is no longer the rich and vibrant substance beside which men and women toiled and sweated, but instead a kind of precious chic material, embroidery in a glass case.
That has not been the fate of the stone of Greene's mill in Cavan town. Malachy's workforce have restored it as a working mill, not to be viewed as an interesting artefact from a by gone era, but as a real living producer of stoneground flour. Malachy admits to a certain disappointment when he discovered the mill was turbine powered rather than wheel driven the wheel, after all, is far more romantic.
Discovered water turbine
But he discovered that the turbine is almost a unique example of a McAdam water turbine from the 1850s. The tribune has been restored to working condition and when the writers of the enchanting named Kennypottle River are low, a powered engine takes over to keep the great stones turning. And even that is an antique - a Hornsby Royson from 1907.
It is history and it is the thriving present; so right for Cavan, one the most energetic, least dependent parts of the entire country. Greene's mill was once a central feature of the town perhaps it was the central feature of the town. Did my, Teevan ancestors take their grain there to be ground? Did they buy the flour from Greene's? As their horse and cart shuffled in the long, hoofed queue along the riverside, did they chat with neighbours, and did thrifty Cavan souls scurry around the horses' tails collecting the precious dung?
Malachy and his assistants found the old mill in remarkably good condition after he "bought it. There was some rot, but very little, and most of the old joists and timbers were sound as they had been when they were laid, one and a half centuries ago. It is worth contemplating that this mill was being built as the Famine took hold; that it was constructed at such a time does tell us of the level and type of economic activity at that time. We have been burdened with stereotypical images from the Famine; Cavan then and Cavan now provide a different image, one in part at least of prosperity and vitality.
Three programme makers
Tuesday's programme, incidentally, happens to assemble three of the putatively titled gentlemen from my putative single day of titles - one is Paddy Shaffrey, the architectural historian and conservationist, who advised on the mill restoration, and Eamon de Buitlear, the film maker and naturalist, who made the programme.
Green's Mill is now producing the cold ground flour of traditional breads, with the wheatgerm undamaged by the heat of the modern mill. A centre for visitors (who can bake their own bread while visiting), has been built from stone rescued from a building due to be demolished for road widening just outside Drogheda. You might have gathered I like, admire and respect Malachy McCloskey, Keeper of Stone, Guardian of the Light, Lord of the Woodland.