Stonehenge. One of the great pre-Christian sites, a
mysterious collection of monumental blocks carried from afar and laid out in a
fashion that is utterly beguiling. Shuffling along the path that surrounded the
stones, I was surprised by the shivers that ran down my back when I saw a crow
light on one of the carved lintels, an action that served to highlight the
enormous size and strangeness of the stones.
But just
as memorable as the stones themselves were some of the gifts available in the
very busy shop in the visitor centre. Standing near the back of a long queue, I saw
a shelf with products aimed at pre-teen girls that included tubes of lipgloss
and bags covered with pink love hearts and glitter and the word ‘Stonehenge’
written in the kind of jazzy, jagged script I associate with the late 1980s.
I liked this blending of the ancient and
unknowable with the light and sparkly, and it reminded me of watching
girls walking to the St Patrick’s Day parade wearing bright green tights, shamrock earrings and cowboy hats, totally unburdened by the
baggage of history and identity and just embracing the event as nothing more
than a fun day out.
The
Stonehenge/love hearts mismatch also brought to my mind another, less successful
mixture of the old and the new I experienced on a tour of the Dunbrody famine
ship, an immaculately restored vessel that sits in the harbour in New Ross. I
was prepared for something deeply sobering but the hyper-enthusiastic guide and
the actor-passengers wailing in the thickest local accents over the sick baby
dolls in their arms managed to make crossing the Atlantic in a boat plagued by
death and disease seem like a pantomime. As much as I enjoyed the unintentional comedy
of the tour, I felt a little sorry for those who had taken such pains to recondition
the ship – I doubt they imagined they were preparing it for ‘Mrs Brown gets
Cholera’.
But it’s weirdly refreshing that years after my visit, the words ‘famine
ship’ make me smile and I’ve no doubt that when I think ‘stonehenge’ in the future,
the vast stones will compete in my memory with electric pink bags. It’s funny
what memory latches onto.
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