My 11-hour flight of fancy was a chance to revisit our rich history

I’M reminded of life’s strange and rich tapestry as I write this, 35,000ft over Greenland, with endless ice sheets extending into the distance and me on an Aer Lingus plane listening to stories about Maude Gonne, Arthur Griffith and the Ark of the Covenant.

No, I am not gone completely crazy, nor have I smoked any funny cigarettes. It’s just that I am really ‘veering wesht’ today, further than I’ve ever been since I started writing this column, as I head towards Los Angeles and then south to San Diego for a conference.

It’s my first time heading this far south along the Pacific Coast and it’s one of my very favourite parts of the world. The people are chill, the ocean is cold, the vibe is really nice.

In many ways, it’s a lot like West Cork here, especially further North around Seattle and Oregon.

Although I’ve been dreading the eleven-hour transatlantic flight, I have been listening to a lot of historical podcasts recently and I’ve got hours of the stuff lined up and ready to go on Spotify.

My favourite is The Rest is History, which is very amiably hosted by English historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, and they take whistlestop tours through some of the most fascinating stories from history. Running for many years now, they have done everything from in-depth analyses of JFK’s assassination, to the fall of the Aztecs and even the Irish revolutionary period.

On my flight north over Iceland today, I’ve been listening to a brilliant episode on the mysterious origins of The Ark of the Covenant, which they have been amusingly telling through the lens of the first Indiana Jones movie, but which also takes a very surreal and surprising turn.

There are many strange and fascinating theories about what the ark is, where it might be and what it might mean. But the strangest of all has an Irish connection.

It turns out that, between the years 1899 and 1902, a group known as the British-Israelites dug up the Rath of the Synods on the Hill of Tara in a quest to find the Ark of the Covenant. This certainly was news to me.

What I also didn’t know was that Arthur Griffith campaigned against these explorations, rightly seeing them as the destruction of a national monument. He was joined in his protests by William Butler Yeats, George Moore and Douglas Hyde, despite being ordered off the site by a man with a rifle.

Then Maud Gonne arrived and lit a bonfire on the site and sang ‘A nation once again’, much to the consternation of the landlord and the police.

Needless to say, nobody ever found the ark in Ireland but the protests worked and the explorers soon gave up on their mission. It feels very odd to be this far away from home, listening to these strange tales from Ireland’s past but I’m also reminded of how privileged we really are to be able to enjoy the wonders of modern transport.

Another podcast episode covers Captain Cook’s explorations in the South Pacific and Tahiti, New Zealand and Australia, which he ‘discovered’.

Obviously, this phrase is far from satisfying in a post-colonial context, but the episode does give you a sense of the bravery and ambition of these explorers, and the huge danger and hardships they endured to travel long distances.

Suddenly, my own cribbing about and eleven-hour flight feels like a very first world problem.

How long will it last?

IT was nice landing in California and hearing the historic news from Stormont, not to mention the heroics of the rugby team.

It’s an amazing thing to see Northern Ireland’s first nationalist First Minister in a province that was literally designed to never allow such a thing come to pass. Although it marks the end of two years of political stagnation, it’s hard to feel too optimistic given both Sinn Féin and the DUP’s track record in bringing everything down again.

The deputy First Minister DUP MLA Emma Little-Pengelly was quick to announce that she was also the First Minster, for example. However, you would hope that Donaldson has done enough to bring his party onside, and to give Stormont some chance of providing a functioning executive in the North where strikes and a creaking health service are making life on the ground far from ideal.

So, a step forward, but let’s hope they have the will and the capacity between them to make it work.

Rotten eggs in the Dáil

MATTERS were altogether less exotic in the halls of Leinster House during the week, I’m afraid. Turns out that the Office of Public Works was called in to investigate a ‘rotten eggs’ smell around the debating chamber.

There were complaints about a stink-bomb effect, a noxious atmosphere and an awful whiff making its way the corridors of power.

It is suspected that a sewage incident was responsible but this writer is not convinced.