Dear Reader,

Perhaps you would like more information about places mentioned in Wormhole? Maybe it would be naive to pretend that places like Mullachlár were not fictionalised versions of real places. The pseudonym, Mullachlár would be readily seen through by Irish readers, not to mention Clogher and Drogheda folk and quite a few tourists with even a rudimentary knowledge of Irish geography.

Observant cinema buffs would recognise it as the location for parts of the film about the 19th Century English landlord whose name gave us the verb to boycott. The film, Captain Boycott has a scene that included the rear of my great grandparent's home near the beach and part of the trail taken by Laeg and Cú in their flight from the Fomorians!

I would like to present the real Mullachlár as Clogher, the rootball of the Sharkeys. My father and two or three generations prior to his were from there. Many of my Sharkey nieces and nephews have recently set up house there with their spouses and children. The Clar part of the place-name is really the village of Clogher, often known as Clogherhead to distinguish it from other places of the same name.

This view looks down from the mid-reaches of Mullachlár towards Meath, Dublin and Wicklow, and is as close to the summit as one can drive.

The Mulla part is really The Mullagh, meaning a hilltop. It overlooks the village and the sea and is the site of an ancient Church within whose ruins many generations of Clogher people are buried. Geologically, Clogher Head is the point where an esker ridge running from the west dips its eastern terminus into the Irish Sea. I suspect it ran part, if not all, of the way to Britain in prehistoric times.

The Clogher harbour and Pier are on the northern side of the head where they are sheltered from south-easterly gales while providing a natural deep-water anchorage for fairly large ocean-going trawlers. The largest of these is owned by one Cecil Sharkey. It is the largest Irish registered trawler and fitted out like the Starship Enterprise. (I almost wrote' Starfish Enterprise). It spends a lot of time away from Irish waters in search of tuna in warmer climes.

The day I took the pier photo all of the fleet were out working. The lone red trawler had probably just come in.

The second picture is a lovely thatched cottage in Clogher's Crooked Street, known to posh people as Strand Street. This is the last of the houses that once gave Clogher its picturesque character. Alas, there are some decidedly vulgar and insensitive architectural outrages being visited upon the village.

As my famously funny Aunt Alice would say:

"If your father was alive he'd turn in his grave."

My father was born in a similar type house almost opposite that nice little cottage. Alas, for want of a will, it was lost to our family and eventually bulldozed by the County Council.