I can’t admit to being a great believer in coincidence. I can’t boast to being comfortable in making risky life decisions by the adage that ‘what is meant for me won’t pass me by’. I have never sat back contentedly to wait for fate to take me where it will. A long time ago I gave up on the idea of an omniscient, omnipresent conductor of our life here and beyond, regardless of which religion offered the shelter for the gullible and the needy.
But now and then something happens that defies a logical approach to explaining life’s vagaries; that forces you to reflect on what happened and wonder why it occurred. It was during the first week of the first lockdown of 2020 that this happened. My wife and I were walking up a narrow lane within the newly imposed 5 kilometre limit advised by the epidemiologists and adopted by the politicians. Our two Springer Spaniels bounced this way and that, content in their own immunity from COVID-19. Round the corner trundled an oversize tractor and trailer with an under size driver, swallowing the space as it brought home the stacked reels of winter fodder. We stepped onto the ditch dragging the reluctant dogs to some sort of obedience. They say a Springer Spaniel is born half trained and dies half trained. Behind us a thirty something man on a mountain bike and with all the requisite lurid trappings of the over fit dismounted at a convenient gate. The tractor slowed and with a smile from the inexperienced driver passed safely on its way to the winter barn.
Sharon, my wife, being the social half of our partnership exchanged pleasantries with the cyclist and immediately engaged in the only topic occupying most of the population; Coronavirus. Having bemoaned the limitations imposed on our lifestyle but immediately noting how much more difficult it was for others and asserting our determination to make the best of it, I soon found that our pedal pusher had grown up in Cashel Co Tipperary. At this point I joined in and told him I was from Clogheen, a mere 19 miles away. He asked me to spell it. I agreed to the slightly strange request. Did I have to provide proof of my origins? I’m sure he noticed the wrinkled frown spreading across my forehead.
“That’s amazing.” he concluded. Now I have always been proud of my birthplace under the Knockmealdown mountains in the lush Galtee Valley, but I had yet to accord it the status of amazing. I waited as he peeled his helmet and goggles off and hung them on the handlebars. He explained his father had been a GP in Cashel for years but had also been a founder member of the local archaeological society. This information came as no surprise, as the imposing Rock of Cashel would have begged further examination of the intervening time since its twelfth century founding. He then told me that his Dad, on one of his regular walks in the surrounding country lanes, had come across an old Imperial measure 56lb standard weight propping open a gate. He persuaded the farmer to give it over to the greater academic good. Our cyclist friend was 7 when it first appeared in his home, and he had taken possession of it when his father had retired to Galway. The weight was stamped Standard of Clogheen and dated 1818. It would have been one of a set going from 1 ounce and would have been used to weigh various produce for sale at markets in Clogheen. The British administration produced these weights throughout its dominions to ensure consistency of measure. Our cyclist friend told us it had always been his father’s intention to return it to Clogheen. Five minutes later John (we had quickly moved to first name terms) assured me he would bring it down from his apartment in Dublin the next time he was in Galway. We exchanged mobile numbers; he donned helmet, goggles and gloves and pedalled away. We let the dogs off the leash to continue their nose down exploration of the lane.
Five weeks later the call came, and I met John outside the local football pitch and moved the black weight from his car boot to mine. Only one curious local slowed to have a look at this exchange. A quick wave and smile in their direction and they sped away. I rushed home to examine it closer. What I thought was a weight made from gun metal turned out, with the help of a lemon and salt mixture and crumpled tinfoil, to be brass. Once I had removed some grime, the stamps of the assay office with the invaders crown and the marks charting its 202 year history were visible and touchable. As the brass trapped the shifting light and the pitted marks showed their black history, it was easy to reflect on the events that it had been part of.
This weight was in Clogheen during the famine, when the grain from the rich valley was weighed and transported by road and river to Waterford for export to England. It was probably used to weigh the turf mould that desperate people gleaned from the nearby mountains in a desperate attempt to survive. It was present when even this meagre source of income was cut as local landowners decided they had rights to anything produced on the mountain.
The odds against John having to pull in on a country lane in Galway and meeting a man from Clogheen did not escape me; the coincidence or quirk of fate defying any attempt at explanation. The second and linked coincidence happened when I phoned my brother Jerry, who still lived in our home village. He was always interested in the village’s history and was delighted to hear my story. He was the secretary of the local Men’s Shed who could use the long abandoned Courthouse where these official weights were probably stored. Jerry was completing a grant to renovate the principal room as a recreation area for members of the Shed. We quickly agreed that we would house the weight in this previous administrative centre of Clogheen when it was a thriving market town. We are both looking forward to the lifting of the Covid restrictions so that the brass weight can return home.
For myself I might need to ponder Albert Einstein’s assertion that:
“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining Anonymous.”
The Scribbler Griffin 