The road not travelled – Frank McNally on a long-dormant book project

“Explore a forgotten route” is among the suggestions in a manual for local organisers of this year’s National Heritage Week.

And sure enough, when I had to give a talk to some of them at a training day in Sligo on Thursday, exploring a forgotten route is one of thing things I did, but with feelings of guilt probably not envisaged by the manual.

In my case, the route was implied in the title of a book I agreed to write more than 10 years ago, a project that for various reasons never happened.

It was for a big English publisher, whose affable Irish editor gradually talked me into it over coffees and pints of Guinness during his occasional visits home.

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The book would be about Ireland, he said, but more specifically about the Ireland outside Dublin, something not well known to British readers and with which he thought I had an affinity.

It should be in the style of An Irishman’s Diary, but themed in some way, not just a collection of columns. Maybe it would be an actual travel book. Maybe something less structured.

So after agreeing in principle, I thought about it for a while and came up with a provisional title: “From Sky Road to Hell Street”, referencing two actual places, both of which I’ve written about over the years.

Sky Road is a famously picturesque coastal route in the west. Hell Street, by contrast, was the historic nickname of a now obscure boreen in my native northeast, once the scene of a very dark episode in local history.

My title implied not only geographic extremes, if I was planning a travelogue, but also spiritual ones, if I wanted to dig deeper.

A possible downside was that “Sky Road to Hell Street” suggested an easterly journey, which by tradition is the wrong direction. In Ireland and America, at least, you always have to go west to discover yourself.

But most likely, if I’d ever got around to writing it, the book would have just been a series of random reflections, humorous or tragic, on Irish rural life, linked lightly by the theme of roads or road signs.

Anway, while still undecided on the subtitle – a crucial matter – I signed a contract and was paid half of a respectable advance.

No sooner had this happened, alas, than my Irish friend left the publishing company – they had been having artistic differences – and joined another.

Breaking the news with apology, he said that one of two things would now happen. His former employers would appoint a new editor to deal with me. Or if they didn’t want to continue with the book, he would take the contract over to his new publisher.

In the meantime, it suited me to let the hare sit. Pending news from London about my new overlord, I got on with the treadmill of daily columns and the many other distractions of life, such as child-rearing, that had made me reluctant to sign a contract in the first place.

But the hare sat indefinitely. It sat so long that soon its ears disappeared under the long grass that grew around it. Years passed. London never appointed a new editor.

The company’s computer system knew I existed, clearly, because every summer it invited me to a garden party to meet my fellow authors. I was often tempted to go but never did. In the meantime, the long-spent advance haunted me.

Then one day a couple of years ago, I finally wrote a letter to the publishers that began: “You don’t know who I am, but …” and ended with a suggestion that they tear up the contract and that I return the money.

This was accepted, perhaps with some surprise. When I told my friend, their former editor, he predicted the cheque would be framed on the office wall as the first advance ever refunded.

I haven’t entirely given up on the project, even now. In fact, a while ago in a quiet column week, while reflecting again on the roads theme, I found myself wondering about a certain oddly-named town in Offaly.

Despite its exotic appearance, as I learned, “Rhode” is nothing more than the anglicisation of the old Irish ród, meaning – yes – road. And by way of investigating further, I paid a first-ever visit to Rhode and its surrounding roads and rodeens (a real word in Hiberno-English, by the way, and the name of several Irish townlands).

Of course I got a column out of it. But in the process, I also acquired the seeds of a chapter for the long-dormant book, should it ever happen. As well as the beginning and end implied in the title, I now had a possible middle. Perhaps the remaining 90 per cent of the journey will fall into place one of these days.

But where was I? Oh yes, in Sligo, giving a talk to organisers of National Heritage Week. This year’s theme is “Connections, Routes, and Networks” and the event will run from August 17th to 25th.