Author interview: If home is where the heart is, then Taylor’s readers are her family

Home is a place close to Alice Taylor’s heart — whether that’s the house on the main street of the Cork village of Innishannon, where she settled with her late husband, Gabriel, and raised her family, or the farm in North Cork where she spent her childhood. 

In her latest book, 'A Place Called Home', the author reflects on how memory meets reality and the present weaves with the past.

It is Taylor’s 32nd book — she calls herself a “late starter”, but the 86-year-old began impressively with her hugely successful memoir To School Through the Fields, which was published in 1988.

“There seemed to be lots to write about, when I got around to it,” Taylor says. “I was too busy up until then, with working and children. 

“But, I suppose, at the back of my mind, I always had it in my head to write. I think there was a reservoir after building up and then it began to flow.”

Taylor grew up in a very different Ireland, before supermarkets and smartphones, when sacrifice and self-sufficiency were givens.

“We never heard of the words ‘organic farming’ and ‘recycling’. We didn’t go outside the farm gate; the only things we got from outside were candles and paraffin oil.”

The flour went to the mill, we grew spuds, cabbage, our food was the bacon or chickens. We had the best of living inside the farm gate.

“Farming was hard work,” Taylor says. “it was a discipline that had to be adhered to, because the animals had to be fed and there were cold, hard days. But, I think, the closeness to nature sustained people and kept them going.”

This resourcefulness is mirrored in one of the pieces featured in the book, in which Taylor observes shredded remnants of an old Irish Examiner utilised in a blackbird’s nest in her garden. 

She also describes how one of her teachers used scraps of the newspaper as a practice communion wafer.

“Wasn’t it multi-purpose?” Taylor says. “Our lunches were wrapped in newspaper going to school, and if the corks got lost on the Milk of Magnesia bottle or the red lemonade, the bunched-up newspaper was there, too.”

While the success of To School Through the Fields demonstrated a significant appetite for stories of old Ireland, Taylor says nostalgia gets a bad press now, but acknowledges that the danger that we can tip from nostalgia in to misery.

“People perceive it as looking at life through rose-coloured spectacles,” Taylor says.

“I suppose it is a mixture of a lot of things. I think, in Ireland, we have what I call the olagón factor: We are inclined to moan a bit. 

“My sister used to say to me, ‘Oh, that’s the Famine’, but I would say, ‘We can’t blame the Famine for everything’ We look back and we remember all the bad things, but there were good things, too.”

Balancing the old Ireland with the new Ireland

Taylor says that in 'A Place Called Home', she is exploring how to reconcile the positive and negative of the past and the present.

“What I am trying to do, for myself as well as the readers, is balance the old Ireland with the new Ireland. There is good in both of them and bad in both of them — wrongs and rights and all sorts.”

The author has remained active in her community and the importance of connection is a thread that runs through all of her work.

“People are looking for a human connection that is a vital link,” Taylor says. 

“We have to be fierce careful — in the old Ireland, community took care of itself. The neighbours would drop in and out, but now it is a different story: We have to make the effort.

“I always have my book launches here in the parish hall. It provides an excuse for a gathering. Gatherings are hugely important, because if we don’t communicate with the neighbours, if they are in trouble, how are we going to know? 

“If there is no connectedness, there is no conduit through which to help each other.”

She worries that our increasing tendency to tune out of the world around us is detrimental on many levels.

“That is why I would be fierce wary of going for a walk and being plugged in to some other world,” Taylor says. 

If you are on your mobile phone and all of that, you are cutting yourself off.

However, Taylor is also mindful of the benefits of technology in helping us stay in touch.

“I have a cousin who is a priest up in Castleknock, Fr Denis, and, last Sunday, after I had been out for a walk, I thought I’ll just see how Fr Denis is doing, because he had been in hospital. 

“So I tuned in on the laptop to the church in Castleknock, and there he was up on the altar, saying Mass. In a way, modern technology is fantastic.”

With Christmas fast approaching, many people’s thoughts turn to home, and Taylor is no different. 

She says that, growing up, her mother fostered a love for the festive season that has been passed down the generations.

“My mother loved Christmas and she sent forth a hatch of chicks that love Christmas as well. 

“In North Cork, there were no such thing as Christmas presents or luxuries, but she made Christmas out of very little.

“For her, it was all about the magic of the crib and the candle — the candle was big in her world and in ours.”

My father would light it and we all gathered around while my mother would sprinkle us all with holy water.

“We could look out over the Kerry mountains from our door and I was convinced that Santy was on his sleigh over those mountains and the baby Jesus was out in our stable. 

“To this day, I love the crib. The first thing I do is put a crib out in the window for the children passing.”

In the new year, Taylor says her thoughts usually turn to writing. She tends to write in bursts.

“I’m not a regular performer and I envy people that have the discipline, who sit down every morning and do so many hours. 

“I’m not like that — in my way of life, either. I have a sister who said to me, ‘There isn’t enough of the plough horse in you, you’re a bit like a racehorse: It’s full belt ahead or nothing’. But that is our temperament: We come like that.” 

Taylor says that the benefits of writing are many, including to help her process her thoughts.

“Something could make me feel good, annoy me, or puzzle me, and I would find I could work it out in writing. 

“I keep a journal as well. The funny thing about keeping a journal is that when you write it down, you sort yourself out in the writing.”

As for what’s coming next, Taylor says she doesn’t like to plan too far ahead.

“When I’m doing one thing, I’m not thinking beyond it. Creativity has a strange way of working itself out. 

“Creativity is the key, really — sometimes we are inclined to think of it as writing, music, or art, but it is also baking, woodwork, all of that. 

“I find that if I’m out in the garden and I get an idea, maybe by the time the evening comes, that idea has changed to something else.”