Gangster Granny - Cavan style!

By Sarah O'Reilly

One of the most difficult things for me during this lockdown was the restriction of visits to my elderly friends and neighbours. The idea that calling for a céilí, could inadvertently cause serious illness or even kill someone of whom I was very fond, was off-putting to say the least.

The added pressure from the powers that be because of my public position, urging me to lead by “example” [remember the fallout from the #golfgate saga] restricted me further still. All this meant a last visit to my 84-year-old friend, before the impending Level Five lockdown.

Social butterfly wings clipped, she had been phoning a lot lately. She sounded down, nobody was calling. She was beginning to go to bed at 7pm and there was even talk of selling the car.

As I wheeled up the lane to her cottage, there she was, reversing her beat-up (soon to be sold) car into its space in the yard. She shouted “I’m only up the lane in front of ya. Only just home from Navan.”

Shocked, I reminded her that she was only allowed to leave the county for work or essential business. She laughed. It was good to see her excited and with a glint in her eye. I took the fold-up chairs out of the boot of my car and placed them two meters apart, we sat down with rugs on our laps and I listened while she unfolded her ingenious plan.Historically, a culture of smuggling occurred around the Border area from Carrickmacross to Crossmaglen. This is a story of a planned revival during the latest Level Five lockdown, from a source you might least suspect! That is an 84-year-old, blue rinse widow, rebelled against bubbling, isolating and cocooning, enforced to such a degree she felt it was time to either “get busy living or get busy dying”.

Medical evidence suggested that alcohol could alleviate COVID-19 symptoms (Source: Vladimir Putin). In her mind pure alcohol was the base for a whole new era of cottage industry manufacturing - hand sanitizer, rubs and ointments. She was onto a winner, firstly, she would source high-end hooch in counties Meath and Louth. “I know a couple of fellas,” she winked. She would list her target customers, committing to travelling no further than Cavan, Monaghan and Leitrim.

Logistically it was wise to only distribute in small lots (six bottles). The bottles would be camouflaged in a woolly red tartan blanket, this would keep clinking on the back seat down to a minimum. Mode of transportation would be her own very small car (sale abandoned), indented with more hits than the Beatles – and self-driven!

She would slip across county boundaries with the ease and innocence that only an 84-year-old granny can. The brazenness of its execution, would be the beauty of the plan. While slightly worried about the legalities of her intentions and sneaking a peep at her little car, faced towards the road poised for action, I decided not to burst her bubble. It was her hope, her imagination keeping her going, the possibility of interactions and her way of combating loneliness.

I smiled, said, “It’s not a bad idea.” I knew she’d be fine, knew she was coping. I thought of Dermot Healy’s line:

Lonely? No.

There’s enough in my head

To do me a while longer.

After that who knows?