Who has killed the Golden Goose?

I have often looked at the quaint country villages that you see on the holiday programmes on TV and wished I was there. Some are scattered throughout the English countryside, and usually feature old houses from yesteryear, and a river that snakes its way through green fields which always seem to contain an abundance of tall trees heavy with summer foliage. The houses and cottages probably date back to Tudor or Victorian times, and for the most part are inhabited by the latest generations of the same families, who are quite content to leave well enough alone except for the overall upkeep of their traditional dwellings. The pace of life appears slow, people stop and converse about the weather and local gossip, and across the old stone arch bridge fly-fishermen cast their lures from the banks of farmer's fields into the winding stream.

Every now and then a river barge passes, put-putting to the lock gates to continue its journey into the warm summer's day. Food at the village Inn usually features breakfast which includes bacon, eggs and sausages; the lunch menu displays an array of meat pies and pasties, and for dinner, salmon, trout, duck, beef and chicken can be enjoyed as well as pheasant or quail which make a regular appearance. Of course the food is prepared nowadays by a chef of noted distinction whose array of gravies and sauces adds to the everyday ordinary, and transforms it into the extraordinary, the results of which tease the palettes of locals and tourists alike.

Why do people come to such places, you may ask? What is it about this simplistic scattering of houses and humans that attracts people from all walks of life when sun-drenched holidays are readily available all but two hours away on Spanish or Greek islands? The answer is simple, people are tired of the hustle and bustle of today's existences, and swapping one type of confusion for another, although it may be sun-baked, does little to relax the spirit for those precious few days a year that we know as holidays. The golden goose of these village excursions can often manifest itself in affording the traveler a chance to revisit a time that has stood still, and yet has managed to embrace all the trappings of modernism including speculation and an ever denser and richer population. The English planning authorities have managed to preserve such treasures, although that's not to say that areas have not also been ruined by holiday developments in England, Wales, and Scotland , but a few jewels still remain protected under a particular legal precedent, not available to Irish planners, known as Crown Land. This particular piece of legislation allows the British version of our Planning Board to defend and make absolute final decisions free of expensive legal actions by developers who feel they have been hard done by a local planning authority, or Government authority, with regard to proposed developments.

But what of Dunmore and other seaside towns and villages in Ireland whose masters have nothing under the constitution to defend their decisions. Dunmore has always had its share of tourists who were prepared to also leave well enough alone in the knowledge that the simplistic natural beauty of the place was the golden egg that enticed them back year after year. Then someone must have said, ‘wouldn't it be nice to build a summer home here', then another, and then another. There was no shortage of enticement for such lunacy as section 25 tax relief was available to those who earned enough to even consider tax relief, and hence the cuckoo began to lay its eggs in the nest of the golden goose. Along with the cuckoo laying eggs, the very essence of local planning was also compromised, the onus on decision makers to foster and nurture the existing historical population, and allow them to continue to build homes for their families suffered and became extinct because no one could really afford the asking prices for building sites which were unrealistic to the ordinary working person. Of course it was not just the tourist who began to strangle the goose. There were plenty locals who couldn't wait for the chance to sell their land, or develop it into another eyesore for tidy sums of money. Money can come, and money can go, but Dunmore and other such places should have been protected from such ignorance. Today I read that the beaches are so polluted that bacteria are making Doctor appointments because they feel sick.

The cuckoo eggs hatched and out went those of the golden goose. The goose herself was finally hung by a rope of new found fortune, and an inability to realize the obvious. Sometimes if you overdress the lady she begins to look like a gaudy tramp, is this not the case with regard to Dunmore .

From the short story writings of Mick D