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our shop. The village shop and post office is a great place to be if you want to do a parish survey on anything. But the general reaction to the millennium night was that nobody with a glint of imagination or a sense of adventure would be found in the parish hall on the night. Faraway places beckoned. That evening I put the idea to my husband Gabriel who always had his finger on the pulse of the parish.
    “Well, of course we should have something in the hall,” he declared. “When millennium night comes around, a lot of those high flyers will have come down to earth.”
    Later, when our cousin Con, who had been part of the family for over thirty years, came home from his school in Bandon with a bundle of textbooks under his arm, I asked: “Con, what had you planned to do for the millennium?”
    “Never even gave it a thought,” he told me mildly.
    That was the end of my survey and, as with lots of surveys, I was as wise at the end as I had been at the beginning.
    The following week a supplement fell out of a newspaper that I was reading on a train home from Dublin. The headline ran “Last Light Ceremony”. I read and reread the article, marvelling at the simplicity and imagination of the entire concept. The idea was that everyone in Ireland was to be furnished with a millennium candle to be lit on the evening of the old millennium so that the entire country could be united in this Last Light ceremony. The accompanying message with the candle would read: “As the sun sets on the millennium onDecember 31st 1999, the National Millennium Committee invites you to join with family and friends, neighbours or colleagues, to light your millennium candle at this milestone in history.
Mílaois faoi sheán is faoi mhaise
.”
    It was, I thought, an imaginative and visionary concept. The last light of the millennium would fade out over Dursey Sound and our parish would be in its dying rays. Our parish could build its whole millennium celebration, incorporating the congregations of both churches, around the Last Light ceremony. We would gather in Christ Church at four o’clock, which was the scheduled time for the Last Light ceremony, and later go up the hill to St Mary’s for a second ceremony, and finish with a party in the parish hall to welcome in the new millennium. The possibilities of the project gave me food for thought that lasted the entire train journey.
    When I got home, I rang my friend Joy, an active member of the Church of Ireland.
    “Joy, what do you think of a Last Light ceremony in Christ Church at four o’clock for both congregations and later a joint ceremony in our church and then a party in the parish hall for all of us?”
    “Sounds great,” she enthused. “But will all of you come to our church?”
    “Of course we’ll come,” I assured her, never doubting it for a moment. Relations between both congregations had always been cordial; we attended each other’s weddings and funerals, though up to this we had never shared ceremonies. We ran the idea past both sets of clergy and there was no problem.
    That year, Christmas took a back seat as the whole country waited with bated breath for the coming of the new millennium. It seemed that people were planning to be in themost exotic of places to welcome it in.
    On Christmas Eve, a man from the bogs of North Cork came into our village selling huge pieces of bog deal. He was pointed in my direction and his cargo made me gasp in awe. What would be more appropriate as a centre-piece for a millennium celebration than bog deal from the deep belly of ancient Ireland? This bog deal was probably as old as the millennium itself. There was a huge claw-like
creachaill
on the top of the trailer which was the jewel in the crown of the load. It was probably placed there to act as bait. He was a large, jovial man in a hand-knitted jumper, with a twinkle in his eye, and would have made a great Santa Claus. But this was no Santa Claus! He had what I wanted and he knew it.