"Let me say it right at the start; I hate golf, utterly and totally. I hate the goddamned all-importance of it. I hate the ambience of privilege and exclusivity that goes with it. I hate the seeming need to wear shirt and jersey badges, as if those who play it can be identified only by these."
"I hate its cultivation of business links. . .I hate the inference that it is the alpha and omega of social life. I hate its sheer seductiveness. But, most of all, I hate golf because my wife plays it. . ."
As winning introductions go, this one takes some risks - but then risk is not something that has ever bothered Seamus Hayden. Since the enforced emigration of his family in the late 1950s, his life has been synonymous with challenge, of the "survival" kind. And it has been one of wandering - even after he and his own family settled back in Ireland, in west Donegal.
Early manhood
By then, he was already an "apprentice Donegalman", he writes. Best known as former managing director of one of Europe's most successful netmaking firms, founded by the legendary herring skipper, Albert Swan, Seamus has just spent the first year of his retirement hard at work. Last month he published an account of his "youth and early manhood", a story that covers the map from Tanzania to Uruguay, and from Iceland to Iran.
Scotland, Russia, Norway and Chile feature in between, and he even spent some time in the middle of the North Sea. Galway too is on the Hayden route: he studied for a fishing skipper's ticket in the tech there, living on £4 a week. But his itinerary starts in Greystones, Co Wicklow, where he was born.
Known in those days as a little Protestant, middle-class enclave, it was a Mecca for those who played his detested golf. But the local club had a solid corps of artisan members, who could be recognised at the back of the church during Sunday Mass, ready to leave before the final prayers.
If he attributes his mixed feelings about the game to his home village, he attributes his restless nature to his father, who came from Delgany and went off to "the War" when Seamus, better known as Jago, was only three. He didn't come back home, other than for yearly or twice-yearly visits, until 1946, when Seamus was nine. He learned later that his father had run off to sea when only 16 and had reached Australia. In snatches of conversation, he would regale his curious son with stories of Indian rope tricks, of white maggot treatments for severe sunburn, and suchlike.
First mackerel
Much of Seamus's book will mean most to those who know Greystones, albeit at a very different time. He describes a village that had its own working harbour and fishery, where he and his brothers shared a boat. It was a 14foot, clinker-built white deal vessel built in Glasgow, which they called the Kathleen. From the age of "five or six", Seamus was afloat, and he describes the thrill of the "first gleaming, quivering" mackerel that he caught, which "jumped off the seat and smacked me in the puss".
His attention to detail is impressive - and there will be more of that, and of his life on the north-west coast, in the sequel which he is already writing. This first account, entitled Hair All Curling Gold, by Jago Hayden, is published by himself at Black Lion Books, Crannoge Boy, Loughros Point, Ardara, Co Donegal, price £7.95.
Further up Hayden's native east coast, a flavour of life as once lived in the port of Drogheda has received a very enthusiastic response since it was captured on CD just over a year ago. A River of Memories is a "poetic document", according to one of its producers, the Drogheda-based composer and member of Aosdana, Michael Holohan.
Poetry and music
It is a historical document also, comprising interviews, original poetry, music and special effects, with the late Prof Frank Mitchell contributing to the opening track about the river Boyne itself. The poet John F. Deane joins the voices of Dermot Molloy, Jemmy Smith, Thomas J. O'Reilly, Denis Sweeney, Moira Corcoran, Maurice Collins, Caitlin Bean Ui Chairbre, Susan Connolly, Jim and Kit Reynolds, Capt Bill Hanrahan and others. The radio presenter and producer, Breida Delaney, was co-producer, and Derek Cronin of the Dublin Institute of Technology provided the technical support.
A River of Memories is dedicated, appropriately, to Dr John de Courcy Ireland who, the cover note says, "has been a constant inspiration and support to all Irish maritime historians and lovers of the sea".
Copies of the CD at £10, or cassette at £8, are still available in good bookshops in Dublin, or directly from Michael Holohan at Listoke Lodge, Listoke, Ballymakenny Road, Drogheda, Co Louth (telephone 041-9834853.)