“Many things appear greater in thought than in fact. I have spent a large part of my life in perfect good health: it was not only perfect but vivacious and boiling over. That state, so full of sap and festivity, made thinking of illness so horrifying that when I came to experience it I found its stabbing pains to be mild and weak compared with my fears.
“Here is an everyday experience of mine: if I am sheltered and warm in a pleasant room during a night of storm and tempest, I am dumbstruck with affliction for those then caught out in the open; yet when I am out there myself I never even want to be anywhere else.”
- Michel De Montaigne (1533-1592)
Friday night last. It’s just gone 11pm and I have taken to my sleeping bag on our garden deck on the outskirts of Waterford City.
It’s a calm, relatively benign night – eight or nine degrees Celsius – and there’s only an outside prospect of rain overnight. It’s nonetheless cloudy so regrettably there’ll be no stargazing to help while away the hours ahead.
Buddy, who along with our other house dog Zippy (very much a ‘Little & Large’ combo) has peeked his head underneath the blind, fully drawn down over the double doors that lead onto the deck.
He sees me settling into my sleeping bag and barks, whelps and jumps for about 30 seconds before my knocking on the window appears to calm him down. Within minutes, the only sound I can hear from the kitchen are the slightly muffled tunes from RTE Radio One’s ‘Late Date’ show, which will provide my aural company for the night ahead.
I check in on Twitter to see how people out for the night like myself are getting on and, to my delight, a great many people have opted to support my sleep-out by donating to my fundraising page. And as I eventually doze off ahead of an unsurprisingly broken night’s sleep, I’m oddly buzzing about it all; the only downside of the night being the lack of company due to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions.
Since 2015, I’ve taken part in the annual sleep-out for Focus Ireland, one of several organisations which advocate for individuals and families experiencing homelessness in this country of unfinished housing developments and significant dereliction.
Last year, the event went national through the ‘Shine A Light Night’ initiative and I joined a whole host of familiar faces - in addition to secondary school students – to sleep out in the grounds of the Edmund Rice Centre in Mount Sion in Waterford City.
The company, as it has been since Focus-specific sleep-outs began back in 2015 on a rain-soaked Plaza on the city’s Quay, was fantastic.
While the cause of our committing to one night out in the elements is self-evident in its gravity, the nights themselves have not been without a great deal of laughter and kinship.
Solidarity is an ally with many guises – and a sense of fun, in addition to not taking yourself too seriously, should never be discounted.
That I was not with my acquaintances of recent years last Friday was the greatest single disappointment of the night but once I’d decided to take on the sleep-out again, I knew I’d make the most of it. And I did.
I managed about two hours’ sleep before I turned off my side and onto my back. It was just gone 4am and it felt like no more than three drops of rain fell on me. It came and went in a few eyeblinks as I settled again onto my harder than usual mattress.
I got in just over two hours more shut-eye before some dogs barking nearby, in addition to the early morning traffic saw me wiping the sleep out of my eyes as Friday drifted further behind me while Saturday was still stretching out in front of me.
Just after 7am, a familiar snout once more came into view from inside the double doors. The
redoubtable Buddy was once more scanning my sleeping area as I began to fold away the cardboard which lay between me and the garden deck. I laughed quietly to myself at the loveable nuisance, quietly telling him I’d be in shortly.
Rather than go straight upstairs and take to my altogether more regular bed, I brought Buddy and Zippy on a walk of ‘the loop’, a five-kilometre triangle of road we live on, just as the sun was rising.
Some years (and kilos) ago, I remember giggling at an old rugby team mate of mine after a training session when he announced to the dressing room that he’d got up that morning to see the sun rise.
A dressing room heaving with sweaty, naked men in their 20s and 30s isn’t readily associated with philosophy and the bigger questions a lot of us probably don’t get around to pondering until we’re that bit older. But that team mate of mine was on to something – and wasn’t I the fool for laughing at him.
Watching the first light catch the trees at Ballinamona (between the city and Tramore) and from there onto the hills above my native Portlaw and then the slopes of the Comeragh Mountains, Slievenamon and Tory Hill, was life-affirming.
It takes a hell of a lot to get me down, even taking the surrealism of the pandemic into account, but watching the part of the earth I know best being flooded by our life-giving star, provided the best feeling I’d had in quite some time.
Were I on stage right then, the orchestra in the pit would have been into the opening strains of a big show number, while I sung and sauntered across the boards for the next three and a half minutes. The sun had come, to paraphrase George Harrison and right then, life most certainly was alright.
Upon my return home, I checked my phone to see I’d received further donations and by the time I did go to bed for a few hours, the money was still – by my fundraising standards anyway – rolling in.
Maybe the events of the past seven months made more people in my sphere aware of this year’s sleep-out. Regardless of what their motivations were for supporting me, I was blown away by the 50-plus donors who saw fit to assist Focus Ireland with their ongoing efforts to assist people in dire need.
“The single most important message which everybody in public health has been giving out in terms of what people should do during Covid-19 to stay safe: they should stay at home,” said Focus Ireland Director of Advocacy Mike Allen on Friday last.
“That’s what we’ve all been told, that’s what we’ve all been trying to do and that’s what we’re going to be doing over the next number of weeks. But that’s not so easy if you haven’t got a home and I think the centrality of how important a home is in everybody’s lives, to feel human and to be safe, has really been emphasised during the Covid-19 period. I think that’s why we’ve got so many people here tonight and that’s why I feel we’ve been so successful in the fundraising because it’s really brought home to people how important a home is.”
By the time I was posting this piece, Shine A Light Night 2020 had exceeded its fundraising target of €1.3 million – and there’s little doubt that more donations will come Focus Ireland’s way over the next week or so.
Of course, there shouldn’t be a requirement for an organisation like Focus Ireland to exist in an established democracy such as ours; housing is a basic right we should all be able to avail of.
But as long as there are families and individuals who need help which the State is clearly not adequately assisting, then the general public will keep supporting events like Shine A Light Night. Supporting the work of an organisation attempting to alleviate the homeless crisis is a great deal better than doing absolutely nothing. To me, that certainly feels like a light well worth shining.
If you would like to make a donation, please visit: https://shine-a-light-night-2020.everydayhero.com/ie/mr-dermot-keyes
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