HAPPENSTANCE - “Late 19th century. Blend of happen and circumstance”. So the laptop tells me in micro-seconds yet, neither artificial intelligence nor logic can explain how wonderful coincidences happen.
Such as finding out that Noel Mullins’ favourite horse ‘Walter’ was sourced in Walter Kent’s yard and the lightbulb moment that a festive feature on Noel himself will wrap up a trio of features about the Bannow and Rathangan Show president, the show’s All-Ireland centrepiece and an extraordinary character as neatly as a parcel sporting a big red bow found under the proverbial tree.
Last Monday was cause for another celebration in the Mullins’ households dotted around Skerries, where Noel and wife Emer live.
“My birthday is on Christmas Day and I was a ‘war baby’. My daughter Sheila and son Philip and four grandchildren live locally, they’re into sport: hurling, gaelic football, soccer, cross-country running and I play golf with the nine and 15-year-olds.
“My late brother Maurice represented Ireland in Ultra running and brought the first Triathlon and Iron Man to Ireland, so most of the adults in the family are marathon or ultra-runners. Even my grandchildren are junior triathlon competitors.
“Christmas Eve is spent with my son’s family and, as my daughter-in-law is French, we have a typical French Christmas Eve meal of seasonal seafood, and then we spend Christmas Day with our daughter and her family.”
Hunting is part and parcel of St Stephen’s Day for hunting families. And contributors. “The St Stephen’s Day hunt meet I remember most is after hunting with the Blazers, there was a ceilidh in Raftery’s Pub in Craughwell, when film director John Huston was joint-master.
“I recall his house guest, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, John Steinbeck, author of Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row and East of Eden, being asked to hold the coats as the adults danced, as nobody knew who he was!”
Although Skerries is now his home, Noel is a Tribesman. “Loughrea, Co Galway, was a great town to grow up in. Characters everywhere and ponies and horses to hunt. My first hunt was on the local milkman’s pony, as long as I helped delivering the milk first with the pony and dray. Then canter out the ‘Long Acre’ as quick as I could to get to the meet!”
“I was not the most diligent student, as I spent my time hunting ponies and horses with the Galway Blazers, so I was packed off as a boarder to Garbally Park in Ballinasloe. It was a strict regime: every teacher was armed with a cane, food adequate, cold water showers, no talking after night prayers or you got six of the best on each hand.”
Garbally was originally the home of the French Huguenot Trench family, who came to Ireland in the 1690s and settled in Ballinasloe. A judicious marriage arrangement brought the Earls of Clancarty title and the family put their stamp on the market town, establishing the world-famous horse fair, a ‘model farm’ and even persuading the Midland Great Western Railway company to divert the Galway train line through Ballinasloe. Garbally Court was built in 1819. However, in financially-straitened times, the house was sold off in 1922 for £6,750 and became St Joseph’s College, (which also operated as a boys’ boarding school until 2008) or simply: Garbally.
Another coincidence is our cottage appears on the Clancarty and various census records as the home of various stud grooms until it too was sold off a century ago by the estate. The old stableyard bell, once rang to summon the farm workers, grooms and pupils, when later recycled as a school bell, could be heard across the fields.
Horses, not the classroom, appealed more to an enterprising young Noel. “For my parents’ first visit, we met on the avenue and I was riding Irish teacher Fr Keyes’ smashing grey Irish Draught, who I knew from hunting with the Blazers, so I had offered to look after it! My father said, ‘Where did you get that horse, I sent you here to get you away from horses!’”
Personal shopper
“I did the shopping for the lads with the horse, hanging a bag on front of the saddle, as they were not allowed out. I made lasting friendships, got a good education, as well as rugby, hurling and athletics. Fr Joe Cassidy gave us an appreciation of writing, music and drama, staging HMS Pinafore, The Arcadians, Irish language, plays of Oscar Wilde and musical evenings. I did my Leaving Cert in 1963 and the ‘Class of 63’ met last month to mark 60 years.”
After his Garbally College years, Noel started off as a trainee manager with the Shelbourne Hotel Group. “Then I studied accountancy and joined the hotel’s Internal Audit team, auditing the six hotels in the group. Next, I worked for Bank of Ireland Finance in the accounting and deposits area.
“Finally, I spent 30 years working for IBM Ireland in Dublin, as Head of Sales and Marketing and the Consultancy Group. Then an international assignment in the HQ in Paris, responsible for marketing in Europe, Middle East, former Eastern Bloc countries and Africa. It involved extensive travel to the Middle East, Pakistan, smaller European countries and the non-French speaking African countries and Iceland.
“Marketing was my speciality and as Tony O’Reilly remarked, it is just a clever way of selling. I was never really technical, as there are plenty of techies around, but you need people who can bring a product to the market. It’s simple really, people buy for two reasons: ‘To gain a benefit or avoid a loss’.”
They say the typical iPhone has more than 100,000 times the processing power of the Apollo Guidance Computer that put man on the moon in 1969, six years after Noel left Garbally. What high-tech products were on the market then?
“In the early stages, we sold IBM office products that could also be used in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for data input to computers in mainly banking, as well as mainframes, UNIX and mid-range computers to Government departments, utilities, manufacturing and distribution. When I got back from Paris, we launched the IBM personal computer and set up a dealer network countrywide.
“After 30 years, I followed management guru Charles Handy’s theory, the first career is to pay the mortgage and educate the children and the second career is do what you enjoy best! In my case, writing, reading and travel. Re-skilling I find important and I studied Journalism in UCD when I retired at 56 years of age.”
Although he’s pro-technology, he’s firmly in the ‘good servant, bad master’ camp about smartphones. “I must say I cannot understand people holding an iPhone in one hand scrolling trivia, a bottle of water in the other and a set of earphones on their head missing out on all the sights and sounds of everyday life. Just too many TV channels, get back to the rabbit’s ears - a coat hanger in the TV aerial!”
No WhatsApp ‘round robin’ Christmas greetings for him either. “I am old-fashioned, as I still produce my own Christmas card every year.”
Artificial Intelligence
There’s much discussion about the future role of artificial intelligence (AI). What’s his inside track on the topic?
“There are strengths and limitations in both AI and humans. But AI is not new, as the first algorithm was designed by an English mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852). Ireland has outsourced most of its manufacturing to China and high-end computer applications, even your local bank, are most likely run out of Bangalore in India. We’ve bridged the gap with services jobs, many of which will now be replaced through AI.
“At IBM, we manufactured and ran distribution with robots 40 years ago in darkroom conditions. I think the use of robots in hospitals, using UV light to disinfect wards, is a great use, and reading scans and images more accurately than humans is a game-changer.
“Because of fake news on social media, divisiveness and deception, the big opportunity is in authentication software that can identify fraudulent content.”
From the Hollywood screenwriters strike to the local newspapers, there’s worldwide concern that AI will replace writers’ jobs.
“Some areas of journalism, I think, will be impacted, but I don’t see feature writing with a personal touch under threat for the foreseeable future. Humans are superior from a cognitive point of view, for example, human intelligence is flexible, uses judgement, is emphatic, creative but often slow and prone to error, whereas AI is consistent, accurate, efficient and fast.
“The future I see is a combination of both to create a hybrid intelligence that combines AI and human to produce a performance that is superior to either on its own.”
Nor can AI completely replace his and Dickie Power’s detailed and intricately-woven hunting reports or the rapid-fire wit heard by Noel in his hunting travels.
“My mother and uncle hunted. I started hacking to meets with Blazers field master Willie Leahy and master and huntsman Michael Dempsey. I continued hunting with the Galway Blazers and the Fingal Harriers, whipping-in and hunting hounds with the latter, as well as hunting the Russellstown Beagles and Goldburn Beagles.”
That’s his hunting background covered, how did the reports begin? ”When I was hunting the Russelstown Beagles in 1983, I was asked by The Westmeath Examiner to write a weekly hunt report and I added the Galway Blazers and the Fingal Harriers for The Irish Field, then Baileys Hunting Directory, Hounds Magazine in the UK and Foxhunting Life in the USA followed later. I have since reported on equestrian events in UK, USA, France, Italy, Germany, Dubai, the Czech Republic, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Australia and New Zealand.
“I loved hunting in North America, racing in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, South Island New Zealand and sailing with friends in the Caribbean, especially to Antigua, St Kitts and Montserrat. But my favourite country, besides Ireland, is France, where I worked at IBM HQ in Paris and went hunting, eventing and racing as often as I could.”
And his photo collection? “I recall the Irish Horse World editor Grania Willis sending a photographer with me to the Kilkenny Foxhounds, but he wanted to go home after an hour, so I bought my own camera. Ever since, I take the photos and write the hunt reports.
“In 40 years, I have made friends all over the world. I enjoy the humour of characters like Jack Lambert, who I travelled with to the USA to hunt. He used to say about the temperament of the Irish Draught, ‘If they stood on your toes, they would nearly apologise’. Aidan ‘Suntan’ O’Connell’s favourite saying is, ‘Hunting is like a cocktail party on horseback’.
“I remember a man in the Blacksticks Pub, under pressure from his wife not to go hunting with the East Clare Harriers, remarking to his wife politely, ‘Mary, you are losing your appeal’.
“A Garda told me he was looking for a suspect at Ballinasloe Horse Fair and the culprit’s mother, quick as a flash, said, ‘Did you not hear, Guard? he died in 9/11…”
Liquid breakfast
Horse Tales & Hunt Talk and The Origins of Irish Horse Fairs are two outlets for this stack of priceless anecdotes built up. Noel has also published The Irish Hunter, The Dublin Horse Show“and I edited and published former The Irish Field contributor Stanislaus Lynch’s book In Search of the Kerry Beagle after 70 years on a shelf”.
Plus one more in the pipeline, a result of when Noel was awarded a research fellowship at the National Sporting Library and Museum, in Middleburg, Virginia. “A clue to the book I’m working on at the moment is from the Somerville and Ross manuscripts I then worked on, with a comical twist.”
The Humour of Somerville and Ross is one of several talks he has delivered, that particular one at the National Sporting Library in the heart of American hunting country, then more talks “in Vermont USA to Irish horse breeders, Hunting in Ireland to Ampleforth College Beagles members in Yorkshire, The Irish Horse in the 7th Century at the Cashel Arts Festival and Irish Horse Fairs at the RDS”.
And he has appeared on the other side of the camera too, alongside ‘Walter’ and Peter O’Toole, when Noel had the part of the huntsman in the Lassie remake. “Cameraman Ken O’Mahony and myself filmed seven hunt documentaries, as well as one on author, journalist and commentator Michael Slavin in his Tara bookshop. More interviews were Hunting in Ireland for French TV, on Countrywide and Drivetime for RTÉ, My Dublin Horse Show Documentary for the RDS and the BBC World at War Series on War Horses in WWI.”
The Irish Draught breed was one of several horse breeds adversely affected by the cavalry era and according to Noel, faces another risk. “If hunting is ever phased out, I fear for the future of the Irish Draught. As an endangered species and rare breed, even recognised at EU level, I don’t think the relevant organisations here are taking it seriously. Every mare should reproduce at least one filly to replace her to maintain a healthy herd number.
“Also I would like to see the Irish Draught, the Connemara pony and the Kerry Bog Pony in the Irish National Stud for visitors to admire along with the thoroughbreds.”
The former hotelier engaging his Discover Ireland brain. “My favourite part of Dublin is St Stephen’s Green, near my old employer the Shelbourne Hotel, as I have great memories of Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and other Hollywood stars dining there.
“I was living in Dawson Street, the only other resident in the street aside from the Dublin Lord Mayor. We drank in O’Donohoe’s Bar in Baggot Row, when the Dubliners and Christy Moore were only learning chords.
“When filming Lassie on my favourite hunter Walter and the Fingal Harriers hounds with Peter O’Toole, I asked Peter if he remembered his breakfast order in the Shelbourne Hotel when he appeared in Juno and the Paycock in 1966. I had to remind him: one bottle of Courvoisier cognac, six raw eggs and a jug of milk. He replied: ‘How am I still alive!’”
Noel has had his own brush with mortality. “My daughter persuaded me to complete a marathon 11 months after cancer surgery to raise money for the Children’s Hospice.”
Most recently, he took part in the Dickie Dip charity swim for the Mater Hospital Foundation.
Carpe Diem: “Latin. Seize The Day.” No doubt a phrase Noel Mullins first heard back in Garbally and has certainly lived up to the mantra since.
“Wishing everybody a Happy and a Healthy New Year,” signs off this extraordinary character.