John Arnold: It took 45 years, but we’ve finally made it to our honeymoon destination

Look, I know, one should forgive and forget, but with some things - it’s very hard indeed!

Like Tito for example – I never met him, nor anyone else that actually encountered Josip Broz, for that was Marshall Tito’s, or if you like, President Tito’s, real name.

To be honest, back in May of 1980, my wife and I never even knew the man was sick. What do they say about ‘The best laid plans of mice and men…’, yes indeed, they do ‘oft go astray’.

Now, when the Scottish ‘National’ poet Robbie Burns penned those lines around 1785, I’d say he wasn’t referring to the future effect of Tito’s death - 195 later, on our honeymoon!

It takes two to tango, and in reality at least the same number is required for any bit of fun on a honeymoon!

I suppose in the far-distant future experts will write about the meaning of the word ‘honeymoon’ and books will be published about what will be termed “a practise whereby a couple who had just been married /wed / jumped the anvil / said ‘I do’ to each other would depart for a strange place and actually begin the custom of actually living together or co-habiting in the same room and maybe even the same bed”.

Sure, that’s the way it was long ago - well up until the 1980s anyway There was kind of a recipe or formula which had been well tested and tried for centuries. It went kinda like this; meeting, greeting, dating, romancing, engaging, marrying, and then off on the honeymoon where all the norms of society were discarded and couples ‘really got to know each other’.

That was our route, and when we planned the big day for May of 1981, things moved fairly lively. A new house was built for other family members and a thousand other arrangements were made.

About seven or eight months before the big date, we had to decide on a honeymoon destination - imagine a couple in their early twenties and we planning to go far, far away for a fortnight - together and on our own!

There was no computer, internet or social media back then. Nowadays people just press the ‘mouse’ and everything happens - in 1980 we had trouble enough trying to keep mice out of the kitchen as our cat had died!

From Cork, Fermoy and Midleton, we got tons of glossy brochures - I’ll admit it now, but ’twas only when I saw the grand coloured pictures in them Travel Company publications that I first realised what a bikini was! Says I to myself, begod, one of them things wouldn’t be much good if you were on a December honeymoon.

We had the brochures in my house and in Mary’s home and, betwixt and between, we said we’d narrow down our honeymoon options a bit.

In fairness to the two of us - what do they say about great minds and all that? Neither of us wanted to go to Egypt, Abyssinia, Denmark, Australia or Greenland.

Well, we spotted - in two different brochures - ‘The Pearl of The Adriatic - Dubrovnik’ and we were enthralled by the colour pictures, and hadn’t I a second cousin, once removed, who’d been there on a ‘getting to know each other’ venture like we were planning?

We knew they spoke a foreign language there but what matter -weren’t we both able to talk to each other in the language of love

Mary had worked in Dublin in the Mint- not making mints now, mind, but making actual money notes - so she said she knew a girl who was friendly with a fella who could get a lash of them traveller’s cheques for us. We were sorted.

We had to get passports and everything like that and booked the trip to Dubrovnik.

We had never been away foreign together except when 20 of us from Bartlemy Macra spent a few nights in London at Smithfield Show. We were a mixed group, young and not so young, and Mary’s really young-at-heart parents went on that trip. They didn’t really go to ‘keep an eye on me’ - we all had a great time.

I can tell ye now all these years later that we saw the carry-on down around Soho with red flashing lights over the doors of houses every night -we thought the red lights were just the locals’ way of being friendly to Cork people - oh, how innocent we were.

I remember it took us a day to go over on the Innisfallen. We spent two days over and, thanks to a woeful storm, it took us nearly three days to get home! On the boat back we got six different types of sea sickness.

You know, that was only just over six months before our planned nuptials, and I said if we got that tossed around while engaged, we’d manage OK in the marriage department.

With all the excitement of the courting and the engagement and the planning and the lists of who to ask and who would be expecting to be asked and who’d be sour if they weren’t asked - well, we never spotted that President Tito of Yugoslavia -where Dubrovnik is - had died. He was just three days short of his 88th birthday.

We were in love and little else mattered. That’s where we were very wrong though!

Even though I liked history in school, and in St Colman’s I knew very little about the Cold War – why should I, and we getting ready for the wedding - you could say things were really heating up!

Anyhow, in a few months we all knew about the bould Tito - though he was dead by now. Some said he was a tyrant and a cruel dictator whilst other ‘experts’ deemed him a great leader who kept some semblance of unity between the Slavs, the Croats, the Serbs, and other different ethnic groups.

Love him or hate him, Tito kept a semblance of unity in the country under strict Communist rule.

After his death in May, 1980 - just a year before our wedding date - tensions there rose a bit.

However, the travel agent in Cork reassured us that “Dubrovnik would be heavenly” for newlyweds like us -explaining that our destination was by the sea, hemmed in by mountains and far away from any possible troubles.

By February or March of ’81, the travel agent had changed his tune. He initially warned us “there might be a problem” but soon the decision was made for us. The Irish Government issued a ‘no travel to Yugoslavia’ warning and our plans were in shreds.

Our travel agent was great, and after another quick look at the brochures we picked Fuengirola, a tiny costal resort on the Spanish coast. In 1981, it seemed similar to Ballycotton - we went back there 25 years later and they seemed to have shoved the mountains back inland to make way for more and more hotels.

What happened later, when Yugoslavia really tore itself apart with an absolutely horrendous, murderous Civil War, meant returning to our chosen ‘honeymoon destination’ in Dubrovnik was not an option.

Thankfully, thing change and peace - maybe fragile, but peace nevertheless - has becalmed the country. Six different ‘new’ countries have emerged in the area since the genocide of the 1990s.

Yugoslavia started to ‘crack’ in 1981, the year we got married. That glorious summer brought a new name, Medjugorje. to the lips of the world. On a mountainside, six children saw a vision of Our Lady – those visions are still happening.

We failed to get to Dubrovnik in 1981 but this week, with the Rathcormac Parish Social Initiative Group, we got there, and to Makarska, to the islands of Brac and Havar and, of course, to Medugorge – oh how lucky we are!

I’ll share my memories of a memorable trip next week.