Forty years an emigrant. Two generations away from Ireland, and now we were returning to scale the first – experimental – rungs of retirement.

Would resettlement bring a reaffirmation of old ways, enhanced by the accumulated wisdom and witness of our time abroad? Or would it offer a rebirth? A renaissance?

The faraway fields had, over time, proven green, but which shades of the fabled forty awaited our return? Were the final chapters in a life, with many roads well and ill-travelled, to unfold in a welcoming Hibernian hinterland?

My back pages are still legible and accessible, chronicling a Dublin upbringing and education from the fifties to the seventies. A Christian (sic) Brothers’ education ensured ever shortening hair in times of plenty, the ability to recite verbatim St. Luke’s Gospel, a suspicion of sex, a fear of clerical uniforms and ultimately four honours in my Leaving Certificate.

Having turned down employment offers from the Irish civil service twice – ideologically driven by 70’s stances against the establishment – I then made a Faustian agreement with a much larger public service and answered a European call to arms. I landed a job in the EEC: and not the BBC or VEC that some well-wishing and hard of hearing neighbours in the Dublin suburb of Churchtown thought.

Luxembourg was to be the launching pad for career and family development. That was 1977, I was 24. Long-haired and trousers flared, with philosophies pared and budgets shared, my girlfriend and I headed into our uncertain continental future. Although we didn’t know it then, that was our Francis Fukuyama moment: “The end of history.”

Over the following forty years, emigrant, emerald feet walked, explored, danced, and footballed on foreign soil. We lived, loved, worked, married, had children, and grew old together in different European and Asian countries. While we enthusiastically embraced the wider cultural canvasses our extensive travel allowed, a Celtic heart still orchestrated the symphony of emotions.

The Irish flag was regularly unfolded on foreign football terraces; St Patrick’s Day abroad ignited a patriotic thirst somewhat sated by sub-standard stout; I read myself hoarse on Yeats and Heaney at international poetry readings; Ireland’s divided geography and common history was explained to sympathetic audiences; the Irish language was kept on international life-support by the exchange of the ‘cúpla focail’ with like-minded, modern wild geese in several European taverns.

My work over four decades, took me to some very interesting places in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, North America and Europe where my Irish, more than my European, credentials evoked empathy, access and often a friendly smile. “Welcome to my country,” was a refrain repeated across many a border. Those words would echo with no small irony on my later return to Ireland. The years rolled on… Ryanair; Live Aid; Stuttgart ‘88; Iraq; Mobile telephony and the WWW; Berlin Wall; the Soviet Union implosion; Giant’s Stadium 1990; Good Friday agreement; the New York bombing atrocities; the Euro; the Celtic Tiger, the financial crisis; the Lisbon Treaty; Brexit; Trump…… And then, one day, I woke up to be greeted by my sixties. It seemed like light years since the swashbuckling days of youth. My TS Eliot moment: “I will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

Retirement chimes tolled. Quo Vadis? Ireland? Belgium? Portugal? Malta? The Eurovision jury gave Ireland 12 points. The next chapter of our lives would unfold back on the island. Homeward bound then, but not “with every footstep neatly planned.” We left Brussels in January 2018 and drove to the French coast. Again, although we weren’t to know it then, that was our Pol Pot moment. “Year zero.” The portents for our return had not been good – a force-ten gale hurled our French ferry off its Dublin course into Rosslare. Meanwhile, our furniture and possessions, which were scheduled to enjoy a separate, short sea crossing from Antwerp to Dublin somehow ended up surfing the Suez Canal. That confused compass meant there would be no reunion for eight weeks, forcing us to live in a house as sparsely furnished as a Beckett stage.

As we first footed on icy paths and roads leading to Ikea, we had not yet got enmeshed in the maze of labyrinthine, bureaucratic formalities that await returning emigres and hopeful immigrants. Trying to deal with all the attendant emotional and practical turmoil of the dismantlement and departure from our recent life, and re-settle into the new one, was taking an early toll on mood and morale. As the raft of re-entry requirements crystallised, there was a confluence of frustration and bewilderment eddying in the head as well as the surging emotional currents in the heart.

Over the course of our last two months abroad we had been unhappy witnesses to the deconstruction of our family life of many years. We watched the transformation of our home, first to a house then a warehouse, and finally an eerie echo chamber of past times. The parting glass was raised with neighbours, friends and colleagues. More difficult, however, was leaving our young family behind to their lives and careers, and returning, orphaned, to our settled families, scattered in the cemeteries of Rathnew and Dublin.

I had no delusions about the homecoming. Despite modest successes on the international diplomatic, sporting and literary stages, mine would be no Caesar returning triumphantly to Rome. Nor would it be a pilgrim’s or prodigal’s return. Just another emigrant Paddy back, no piped band or Irish dancing welcome on the docks; the trip along the roads of the south-East coast were bunting-free; no open-topped bus tour for us! Earlier footprints were well and truly eroded as we were to learn in blunt terms a little later.

And then it began – the process of formal repatriation: a Darwinian duel with the authorities, a long via dolorosa, a giddy gauntlet of local government and social welfare offices, where meetings and interviews begat further meetings and interviews. Our portfolios of documents for repatriation, the supporting existential evidence – meticulously gathered and ferreted from archives and attics – were never sufficient or correct under the mandarins’ gimlet inspections.

Long and short birth certificates, certified copies of baptism and wedding certificates, utility bills, house lease/deeds, medical records, transportation details of imported car, purchase details of same, remuneration records for the past five years: Stasi filing cabinets in the 60’s were less congested!

For weeks we were force-fed and gorged on the ingestion of alphabet and acronym soup: PPS (Personal Public Service Number); PSC (Public Service Card); TOR (Transfer of Residence – a misnomer, it’s not your residence but the car’s identity papers); VRT (Vehicle Registration Tax)…. Progress was slow, a war of attrition in Kafkaesque kiosks almost resulted in trench foot, but in the long march through a longer February, I pipped my wife to the post. A lazy hospital registrar, some 60 years previously, ensured her Purgatory would be extended a little longer when her first name on the birth certificate was entered as ‘Female’ rather than the carefully chosen ‘Monica.’

More forms and certificates were required to correct the sixty year old clerical error. I finally arrived at the interview session for a PPS card. This card was the portal through which, if successfully attained, all the other pieces of the meandering mosaic would fall, however begrudgingly, into place. The final lap of this first race, a face-to-face interview with the civil servant (CS), was scheduled. The interview, by any classification or criteria, was an abject failure. Spoiler alert: my Flann O’Brien moment.

CS (looking earnestly at her computer): “There seems to be a major problem here. We have you down as deceased.”

Tom: (checking his pulse and trying to look as animated as possible) “Oh, that’s a surprise and a disappointment. Perhaps the premature burial, the misunderstanding arises from the fact that my father (deceased) has the same first name as me.”

CS: “Did your father die on the 14th March?”

Tom: “No, that was the day on which I got married.”

The exchanges of looks and silences imbued the atmosphere with a sense of eeriness until humour defused the situation, and I had my Lazarus moment with an eventual IT resurrection. I came forth, and my PPS card followed a week later. At an early stage in the staggering series of interviews and document-processing, I had been tersely reminded that an Irish passport, Irish parents, Irish education and employment, Irish taxes paid, Irish stamps earned in the chicken processing and plastic pants industries of long ago offered no short cut to repatriation.

I dutifully took my place in queues, populated by aspirants from half the UN set of countries. Good luck to them, I thought, but still brooded that eaten bread is soon forgotten.

There were times during this winter campaign when I wondered: do they really want us to come back? They punish you when you leave, and still bear the grudge when you return. I had lived with the suppressed anger of not having a vote in Ireland during my entire emigration, a right endowed to all my European Union colleagues in their respective 27 countries. I was not mollified by the consolation of lesser prizes – votes in the European Parliament elections and local elections in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Why are there more Irish passport holders who do not have a vote than Irish passport holders that do? The interminable ‘interrogations’ strained and drained the life fluid from my soul. Importing and registering the car (see ToR and VRT above) put the agonies of an asylum seeker in perspective. There were multiple rejections from insurance companies. My Belgian insurance was not valid in Ireland; my Belgian or Luxembourg driving licenses unacceptable to most Irish insurance companies, although I had driven and resided in various countries in Europe and Asia; no claims bonuses of over 30 years standing were not acceptable. I have driven in the United States, Australia, Japan, the Middle East, Afghanistan and all over Europe, but my EU (sic) license would not allow me drive on EU-financed Irish roads!

Ireland may well be a good pupil in The European class – when it suits it. The free movement of goods, people, labour and services underpins the European pact. Those four freedoms are not always honoured in Ireland’s four green fields. EU car insurance does not cross Irish borders – hard, soft, invisible or not.

The Belgian health service is regarded as one of the finest in Europe, to which our personal testimonies would bear witness. We were reluctant to discharge ourselves from their supervision, particularly because of a serious illness that overshadowed our lives. We decided therefore to continue with their specialist care but still needed to register with a GP in Ireland for other general health issues. In all innocence and expectation, we applied to one of the local health centres, to be told that they were ‘full’. All seven doctors there had more files than they could manage. There was a shortage of GPs in Ireland, it appeared. A similar story was spun out at another centre. Then, at the third effort, we were told that the doctors would discuss our application at their next meeting, and that we would be informed, in due course, of their decision. This was my James Joyce moment. “Ireland, the old sow that eats her farrow.”

During the painful pilgrimage spanning many months, we had spoken with innumerable public servants, our compatriots, in a maze of buildings and offices. Long lexicons of words were exchanged, but it was not until almost the end of this process that we heard the words – “Welcome home.” It took about six months, but we finally got there, everyone and everything registered. We are now repatriated, legally resident, and faithfully paying the monthly utility bills that so interested our erstwhile interlocutors.

There are war wounds, but an entente cordiale has been declared. Now, from the terrace of our new temporary home there is a sea view, of one of the two seas that divide us from our recent life and home. Is this it? Is the anchor firmly embedded? I await my Nostradamus moment, and my bus pass, which should arrive next week – if all the application documents are correct!