Luggala.
One word and it brings to mind the beauty of Wicklow, the Guinness dynasty, the Beatles and A Day in the Life, their song about Tara Browne, the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger, Garech Browne and parties, wild parties we never imagined took place on our saintly isle. But they did.
Liam Collins paid a last visit to the estate and wrote a superb piece about it in today’s Sunday Indo.
It brought me back fifty-something years.
It was the mid sixties. I was about 12 or 13.
I was strolling from Mount Merrion towards Stillorgan, close to Oatlands College, on the old road to Bray.
I saw a large car approach from Stillorgan. It was a Rolls Royce, moving quite slowly.
As it drew close, the back window opened and I saw a man, lean across a woman to throw a cigarette butt out onto the road.
I only saw them for a couple of seconds.
The man looked like Mick Jagger and the woman like Marianne Faithful.
The window went up slowly.
And I looked at the smouldering butt on the ground.
I didn’t mention the incident to anyone for years. I mean, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful In Stillorgan?
I would have been locked up for suggesting such an unlikely occurrence.
It was years before I mentioned what, I said, I imagined I had seen.
To my amazement – and I can’t even remember who I was talking to – he said it more than likely was who I thought it was.
“Regular visitors to Luggala,” he said. “Probably on their way to the airport after a wild weekend.”
After that, I mentioned it to several people I thought might have an informed view.
Unanimously, they said it more than likely was Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithful.
Two questions remain.
Should I have reported him for littering?
Or kept the butt as a souvenir?
Paddy's World 