Of the Kingdom of Kerry - and a funeral

The much longed for week-away to Kerry finally got underway on Sunday 22nd September,

and it was touch and go that we might get our break at all. Three weeks previously I had a phone call from a cousin telling me that his father was in hospital in Cork, following a fall, and that the odds were not good.  He had only just celebrated his 90th birthday two weeks prior to that and it came as something of a shock that this vital, energetic man was laid low. His condition deteriorated and he went home to God on 21st September.

Being in Tralee at that time meant that we were able to journey up to Cork on the day of the funeral and return to our home-from-home on the same day.  Tom was a quiet, dignified man whose love of family and pottering about his garden for nigh on thirty years after his retirement was his whole reason for living.  He was married to my Father's youngest sister, and my heart aches for her.  They were married for over 55 years and only had eyes for each other.

If there is one place on this earth that I am not fond of, it is the city of Cork.  Every time we visit it we inevitably get lost.  Sunday night, however, I spent time with a google map sussing out the best route to take and, leaving early on Monday morning for the funeral, we actually found our way to the lovely little chapel where Mass was being celebrated for him with ease.  As we say here in Ireland, "he had a good life" and he slipped away surrounded by those who love him, peacefully.

Our journey home to Tralee, though tinged with sadness, was one of beauty.  Travelling west we stopped off in Ballyvourney, the last village in County Cork, at the last pub in the town and Himself had a pint of Murphy, Cork's answer to Guinness,  I had a glass of Merlot and we toasted a long life and a happy man. The view as we drove back through the mountains was spectacular that evening, a blue mist in the valleys and the setting sun highlighting the mountain tops with a warm golden glow.  Back at the Courtyard, it was good to sit in the kitchen and talk about the day and the life that Tom led and his lifelong love of steam trains. There is a joy in cooking in a kitchen that is strange yet familiar.

Tuesday,the weather giving showers, we drove out to Fenit and whiled away a pleasant hour or two watching a cargo ship being loaded, listening to the gulls cry and the spinnakers singing their tune on the yachts, cheek by jowl with trawlers, in this small marina.

Above the harbour looking down on the cove, a group of houses always attract my attention. One in particular is especially attractive, sheltered by pines, overlooking the statue of St Brendan the Navigator and the Sliabh Mish mountains.  Its blue cladding and white windows are reminiscent of a Cabot Cove house and one might expect Jessica Fletcher to come cycling down the pier on her bicycle.  Indeed the coastline boasts so many coves, one could imagine  Pierce Brosnan [with his Tralee roots] as OO7 coming ashore in dead of night to deal with smugglers in this sleepy harbour.  As children, my daughters were always disappointed that Willy the whale in Free Willy didn't appear.  I am sure the Orcas swim up the coast, just a little further out.

Wednesday saw us driving out over the Connor Pass to Dingle and onwards to Feoghannagh and the Murrioch, small villages out at the tip of the peninsula, windswept by the Atlantic gales and beautiful against the backdrop of those glorious mountains.

St. Brendan's Cove

At Slea Head the seagulls fight over bread we toss them, one so busy fighting for his territory that he fails to secure a treat for himself.

The beautiful Skelligs lie on a silver sea, and I never cease to be amazed by Sceilig Mhichil, and the monastery built on this bleak and barren rock protruding up from the Atlantic.

Out at Feoghannagh we watched a murmuration of Starlings like a tornado against the vast Atlantic sky.  

Edel joined us on Thursday night, and why wouldn't she?  She is a Kerrywoman at heart, and with the wonderful welcome Myra and Derry Daly give us at the Courtyard - a welcoming bottle of wine, homemade brown bread and Butler's chocolates, this truly is a home from home, add to it summer-like weather and you can keep the Bahamas.

On Friday I relive old memories of my childhood holidays in Tralee with a cousin.  Racing down Rock Street to watch the trains cross over on their way to Fenit, our cousin John arriving with pony and trap to take us to Mass in the Dominican church, and later when he had upgraded to a Ford Consul, the very epitome of elegance back in the day.  John passed away on the Friday before Tom.  I had a soft spot for John, he was the image of my Father, in looks and wit - they were first cousins and the resemblance was uncanny.  Ar dheis Dé a h-anamh dilís.

A Dublin spider made his home in the shelter of my wing mirror, and with considerable industry, made a beautiful web between the door and the window.  On the road to Castlegregory on Friday afternoon, we had to go tight to the fuchsia hedge to avoid a passing milk container lorry, his web was damaged. On Saturday he set about repairing his dew diamonded web, his annoyance was palpable.  I am glad to report he travelled back to Dublin without further mishap and now has a stock of fresh Kerry fly for the winter.

We reluctantly pulled away from the Courtyard on Sunday morning; I love being back home and with a change in the weather, the range is in full swing keeping us snug and warm.  Tuesday gave us gales and a leak in our bedroom ceiling.  Himself's language was blue when he took a look up into the old attic and saw sky beside the chimney.  He got on to the roofer immediately who turned up on the day, and hasn't been seen since, but that, as they say, is another story.

Myra Daly
Courtyard Cottages
Greenlawns, Blennerville, Co Kerry

tel 353667124494

353872069057
email welcome@countykerryholidays.com

Sun setting on Galway trip...

Last week we were going on the much vaunted trip to Galway.  That trip that we had pared down to the 11.25a.m., train, arriving at 13.44p.m., bus to Salthill, lunch at the Galleon restaurant, return to train for departure at 17.20.  The sun shone, and the garden called and we postponed to yesterday.  I am beginning to think there is something UP THERE deciding that we are not likely to get there this year.

I am not, however, discouraged.  On Saturday morning we were having a family breakfast and discussing the coming week ahead.  Himself was fretting that he had a list as long as his arm of things to do yet before we close the garden down for the winter.  When I read out my diary list of meetings regarding our village history exhibition, coffee dates with friends back from holidays and other summer pursuits, a re-decoration programme for the garden room [smallest room in the house needs a major rethink], and other obligations, Frances announced that we would be better leaving Galway until next year.  It is now on the list for the first week in October, according to Himself "We will get there this year...heavy emphasis on the THIS!".  I believe him.

When we built our new extension in 2010, by putting one wall at an angle, what should have been a narrow corridor suddenly became an area in which we could sit and enjoy the view.  It became a "room" by accident; Peter, our builder, was the one who named it The Garden Room.  I put a long mirror on the wall, one of those box presses from Lidl as a temporary measure, and some Chinese slate effect vinyl on the floor.  We painted the walls white as an undercoat for an, as yet to be chosen, colour and promptly forgot about it while we got on with the rest of the decorating.  

It has always been at the back of my mind to do something with it; the white, while fresh and "garden room" looking, being North facing is cold in winter, and I don't like the white box.  My beady eye has been assessing this area for the past few weeks and I have now decided that it shall be a light cream colour and I am on the look out for a nice chest to place under the mirror.  I already have a mahogany garden chair in it.  On cool days and cold winter afternoons, I can cosy up to the radiator enjoying a cup of tea and the view.  I made some cushion covers [sewn by hand] out of Mum's old curtains and the apricot and taupe flower on a creamy base colour picks up the floor vinyl and and warm's it up somewhat.  The same pale cream will greatly improve the walls.  Whenever visitors come, they always head for the garden room sighing that they could sit there forever.  Try holding a history group meeting in a room that has four doors off it and holds three people...and that's pushing your luck!

I hate sewing.  Sewing with machines that is.  We have an old sewing machine that was my Grandmothers, and which Mum had converted from manual to electric.  I was terrified of it as a child.  When you eventually got it going, it confused itself with a Gattling gun and shot out broken needles at a rate of speed that makes the modern machine gun look like slow motion.  The nuns at school were very keen that we young ladies would be good seamstresses.  I can hem for Ireland and my carrier bags made from leftover curtain material are popular among my friends.  Anything I sew by hand will never come undone.  This is wonderful until you need to unpick a line of stitching for some reason.

The history group has fallen into  groups, as was inevitable.  There are those of us whose families date back to Adam and Eve, those who probably arrived with the Postman, and those who landed five minutes ago.  The middle group don't know which side they fly with.  On the one hand they are sometimes scathing about the A&E group chats on family memories [nearly all inter-related] and on the other they're not too enthralled with the 5 Minuters.  The 5 Minuter's are determined to organise us all and tell us the history of our families and the village.  Wonderful.  They do more "popping in just for a minute" than Mapp did to Lucia when Lucia first rented Mallards*.  

One popped in the other day to tell me what to write about my family history for the exhibition.  Feeling distinctly Lucia-like I told her it was already written, done and dusted. She kindly told me she would "pop in later" to help me edit it and arrange it properly.  I am seriously considering seccession from the rest of the nation and declaring our garden the Independent Republic of Our Family.

The effect of all this "popping" is that the A&E group have, collectively, decided to present a single A4 sheet with a relevant photograph on their respective families for "blowing up" so they can be put on the "Exhibition Board".  The meeting tonight bids fair to  be interesting.  All this popping and blowing has left me in sore need of a cup of tea.

*Mapp & Lucia; E. F. Benson

September garden

The garden looks wonderful this September.  The rowan trees are full of berries, the packet of wildflowers [free with a tub of butter last spring] has delivered with two kinds of red poppies, cornflowers, pink flowers [as yet unnamed] which mix joyously with the invasive but 
undeniably pretty convolvulus.

I love the garden in September on days like this; the sky and the sea meeting seemlessly, bee's droning as they go about their business and butterflies dancing on the trees.

The sight of a specklewood butterfly sunbathing on the leaves of the sumach tree has always enthralled me; they were a favourite of Mum's, she always associated them with balmy autumn days.  

I love the garden, and I love this garden.  It was a granite quarry from the 1700's tgo 1866 [approx.] and when the quarrymen moved out, my great-grandfather and great-great grandmother moved, literally, up the cliff and into the cottages with a 99 year lease and a measure of security for the  twelve children they were eventually to go on to have.  Eight of them survived; the youngest, my Grandfather, with his father, founded the dairy farm that was the family business for the better part of a century.  The lease was eventually bought out and, today, my branch of the family lives where the dairy farm once was.

Over the years, since it ceased being a dairy farm in 1958, Mum created a garden at the side of the house, wherein she grew fruit and veg and flowers.  We still try to maintain the flowers in her garden

and today Himself is giving it a thorough tidy.  We are in Galway today...not...but that's another story and the betting is on for Monday being Galway day.  In the meantime, the garden is not suffering from our absence.  He's tidying the garden, and I'm doing the indoor chores.  

The surplus jam and chutney she sold at the local shop in the village, I can still see her hovering over her "jam-pan" with a red gingham apron tied around her waist; "Country Living" or "Period Living" personified.  Her dahlia's won prizes at the various horticultural shows and her white soda bread frequently walked away with the challenge cup at the nearest annual agricultural show.

In my childhood, "Bleak House" would have been a better name for here, with arctic winds sweeping down from the north and eastern howlers in from Wales, and only gorse and cotoneaster for shelter.  She managed to keep two flower beds surviving under the front windows of the house, ablaze with peacock tulips, marigolds, pansies and daffs in spring.  Lupins, penstimon and nasturtiums in summer.  Those were the days when she had more time for gardening, limited by areas of bare granite.

Mum and Dad planted a blue cedar in 1967 and in my mind's eye I can still see them seeking enough soil to dig a hole to plant the sapling.  She in a yellow sleeveless linen dress and he in khaki trousers and soft cotton shirt.  After Dad died on 22 March 1970, the night Ireland won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, Mum went back to teaching full time and the garden took second place to her work and her various groups, such as the ICA  which is the Irish version of the Women's Institute, and her grand daughters.  Various pine trees had seeded themselves, the ubiquitous gorse had crept even closer to the house and brambles ran riot.  For Frances and Edel, "Gran's" was a wonderful jungle in their childhood, just as in mine when it was the "high mesa's" where in we played  "Cowboy's and Indian's" among the granite rocks.  My pal Alex and I were always the "Indians".

On 22 March, 2008, Mum quietly went to Dad, reunited after 38 years and Himself and I took over.  Bit by bit Himself cut, sawed, chopped and fought his way through the land that time forgot.

TIMBER!!!!!!

Before and after

Blackberries grow where we want them to now

Instead of briars

Cyclamen on the bank 

Successive gorse fires had made for healthy fertile soil where once there was bare granite.  We had firewood out of it for the range for five years.  All over the years the Blue Cedar, now well over 60' high, kept watch over the house.

Himself has the huge lawn he always wanted, I have my woodland areas where frttilaria's dance in spring breezes, shaded by the blue cedar, alive with birdsong from the other trees.  Fat wood-pigeon graze the lawns where once dairy cattle waited entrance to the milking parlour, magpie's thieve food buried by our handsome fox.  At the foot of a small cliff blackberries grow and Himself and I have enjoyed blackberry and ice cream for the past few weeks.  On top of the cliff, ling and heather have returned and the gorse is firmly controlled acting as a boundary barrier.

There are rifts of wild grass and rose-bay willow herb, orange lillies grow along the small dry stone walls Himself built, a reminder of my Kerry ancestry.  The blue cedar still hovers over the house.  This year, because of the winter storms, we have halved it's height and cut dead limbs off, lightened the length of the healthy limbs.  She is, once again, the supreme queen of our garden.

Last night at dusk, as I pulled the curtains across the study window, I swear I saw Mum and Dad standing beneath the blue cedar smiling lovingly at me.

Mum's virginia creeper still going strong

Down on the Bog

Yes, you've guessed it, another week and no Galway.  Still, I'm not grousing over this. We spent a lovely couple of hours down on the Bog, deep in rural Ireland yesterday, and it was pure Heaven, as they say in Kerry.

Following a phone call from sister-in-law, who inherited Himself's family home in rural Ireland, but lives and works in Dublin, he had to investigate a neighbour's report of a missing roof tile and the possibility of a leak into one of the bedrooms.  Despite the fact that my 'to do' list was longer than my arm, I threw all aside and headed off with him.  I am so glad I did; you know the song "It's such a perfect day...I'm glad I spent it with you..."? well yesterday was just such a day.

On the road early, picnic lunch packed and two flasks of tea - just in case we might need an extra cuppa or so [teaholics 'r' us] we thanked God for a beautiful sunny day after a night of high wind and driving rain.

Himself comes from the middle of nowhere, [his description], rush hour is last feed by wild birds in what was his Mother's garden of a summers evening.  Friends and relations of sister in law's who visit always comment on the silence down there, but in fact it is a very noisy place.  With cattle lowing in the bottom fields, sheep on the hillside making their contribution to the cacophony and sparrows, swallows and Mr Big the friendly garden robin - the place is drowned with sound.  

It is not a place I would like to live in.  The solitude is not the problem, but I am a product of my genes, and with a strong Kerry, Limerick, Sligo West coast and East coast background, I like the sound of the sea and the view from the mountains.  I like mid week breaks spent there when it is just the two of us, our girls visit occasionally, but are sea and Mountain lovers by preference.

After we had checked out the house, all being well indoors and organised with the local roofer to come and replace the missing tile, Himself was disinclined to hang around.  It is only three years since his Mother passed away, and I know he felt her absence yesterday.  It was one of those type of days she would have loved, wandering down the lane, picking blackberries and grousing about the damage the rabbits have done.

"Let's go to the bog", he suggested and, nothing loathe, I agreed.  We haven't visited his bog land area in about twenty years, and under a new Government scheme, turf is no longer being cut on it.  The scheme was introduced to protect a landscape that is slowly disappearing and to try to replenish the natural wildlife.

Shortly after noon, we drove along the country road that brings us to the lane into the bog.  It was hard finding it at first; in twenty years it has become overgrown, trees have shot up and the vast open expanse we knew looks more like heathland with rowan, ash and sycamore dotted around.

There is a long bóreen* into his section of bog, overgrown on either side of the path; you have to be careful to stay in the middle of the path.  On each side of it are deep channels for drainage.  It is very tempting to reach out and try to pick blackberries from their briars in some places.  Being an avid wildflower seed collector, the temptation of the rowan trees and the vetches that grow along the path, I had to caution myself to be careful.  Himself was like a fussy mother wandering down the lane before me, watch this, mind your step, don't step in that fox dropping...[as if I wasn't well acquainted with foxes from here]but, eventually we reached a part where it was safe to thrown down the tarpaulin and a plaid blanket over it and take out our picnic lunch.

There is something very special about the taste of bacon, egg and tomato sandwiches washed down by lashings of hot tea and followed by mouth wateringly good fruit cake.  It has that sumptuous feeling of a Famous Five outing and I fully expected Timmy the dog to come bouncing down the lane at any minute.  There was absolutely no sound at all, at first, except the wind across the bog.  Various butterflies softly wafted across the lane. Bees busily hurried from flower to flower.

We sat contentedly eating our meal, happy in the silence that was between us and all around us.  After a while, a little way up the lane there was a rustle in the hedgerow; we held our breath sitting as still as possible for two 60 somethings with arthritis, and a slinky black form ran across the bóreen about two hundred yards away from us.  A mink.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  There was once a mink farm in the vicinity, over two decades ago, but with the decline in the fur industry, many were released into the countryside to wreak havoc on the local wildlife.  

Over the years with trapping, shooting and poisoning their numbers have declined, but...they are still there.  Far more vicious than the native weasel, (we don't have stoats), they make pine martin's look like the friendly house cat.  Himself was uneasy but, as I pointed out, if Minnie the Mink was that curious she, or indeed he, would have come out of the hedgerow closer to us.  Besides which I had a stout walking stick with me.  He soon settled back into the drowsy relaxed half sleep the mink had awakened him from. 

I entertained myself gathering vetch seeds, and trying to capture a picture of blackberries on my camera phone, not very successfully I'm afraid.  Across the ditch the bog was covered in a carpet of thick purple heather; as I roused Himself and began to pack away our things, I heard the very sound I had been hoping for, far across the bog came the call of a grouse.  

We left reluctantly, ambling up the bóreen - enjoying the smell of ripening blackberries that always reminds me of liquorice all- sorts sweets.  That smell that, as a child I dreaded, the smell of back to school and long winter nights of homework, hours spent in a lonely goal on a freezing, windswept hockey pitch.  Standing waiting for the game to come down the field so that you would have something to do.  There are times when a good home team is not a blessing to a frozen goalie.

To-day, that smell resonates with the joyous thought of warm winter fires, casseroles cooking in the range.  Slow cooked food with it's glorious smell floating through the house.  As Eldest daughter always says "the smell to come home to"; I love it.

We called back to the house to pick up some items that sister in law wanted brought back to Dublin; taking the long way, we drove down to the local lake just as the cattle were slowly meandering back up the hill after taking a drink.

Yesterday was a meandering type of day.  Like the slow cooked winter food in a range, it had its smells, sounds and like a good meal eaten slowly with great enjoyment, it will last in our memory as ...just such a perfect day.

*bóreen from the Irish word Bóthair = road, bóreen = lane.

On going to Galway - today.

Just I thought I would treat myself to putting up a picture of Lettermore in Galway for this blog, I might as well, it's as close as we got to Galway today.  Himself announced on Tuesday that, come hail, rain or..."yes, snow", I interrupted his flow with something less than my usual tolerance.  Last night I got everything ready, and this morning, after a sleepless night in case I missed the alarm, I awaited his awakening before I put a toe out on the carpet.  Aha! I'm getting too fly for that mistake at 6 a.m.  

Opening a sleepy eye, Beloved greeted me with "What's the weather like?" 

"Well," I replied, "at 5 a.m., there was a heavy downpour with hail stones but it's offering sunshine at the moment".  

There was a silence.  Followed by more silence.  "What do you think", he asked, snugly wrapped up with 86% of the duvet tightly wrapped around him, "will we go or will we leave it until next week?". 

I'm up to that dodge as well.  "It's entirely up to you, Sweetheart, whatever you decide is fine by me" [this with a smirk into the pillow].

Even the early rising birds are amused by him, at this stage, or maybe that's bemused.I'm sure I heard one tweet "he'll stay in his cocoon".  I had a long chat with myself on Sunday about leaving the "Day Away" decision up to him.  If I say yes, and we go and it rains - "well, you wanted to come here, I didn't" is probably number one refrain on a list of thousands.  If I say "no" then "Ah but you never want to go anywhere" would be number one on the other list; playing safe was a cosy option and I grabbed it for all I was worth.  Mum used to do this to Dad, she called it "Rug Pulling", with capitals, and it always worked.  It worked this time too.  Rolling over into more of the duvet he announced "Arra, sure we'll leave it until next week, and we'll go to ......[wait for it]....CORK!."

So, we got up at 9 o'clock and headed off to do the weeks grocery shopping.  Over breakfast, the Wise One decreed that we shall go to Waterford one day [notice that casual 'one day'] next week as that train leaves at a respectable 10.25 a.m., (that's, as I pointed out to him if it doesn't sit down at Sallins, Hazelhatch or in the departure station) and we shall [shall we?] arrive in Waterford at 12.20 and the train home is at 14.50 pip emma.  Well Emma might just well get the pip, whoever Emma is, because if that train manages to run to schedule, then there will be miracles in the air.

At this stage I'm not quite sure if this is beginning to be an episode out of an Irish comedy or am I blurry irritated with it.  It's messing up my schedule for one thing, trying to organise history group meetings, meeting up with an old friend home from America, a days shopping with youngest daughter and a days photography with eldest, a bit of blogging and a bit of research on another project of mine... well, it's beginning to get in the way. A discussion while travelling out to our local Aldi this morning ran something like this

Me:       You know the original plan was to have a weekly trip somewhere we wanted to see

              travelling by car, and once a month a trip to Galway [heard of that place before?] or 

              Waterford by train.

Him:      Well, things have gotten in the way, the rain, that inner ear infection you got, that 

               funeral we had to go to, and then there was...

Me:        Well, I suggest that you and I take the "car" trips together, we try for Waterford next week and that we can take off in a couple of weeks time for more local trips to either Balbriggan or Maynooth on the D.A.R.T, then in October you can head down to Thurles for lunch with your old pal Jimmy, and I can head off, or do a few of my own things while you're away for the day...

The response was a soulful look accompanied by a little boy hurt voice telling me that he likes being in my company.  6'2" doesn't carry off little boy hurt too well with me.  I have Kerry blood in my veins and am not for turning.  I am a determined woman.

Me:      O.K., we'll see what we can organise [pause here for quick reassessment] Nooo! wait a minute.  I pointed out my old argument of 35 years together, 34 of them while he was working I was organising household, children etc., etc., and had made a life of my own.  So we are now agreed on the above agenda of car trips, local trips on D.A.R.T [Dublin Area Rapid Transit]

and lunch [solo run] in October to Thurles, Co. Tipperary - oh! and one day next week we're going to either Waterford or Cork.

Lovely.   

In the meantime, he'll be where he wants to be.  In the garden wrestling gorse, cutting hedges, murdering the buddleja, and planning his chicken coop.

I did mention the chicken coop didn't I.   Last year it was called the chicken run, but the girls had too much fun with that title and it acquired a new title this year.  O.k., so the story on the chicken accommodation is roughly this [using the patented time schedule for demonstration purposes, patented by Himself]

March 2008, I inherit and we move in full time in July 2008 after some minor roof repairs and decorating are done.  August 2008 he announces he is dismantling Mum's hen run and turning it into a vegetable patch.

Christmas 2009, while watching me draw up plans for a new extension to the house, he draws up Plan #1/sometime in-20?? for a hen house.

August 2010 extension commenced, vegetable plot prepared.  

December 2010 extension completed.

Still with me?

January 2011 Planning Application for Hen Accommodation Plan #2/anytime in near future/20?? is put before me.  I tell him that, apart from that I don't want it as near to the house as Mum had her hen run, and the whiff on hot summer days was something else, and that another part of the garden will be too cold in winter and far too hot in summer for the poor hens, he's free to put said hen accommodation wherever he chooses.

August 2011  Various brochures on various types of hen accommodation are acquired at Tinahely Annual Agricultural Show, Co. Wicklow.  They make an interesting contribution to the coffee table.

November 2011 - June 2012, rambling discourse on types of hen ensue.  He wants ten, I tell him that is too many.  Nearly everyone on the lane keeps hens, so the days [when Mum was alive] of selling off your surplus to the local shop have passed him by.  Besides, I remind him of his cholesterol level.  I suggest two Marrans, and he wants Bantams, I suggest Silkies and he decides to investigate Leghorns.  At the moment Ostriches are definitely off the list but the possibility of bustards is not.  Mum would be so proud of him, she kept quail, guinea fowl, marrans, silkies, woodcock, pheasants...I'd settle for one hen, just for a home reared egg!

September 2012 Dining room table [a large, long one] covered for two months with plans for Hen house/run/accommodation/you name it.  Dinner party for friends in early November necessitates re-acquiring dining table, plans sulkily put away.

December 2012  "Did anyone see my hen house plans?"

A silent 2013.

June 2014 "Why did I get convert your Mum's hen run into a vegetable patch?"  

                    "...'er, we wanted fresh veg and last years haul was fabulous?????"

August 2014.  "Where's that magazine you were reading the other day with those fancy hen trailers in it".

Himself was last seen, when not plotting train trips to Galway, digging out foundations for a hen run.  He built a two story house 5'2[H] x 3'6"[W] x 4'7"[D] twelve years ago for the cat, it will, it appears, be the template for the hen shack!

The cat currently sleeps in an abandoned cardboard box [full of old t-shirts belonging to youngest daughter who was throwing them out] on the veranda.  On winter nights she occupies the bottom left hand corner of eldest daughter's bed...it's nearer the radiator.

On that note...

On being back in village life

Six weeks ago I was sitting down having a quick cuppa, pondering on life in general, when there was a tap on the kitchen window.  We don't get passers-by here as we are up a long lane, rather off the beaten track.  It was a neighbour, from down the lane, with whom I had grown up in this village.  To be more accurate, her sister and I are of an age and played cheyneys, hopscotch, and all the other childhood games together in a sunshine blessed childhood. Maura is seven years older than I am, and back in the day that was tantamount to light years.

"We're getting a history group together" she said, breathless from the climb up to our house.  "It's part of that group who keep the village tidy, something to do with heritage" she continued.  "I thought of you instantly, so are you game?  Will you come down to the pub on Saturday morning after the clean-up and we can find out whats what?".  I agreed, but pointed out to her that owing to a major disc problem in my back, I have never been able to take part in the clean-ups, and that this might cause some resentment.  "Ah! let it", said she.  "Aren't we too old to be pluckin' weeds out of the footpath, and don't we contribute financially, and anyway I've the same problem myself and don't physically participate".  Enough said, I was in.

On that balmy Saturday morning, it was arranged that a meeting would be held during the week to organise what it was all about.  Maura, Therese, Louise and I met up at the end of the lane and headed for our local.  There we met the chairperson, new to the village, twenty years ago, who told us that "being as how" we were probably the longest residing in the village, we "may know about the history of it".  There were jobs for everyone, she said.  It was like some sort of corporate business meeting.  Laura, another one of the villages "old residents" decided not to come in on the history group; she and her husband elected to join the graphics group; we agreed to keep her posted on our research and any historical information she had, she would pass it on to us.

Between us, we constitute the sum total of 254 years of shared history between us.  Our families all arrived from County Wicklow in the 1800's.  Mine after the Great Famine of 1847.  We're here from sometime around 1856-'59; Maura's family came in 1870, Therese is a relation of Maura's and descended from the same root stock and Louise can trace her family back to 1880. Some of us have seven generations to show and others five.

Resentment?  A little, from "blow ins" of only 80 years.  Bewilderment from those who landed here 20-40 years ago, the old families are all inter-related, except mine.  My family tended to marry out.  Throw a stone in this village and you'll hit someone who is related to somebody, and newbies find this bewildering.  It's a village of three parts, really.  Upper and Lower, clinging to the hill side.  The Upper part being the oldest.  The third part is the "Who's Who of Generations living here".

Mum's childhood friend [family arrived here in 1865] has joined us.  I love this; I get to share memories with a wonderful lady 86 years old and as mentally acute as a razor.  Her knowledge of village history is almost computer-like, and as I learned all the history from my Mother over the years, if Mary gets stuck, I have the back-up information.  Following on from that first meeting we met in my house, and over tea and sweet cake we never saw five hours fly by.

In the past six weeks, we have met every week.  The major group is keen to hold an exhibition of village history in the autumn and we are working towards that goal.  We do approximately four per cent work on it, and the rest is glorious.  Hours of chat, memories of people long gone but very lovingly and in some cases unlovingly remembered; tonnes of laughter and above all a new found sort of kinship.  We have decided to continue on meeting every month just for the company and the craic.*

We are the last of our breed.  The twenty plus age difference between Mary and the rest of us is non-existent.  We were raised with the same principles as she was.  Life was hard in the village for her family and our families; but there was a pride, a joy and a fervour in making something of oneself that encompassed the generations right up to ours.  Social media has changed a lot of things nowadays; some of it for good, and some with disastrous outcomes.  

My night was made last Tuesday when Louise and Therese walked me home from a meeting in Maura's house.  We do that for each other - really it is just an excuse to continue the gossip.  We stood for another hour chatting over my garden gate at midnight.  As they took their leave Louise turned to me and, calling me not by my present surname but by that of my Grandfather, said "see you next Tuesday, I'll bring the buns!".

* craic = [Ir.] fun, used to describe a joyous occasion.

So he's retired, and we're going travelling around the country! Yeah!

 OH, now fully retired, and the recipient of a free-travel pass from the Government.  It's a lovely ornament in his pocket, truly it is.  He has me persecuted since last March telling me of all the places we're going to go to in the Summer.  Lunch in Galway, by train, for the day; Waterford, here we come [not enthused about this one because of the trains that serve the route - see previous blog] Cork, Tralee, we're off, says he.  

Yes.  Well, I have a theory.  I don't think the dear man wants to leave his precious garden, but, being a country man, and an Irish country man at that, the thought of having something for nothing is eating into him.  He longs to avail of "free travel", but his ponds need cleaning out or the tadpoles may not turn into frogs.  That hedge has grown 50ft in the past ten minutes, it could have the whole place covered if we go away.  Ah sure the rain might come.

Take this month for example.  On the first Tuesday in July he announced that this is IT, we are going to Galway on Tuesday, hail, rain or snow. [Remember, it's July and it's heatwave time]. I had been the cause of one missed trip in June due to a stomach bug, but on the first Tuesday in July I arose at 6a.m., got my back pack loaded with necessary book, notepad, and CD player to while away the journey.  I went into the bedroom to call the little darlin' at 7.  Eldest daughter was bringing us into Heuston Station to catch the 9.25 to Galway.  Gently shaking him, I told him it was time to be up and about.  "Ah, sure there's another twenty minutes yet before we have to get up" says the intrepid explorer.  Twenty minutes later he tells me that the weather forecast said it might be raining in Dublin, [on Ireland's east coast], so we might as well not chance it raining in Galway [Ireland's west coast] in case we got wet.

Still, the day had benefits.  I texted Eldest daughter and told her she was off the hook for taxiing us into Dublin.  Packing a lunch, I pushed him out of the garden [the rain having missed us by the breadth of the Atlantic] and into the car.  "Where to" says the Alan Titchmarch-fan; "The Dublin Mountains" replies the long suffering "!Are we going tomorrow!" wife.  God can be very good.  He gives us delights when we least expect them.

Over the years I have travelled the length and the breadth of the Dublin Mountains.  As Mountains go, in global terms they're only Very Large Hills, but they are the mountains of my home county.  I have seen them in all weathers, but this time we found a small boreen that we had never seen before.  In Irish boreen [boar-een] is a lane that is not quite a road, but definitely not a dirt track.  This one descended down into the valley in stages.  The further we travelled, the more beautiful it got.  The air was heavy with the scent of roses, honeysuckle.  Ox-eye daisies large as plates lazily swayed in the delicate breeze; rabbits sat in smaller lanes leading onto farmland looking for all the world as if they had hopped out of Watership Down. Bee's drunkenly wafted from flower to flower and hover flies darted about not quite sure which blossom needed attention next.

Around a corner we saw Scottish Highland Cattle milling around a pond, completely unexpected, another bend in the road revealed a gaggle of geese strolling up the middle of the boreen.  If Tess of the d'Urbervilles had stepped out from a cottage it would not have surprised me.  We did come across the local Tess, but she was too busy with her mobile phone - Facebook - no doubt, to pay much heed to what beauty surrounded her.  By now we were right down in the bottom of the valley, I half expected the Doones to come riding past, and then we saw it.  A beautiful lake, placid with mallard sailing on it.  Surrounded by trees and fields full of wild flowers.  

We decided there and then that, if we can find the boreen again, we'll be back in the autumn when the colours will make this place truly heavenly.  It was only as we ascended up the winding road out of the valley that it suddenly struck me that we had been in Bohernabreena.  I had often heard my Mum telling me about a girl she worked with who came from there.  A place of which you could say "the land that time forgot".

Two bends over the length of half a mile when we reached the top of the valley put us back on the main road to Tallaght in Dublin.  Traffic roared up and down, and no rabbit worth his carrot would risk his cottontail to go near that road.  Still, it didn't take the magic off the day.  We had had our picnic beside the lake, watched intently by a flock of sheep who commented endlessly and reinforced my dislike of sheep.  I'll take cattle any day and dairy cows are Number One.

The following Tuesday was nominated Travel to Galway day.  This time I packed the bag the night before and waited for Himself to get out of the bed before I stuck a toe out.  He was sure he heard a rattle of thunder, it was too hot to travel [right enough it was 25 degrees and rising and this at 8 in the morning].  We'll go next week he announced.  No, we won't came the reply.  I had shoved all the things I had to do into one week to be free to travel with him, and nothing and not even love would make me change that week.  This Tuesday the Galway races were on.  The train, I was told, would be too full; too many people drinking and making things uncomfortable so - next Tuesday I hear we're off to      C O R K!   I'll let you know if we get there!