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!

Irish Rural life and the way it might appear

On one of our recent trips away to rural Ireland, OH and stayed in a small village overnight, while attending a wedding.  The wedding was another story in itself, but I was amused by the Parish Newsletter which I discovered, was written by the parish committee - typed up by the local spinster on her new Windows Vista computer, [second hand in a thrift shop, and sure isn't it workin' grand, as the lady of the house we were staying in told me.]

The newsletter had all the local gossip in it, and it set me to thinking how lovely it was to find a newsletter that wasn't pc.  Sometimes I wonder have we become so politically correct that we cannot speak our hearts for fear we'll land ourselves in Court, prosecuted for libel and whatever else.  Anyway, I took a couple of parish newsletters that I have come across in my journeys over the years, and put one together, totally fictional, but something on the lines of what once might have been commonplace in rural Ireland.  Castlebattery and the other villages are a figment of my imagination, but there are many Castlebattery's in Ireland, Fr. Finnery is another piece of fiction, but in my childhood there were many Fr. Finnerys' lectures roaring out from the pulpit and I am sure that Henrietta Delaney would be truly overcome by the holiday slides if she existed.  Maybe some day she will.

CASTLEBATTERY PARISH NEWS LETTER     

MASS TIMES: Sat. 19.30 [if Fr. Finnery is home from the races in Kilmageegee.]

Sundays: 10.30 and 12.45 [please be on time for the 12.45 Mass as Mrs O’Shewlawan likes to have the Father’s dinner on the table by 1.30 so as she can get away to the bingo in the parish hall at 2.30].

Castlebattery Tidy Towns

Following on their big marks increase in this year's Tidy Towns competition, the hard working Committee are already preparing for next years competition and towards this end, they are holding a Church Gate Fundraising Collection on the week-end of October 12th - 13th and a Table Quiz on the 15th November in the Four Flowers Hotel Castlebattery at 9.30pm. Following the exertions of their fundraising efforts, the Committee will be on their annual trip to Santa Ponsa in early December and so no committee meetings will be held until 14^th January. Please support the committee.

Ceili Dancing

The County organisation responsible for promoting all non-competitive céilí dancing amongst every age group in Ireland, has been awarded a grant from the County Council to organise six céilí dances  between now and early December.  The first of these will take place in St Declan's Parish Centre, Barnahoolia on Sunday 23th October from 2:30-4:30 p.m.  All are welcome to attend and participants will be guided through 5 céilí dances by certified céilí dance teachers.  No experience is necessary.  Fr. Finnery has stated that this is not a match-making ceili and will all couples attending please observe the proprieties.

Admission is £5 (£2 for childer) including a break for refreshments, the refreshments will be sponsored by the Cummagweela Golf and Pitch and Putt Society, as they have a surplus of beer which Mick the Ferret found in the basement of the Four Flowers hotel, the beer is only five years past its past due date.  Just come on the day or phone Marty Hourican for further information.

Sport

Hard luck to Knockemdawn Hurling Club which lost the Intermediate County Hurling final to Killawaspa last week-end.  Father Finery has stated that the Sunday collection in the Church of the Blessed Martyr, Castletownless, is not to be put aside and used for condolence pints in Barney Mulligan’s pub on Sunday night.

P.s.

We wish Frockenstown every success in the Senior County hurling final next Sunday afternoon in Ballymuckla Park against the Killawilla Senior team.  It is to be hoped that they will have better luck than the Inter team.  New jerseys have been issued to avoid confusion with the Killawilla team as happened last year when Ballymuckla wore, with pride, white jerseys with a pink stripe and yellow sleeves, and Killawilla wore pink jerseys with a yellow stripe and white sleeves.  We have it on good authority from the Haymaker Quigley over in Bannawanton that Frockenstown is wearing navy and red jerseys this year.  Killawilla will take to the field sporting their new red and navy jerseys on Sunday.

Life in rural Ireland was, despite current revelations in the media, innocent, and moved at a slow pace.  The majority of citizens had no idea of what went on in homes for unmarried mothers.  Looking back, it is hard to imagine that there should be such ignorance, but the ignorance was in the behaviour of those who perpetrated what went on there, and in the families who sought to hide what they considered their shame, in such places.  Nobody asked questions, and there was an innocence in the acceptance by the people of church teaching.  What was overlooked, and should never be overlooked is the fact that people are people with all the good and bad that resides within every individual, and being a member of a religious order is neither an excuse nor a cure for the inner self.

I remember how delighted people would be that the local curate had called, if the Parish Priest paid your house a visit, sure weren't you mixing in high society altogether was the general thought.  It was the hope of every mother then that if you had four children one would become a priest, one a nun, one go into the civil service and one would stay at home and care for you in your old age, and sure, if they managed to get married after you were dead and gone, wouldn't that be wonderful altogether.

My maternal Grandmother, a lovely elegant lady, annoyed her own Mother by marrying a man 18 years older than her.  When he died nine years after they married, of Parkinson's Disease, Great-Grandmother resumed communication with her daughter - to tell her how stupid she had been, marrying and now left to rear three children aged 7, 3 [my Mother] and 18 months.  When the eldest died at the age of 11 of diphtheria, Great Grandmother informed her daughter that this would never have happened if she had done as she was told.  Join a nunnery.  Ah! charitable christian Ireland.  May you never return to that attitude.  Gradually, over the years, with every house in the country having at least one t.v., the rural Ireland of yesterday is dying away.  I have no regret for the loss of the cruelty and hardship that was put on people, but for the gentle innocence and the old fashioned courtesy that is passing, that I do regret.  

I refuse to let go of the lovely innocence of my youth, both in suburban and rural Ireland. Childhood holidays where the rainy days were spent making button pictures, the buttons supplied from my paternal Grandmother's enormous sewing box, shoe bags for school in September, hand stitched using leftover pieces of chintz curtains.  To this day, I still hand stitch bags for everything; bags to hold newspapers until everyone has had a chance to read them. Bags to hold the unopened packs of kitchen towel rolls and save space in the kitchen.  They nestle between a book case and a press in the study.  The latest effort is Toile de Juouy [blue and white]; I have hand stitched the cream and cinnamomn cushion covers on the garden room chair - the material once adorned my Mother's windows as very pretty curtains.  Why not use a sewing machine I hear you ask?  Well, when we had sewing class in school, being left handed I was awkward, and the machine at home fired needles out from it like a Bofors gun.  That put me off sewing machines for life.  The nuns were insistent that we "lefties" should use our right hands as we were "spawn of the devil" if we didn't.  I can sew and write with either hand, but typing I still lead with my left hand, a fact that irritated the nun that taught me.  A right handed lady, she feared for my soul with my typewriter!

'Tis glad I am to be Irish

Wind harp

[John Montague]

The sounds of Ireland,

that restless whispering you never get away from,

seeping out of low bushes and grass,

heather-bells and fern,

wrinkling bog pools,

scraping tree branches,

light hunting cloud,

sound hounding sight,

a hand ceaselessly combing and stroking the landscape,

till the valley gleams like the pile upon a mountain pony's coat.

The Farmer's Son

[T. D. Sullivan]

Where'er are scattered the Irish nation, 

In foreign lands or on Irish ground,

In every calling and rank and station

Good men and true will always be found;

But 'midst their masses

And ranks and classes,

When noble work must be dared and done,

No heart's more ready,

No hand's more steady

Than the heart and hand of a Farmer's son.

His homely garb has not fashion's graces,

But it wraps a frame that is lithe and strong;

His brawny hand may show labour's traces,

But 'tis honest toil that does no man wrong.

For generous greeting,

For social meeting,

For genial mirth or for harmless fun,

'Midst high or low men,

'Midst friend or foemen,

Oh where's the match for a farmer's son?

Ireland

[Francis Stuart]

Over you falls the sea light, festive yet pale

 as though from the trees hung candles alight in a gale

To fill with shadows your days, as the distant beat

of waves fill the lonely width of many a western street.

Bare and grey and hung with berries of mountain ash,

Drifting through ages with tilted fields awash,

Steeped with your few lost lights in the long Atlantic dark,

Sea-birds' shelter, our shelter and ark.

OH  has retired, and we now venture off on "day-trips" to various places.  He is now entitled to free travel on bus and train, and this has opened a whole new vista.  Some of his great travel plans come to naught; being more experienced than he with Ironród Eireann, I am somewhat underwhelmed with the Dublin to Waterford train.  Over the years while he was working and the girls were at school, I usually paid an annual summer visit to a relative; my journey taking me to Athy in Co. Kildare, on the Dublin Waterford line.  I have an abhorrence of the area known as Hazelhatch.  I am sure that the people who live in Hazelhatch are perfectly wonderful; but they have my sympathy.  Two and a half hours sitting a mile out from Hazelhatch on a train that has chosen to sit down, when I pick my annual day out, has not enhanced the Dub/Wat line for me.  This is not an odd hiccup.  No, it is more of a regular feature.

 The last trip was 40 minutes delay [I was flabbergasted when the train started to move], the one before that we sat for 1hr:58 minutes, two and a half hours the previous one...why didn't I just drive down?  Well, the rewards for taking the train [when it travels as per schedule] are hares dancing in a field, cattle running across another field to look at the train, a lone white horse with windblown tail and mane standing in a boggy field.  On the return journey the rewards are manifold,  the setting sun lying golden across the green fields, colouring the May [Hawthorn] and elder bushes, rabbits grazing 'neath the shelter of a ditch or low wall; calling to mind Watership Down, and tractors, days work done, heading back to the farmyard.  This is MY Ireland. The 9p.m., train never sat down yet, Hazelhatch or otherwise.

We have agreed, pro tem, that he and some of his recently retired friends can take the Waterford trip, lunch and a few pints, a boy's day out while I get on with whatever it is I want to do.  In two weeks time we are heading down to Galway for the day.  Train to the city, bus to Salthill, lunch in the Galleon restaurant, stroll along the prom, bus back to train and home by ten. T'will be a grand day no doubt.  Weather permitting.

Some years ago E.D and I took this trip in March.  She was treating me for my birthday and it was a Grand Day.  The weather proved mild, and we got to do everything we wanted.  I brought a notebook along with me to jot down anything that tickled my fancy and the conversations on the train down to Galway had me in stitches:

"...Carty said he hadn't a knee nor a knickers on him when he joined the club..."

"...pinta green stuff spread all over his face to take the redness outa that puss of his and he that high on blood pressure tablets..."

"...mind you, Mickeleen The Ferret said yer man's very nice, not like most as come down from Dublin with their uppity *D4 idea's..."

"...herself at home couldn't go to the Barnabullia dinner dance 'cos she had to stay home and watch them Kardizzynan's on dat show, now they've got the sattylite..."

There's nothing like a country train to hear all sorts.  Reputations are made and broken, news is passed along and all of life is there.  Irish life that is, and long may it, in it's uniqueness, last.  

"...told him them cattle of his had the scour, OOOH! yes, powerful bad it was too, but looka, would ye tink he'd listen...vet is drivin' 'round town in his big jeep on de profit he's making on them cows and their effen scour so he is...l

I am look forward to our day trips; some by car and some by train.  We dine out in local hotels and restaurants, and my face is nearly like stone nowadays trying not to laugh out loud and "make a holy show" of myself.

"Ah! Ireland, Mother Ireland, on your own facing the Atlantic spray, 'tis God's own gift I was born here!".  A quote from my Father, who loved his native Kerry and wore his county pride like a blanket. 

* D4 a very wealthy area of Dublin full "glamorous people; one of the most desirable area's to live in in Dublin.

The Great War and our Village

Last year while out on one of our country drives, OH and I came across a charity shop in a small village in Co. Westmeath.  It was one of those places that had everything from a needle to an anchor and my biggest regret was neither of us had come away with our cards and only had whatever was in our pocket.  Despite this, I managed to buy a lovely linen table cloth, complete with embroidered shamrocks and edging that was only slightly faded in the sunlight.  A good wash with lemon juice in the water brought it back to being near enough to its usual white.  I paid the princely sum of approximately £5 in euros for it.  The bargain of the century in my opinion.  Since then it has graced my kitchen table on, as my Kerry Grandmother used to call them, “Saints Days, Holy days, birthdays and when guests came for tea”.

Among my other purchases were a vintage biscuit tin with roses on it [mild rust attached at bottom corner -  €1] it now graces my desk with my pens and pencils in it, and four shabby, much worn and handled wild seed packets with a date of 1989 on them.  These cost me the princely sum of 50 cent.  They promised me that I would have a garden full of Scabious, red poppies, Scarlet Pimpernel to mention but a few. 

OH laughed at me when he saw the date; but as I said, what have I to loose.  The charity benefits by 50c, and if they can cultivate thousand year old wheat, well… ED started school in 1989, and that doesn’t seem so long ago.  When we got back home I mixed up all the seeds together, soaked them in water over night.  On the morrow I filled up the watering can with my watery seeds and, while not quite dancing around the garden like Pam Ferris in Rosemary and Thyme singing “Nymphs and Shepherds…” I fairly flung the water around the areas that OH hasn’t managed to cultivate.

We already have Rosebay Willow herb, Stone Crop, Bird’s foot trefoil, Yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, Vetch, Lucerne, Rough and White clover, and more Orange and Yellow poppies than we need.  I even managed to introduce pink poppies into the garden a few years ago.  They came in a pot of Fuchsia I had bought in our local garden centre.  It was closing down and I was first in the queue to load my trolley.  Plants were crammed together on trestle tables for sale and seeds obviously had been exchanged.  I came to call them my “value pots”.  I purchased my charity plants in April last year and OH spent the summer shaking his head and gleefully telling me “I told you so”.

Four of Mum’s cousins no longer live in Ireland, but had decided to “come home” for a visit to Ireland.  They avoided The Gathering of last year, instead choosing 2014 to be their year to travel.  The son of one of them did the driving and they arrived last Wednesday.  I had organised accommodation in our local hotel for them.  The youngest is 81, the eldest, who lives locally, is 93; she booked into the hotel with them for companionship.  

They all stem from here where I live.  Their Great-Grand or Grandfathers were my Grandfather’s brothers.  In their 80’s you say and you’re 60 how come the generational difference?  Grandfather was the youngest of seven brothers and four sisters and the one who stayed to continued dairy farming here.  The cousins are descended from his elder brothers.  Over the years they had kept in touch with Mum, and when she passed on six years ago they corresponded with me.

On Saturday afternoon I hosted afternoon tea in the garden for them.  We sat out in glorious sunshine and I brought out the best family china for the occasion.  Some of it inherited from our mutual Great-Grand/Grandmother.  All of them had spent childhood holidays here and we had a memory fest!  The old gate OH discovered buried in the ground and which we restored, caused many Ooh! and Ah’s! Winnie and Deena – the eldest at 87 and 93 remembered swinging on it and were delighted to see it back only a few feet from its original site. On the new lane we have created at the foot of OH’s formal flower beds, there is a riot of colour with red clover, red poppies, cranesbill, corn marigold, fox gloves [which we already had] and many more wild flowers.  OH is remarkably quiet about this show of colourful glory.  My smirk is wide. 

The sight of the red poppies caused Laura (86) to recall her Father’s memories of the effect of The Great War on the village.  Three boys joined the British army and went away to fight on Flanders Fields. Two of them, Georgie and Ned, were brothers.  Both survived the war, but never returned, apart from visits to family, choosing to live in England.  One of them made a career in the army and saw fighting in India, Africa and elsewhere.  He retired, as far as she knew, to open a pub deep in the English countryside.  Tom returned, suffering from the effect of gas and lived on his pension to the ripe old age of 77. 

Georgie and Ned’s last surviving nephew died two weeks ago.  He was born in 1920. No one of that family lives in the village now.  All descendants have emigrated. Tom used to sit on fine days on a low wall near the bus stop.  As children we loved to hear his tales of the war.  He had been a “gunner” as he old us.  We, being very young and very innocent of life in the great big world equated this with “runner” and wondered how he ran around with a great big gun under his arm.  He had shown us pictures of himself and his comrades beside their great big gun.  In those days, everything was “great big” to us..

My Grand-Uncle Nick, third brother up from Grandfather, was keen to join up in 1914 at the age of 16 but his eldest sister put her foot down on this plan.  Their mother had died when my Grandfather was thirteen and Kate (second eldest child) reared the youngest members.  Nick died of TB aged 21, working on the farm.

Emily (81) remarked on the current fashion for young men to wear their hair cut short over their ears and to wear beards.  One of her Grandsons, she told us, has taken to wearing Edwardian style suits, and has gone from looking like a member of ZZ Top to someone just about to embark for the Somme.  As she was describing him, a neighbour’s son arrived with some post that had been dropped into his Mothers letter box by mistake.  Sporting the short back and no sides’ haircut, neatly trimmed beard, grand-dad shirt and khaki trousers with braces and brown boots with a high shine on them, he brought her description of Shane to life. The only thing that ruined this living sartorial piece of history was the mobile phone ear piece.  2014 meets 1914.  I wondered if the mobile phone had been invented then, would some lives have been saved.

May Bank Holiday gets me thinking about June's Corpus Christi

It is the May Bank Holiday, a bank holiday we acquired years ago when the Labour Party of this island nation of ours were in Government.  Prior to that, we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi on the first week end in June.  Once we returned to school on 7^th January after Little Christmas we lived for St. Patrick’ day to fall on a Monday or Friday so that we would have a long week end off school.  Half Term holidays were not the norm in my childhood; unless it was a very long term until Easter.  We also had school on Saturdays and two days off at Halloween.

June and the Corpus Christi week end are filled with memories for me.  Once we made our Holy Communion we were considered fit enough to join in the Corpus Christi procession.  For weeks before the Big Occasion of Our Making Our Holy Communion [the nun’s always seemed to refer to it in sentences containing capital letters] we were paraded around the school grounds wearing veils of every description and hue, from brilliantly Tide White to Sunrise Yellow.  Veils often donated by past pupils and veils made from net curtains.  The purpose of this?  Well, I think the nuns believed that if we were marshalled enough; and used to wearing the veils enough two things would happen.  We would walk like little saints in our parish procession at Corpus Christi, and maybe the idea of wearing a veil might hint a few 7 year olds into thinking about joining the convent.  In a class of 33, twenty six took the veil.  On their wedding day.   We’re not counting the 14 divorces and widowhoods here, of the other seven only one was inspired to join a convent, and at that, much to Mother Ignatius’ disgust, a different order.

From the age of 7 until, and memory is shaky here, either twelve or The Vatican Council’s changes, my friends and I were dragged down to the parish church, faces that would turn the milk sour on us, and pucked into angelic smiles by Mothers who didn’t want anyone to think their darling daughter wasn’t a living saint.  There is nothing like an Irish Mother to land a tight fist between the shoulder blades and look at the same time as if she was straightening your cardigan.  If your own Mother didn’t descend to such tactics, you could rest assured that Mrs Mulligan had no such hesitation in landing both you and her own daughter Maura a “laminer” as we used to call it.

Boys seemed to get off lighter, we were caught with the veils.  What had seemed wonderful in May on First Holy Communion Day, all dressed up in white lace and cripplingly tight shoes, was agony in a crowd of people, all walking along mumbling the Rosary and swatting at midges.  I blame the midges.  A swatter never stopped to look if he, or she, were pulling at your veil as they vented their ire on the insect.  Mothers had a happy knack of putting your veil on, tightly adhered to your head by clips, and God help you if Mr O’Callaghan, and he 70 years of age, aided by a walking stick and a hip flask of “Holy Medicine” caught your veil.  If he didn’t pull the hair off your head as well as the veil, then God was surely on your side then.

Mr O’Mara and Mr O’Callaghan combined could bring down the veils of a nation with sublime ease.  Mr O’Mara, in the year of 1962, stays in my memory.  Painfully.  We were gathered in procession, sons, daughters and proud parents, shuffling along down the church lane, up the drive of the local Big House, and back up the church lane, singing “Bring Flowers of the Forest”, reciting the rosary, and generally aiming to look as pious as possible.  My friend Mary and I had come to terms, as hardened communicants of two years, with the fact that the veil and the procession were unavoidable aspects of our lives.  Pure selfishness on our parents’ parts deprived us of the joy of racing off over the hill with our other friends, playing cheyneys, hide-and-go-seek and collecting blooms from a local woody dell.  No doubt, as part of a major grown up scheme to get them into Heaven when the day came, parents had concocted this punishment for us to make them appear holier to God.  We were convinced of it.

That CC procession started out well. We were scrubbed till we glowed; the boys had their best short trousers, sleeveless jumpers, shirts and ties on and all of them had their hair slicked down with the Daddy’s Brylcreem.  We had our summer school uniforms on us, pale blue gingham in my case, pink spots in Mary’s, [we attended different schools] and our veils were pinned to our heads [I am sure my Mother aimed for my hair] with whole packets of clips.  As we came along the home straight, just out of the gates of the Big House, and almost onto the church lane, Mr O’Mara and his daughter barged in mid centre of the line.  Mr O’Mara in his wicker bath chair pushed by his only surviving single daughter, Mildred.

It was not in Mildred nature to either say “excuse me” or “Sorry” to anyone under the age of forty.  She treated us to a glare from behind her long red nose and bottle lensed glasses and hissed “make way for Father”.  I fell in one direction, and would have broken my arm only Mum grabbed hold of me and Mary staggered into the wall across the lane, winding up with a shiner of a black eye where she had put a hand up to protect her face.  The picture of saintly holiness, Mildred ploughed on and if she missed a few parishioners, well her father was nothing if not diligent in striking out with his walking stick.  An evil looking shillelagh with a nob on it that would strike fear in the heart of the Parish Priest himself.  Still we survived these years.  In later years we often told each other that it helped us negotiate Grafton Street in Dublin in rush hour.  We were adept at ducking and diving by then.

To-day the parish church is closed after the last Mass of the day at 11.15. Where once there was a Parish Priest and two curates, today’s incumbent services three churches, He has three miles to go for the 10.15 in our village church and then after 11.15 in the parish he heads to another village for the 12.30.  Mass, which could and did take up to two hours back in the day now takes twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes that is unless you go to the other Parish nearby at 10a.m., on a Sunday morning.  It’s a family Mass.  Being a wealthy parish it has a different parishioner attending this Mass.  This is the Yummy Mummy and Hands On Daddy Mass, with little Saoirse, Caoilan, Bethany-Marie-Eve and Torquil.  On entering the church, the cacophony of sound assaulting your ears is like the chattering of a wood full of sparrows.  Mummy’s stand in the aisles chatting to each other, Caoilfinn thumps Darragh, who in turn uses Piglet to take a swipe at Hayleigh-Sarah-Louise.  Foodie Dads chat about that wonderful beer they discovered at that terrific market down in wheredjacallit, and the joys of tofu, gluten free bread [and not a coeliac among them] and green tea; the elderly also attend this Mass, especially the women.  It was the traditional time to bring children to Mass if the husbands had attended the 8.30 sodality, after Vatican II removed the fasting before taking the Eucharist rule. 

Nowadays these elderly women can look forward to a mass filled with the voices of yuppie children raised loudly in singing Allelulia, Allulelia and even on occasion Alleluia, kicks in the back of the knee from some four year old terrorist who Mummy is trying to stop from racing off up the middle aisle to demand “one of those white bikkies, now, I said NOW!” from the Priest.  Oh! The poet had it right, “all’s changed, changed utterly.  A terrible beauty is born”.  There’s nothing beautiful about the temper tantrums these little darlings can throw.

The Little Dresser

There she sits in polished splendour, reclining against the wall of the dining room.  A plain, brown, wooden dresser. Diminutive in size but very dainty.  She came to live with us last Friday and, after a good polishing with Nugents Brown Shoe polish with carnauba, she is gleaming like the best quality antique. The LBD is 142 years old, we know this for a fact.

OH's Godmother, Catherine, died at the age of 93 in 1968, and because she was my Mother in Law's aunt, we know her parents were married three years before she was born, their second of three children.  Catherine arrived eleven months after her brother Peter was born, and two years before John, and their sister Margaret followed not long after that.

We know that Catherine's parents married in 1872 and that Michael made all the furniture for his and his new bride's home, including the LBD.  In its day Catherine's mother kept a willow pattern bowl of eggs on the dresser, a jug of milk, and various ornaments.  Plates, cups and saucers dwelt behind its doors.  Her best pearl handled knives and forks resided in one side of the drawer, in the other side her everyday cutlery.  Her proudest possession, the knives had been a wedding present from the brother and sister she had been housekeeper to. 

The little brown dresser as she looks today in our house

We know her employer was a local doctor and his frail sister lived with him, but, from family tales, apart from sending to London for the latest fashions, and drinking port wine, his sister did little else and so they employed a housekeeper.

Margaret was 38 when she married 42 year old Michael. No doubt she had been told that she was past her last prayers and that she was lucky to be employed as a housekeeper.  Bachelor Michael met her when his father died, whose smallholding he inherited.  Love struck and in 1874, 1975 and 1877 Peter, Catherine and John were born.

Peter married a lady from Longford named Bridget, and they became Catherine's neighbours.  John married and moved into town.  Catherine inherited the small holding, never married and enjoyed life to the full.  She divided her time between entertaining her brother John's children and trying to work out why Peter's daughter Margaret was so spoiled.  There was a lifetime of antipathy between them.

In the course of time, Margaret married a man from "up-the-country", they met at a Hallow e'en bonfire.  They had two children, a boy and five years later, a girl, the image of her mother.  "The Boy", as Catherine called him, was the apple of Catherine's eye.  He took after her father, she proudly told everyone. He spent hours with her on long winter evenings, drawing pictures in the ashes he would pull out onto the hearthstone of the big inglenook fireplace. Before he went home at night, Catherine handed him a brush and a cup of milk.  One to tidy the hearth, the other to give him strength to walk the quarter mile to his home.

He left home at 17 to work in Dublin, Catherine's caution ringing in his ears "eat well and buy a good black suit".  He also bought a motor bike on which he would take Catherine, then aged 90, for a gentle spin on quiet country roads.  She frequently bitterly complained that he "drove too slow".

Upon her death, her dresser was given to "The Boy" and his mother made room for it in her kitchen.  Over the next 46 years it made a home for a multi-coloured plastic hen, two pictures of Our Lady of Knock, various hooks were screwed into its side to hold keys.  In behind its doors bottles of Johnny Walker, Paddy, Guinness and Layers Pellets were housed.  It bore all stoically.

"The Boy"s mother passed away a few years ago.  His sister inherited the house and fulfilled her long held dream to do a makeover on it.  Because the little brown dresser didn't come from Ikea, she moved it to an outhouse in January.

Last Friday the little brown dresser made the longest journey of its 142 year old life to Dublin; to the house we live in, built by my Grandfather who was, like Catherine, born in 1875.

The little brown dresser sits snugly against the dining room wall, the plastic chicken is but a memory.  Once again she glows, willow pattern stands proudly on her enhancing her rich patina.

I like to think that Catherine's love shines through, after all she and her mother polished the LBD with beeswax every Saturday morning for many years.

Last night I watched "The Boy", now aged 66, lay a hand briefly on the dresser as he made his way to our kitchen.  I know that a prayer went up for Catherine, along with that contented smile.

60 in Kerry Part 2

The morning of my birthday, Thursday was a day drenched in sunshine, albeit there was a tax of a thin bitter wind coming in from the east.  I was up bright and early sitting in the kitchen with a large cup of tea.  I love on Spring mornings to get up earlier than the family and relax with a cuppa and look out over the garden at home.  Here I watched the cows from the farm next door meander out from the milking parlour and wend their leisurely way down the lane to the fields.

I'm a dairy farmer's grand-daughter, and the bovine lure is strong.  I have little tolerance for sheep, especially the dimwitted one's who live on the Connor Pass on the road to Dingle.  As a child YD termed them "Woolly Jumpers" and not without some accuracy.  They, full fleeced and grazing the long acre, jump out from behind rocks onto the road in front of oncoming motorists.  In my childhood the Connor Pass was treacherously narrow and the low walls in permanent state of decline.  As OH complained on this trip, Kerry County Council has had a burst of health and safety concerns, and the road is now wider.  All the thrill of imagining oneself as James Bond on high mountain curves has gone.  Reginald Molehusband lives!

One by one the family emerged from their warm cocoons under duvets in Egyptian cotton covers; presents were given with hugs.  I am spoiled.  That's the long and the short of it.  They know me so well.  I love vintage and was not disappointed. 

 OH cooked the full Irish, and it was hilarious to hear him fuss around a strange kitchen.

After a leisurely breakfast, and a lot of laughter we prepared to head out to Slea Head.  I had promised myself a very long time ago that no matter what my station in life on my 60th birthday, I would be at Slea Head on my 60th.  Just as we were about to depart, Myra [Myra Daly] the owner of Courtyard Cottages, arrived down with a birthday present for me.  A lovely candle to light my celebration.  Myra and her husband Derry are a lovely couple who make you feel very welcome and at home.

Never mind 40 shades of green, Kerry shows us 40 shades of weather

Bob the Ruffled Herring Gull

We arrived, via the Connor Pass and a "woolly jumper" who narrowly missed us just below the waterfall.  Not only did we arrive, but a strong wind and heavy shower chased us too.  Still, it couldn't dampen my spirits and it was wonderful to watch the dramatic changes in the weather as the rain came in from the Atlantic, passed over and left everything looking wonderfully well washed.  Bob the seagull's feathers were a bit ruffled by it all, but a handful of crumbs soon soothed his ire.  It takes a seagull to perch on a low wall, three stories above the water, in a rain lashed gale and still look implacable.

We sat in the car overlooking Slea Head and Dún Chaoín as it was too windy to get out.  We had brought a light picnic with us.

The headland where the set for "Ryan's Daughter" was filmed.  It still annoys me that the set was not kept by the local people.  David Lean had offered it to them and it would have been a very valuable asset from a tourism perspective.  There is little, today, to mark where this beautiful film was shot, but Robert Mitchum is still remembered with affection by elderly local people.  

After our picnic we drove on towards The Marioch, Ventry and Feohannagh.  We stopped off in Ballyferriter to pay a quick  facility visit.  In Murphy's pub we were treated graciously although we were not stopping for a pint or a sandwich.  We shall be visiting Murphys in Ballyferriter when we return in September, and for lunch this time. Because I thought there mightn't be many places open in this area, as the season didn't open for another week, I had suggested a picnic. The smell of the food in Murphy's was tantalising and the huge blazing fire tempting but we had miles to go yet. 

We snuggled up in front of a roaring fire

and chatted over a glass or ? of Merlot

We returned home to Blennerville and The Courtyard to find it a hive of activity.  The gentleman who lived in the bungalow across from the CC had passed away suddenly.  Originally from the North of Ireland, he had settled in Tralee.  Myra had offered the use of the parking area to his family.  There was a huge funeral on Saturday as we were leaving, he was a popular man in the town and involved in many local sports activities.  

[the friendliest collie in Kerry]

Dinner in The Earl of Desmond Hotel, Ballyseedy that night was wonderful and I voted this the best birthday in a long time.

We left on Saturday morning for Cork to visit my last remaining aunt.  Even then Kerry threw more weather into the pot.  High on the mountains there was snow.  We had visited Brandon Point on Friday and had watched the squalls ride in from the west, across the mountains, drifting snow like icing sugar across their tops.  Baurt Regaum, Guivnageela, and the rest of the Slieve Mish were stunning in their beauty.  By Saturday morning as we headed up through the Killarney mountains on route to Cork the snow had fallen more heavily and was further down the slopes.  As YD remarked "It's like Switzerland at home".

We stayed in: 
The Courtyard Cottages, Greenway, Blennerville, Tralee, Co. Kerry 
Telephone: 353 667 124494
[prop. Derry & Myra Daly]
email:
welcome@countykerryholidays.com

We shopped in: 
Loramar Gift Shop, Lower Rock Street, Tralee 
Kelliher's Hardware, Lower Rock Street, Tralee               
Dan Fitzgerald's, 4/6 The Mall, Tralee.