Ar ais go Ciarraí

 If all goes according to plan, by this time tomorrow, I'll be west of Dingle. 

I bought these postcards the first time I went to Dingle which was sometime last century.

In other news, Wordle is suspended as my PC won't fit in my suitcase. I have a winning streak of 103 and must begin afresh on my return to County Antrim.

Pig Abroad

This was my usual Monday, leisurely preparing supper for the fam. On the menu, a sort-of cassoulet - light on beans and for dessert, an apple crumble. A glut of tomatoes (thanks Clint) went into the stew and a present of Katy apples (thanks Howard) were used up in the crumble.

Then the dogs started to bark. A taxi-van pulled up to the door. The same taxi-van that I'd pranged the wing mirror. Who could it be? We weren't expecting anyone. The driver jumped out, the same pleasant bloke who'd got Zoe's surplus tomato plants. He looked slightly panicked. I went out to him.

Do you have a pig?

Indeed we do.

It's on the road!

Oh God! Bert! There's a pig on the road.

Bert set down his clarinet and I shouted to him

Bring an apple! We'll tempt it back up the lane.

What is it about apples and temptation?

The taxi driver drove off and parked his van at the mouth of the lane. And there was Rusty being 'kepped' by our neighbour Clare. There were several cars stopped in both directions but thankfully they couldn't see we feckless pig-owners because of the taxi-van. Of course, as soon as Rusty spotted the apple he was good to go and Bert placed him under shed arrest. As I expected, it was Bert to blame, He'd brought a load of timber in from the wood and forgot to close the gate. Probably going over a new clarinet tune in his head. 

We worked out that Rusty probably wanted into the hen run to guzzle up the windfall apples. When he couldn't get through the gate he must have wandered down the lane to see if he could find another opening. Pigs are like that. And apples are tempting. 

My Diary

 

The diaries of Alan Rickman featured in yesterday's Guardian and it occurred to me that one's blog is actually a diary and that I should start treating it as such. It's not the first time I've thought this.

So I must mention that I started seeing a physiotherapist a few weeks ago. I'd been urged to do this by both Ganching and Kerry Sister. It all seems to be going well and I've noticed some minor improvements. On Saturday last I needed to pick up a prescription and parked the van five minutes walk from the pharmacy. About one minute into the walk my hip started to hurt and it didn't stop. I kept going. The only other notable thing that happened was bumping into the taxi driver whose wing mirror I clipped a few months ago. When he called to see me about this we ended up visiting the polytunnels and left with his repair money and a box of free tomato plants. Apparently, they've done well.

Wednesday evening and all of Thursday were marred by stomach aches. I blamed too much rich food, especially birthday cake. Despite this, I still bought the ingredients for a Pineapple Coconut Cake. At the time of writing, I have yet to make it.

In Bert’s opinion, my guts were bad because I had not drunk wine since the previous Saturday. He backed his argument with that famous biblical quote.*

With this in mind, on Friday we shared a nice bottle of wine from Lidl.

On Saturday I went to Portglenone to have my hair trimmed and afterwards went to the charity shops. And only bought a book, Updike’s Run, Rabbit which I will hopefully get around to reading sometime in the next two years. Whilst perusing the shelves I heard a familiar voice which turned out to be a chap I’d sat next to at my Aunt Bee’s funeral meal some weeks before. He told me that it was Bee’s Months Mind which I’d not known about.

When I got home I contacted Youngest Brother and we made an arrangement to go together. It was the regular early evening mass in Antrim and the chapel was packed. The priest had just got back from Medjugorje and was tremendously enthused about it. The sermon was delivered with exuberance and featured the importance of the Rosary and the reality of the Devil. I’m sure that Aunt Bee would have approved.

Afterwards, Joe and I went to the cemetery. We visited two graves. Joe’s little granddaughter Ava, who died three years ago and Joseph, our cousin and Aunt Bee’s oldest child, who will be gone ten years tomorrow.

And after all that, I went home via Lidl where I bought another bottle of that fine wine – for my stomach’s sake.

*1 Timothy 5:23

Family  Anniversaries

Bernie 1930 - 1922

Joseph 1955 - 2012

Ava 2011 - 2019

A Momentous Day

This morning I woke up early this and finished reading my book on Princess Margaret.*  What a dragon!

There were two Chocolate Guinness cakes to make and the house was a mess because I'd had a busy couple of days. 

Me doing absolutely nothing. Except for drinking and it's not even dark outside.

I was making cake for a special day and as I started to gather the ingredients I watched the State Funeral. Watching TV whilst baking is not something I'd normally do but, y'know... history, pageantry, human interest, military bands, Princess Charlotte, the Duchess of Sussex,** and Michelle O'Neill. 

The cakes turned out fine and at last, the special guest arrived, Martha the Teenager! As well as Nigella's Chocolate Guinness Cake we had Spaghetti Bolognese made with some very ripe tomatoes that Bert poached from Clint. It was good. 

Something tells me that I will remember forever what happened on the 19th of September 2022. 

* It's been that kind of week.

** Oxford comma placed in solidarity with the NHS.

Mind You Don't Hurt Yourself

 'Mind you don't hurt yourself', were the very words I spoke to Bert when he announced that he and Les were going to fell a dying beech tree.

He had everything ready, long ladders in place, just waiting for the right fellow to assist him in this manly task. Unfortunately, on the previous evening, the ladders had to be re-deployed as Pippin the kitten had got herself into a bit of a pickle. She has a passion for climbing trees and had got herself stuck in a big hawthorn. Her ascent was easy but the way down was difficult because of the thorns. The meows were piteous. All her biggest fans (Hannah, Martha and Evie) were distraught and Bert was nowhere to be seen. Hannah had found a short step ladder and tried to persuade Pippin to come down. Instead, the silly cat went further up.

Then Bert, the hero of the hour arrived, and the big ladder was put in position which Bert ascended whilst getting a jolly good telling off from Martha for attempting the rescue in unsafe Crocs but he paid her no mind. Pippin ( who likes Bert better than anyone) was brought down but not before there was a very scary, jiggly moment with the ladder. There is really nothing much in a hawthorn tree to lay a ladder against.

Today, when Les arrived the ladders had to be brought back to the beech trees. It's really a two-person job handling a long ladder. Bert informed me what they were going to do, I asked him to be careful, and he said I could take photographs but I was to stay at a safe distance. 

The old tractor was used to keep taut a rope intended to encourage the tree to fall without damaging any of the other beech trees. I stood at a safe distance and waited. And waited. And waited.

Then came the crack. The distance I stood at was so safe that all I saw was the rope slacken and the top branches crumble to dust as they fell. 

It would have been far more dramatic if I'd been observing from here.

On the wander back to the house I picked some tomatoes.

And took a fairly decent photo of the mina lobata.

Another one of this veronica, throwing out the last blooms of the season. I've already collected seed and hope to have it again next year.

And this pretty clematis flowering along with white bindweed. One to be prized, the other despised. 

 

8th September, 2022

In my late teens, I took a job in the sewing room at the Old Bleach Factory in Randalstown. I didn't stay long as my sewing was abysmal and the wee forewoman despaired of me. All I had to do was hem linen tea towels. It wasn't that hard. Even so, my efforts all ended up in the reject bin.

The 'girls' in the sewing room were a mixed bunch. All ages, all persuasions and all female. The only 'lads' were a couple of mechanics who were supposed to keep the machines running smoothly. From what I could see, that looked like a  very cushy number. The fellows seemed to spend most of the day hanging over the big cast iron radiators eyeing up the talent.

There was a group of young women from Toome who befriended me. Their leader, Marian came in one morning telling everyone how the Brits had smashed in their door while it was still dark and lifted two of her brothers. I was amazed that she had still bothered to come to work. If that had happened in our house we'd all have been bad with our nerves for weeks. Marian must have thrived on the excitement as a year or so after I left the job I read in the paper that she was up in court for hijacking a bus.

Our forewoman, whose name I cannot remember, was a small thin woman, probably in her late fifties. Her office, a roughly partitioned-off area, was covered in Union flags and pictures of the Royal Family. And even though she seemed a mild-mannered and unthreatening person I still felt uncomfortable with this display for she was marking her territory and asserting her superiority over the RCs.

So, although I did not have any issue with the Windsors it was made very clear to Catholics that they were not for the likes of us.

Fast forward to 1977. I'm in London for the summer and it's the Silver Jubilee and the place is decked out like the Twelfth with bells on. The Queen was out and about, she's all over the place and I never saw her once. My sister claims to have spotted her on several occasions but I had to make do with Connie Booth from Fawlty Towers, spotted buying calamine lotion in a Holland Park pharmacy.

It took another 34 years before I got the point of  Elizabeth II. I was in Donegal, recovering from a bout of food poisoning and the only TV channel we could get was RTE. And all that was on was coverage of the Queen's State Visit to Ireland. There she was, speaking a bit of Irish at a state banquet, attending a ceremony at the Garden of Remembrance, where she laid a wreath in memory of those who gave their lives fighting for freedom from British rule. And then, making a visit to the National Stud in Kildare, and just standing there quietly as a massive stallion reared up only yards from her. I have to say, I was impressed.

Liz Saves The Day!

 It seems that sometime today Liz Truss will become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland and, like many others, I have been dismayed at the prospect. 

However, I have changed my mind as it seems Liz has had, all along, a cunning plan. She has been busy. This energy crisis that threatens our way of life will disappear, or at least, be alleviated. The projected fuel bills, unpayable for most, were just meant to frighten us. We will all be so grateful that we are only paying twice what we paid last year that Ms Truss will seem like our saviour. 

I have no doubt that the new PM will have found the time to have a few late-night calls with Jeffrey Donaldson. The DUP will return to Stormont. I cannot imagine what this will entail but her handlers are a clever lot. They will have thought of something. Maybe a nice backhander and/or a peerage, something like that. Possibly a climbdown on the First Minister and Deputy First Minister thing. Jeffrey's party may well have thought better of that one.

With the energy crisis and Stormont solved the new PM will ride on a wave of approval. For a while, anyway.

For myself, I'm sad I came late to the white trainer/older woman thing for Liz has put me right off them.

I may throw mine in the Lagan.