Dispatches from the Deise

Leaving on a Jet Plane - Emigration Generation at our Doorstep.

2012-01-29T19:34:00.000Z

Bobby and Martin in Lismore

Yesterday middle son Martin left Dublin for Brisbane, treading a well-worn path all too familiar to most Irish people with children in their twenties and thirties - Generation Emigration as they're being called, most recently in the series run by the Irish Times over the past few weeks. So it was a day of mixed emotions for me, sad to see Martin go on his first big journey since he'd been living overseas as a child, and happy for him to see him embark on a new life adventure. He was travelling with his friend Bobby who is also a graphic designer, and they are going to spend their first days in Australia with friends whom Martin grew up with in Tanzania, and with whose family we have maintained contact over the years since we left Africa. So from the Irish Mammy perspective I have no worries as he'll be looked after and won't get lost travelling to the other side of the world as there's a pair of them in it. They are flying Etihad Airlines, one of those super-duper Mid-Eastern Airlines from the Gulf that fly directly from Dublin to Australia with stops in Abu Dhabi and Singapore but none of the misery of having to navigate Heathrow or the lesser misery of one of the European hubs like Schiphol.

Abu Dhabi first stop!

Martin with William, Shayne, Jany and the girls

Irish Mammy moment in Dublin

JP, Bobby, Martin and Ricky in Lismore

As I write they should be leaving Singapore on the last leg of the journey to Brisbane, and they will no doubt have a few days of jet lag to contend with. I remember when we lived in Laos that the journey west-east from Europe back to Laos was worst for jet lag and it took a few days to reorient to the Orient. But that's probably trying to catch up on lost hours - only 7 in the case of Laos, but 10 or so in the case of Australia I suppose. I haven't checked the detail yet, very provincial of me. In fact Martin and Bobby left on Saturday and will lose out on Sunday and arrive on Monday - almost comparable to Samoa which lost a day in its entirety when they went to the other side of the International Dateline at the end of December. That begs the Table Quiz question - what country will nobody have a birthday on December 29th 2011? I'm sure it'll feature in Pub Quizzes of the future!

Father and son before heading to the Airport!

We have been anticipating this move for Martin since he finished college - he did his undergrad Degree in Cork and his Masters' in Dublin, both in Graphic Design. He wasn't able to get much work other than some freelance and a stint in a local printing and design business, but from the way things were going in Ireland with the downturn in the economy it didn't look great. So he worked in the 5* Westbury Hotel in Dublin for the past 10 months, and managed to save enough to fund his Aussie adventure. The visa is a year's working holiday visa and he will have to change jobs every three months, and maybe he will get sposnsorship and be able to extend his visa - otherwise the only way to stay on is to work in rural Australia for a while.

Hope the scales isn't loaded!

Yes I packed it myself...!

The current government has got into hot water recently over tactless remarks by the shoot-from-the-lip Finance Minister Michael Noonan over emigration being a Lifestyle Choice -an unfortunate turn of phrase that resonated with what Brian Lenihan and Eamon de Valera had said back in the years of mass almost forced emigration of the 1950s and 1980s - it smacks of heedless callousness in the light of all the families whose children would prefer to find work in Ireland and make a life here. I don't know if Martin will make a new life in another country or whether the economy here will revert to some normality to allow him a feasible return.

A final coffee - delaying the goodbyes!

He spent the last couple of weeks at home and then went to Cork to say goodbye to his former college friends there and to Dublin for a final farewell. We had a small party with the family and some of his friends from Lismore last weekend - the days of the Australian or American Wake seem a bit passé and melodramatic in this age of instant messaging via Facebook, Twitter and Skype - new verbs in the vocabulary must surely be To Skype and To Facebook, while To Tweet has been totally hijacked from the birds! We had a nice evening with a curry that went down well with everyone - included were the much-requested homemade chappatis - and it turned into a Boys' Night In with somebody's X-Box produced to play football games on the big TV.

Into the future!

I had a brief Kleenex Moment at the Departure Gate yesterday - no shame in that, as I got a small sense of how my dear mother must have felt with all the farewells she had to endure over two decades of my life. It was so weird to see him off in the vast emptiness of the futuristic boom-time Terminal 2 which was built for another era and economy. Now it has the whiff of a Bertie Ahern/Paddy the Plasterer white elephant about it, somewhat vindicating Michael O'Leary's vitriolic put-down of it over the years. It reminded me of that great Stephen King novella and film The Langoliers, about time-warped air travel and deserted terminals. Martin was the only one at the departure gate, as Bobby had gone through earlier. It was strange to be saying goodbye and turning back to the car park, instead of going through to head for the heat of our destinations over the years of our lives in Africa and Asia - but now it's the turn of the younger generation and that our children are making the move should come as no surprise to us. We can only wish Martin and Bobby well and look forward to new holiday destinations in the future!

Martin on the bridge - with Jan ahead with the suitcase!

Terminal 2 - the deserted airport!

Knitting and Related Craftiness - and an Intro to Knitmas

2012-01-22T03:13:00.000Z

My Secret Santa gift for Knitmas!

I'm way late telling you about Knitmas as the name suggests it's a Christmas Knitting Project with the totally terrific premise of a selective Secret Santa/KristKindle for the Knitting Online Community! I came across it back in October or November, on Twitter or Facebook, not exactly sure now, but the next thing I knew I'd signed up to take part in an Irish exchange programme via Elfster - a new (to me) website facilitating exchanges and gift-giving and sharing. It took a bit of getting used to, as I have been frustrated by a dinosaur laptop that keeps crashing and needs constant frequent CPR (Computer Processor Resuscitation) - so I'd been using my phone to stay online and in touch with the wider world. It has its limitations though - screen size does matter and there are some tasks the mobile apps don't do like the full version, so I let things lie for a few weeks after I was told who my partner in Knitmas crime was - Cathy who tweets as @cathyqtpi - (confusing until you say it, geddit?)

The sincerest form of flattery - my cowl copy!

Anyway I had been assigned to another Knitmas member so I had no idea what approach to take, getting a mild panic attack over whether I'd end up getting fab stuff and not sending my beneficiary anything she'd like, and quickly getting over it when I realised we were able to grill our partners and be grilled in turn by ours on preferences, likes, fave colours and so on. So I ascertained from my inquisition that Cathy liked purple and ladybirds. Sorted. I promptly hit our local craft dealer - Angela at her eponymous Lismore Design Workshop where she has a marvellous treasure trove of everything knitty and crafty. She had lovely haberdashery and I got delightful ladybird buttons, and then she had a soft toy kit for - yes, you guessed it - a ladybird! On the purple front I had some frilly scarf yarn from Lidl last year called Sanibel which I hadn't a clue what to do with, until one night at our Knitting Circle at the self-same Design Workshop Angela was making this wonderful frilly scarf with Tivoli Whirl and had other brands of scarf yarn on sale which looked just like my Lidl shoelace yarn. Finally I knew what to do with it - and I made the most beautiful scarf which I earmarked for Knitmas. It is a quick and easy yarn to knit as you only cast on 8-10 stitches and the scarf can be done in a couple of hours. I have one myself too as I had enough yarn to make two. So I got some colourful wool for my Knitmas package - Ocean I think it was, a lovely wool blend - and finished off the package with a Hope Charity Chocolate bar and there might have been something else I can't recall. I was a few days late for the 1st Dec. deadline but was forgiven as I emailed to say I'd been late. I got such a buzz when Cathy posted her gifts on Twitter and shared them with the Knitmas community. I think she posted a photo on her Tweets.

Assorted iPhone covers from Monika's pattern.

As for my pressies - I got a lovely packet from Caroline (@Scattyhats) who made me a beautiful Silk and Alpaca Cowl in Debbie Bliss Andes, done in a lovely Feather and Fan stitch. She also sent some lovely stitch markers, chocolate, teabags, and best of all - wool! Well to be more precise, a Noro very fine yarn, and Araucania from Chile 100% cotton 4-ply which might be perfect for cotton socks! I have yet to wind the cotton skein as I don't have a winder so am a bit nervous about getting caught up in knots but then my mother used to wind hanks of Aran wool back in the home-knitting days of the 60s and 70s and that was a lot of winding with no winders - back of a kitchen chair or else my aching arms were the best she could manage!

I copied the Andes Cowl in Cotton blend Nadine from Lidl in Teal and it is lovely - soft and smooth (60% Cotton). I made a lovely Dora the Explorer jumper for my granddaughter Sofia for Christmas and she looks sweet in it; it was also made in the Nadine teal. Ive also made some funky cable iPhone covers from Monika on Ravelry - she's made a PDF of her pattern.

So altogether I am enjoying the creativity of this crafty world and I will tell you about my Christmas knitting books next post. I think you'll enjoy and head straight for Amazon!

A Belated Happy New Year - and a Resolution to return to Blogging

2012-01-15T17:12:00.000Z

Happy 2012 rom Lismore!

This is mid-January and I have been very bad at blogging in the last few months - so I am just opening the year with a short post to say to my loyal followers that I will try to be a more diligent poster girl in 2012 than I was last year! I don't know why I slackened off late last year only that my laptop has become very temperamental and slow, prone to frequent collapses and Austenesque fainting bouts calling for liberal application of techie smelling salts in vain attempts to recovery - restarting, rebooting, rekicking, defragging, debunking, deleting file after folder, and other spurious attempts at reviving an exhausted C-Drive. I guess an 80GB Hard Drive wasn't the best but it was one of the biggest back in the day when we got this little Toshiba. Now it's got the computer equivalent of high cholesterol and all the statins in Big Pharma aren't going to cut the mustard. More like a heart transplant or at the very least a triple bypass! Nah, the easiest option is a trip to PC World and a nice new 500GB or 1TB Hard Drive laptop which will probably cost half what this baby did 4 years ago!

So I promise fluency and frequency in the blogosphere in the coming months - goodness knows I have been doing enough in my life to warrant a few trivial blogposts - I've been knitting madly and have some great projects that I am very proud of and lots more in the pipeline - I want to tell you about Knitmas, the wonderful Secret Santa for the Irish Knitting Community, and share my new knitting books with you crafty types out there. I want to share the books I've read, and try to resume the online Book Clubs and real world ones. And I can share about my new workplace which happens to be my home town! There'll be recipes and cooking and baking to share and I will enjoy reading and catching up on all your blogs that I've been remiss on responding to lately.

Thanks for hanging in there with me friends - enough Mea Culpa talk and have a great 2012 - we'll have plenty to catch up on during the year!

Happy Christmas 2011 - the Round Robin comes bob-bob-bobbing along - again!

2011-12-24T12:41:00.000Z

For the past 22 years I've written a Christmas Newsletter from our family to the wider world - and since I started this blog I've shared it with the blogosphere - it's a family update but it's quite general and broad and people seem to enjoy getting it each year. I started it in Tanzania in 1989 and while it's a genre that's frequently the butt of bad jokes and ridiculed as being a self-indulgent brag-fest of family perfection and accomplished genius children I hope mine strikes a balance of normality while entertaining some bragging rights along the way. Enjoy! The photos are a selection you may have already seen on the blog.

Happy Christmas 2011

Dear Friends,

The Christening Party

It’s that wonderful time of the year again when I get down to writing the annual Christmas Newsletter from Lismore and update you on the goings on in the Rotte-Murray household over the past year. It’s become a real tradition now since it began in Iringa in Tanzania in 1989 – hard to believe this is Issue No. 22! I could nearly compile my very own cringe-inducing Round Robin book and give Simon Hogget a run for his money – I’d call it something more creative than The Cat Who Could Open the Fridge! The tree is up since Saturday and there’s a festive air about, with street lights and Christmas fairs all over the place. Shopping till dropping seems to be the mantra in the towns and cities, where there are little signs of recession if you see the tailbacked traffic entering Mahon Point in Cork. Now all I wish for is that there’ll be no severe cold spell like last year when we’d no water for 8 days over Christmas – genuinely Dickensian, drawing water from the Spout (local spring source) and washing everything by hand. Thanks but no thanks!

Livia in her Christening Robe

With the economy in the pits and the recession still nowhere near bottoming out (if we can believe the prophets of doom who hound us on the daily news and current affairs programmes) there’s sometimes a temptation to join the 99% in one of the Occupy sites that have sprung up in our cities and larger towns. It’s really painful to see the budget bleeding every last cent from hard-pressed taxpayers and homeowners just to bailout/pay off the faceless bond-holders who hold us in their clutches. I don’t mind taxes where they’re targeted at specifics that enhance and benefit society – we hear a lot this year about living in a society not an economy, and it’s difficult to square the circle when the country has lost economic sovereignty to our paymasters in Frankfurt (ECB) and Washington (IMF). We hear that in a few years we’ll be able to go back to the markets (financial, not farmers, I’m guessing) and that’s gonna restore our sense of pride and place. Haven’t we all become whizzes at the jargon of economics and high finance? It reminds me of Italia ’90 when every Irish person became an expert in football and pretended to understand the offside rule, while throwing opinions on various players around like snuff at a wake - though it’s a bit obscene to compare those innocent halcyon days with the gloom of the current global crisis.

As for ourselves, we are hit but not rock bottom like many – we aren’t going to lose our home like so many unfortunate people who got stuck in negative equity and repossessions if they lost their jobs, and I am lucky to have a relatively secure public sector job. There are plans to lose thousands of public sector workers in the next few years through voluntary redundancy and early retirement plans and that ghastly term “natural wastage” (where people retire and are not replaced). In the HSE and nursing services there will be a mass exodus of management and some frontline staff come February when the deadline for current pension payments hits. Thereafter previously exempt lump sums will be taxed and no-one blames anyone who is due to retire in the next few years and who has a reasonable amount of years accrued from going while the going is good. The downside for those of us left on the frontline is an increased workload with fewer staff. We’re all working flat out as it is and there will be an inevitable knock-on effect on patient services if it gets much worse. Morale is low at times but for frontline staff like me there’s a lot of job satisfaction so that and team solidarity makes it worthwhile.

Livia's Christening Party

My big news from the work front this year is that I got a transfer from Old Parish, where I’d been for nine years, to Lismore, where my office is around the corner from the house! I am delighted with the new post and have settled in well in the past three months. I knew the area pretty well already though I find some of the back roads in the more remote upland areas in the foothills of the beautiful Knockmealdowns a challenge at times – thank goodness for the satnav – it’s saved my bacon on a few occasions. It’s been good for my personal economy too – my petrol bill has halved since the move, as I’m 150 miles a week down on my previous travel to Dungarvan. Between knitting circles and book clubs, there’s never a dull moment. Jan and I did the Sean Kelly Cycle again in August, with him doing the 90km and me the 50km, great fun and a chance to keep fit.

With Theo in the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin

Jan is still in the Labour Party as Town Councillor and had a busy start to the year with the General Election in February, after Ciara Conway, the Labour candidate for Waterford, asked him to be her Director of Elections. He got into it with great gusto and was on the highways and byways canvassing madly for the few weeks of the campaign, and it all paid off when Ciara was elected to Dáil Eireann after a nail biting marathon in the count centre. It’s been a roller coaster of a year politically as the Labour Party went into Government with Fine Gael, the more conservative centre-right party, after Fianna Fáil, commonly called the “previous shower”, suffered a massive wipe-out at the hands of a furious electorate, ending up with a handful of TDs. Jan had the honour of being at the Dáil for the first day as Ciara’s guest, and it was a great achievement for both of them. Ciara’s making a great name for herself as a vocal back-bencher on many issues, particularly social and economic. One thing’s certain – people will be as angry at this coalition as at FF when times get tough. Reading Twitter when there’s a topical programme on gives a good reflection of the Irish zeitgeist. Immrama was another busy time for Jan with the 9^th festival this year hosting travel writers from a broad sweep of the genre. We had a great weekend and plans are well underway for the 10^th year in 2012, which has to be special. The fundraisers will get under way in January with the annual table quiz honing our dormant post-Christmas brain cells.

Shayne, Jany and Sofia and Livia

The rest of the family are all fine, with plenty going on in their lives. The big news for 2011 was the birth on 26^th March of our beautiful second granddaughter, Livia, to Shayne and Jany and she’s a sweet sister for Sofia, who gets on great with her. She is a lovely happy baby, and is now sitting up and starting to move around. We had her Christening in Lismore at the end of October, and she looked sweet in our century-old family Christening robe which Sofia wore the previous year. Sofia is almost two and is full of chat and always on the go, a real livewire, yet she can sit and play for ages with her toys and it’s great to see her playing with the stash of Duplo from the attic when she’s in Lismore. Shayne got a job in Cork the week after Livia’s birth, in Abtran in Bishopstown, in customer services for Electric Ireland (old ESB). Jany was on maternity leave until September and she got a new job closer to home the week before she was due to go back to work, she’s an IT helpdesk specialist in a company near the CSO in Mahon. They’ve sorted childcare with Anne, a Dutch au pair who’s living with them for a year. Their other big news is they are planning a wedding for next July in Lismore – so we can look forward to another celebration!

Godfather Martin with Livia

Martin is still in Dublin, he was out of work for a few months after finishing his Masters, and then he got a job as a waiter in the Westbury Hotel in Dublin, a pretty swanky place where plenty of celebs stay when they’re doing shows in the city. Graphic design jobs are pretty thin on the ground so he was glad to get off the dole with the Westbury job, but he’s looking farther afield for the coming year and he’s going to Australia at the end of January. He’s going with a friend who’s also a graphic designer, and they’re heading for Brisbane where they have friends who were in Tanzania when we were there – as kids they grew up together in Iringa so it’s nice that they’ve kept in touch over the years, as we have with the parents – in fact Tandy was here in 2010, and the three girls were here over the New Year and visited us in Lismore. So while I’ll miss Martin madly, I have to overcome my Irish Mammyness and be happy for him, as he’s doing the best thing for himself – and wish him the best of luck down under!

Godfather William with Sofia

William is still in Cork; after working in a variety of jobs since he graduated from Limerick and moved to the real Capital last year, he decided to go back to being a student and is doing his Masters in Electronic Business in UCC – totally unrelated to his PE teaching degree but something he wanted to do – sadly a new regulation barring grants if returning to education within 3 years of previous study meant he wasn’t eligible for a grant, but he decided to go ahead with it and luckily we can help him out. He’s got into the sport and social side of UCC life with Intervarsity Volleyball and Trampolining. He’s on the Irish Volleyball team now and has got his first cap a few weeks ago. He will probably travel once he’s finished his Masters, unless a plum job lands on him. It’s hard to see the young adults leaving if there’s little prospects for them coming back in the future – we went from choice back in our day, and jobs prospects for nurses were a given – now the public sector recruitment embargo has done away with that certainty.

Maeve did her Junior Cert and decided to go straight to 5^th year but after a few days she realised she’d made a wrong choice and luckily she was able to go back to Transition Year which is like a gap year – school without too much pressure, plenty of variety and fun activities, and not too much academic pressure. Work experience is part of the programme and she spent a week at the crèche in Fermoy where she went as a toddler until she went to school. She’ll have another two sessions of work experience in the New Year so that will be another taster of the world of work. She is now 16 and taller than me, and she is becoming very grown up and independent, enjoying spending time hanging out with her friends. In June she went with two of her friends to SummerJam in the O2/Point in Dublin, and I had to go as they were under 16 – despite the ear-bleeding decibels I enjoyed some of the acts – LMFAO and Ke$ha – don’t ask! It’s an indoor festival, a kind of Oxygen without the mud, lasting 3-4 hours.

Jan and me at Newgrange World Heritage Site in Co. Meath

Jan and me went to a couple of gigs this year – Eric Clapton was Jan’s guitar hero for years and for his birthday we went to see him at the O2 and he didn’t disappoint – he ain’t Mr. Personality but boy he can play and sing! Christy Moore at the Marquee in Cork was an anniversary pressie from the kids and that was a great night – Christy was in flying form and not grumpy at the crowd as he is at times. We had a lovely day out in Dublin in July when Theo, our old Dutch friend from Iringa days, came with his Dutch Brass Band Me Tresse to play a series of concerts in Ireland – we saw them in the Guinness Storehouse and Jan went to see them in Galway as well. We had another trip to Galway to visit friends and Jan and I had a few staycation short breaks in Sligo and Trim, and I went to the INMO conference in Kilkenny in May. We spent a lot of weekends in Dublin and Cork, and the year flew by.

So that’s about the summary of our lives for another year, and I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and every good wish for 2012 – may it be a happy and prosperous year and don’t forget our door is always open and we’d love to see you anytime. I hope we meet over Christmas!

Love Catherine, Jan, Shayne, Jany, Sofia and Livia, Martin, William and Maeve (and Ben whom I left out of the email and letter version!)

A Family Milestone - Celebrating Livia's Christening Day

2011-11-05T21:17:00.000Z

Livia in the family Christening Robe

Last Saturday saw the Christening of our beloved granddaughter Livia, just over a year after her big sis Sofia was baptised. The ceremony took place in the same church, St. Carthage's in Lismore, with the same priest Fr. Cullinan conducting the rites. He is the local Parish Priest and as Livia lives in Cork with her sis and parents he was happy to do it once they had a letter from the PP in Cork - some kind of territorial hierarchy, perhaps!

The day got off to a very bad weather start, with more of the lashing rainfall which had marked the entire week, which had seen flash floods in Dublin that resulted in the deaths of two people, an off-duty Garda trying to divert cars from a bridge from which he was them swept away, and a Philipina nurse who died when her basement flat was inundated after a wall collapsed, creating a damburst effect. We were very lucky to escape with no floods in Waterford.

Livia with her parents, sister and Godparents

We were very glad to see the sun come out and the rain stop for the afternoon, as the ceremony was at 5pm, and the church is only across the road from our house. Hubby Jan had gone to Cork in the morning to collect the family and Livia's Dutch Godmother Machteld came too, along with Anne their au pair also from Holland. It's great that the girls will have exposure to Dutch from these friends as they won't lose touch with more than half their heritage, in fact three-quarters as their dad's half Dutch! Martin, the girls' uncle, was the Godfather and he'd been here for a few days already as he'd holidays from his job in Dublin.

After the Christening in our garden

With Fr. Cullinan at the Font

We all got glammed up and headed to the church in time - after dressing Livia in the family heirloom Christening robe which has been in my family for over 100 years, and which has done duty for my mother, me, our kids, and now our second grandchild! I think my granny may have also been Christened in it which would make it well over 130 years old, but I can't verify that. She looked so sweet, and never mind that she was much bigger than the babies of long ago at Christening age - the tape ties at the back meant it fitted just fine.

I'd been busy baking for the days leading up to the big day - even though we were only having a simple celebration back at our house after the ceremony - and I was delighted with how well the cake turned out, as it was a rectangle compared to the round cake Sofia had for her big day. I made a Victoria Sponge, with whipped cream and homemade strawberry jam filling, topped with Fondant Icing and piped Butter Icing in pink for the lettering and borders. I made an apple tart and some fairy cakes, which went beautifully on my new cake stand - a two-tier floral pink porcelain job, from Shaws in Dungarvan - totally irresisstable. They have them in blue so they're obviously designed for just such events as births or baptisms! We were having a barbecue in the dark -well, by patio light actually - as hubby was cooking, and I made a savoury Nasi-style fried rice to accompany the BBQ, while Jany and Machteld and Anne made the salads.

The Cake (proud me!)

Fairy cakes on my new Cakestand!

The ceremony took about 40-50 mins, as the priest chatted a lot and there was another baby being Christened at the same time - a kind of conveyor belt Christening, as first Livia and then the other baby were brought to the Font for the actual pouring of the water. It's a lovely symbolic ceremony with the candle lit from the Paschal or Easter Candle, and the anointing with oil and chrysm, and the covering of the head with the white blanket while the family all gather round to welcome the baby into the Christian community. Even though I'm not as regular a churchgoer as I should be I feel happy that the traditions like Baptism continue through the generations.

The gathering on the patio

Livia with Godparents - Martin and Machteld

I hope you like the photos of the day and get a sense of our shared family celebration, and as we did with Sofia we gave Livia silverware engraved with her name and the date. She got a mug from us, the Godfather Martin gave her a photo album, scroll certificate holder and stand, and Maeve her aunt gave her an expanding bracelet, while William gave her silver boxes for first tooth and curl!

Altogether we had a lovely day and goodness knows when the Christening robe will get another family outing!

Livia, Sofia, Shayne and Jany

L-R: William, Kyle, Shayne & Sofia, Jany & Livia, Maeve and Martin

Alice in Wonderland in our own Wonderland - Off the Ground Theatre in Lismore Castle

2011-09-22T22:21:00.000+01:00

Alice down the Rabbit Hole

Last month saw the return of the terrific English Touring Theatre Company Off The Ground Theatre to their annual gig in Lismore Castle. This year they put on a terrific, insane, wacky and wonderful Alice in Wonderland for their Irish tour of various castles and big houses. They were here for one night only, in the courtyard of Lismore Castle as they have done for the past decade, and after a few years of Shakespearian comedies they produced a totally different show - Alice in Wonderland and a cast of all the characters in the original Lewis Carroll book. The Mad Hatter, The Cheshire Cat, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, The Queen of Hearts, the Dormouse, The White Rabbit, and Alice shrinking and growing very convincingly by varying the size of the sets - a big door or a small door, a big key or a small key, and a big or small bottle saying Drink Me! I loved Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass as a child, and the magic came right back when I soaked up the atmosphere of the show.

The only downside was the rain - it was a relentless Irish Mist worthy of Hollywood trying to find an Irish stereotype - it didn't pour and if you glanced out the window you might be forgiven for thinking it wasn't raining at all - that the wet ground was the aftermath of a recent shower. However, a few minutes outside would disabuse you fairly fast - it was a fine spray mist that invaded every crevice of clothing and slowly drenched from the outside in - and made for misery in no time. I went down to the castle for the 7:30pm start armed with a large shopping bag equipped with the following -

a beach towel (optimist!) for the chair;
a roll of black bag bin liners as I didn't have a mac and to put under the towel, over my shoulders, on my head, and on my lap;
a couple of cotton shawls for extra warmth;
bottle of water;
a few packets of Tayto crisps - ubiquitous and indispensible for any outdoor event
a roll of Rowntree Fruit Pastilles for a sugar rush

Painting the trees for the Queen of Hearts

a Twix Bar - for more sugar rushes.

Song and dance with Alice

The posh people in the audience who came from further afield for the show were much more organised and had brought proper outdoor theatrical fare - cheese and wine in proper glasses, with wicker hampers and Tupperware full of tasty tapas and fancy vittles - but I was far too disorganised to be so pretentiously upmarket. Aspiring to be an Irish Glyndebourne or Tanglewood is great but as this is on such a small scale with an audience of about 100 you get all sorts of people turning up. There are a smattering of locals, a few from the surrounding area, and a number who travel from further afield, and who evidently see this event as a high point on the social calender of the summer.

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser!

Alice in Wonderland

The castle's upper garden is accessible during the interval, and there was an opportunity to meet and greet the cast, all very informally. I managed to scrounge a plastic poncho from either Tweedledum or Tweedledee at the interval - I think he felt sorry for this dripping black-bag lady and when I asked if there were any leftover he went off and got me one. Many of those who'd arrived earlier than me had snagged one and I was quite impressed with its effectiveness in keeping the elements at bay. Umbrellas are a no-no at these gigs as they ruin the view for the punters sitting in the rows behind and also they drip relentlessly down everyone else's neck. I love that the show starts at 7:30 in daylight and goes on through dusk to floodlit darkness in the beautiful courtyard - and as befits every Off the Ground performance they intersperse the play with terrific song and dance routines - and plenty of audience participation for the kids sitting on the grass in the front row!


The well-wrapped audience in the floodlights - not sun!

I took some photos and videoclips so I hope you get a sense of the atmosphere of the misty August night. If you ever get a chance to catch this company's tour you'll be in for a rare treat, as they only do a dozen or so gigs in Ireland every year.

The 2011 Sean Kelly Tour of Waterford - My Big Biking Challenge

2011-09-20T14:07:00.001+01:00

With Sean Kelly in Villierstown

I should have posted this two or three weeks ago as it was the last Sunday in August that the 2011 Sean Kelly Tour of Waterford took place - this was my second time participating and it was a great day out. I really enjoyed it last year and entered this year's tour with a little trepidation as I wasn't as well prepared as I felt I was last year. I hadn't done many long cycles in advance of the mega-50km trip I'd signed up for (the shortest of the three runs on the Tour so I am not that adventurous!) but I had done about 35km the previous week so I thought I wouldn't have too much trouble. So I was thrilled when I completed it in around the same time as last year - at just over 2 hours and 30 mins. It was a fabulous day weather wise - the sun shone, it wasn't too windy and there was just one small sunshower as we entered Cappoquin for the half-way pit stop.

Certified Cyclists!

Jany and Shayne and kids

Hubby Jan did the 90km tour as he has done for the past three years - he started with the 50km the first time he did it so it was such a doddle for him he decided to do the 90km. The first time he did it the route took him from Dungarvan to Carrick-on-Suir and back in a big circle via Clonmel and Ballymacarbry. Carrick is the home of the aforementioned Sean Kelly, the famous Irish cyclist who has done the Giro d'Italia and taken part in the Tour de France on numerous occasions as well as winning the Vuelta d'Espana in 1988.

Waiting for the starting countdown

Jany & Livia, Shayne & Sofia

The route of the 50km is from Dungarvan to Cappoquin via Villierstown, the home village of another Irish sporting hero - John Treacy who won an Olympic Silver medal in 1984 in Los Angeles in the Marathon, and who was World Cross-Country champion in 1988 and 1989. So he heads up the Irish Sports Council, and is on the Council of Concern, our old NGO where we spent many happy years working overseas in Development Work. Jan was on the Council with John for the past 3 years and he was pleased to meet John after the cycle. John and Sean Kelly and the Taoiseach Enda Kenny all did the 50km cycle and it was very evidently a fun-run cycle for them all as they posed for photos with the punters in Villierstown and after the Tour back in Dungarvan at the Sports Centre. I got a nice photo of Jan and John, and me and Sean Kelly in Villierstown.

Jan and John Treacy

The scenery looked terrific on the day as we cycled through the verdant sylvan by-roads of West Waterford and from Villierstown to Cappoquin we were in the woodlands that border the Blackwater Valley and caught glistening glimpses of the winding river far below the road - yes, that was some climb from Villierstown to the top of the ridge before descending to the Finisk River valley at the wonderful Hindu-Gothic Bridge, a romantic folly built for the new bride of the local Lord of the Manor- Villiers-Stuart of Dromana House in Villierstown, back in the 19th Century.

Jan arrives back in Dungarvan - 90km on.

The Hindu-Gothic Bridge at Villierstown

We had a lovely food stop in Cappoquin where the local community centre was full of delicious food - pasta and sandwiches and Barron's Brack - the local bakery sponsored the lovely bread and fruit brack, their speciality, and we were well fortified after the refuelling to face the return stretch to Dungarvan. There were no challenging hills on this stretch of the N72 and I felt great after the cycle. I met up with Shayne, Jany and the two children, Sofia and Livia, while we waited for Jan to return from the more gruelling 90km trip along the Copper Coast and the Geo-Park of the old Copper Mines of Bonmahon and along to Tramore. There are some devilish hills on that coast road - the cliffs are indeed scenic but they're also very high when you try to cycle along from sea-level to cliff-top road. He was back in just over four hours which was pretty good for such a difficult trip - and the pros were by then coming back from their 160km mountain challenge through the Comeragh Mountains.

The dappled road from Villierstown to Cappoquin

I hope you enjoy the photos I'm sharing with you - and it gives you an idea of the fun and delights of the day. I do hope to keep up the cycling year round but it's always more challenging in the winter to cycle during the week especially as it's dark so early. I will try to get out on the weekends but they are so full of activities with kids and grandkids that it's hard to prioritise cycling in my me-time!

Castles and Culture in The Royal County - a trip to Trim.

2011-09-13T19:03:00.000+01:00

Jan and me at Newgrange

We're just back from a short break in Trim, Co. Meath - known as the Royal County for its association with all things ancient and regal in Ireland's early history. Co. Meath is a veritable hotbed of ancient historical monuments and is best known for the Hill of Tara, a seat of the High Kings of Ireland, and for its UNESCO World Heritage Site at Brú na Bóinne - Newgrange being the best known of the early Neolithic Passage Graves.

Trim Castle

View from Trim Castle and River Boyne

View of models of Trim Castle thru' the ages

We didn't go to Tara on this short visit, and I had diverted there a couple of years ago on the way from Cavan to Dublin, so I wasn't too bothered. Tara is extremely significant historically and is listed by the Smithsonian Institute as a culturally endangered site - mainly due to the motorway developments around the Tara-Skryne Valley which impinged on some of the site, and whereby some henges had to be preserved in images or as maps, rather than as places to visit. There is polarisation on this issue as there are compelling arguments on both sides - I don't think Tara will ever be destroyed by development closer to the actual Hill, but the surrounding roads shouldn't get any closer than they are. The Hill is very low-key when you get there as it is only from the air that it can be fully appreciated in my view. It's like a good walk up a gently inclining hill, and there are stone icons like the Lia Fáil (Stone of Destiny) at the summit, with the hollows and dips listed as the Banqueting Hall and you really have to stretch your imagination to visualise what it might have been like at its prime.

View from Roof of Trim Castle

So instead of telling you what I didn't see I should probably focus on what I did see! We were staying in the Knightsbrook Hotel, a new boom-time purpose-built hotel and golf resort outside Trim, in Co. Meath. It was very bizarre as it was right in the middle of what can only be described as a model dream of suburbia, a housing development of upmarket homes like a mini-Stepford, everything was so picture-perfect, yet it was like a deserted village which was disconcerting. It wasn't ghost estates, as most houses had cars outside, but there were no people. Probably all off earning the mortgages, which could have been pretty hefty, as some of the houses were upmarket 5-bedroom detached. Also there were a number of apartment blocks, coincidentally featured on this week's Irish Times Property Supplement as high-end and pricey. The hotel and housing was from the same developer who seems not to have gone belly-up in the bust, timing is everything. The hotel was a major improvement on our previous hotel experience in Sligo, in that it was cheaper, and had rooms with views - albeit over the houses but to the golf course!

Sheep's Gate at Trim Castle

Hubby emerging from the Passage at Newgrange

The Spiral Megalithic Artwork on the entrance to Newgrange

Norman Tower near Trim Castle

Hubby had a conference of Town Councillors to attend and I had a free day on Thursday, when I went to Trim Castle for the guided tour. It's a great spot and hats off to the OPW and Heritage Ireland for their excellent maintenance and tour guides who never seem to flag in their engaging and enthusiastic presentations and talks. The OPW came in for some high-profile and in my view unwarranted criticism recently when a UK-based academic slated them for the lack of signage and management of the heritage sites in their care. I didn't see any of that in Meath, and from previous sites I cannot see that either. Either you pave over a site with signage and descriptions or you have a visitor centre with brochures where people with a genuine interest can read up on the site, or have a guide, or an Audio-Visual presentation, and in my view sensitive understatement is the preferred option. In Trim there were excellent schematic diagrams of the castle through the ages, as well as scale models inside the building. It's the largest Norman Keep in Ireland and dates from the mid-1100s. The Normans came along after the Vikings, and settled in large parts of the country, and it was Hugh DeLacy whose family built and settled in Trim Castle. The guide, Neil, was excellent - an Englishman with a sense of humour and on whom the irony of talking about invaders and occupation wasn't lost as he alluded to the 800 years of oppression when the Irish were under the English yoke. Can't say British, as the Scots and Welsh were equally oppressed - and an interesting aside for film anoraks among you - Braveheart was filmed in Trim Castle. We went right to the top, up a narrow spiral staircase with stumble steps - all uneven heights to deter intruders from getting into a rhythm. The views from the roof were great even though it was a dull day. I learnt a lot of my own history with that visit and would encourage every visitor to go there - it's a real step back in time, even if it's only a millenium.

For real ancient history you have to talk about going back 5 or 6 millenia - which is what we did the next day, when we went on a bus tour to Newgrange, the main passage grave in Brú na Bóinne, the UNESCO World Heritage Site encompassing the passage graves of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, and The Battle of the Boyne site. As they are spread over a large area, we could only visit Newgrange. It had a resonance for me as I always remember by late mother telling me how spooked she was by a trip she had there when she got claustraphobia in the passage on the way to the burial chamber and had to be helped out - she nearly got a panic attack. I had never been there before, although it's been one of the most visited sites in Ireland, so I was delighted to have the chance now. It was a beautiful afternoon, blue skies and 20 degrees. Again, kudos to the OPW - the guide was brilliant, enthusiastic and informative and gave us a great background and sense of the life at that time of the Neolithic people who built the graves. There are a number of satellite mounds of smaller graves in the vicinity but this is the main one. It is famed for its alignment to the sun of the Winter Solstice, and so popular is that event that there is a lottery for 100 lucky winners to get access to the chamber for the sunrise on the five days around Dec. 21st every year. When the sun deigns to shine, and it's not raining or cloudy, it must be a moving sight to see the sunbeam light the floor of the passage for the 19m to the chamber and flood that small space with light for a short few minutes. I found it very moving to think how we were in the footsteps of those ancient Neolithic people, in a place that was holy to them, predating Stonehenge and the Pyramids at Giza.

That was my brush with culture and I hope you like the photos and can vicariously enjoy the journey with me. The break in the hotel was enjoyable and I made full use of the pool, and took this intriguing photo outside the Steam Room! I can only wonder - why did they need to post such a notice?

A Weekend in the West - from Ben Bulben to Loop Head

2011-08-26T22:14:00.002+01:00

Ben Bulben from a hill in Sligo town

Two weekends back we went for a short break to the West of Ireland - hubby had a meeting in Sligo so I went along. We stayed in the Clarion in Sligo town and had booked in a few weeks earlier, so imagine our disappointment on arrival to find our room on the second floor offered a view of...the airvents of the hotel! There was no way at their prices we were going to stay put and even though the Irish are notoriously bad at complaining we were moved up a floor after a phone call. This was a bit better as we could at least see over the airvents to see the iconic table mountain, Ben Bulben, famed in poetry by Yeats "Under Bare Ben Bulben's Head".

The (first) room with a view in the Clarion Hotel Sligo!

As we were only staying a night in Sligo we had a lovely meal in the hotel, and a few drinks in the bar. The journey up had taken over four hours so we weren't ready for a night out in Sligo town, and the hotel was a bit too far for a stroll to town by my reckoning. The following day after the meeting ended our time was our own so we drove around some of the renowned beauty spots of the area - Lough Gill with the Lake Isle of Innisfree famed again by the prolific WB Yeats in his eponymous poem, and Glencar Waterfall which is actually in Co. Leitrim! These were two places I'd often heard of but never visited before, so it was an opportunity not to be missed. Never mind that it drizzled and was a typical Irish misty day, muggy and close but deceptively wetting, as you can see in some of the photos. Val, who lives in Sligo, blogged as Magnumlady the week after of the same places we'd seen only her trip was in glorious sunshine, so you can see in her blog how it can look in fine weather.

Lough Gill Co. Sligo

Lough Gill in the mist.

We drove down through Mayo and into Galway in very inclement weather, after a loop round Strandhill and Knocknarea, with Queen Maeve's burial mound at the top, visible for miles around, and bade farewell to Ben Bulben, which will always be Sligo to me, since I first saw it in 1976 when I went to a number of weddings in Sligo of nursing colleagues who were quick off the blocks and got hitched as soon as they finished nursing school.

The trip through Mayo was blighted by the bad weather so we amused ourselves with taking photos of funny signs - the poll topper being the one for the Cowdung Festival, closely followed by the Enniscrone Black Pig Festival, which takes place not too far from Muddy Burn's pub! We arrived in Galway by early evening and checked into the Harbour Hotel, which we'd booked on the way down from Sligo - thank heaven for smartphones with apps like TripAdvisor! The hotel was nice and we'd another lovely meal. There's something about arriving in a new hotel after a day on the road that never loses its appeal, whether it's after a day's driving or hitch-hiking as we did in our youth, or a day trekking in the hills as we did in our backpacking days in India and Nepal, and indeed Africa, though that was less so as we had kids then and couldn't be as free and easy as when we were on our own. Now we've come full circle, as we're back to just the two of us - our teen queen is at the stage where hols with parents are total anathema unless mitigated by the presence of a handful of peers, such as when we hit Dublin for Summerjam 2011!

Parke's Castle, Lough Gill, Co. Sligo

Sunday morning dawned bright and sunny and we had an early breakfast, followed by a relaxing walk through a sleepy Galway city centre - through Spanish Arch and along Shop St. to Eyre Square which I hadn't seen since the controversial revamp a few years ago. There are some seriously odd pieces in the Square, of dubious artistic or cultural merit, so I can see why the revamp was not universally acclaimed. Padraic O'Conaire, the writer whose statue marked a meeting point in the Square and a photo-op for every tourist who sat on his little lap, has vanished to the confines of a nearby museum. In his stead is part of the facade of a merchant's house from the 18th Century, and a very modernistic Galway Hooker - no, not that, we're talking the type of schooner famous in this neck of the woods!

Glencar Waterfall, Co. Leitrim

Onwards to the final leg of our weekend jaunt - we decided to take the scenic route through Co. Clare and hug the coastal road as far as possible, which was a fabulous trip as the sun shone and we had a lovely day. Through southern Galway and around by Kinvara and the Burren, the famous limestone scarp in Clare. We didn't follow Corkscrew Hill, which would have taken us inland, so we stayed coastal after Ballyvaughan and headed down towards the Cliffs of Moher - we passed the tourist trap of the Cliffs, as it was just too packed with busloads of tourists, and there seemed to be a people jam on the way to the Interpretive Centre which is the gateway to the cliffs. The last time I was there was in 1998 with my mother and three youngest kids, and it was just park the car and you were off on your own up the cliff path and prayed that the wind wouldn't blow you over the edge! There was a barrier fence but it was rudimentary and quite low.

We decided to head for Kilkee and go to Loop Head instead - and were delighted to see unspoilt beauty in West Clare, particularly Loop Head which is like a mini-Moher - cliffs with about half the height but all the wild ruggedness that Moher had before crass commercialism took priority - and there was a splendidly vertiginous sea stack - a breakaway cliff that stood alone and parallel to the cliff we were on - and it was not a place for the faint-hearted or anyone with a fear of heights. There's a lighthouse on Loop Head open to the public but we were a little late for that so we just walked off on a lovely clifftop walk, and looked across to the Aran Islands which are best reached from Co. Clare even though they are part of Co. Galway.

Jan and me in the mist at Glencar Waterfall - soaked!

Something for the weekend!

We enjoyed the drive home through the Limerick Tunnel, bypassing the city, and were back home by 8 or so - in good time for a rest before I returned to work the following day, well refreshed after my two week staycation. Enjoy the photos - they're all taken with my iPhone which has made my poor camera well-nigh redundant.

Muddy Burns pub in Co. Mayo

Somewhere in Sligo or Mayo!

Spanish Arch, Galway

Galway signs

Árd Rí = High King - Galway

Nice juxtaposition of speciality treatments!

Merchant's House facade in Eyre Sq. Galway

A Galway Hooker - sort of - Eyre Sq. Galway

Cliffs of north Clare

North West Clare looking out to Inishere Aran Islands

Cliffs at Loop Head, Co. Clare - with sea arches and caves.

Sea cliff caves Loop Head.

Closer view of Sea Arches, Loop Head.

Closer view of Cliffs and Arches Loop Head

Sea Stack off Loop Head - hard to get closer cos of Cliff Edge!

The Big Knit - Little Hats with an Innocent Twist

2011-08-02T02:21:00.000+01:00

Up the Deise! The Waterford Colours!

Oh dear I have been such a dreadfully bad blogger lately but now I am on holidays for the next fortnight I have a chance to catch up with no real excuse. Nothing much planned as we are not going abroad on hols this year and we will probably go to Dublin for a few days. Meanwhile the weather is pretty awful - today's the August Bank Holiday Monday and it's a steady Irish Mist outside. Temps equally miserable - 14C - and I have been trying to cycle a bit more than I had been doing in prep for the50km leg of the Seán Kelly Challenge end of August.

Enough excuses for my non-blogging. Reason for this post is to tell you about the latest crafty business I've been getting up to - a fundraising initiative for charity, namely the Innocent Big Knit for Age Action Ireland. This is my first year participating but it's been on before. The idea is to make little hats for Innocent Smoothie bottles and then they donate €0.25 for every hat and bottle sold. So it's a win-win- Innocent get to sell smoothies ethically and the buyers get a feel-good factor from a) buying a smoothie which is ostensibly good for you and b) supporting a deserving cause. There are patterns on the Website to download and you can join in and post them off by October 14th 2011 if you are living in Ireland - or the UK which has a similar campaign going on for Age UK

A selection to a few days ago!

The benefits for the knitters/crocheters are that creativity can run riot and imagination know no bounds. Plus a hat can be knitted up in no time - about half an hour for a knitted one and about half that or less for a crocheted one. Jany my d-i-l -to-be is a whiz crocheter and has made some wonderful ones, and a whole zoo of crocheted animal bottle toppers - and I've been doing a mix of crochet and knitted ones. There is some fierce rivalry on Twitter over the County Colours (GAA) and I've made a Deise colours hat in Blue/White while the Red/White one I made could be construed as being a Cork hat - or Where's Wally? - or the good old Labour Party red with a bit of white thrown in. You can follow on Twitter at the hashtag #BigKnit and @AgeAction, and on Facebook you can Like the Innocent Smoothies Ireland page here and the Big Knit page here

It's a great way to use up stash scraps, and anything goes - bobbles, tassles, flowers, leaves, beads, buttons, ribbons, you name it, embellishment is the order of the day and you can go with whatever takes your fancy. some of the members of the Tuesday Knitting Circle at the Lismore Design Workshop are knitting hats with great gusto, and Angela will post them all on her Facebook Page which you can check out and Like - here.

Where's Wally? (or Cork, as you prefer!)

Dennis the Menace!

So here are a few of the completed creations - there will be plenty more added to the Facebook and Twitter pages - and my own Twitter stream if you want to follow me @CatherineRotteM here. It's all good fun and the nice thing it they are so quick to do you don't have to set aside your own projects or WIP* to do these little hats - and Jany is great at making baby clothes for prem babies and little blankets for Project Halo which makes keepsakes and blankets for stillborn babies. One of the women at the knitting circle is also making these white blankets and they are welcomed by most of the maternity hospitals which prepare memory boxes for parents who lose their little ones during pregnancy. It must be a great comfort to these parents to know there are so many caring people out there who lovingly make these blankets and clothes. Irish Prems are closer to home and have a Facebook page here - they may be happy to have crochet or knit clothing and blankets too.

From Knitting Stash to Splash - Upcycling through the Recession

2011-07-13T20:05:00.001+01:00

My new jumper

I've just finished knitting this jumper from my yarn stash and am delighted with the result - it was practically a freebie as I bought the original jumper in Shaw's Dungarvan last year and found it didn't do anything for me - in other words I looked frumpy in it when I got home and tried it on. Of course in the shop on the hanger it looked grand and for €7 was a bargain too good to miss. So it was a bit of a disappointment to find it looked so awful on, adding decades to my already mature years! It languished on a hanger on my clothes rail (don't have a wardrobe, just a rail from Argos!) for about a year, till I was doing a charity cleanout and came across it. On mature reflection I decided to deprive the charity and upcycle the yarn. This entailed unpicking the seams and cutting ruthlessly into the jumper from the neckline down - and then painstakingly ripping and rolling the yarn into manageable balls. I probably should have washed and unkinked it but as it was a ribbon yarn it didn't really react like proper wool would have and had an impact on whatever I was going to make. So I just weighed the salvaged yarn and had 350gm. That's like 5x50gm balls so I felt very smug as that would make a jumper even though I couldn't save the top of the jumper from the V-neckline up.

Finished jumper detail

I had a plan to make a jumper like a cream one I had made earlier in the best celebrity-chef tradition - also a ribbon yarn and one I wear to lots of gigs here as it's so comfortable and quite smart to wear - you can see it in the photos in this post - and this lovely burgundy yarn was going to make another similar but slightly longer jumper.

I only started it about a month ago and kept it going between other projects to alleviate the tedium of knitting stocking stitch - or stockinette as the Americans call it.

A ripping yarn!

I was making Jaywalker Socks concurrently so that kept me on my toes - no pun intended! These were a nice challenge and I was delighted with the results using the pre-patterned Lidl wool which is brilliant for socks - I have about 6 pairs in the red and the blue colourways and I am making a pair now in the grey-black colourways. When I'm going on any long car trip as a passenger the socks are a great way to mitigate motorway monotony - bypassing every village and town on the road to Dublin is great to shorten the road but boy is it a dull trip! At least now there are services with decent food and diversions - a good way to part fools and their money but I'm as much a sucker for Supermac's as the next fast-food fan and they do the Carlsberg of Curry Chips - outside of the Perki Chick in Drumcondra and Lennox's of Cork, Supermac's are hard to beat.

After all those deviations from the topic - here's the end result - I am totally taken with my upcycled jumper and I love the cream stripe at the hem - it used a bit of the leftover yarn I had from my first jumper. It's a perfect summer jumper as it's cool and airy, and the three-quarter sleeves are a great compromise - and a great way to mask any hint of bingo-wings!

Stash quantity - 350gm

Weigh-in of salvaged stash!

I'll try to post some more snippets on recent knitting and crochet projects in the coming days, as I've been a disastrous blogger in the past few months. Life's just too busy with work, concert gigs in Dublin and Cork, house renovation in Dublin - a whole other post - and keeping in touch with the kids and grandkids in Dublin and Cork. And as it's summer holidays for the teenqueen in our lives there's a lot of taxi-ing to and fro between friends and sleepovers hither and yon. Never a dull moment, and we wouldn't have it any other way!

Summerjam at the O2 - Teenage kicks for a new generation

2011-07-01T01:35:00.000+01:00

Summerjam 2011 in full swing.

The night before last I found myself at the O2 Arena/Point Depot for Summerjam 2011 - a teenfest for fans of the stars appearing at the concert who were all unknowns to me prior to the gig - and it was a far cry from the last gig I enjoyed at the same venue in May, Eric Clapton. This was strictly for the teen generation and the long-suffering adults who had to accompany the under-16s. I was there in that capacity, along with teen daughter and two friends - it was a birthday present for one of them. They had a blast, and I kept my distance as befits someone of my mature years with granny status already endowed. It would not have been cool to be a helicopter parent hovering over the charges, and they are old enough to mind themselves at something like this.

The Revolver Big Wheel

We made a two-day trip out of the gig - up to Dublin early on Tuesday, stopping off at the new Services in Cashel at Exit 8 of the M7 motorway. Motorway services in Ireland are a bit like buses - for ages there are none and then along come two in quick succession. So now between Cork and Dublin there are two good services at well-spaced intervals - also near Abbeyleix at Junction 14. Thus we found ourselves bizarrely in McDonalds for breakfast - not a place I'd normally frequent at any time unless in the company of the girls.

When we got to Dublin we were too early to check in to the Skylon Hotel so we met son Martin and a friend of his from his Tanzania days who was over in Ireland from Australia/England for a short break. We'd a nice hour or so with them and then checked in where the girls spent the next few hours getting ready for the gig. They went all out with the fake tan, nails, eyeliner tattoos and fluorescent tops and socks! They were all pretty much clones of each other and when we got to the O2 I saw that the every tween and teen girl in the place was in similar attire! It was like a uniform - funky and colourful and with lots of indie style to make their outfit unique, despite the uniformity of the look.

Looking down the Liffey from Revolver wheel.

As we got to the O2 too early for the gig, we decided to go on the Revolver Big Wheel - which was only a fiver - in-keeping with Liveline's Fiver Friday perhaps, or just trying to get a bit of business going - and it was nice to see the city sights from a height. The Wheel is only half the height of the London Eye so not that exciting but then the Dublin Skyline isn't that riveting apart from the landmarks like the Aviva/Landsdowne Road Stadium and Croke Park, Liberty Hall, the Beckett Bridge and the Pringle Box Convention centre. The River Liffey and Dublin Port are the main vistas. After working in Dublin hospitals back in the 70s and 80s there's not much the skyline can offer that's new - from the top floors of Jervis Street and the Mater hospitals you could pretty much see forever!

Looking at the crowd queuing for Summerjam 2011

The gig was noisy but very energetic and lively - the girls were near the stage and I positioned myself near the shop at the back - close to the tea and twix bars for sustenance! I took lots of videoclips for them and as I'd been Tweeting about it earlier I was delighted to meet a fellow-Tweep there - Val who tweets as @magnumlady was there with her son and daughter and we had a mini- tweet-up! She and her kids got to meet and greet the stars as they stayed in the Gibson Hotel in the Point Village beside the O2. She has some terrific photos on her blog - and she's an avid tweeter as well so we connect from time to time.

Cactus display Botanic Gardens

As for the stars - I'd never heard of any of them before the night - though I realised as the night wore on that I was humming along to most of the songs - Ke$ha, LMFAO, Aggro Santos, Alexis Jordan and Fugitive were all headliners - and the quality of the music and rap and dance was impressive. The staging was good with great lighting and props. Spin FM were doing the warm-up disco - though I'm sure it's not called that nowadays (showing my age again!) and the crowd control was good, with a couple of troublemakers picked off early on, when there were a few scraps and turf wars going on. I loved watching the crowd enjoying the gig and it was fun to see all the long-suffering parents there too. It was nearly 11pm when it ended, after over four hours. So it was good value for the punters and they certainly enjoyed it. We were back in the hotel before midnight and went to Abrakebabra on the way home to get some fish'n'chips. You can't beat them when the midnight munchies strike!

Succulents garden Botanic Gardens

The following day some serious shopping was done by the girls, while I relaxed by visiting Martin and meeting up with my friend Darina and her little granddaughter Amelie in the Botanic Gardens - a lovely tranquil oasis in the heart of Glasnevin where you could imagine yourself in the heart of the country. We had coffee and cakes in the light-filled courtyard tearoom and enjoyed a walk around the gardens and the enormous glasshouse with gigantic palms and bananas. The lushness transported me back to the tropics and the equatorial rainforest we knew so well in Tanzania.

The Victorian Greenhouse at the Botanic Gardens

The girls were all shopped out by teatime and we headed for home - with a pit stop at Supermac's in Junction 14 near Abbeyleix - and we arrived by 10pm - and as they say in the best tradition of the school essay "What I did on my Summer Holidays" - tired but happy!

Darina and Amelie in the Botanic Gardens

Having a Blast in the Home of the Black Stuff - Friends Reunited!

2011-06-22T02:49:00.001+01:00

Sláinte! Theo with Jan and me in the Guinness Storehouse

Last Sunday hubby Jan and me travelled to Dublin to a very special musical interlude - our old friend Theo from Deurne in Brabant in Holland was conducting his Dutch Brass Ensemble Mé Tresse (My Tresses in the local dialect) in an afternoon performance in the Guinness Storehouse - the Home of the Black Stuff, as the ads have it - and we planned to be there. Theo had sent us his tour schedule some weeks back and we decided there and then to go to at least one of the shows. The last time we saw Theo perform was in Schouwen Duiveland in 1995, during our leave from Tanzania, when he played with a Jazz Quartet or Quintet in a local venue.

Theo playing to the gallery with Jan & Martin

Sinking the Black!

Theo the Musical Director

A bit of background mightn't go amiss here for those of you who mightn't know who Theo is or where our friendship developed. We met in Iringa in Tanzania in 1993 when he came to be a "manny" - male nanny or au pair to two Dutch boys whose mother worked for an international aid agency. As everyone knew everyone, especially expats, in Iringa, it didn't take long for us to meet up. Our kids were already friendly through the Danish School where they all went for sport and music and craftwork, subjects not covered by the homeschooling we were all doing to some extent or another. The Danish school catered for the MKs (Missionary Kids) of the Danish Lutheran Pastors around Tanzania, and the Danida (Danish Bilateral Aid) kids from the area - Iringa was a prime recipient of Danida largesse. Thus we got to know Theo very well over the year he was there, and we had a lot of fun together - not least because he was and is a brilliant musician and entertained us all at Christmas and parties with impromptu concerts on the trombone and piano, and his warm extrovert personality endeared him to everyone. We even first saw Riverdance in his house, on a video of the Eurovision that someone sent out to Iringa weeks after the event took the country and world by storm.

Mé Tresse with Theo directing in Guinness Storehouse

Not surprisingly, we kept in touch - albeit erratically - in the years that followed. He visited us on a number of occasions when we were in Holland and when we were staying in Liessel with Addie in 2002 we had a memorable evening around a campfire with music and craic into the small hours. A few years ago he turned up on our doorstep in Lismore and we had a lovely few days with him and his friend Liet, and relived a tradition of beercan building from floor to ceiling that had begun in Iringa on a memorable Good Friday back in the 90s.

Jan and Martin - pints and Peelneutjes!

Since then we've had sporadic contact until now, and we were delighted to renew the links with this great performance in Dublin, having collected son Martin before heading to St. James's Gate and the Guinness Storehouse, the iconic shrine to the national drink (besides tea!). The band played under his direction for about an hour and a half and the crowd loved them. Theo played trombone and conducted all his own arrangements, and included a number of Irish songs including Molly Malone and The Fields of Athenry, and they finished up the show with a rousing rendition of what we know as The Red Rose Café - in Dutch, Het Kleine Café aan de Haven. He welcomed us in his speech as old friends from Tanzania and he even played a bar of Mungu Ibariki Afrika (the Tanzanian National Anthem - God Bless Africa, the universal Anthem of Africa that we all know from South Africa as Nkosi Sikelele Afrika,).

Theo and me having a laugh

We repaired afterwards to the Gravity Bar at the top of the Guinness Storehouse - where Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were offered a pint - and enjoyed the panoramic vistas over Dublin. We had a lovely afternoon together catching up on old times, taking some photos of the reunion.

All the boys have fond memories of their time in Iringa with Theo when they were young and homeschooling, and his flamboyance made him easy to remember. If the others hadn't had work Monday I think they'd have come from Cork to meet him.

In fact, Jan went to Galway tonight to see them play in the Augustinian Church with the Galway Choral Society which was a terrific show. I was working and couldn't go, but our friend Fran who lives in Galway went and thoroughly enjoyed it, I had texted her earlier this evening to tell her about it.

I will post a few photos and a video clip if I can upload it to YouTube, and hope you enjoy them and get a sense of the fun and enjoyment of the show as much as we did. Here's a clip from the band from YouTube.

Trying out a new Blogging Platform - Tumblr Time

2011-06-15T23:56:00.001+01:00

Darragh Doyle, Rolf Potts, Manchán Magan, Áine Goggins & Karen, me

The Immrama Festival of Travel Writing 2011 was held in Lismore from June 9-12 and one of the highlights was the Bloggers' Clinic with Manchán Magan, Darragh Doyle, Áine Goggins and Rolf Potts.

Some people who'd been in contact on cyberspace were meeting up in person for the first time - Susan from Clonmel and Susan from Kilkenny were both there, fellow-bloggers and tweeters and book clubbers, and it was a great meeting of minds. I enjoyed it immensely and as I normally work flat out during Immrama covering Health and Safety at all the events, it was a real treat to take some me time for this clinic.

Susan and me

Darragh Doyle from Boards.ie introduced Tumblr and I am giving it a trial and if it works I might divide my loyalties between it and Blogger - or they might work in symbiosis. Time will tell. I need to be adventurous and not get stuck in a rut with Blogger which has the comfort of familiarity.

The crew at the Bloggers' Clinic

So it goes...how we verified the news

Irish people can relate to this!

Susan, Manchán Magan and me

Here are some photos from the clinic - they include Karen, an extreme couchsurfer from Tramore, Manchán, old friend of Immrama on his third visit here, and the clinic "Docs" who presented - Manchán, Aine, Darragh and Rolf, in the group pic. Susan (Queen of Pots!) and me are with Manchán.

Lismore - and one of its citizens - in the Spotlight of Immrama and beyond

2011-06-02T01:45:00.000+01:00

I want to share these few YouTube video clips from a local Waterford company called Waterford First - they have been around for a while now promoting the beautiful county of Waterford and its beautiful people!

They came to Lismore this week and shot some footage of Lismore in glorious sunshine which shows it at its best and at this time of year it certainly looks stunning.

There were some small clips made of hubby Jan in his capacity below here as coordinator of Immrama the Lismore Festival of Travel Writing,

and in two further short clips, from a personal perspective, where he talks about his life and work in overseas and community development and his role in local government and politics.

I hope you enjoy them - they are brief enough to hold the attention span of a proverbial gnat, yet long enough to give some insight into the place and the person, as well as some background to Immrama from one of its founder members.

This year the ninth festival takes place from June 9th to 12th in Lismore, so this time fortnight it will be all over. We are looking forward to it and I am particularly anticipating a lot of craic as well as information at the Bloggers' Clinic which is hosted by a former speaker at Immrama, Manchán Magan, who frequently writes about the festival in his Irish Times column, most recently here when he wrote about the Bloggers' Clinic.

Co-hosting is Áine Goggins from TG4's Irish Language series Ó Tholg go Tolg (From Couch to Couch) on Couchsurfing, the latest backpackers' global phenomenon which has some local participants who will host couchsurfers for Immrama weekend. Lastly, Darragh Doyle from boards.ie a discussion forum will co-present the Clinic.

I usually hover at all the events in a Hi-Viz jacket as a Health & Safety person and often miss the events but this is one gig I am looking forward to as I enjoy blogging - bad and all as I am at it lately, sorry! - and social networking platforms like Facebook and Twitter have revolutionised communications.

TV programmes have never been the same since I started following their hashtags on Twitter, and they make the political programmes and some entertainment shows far more fun to watch if you read the comment stream simulataneously. Multitasking writ large I know, but that's what we're supposed to be good at! I will post about the gig after Immrama.

A night to remember - Clapton in Concert and Dublin's Docklands

2011-05-22T12:28:00.000+01:00

The O2/Point Depot

A couple of weeks ago we had a real treat as we went to see rock legend and guitar hero supreme Eric Clapton in concert in the O2/Point Depot (can't use these commercially driven sponsorship product-placement names without a ton of cynicism and the original name) in Dublin. It was hubby Jan's birthday treat as he has been a fan since forever, and has some of his old vinyl LPs (remember those?!) which must surely be collectors' items by now.

Birthday boy and me!

We went up to Dublin in the early afternoon as we had some business to attend to - and then we called out to see middle son Martin in Drumcondra. We had a lovely early bird meal at the best pizzeria in Dublin - in my humble opinion - The Independent Pizza Company on Dorset Street, beside Drumcondra Railway Station. This was my first time in its current location as it used to be a few doors up the road above Quinn's pub, an iconic landmark, along with nearby McGraths pub, particularly for punters going to Croke Park to the hurling and football All-Ireland qualifiers and finals. I had a delicious Caesar Salad and Chorizo pizza while Jan had a Calzone closed pizza, something I first encountered on our Italian honeymoon almost thirty years ago! Along with a few glasses of house red, we were ready for the road.

Martin and Mammy

Scrummy Caesar Salad

Chorizo Pizza

We walked over to the venue at the end of the Dublin Docklands at the old Point Depot which has undergone a transformation in recent years to become the O2, a nod to telecoms sponsorship and an anodyne ubiquity which irks me as I loved the uniqueness of the old Point - it meant something and referenced its original incarnation as the depot at the point where the River Liffey meets the sea and where goods were offloaded and stored.

We walked down long-familiar streets which were a trip down memory lane in itself as we lived in Dublin many years ago, at the start of our lives together. I spent six happy carefree student years there, living in flatland Rathmines and Rathgar, as well as the house in Drumcondra where our son is now staying. So I have many fond memories of Dublin and there are many landmarks that have a resonance for me. Down Belvedere Road, Gardiner Street and Mountjoy Square, and onto Custom House Quay past Busáras bus depot which housed the Eblana Theatre in the basement - I went to many plays there in my student days.

Jeannie Johnston Famine Memorial Ship

The evening was lovely, and the IFSC, birthplace (probably) of the Celtic Tiger, looked suitably impressive, if not majestic like the Custom House. The Jeannie Johnston seems to be permanently berthed around here and it looks lovely, but the highlights of the walk had to be the harp-like Samuel Beckett Bridge and the "Pringle Box" Convention Centre, so-called because of its backwards-tilting circular glass wall. They are beautiful architectural landmarks of the modern city, and have made the Docklands the vibrant place it is today. The Famine Memorial on Custom House Quay is a recent sculpture and is very haunting and evocative of our darkest days. I was taken with the World Poverty Stone, a UN commemorative stone.

Samuel Beckett Bridge

The Concert was wonderful even if Clapton isn't the most communicative singer around - as Jan said we are there to enjoy the music, and that was great. He sang lots of songs I didn't know as I'm not as diehard a fan as hubby, but the perennial faves like I Shot the Sherriff and Layla and Wonderful Tonight raised the roof of the revamped O2. He looked well for his 66 years and I hope we all wear as well given the hell-raising life he led in his young rock years - he has had his share of tragedy as well with his 4 yr old son falling from a 54th floor apartment in 2002. That inspired Tears in Heaven which he didn't sing - there wouldn't have been a dry eye in the house.

Claption in action on the big screen

I loved the people watching before the gig started and decided that ageing rockers attract a certain demographic - ageing rock fans! We had good seats and the big screens captured the detail we couldn't see from our dizzy heights. Clapton's crew was terrific, with backing singers, keyboard and piano players, and drummer and bass player.

Revolver by night

The crowd at the concert

He was supported for the first hour by Andy Fairweather-Low and the Low Riders - and I hadn't a clue who he was as we'd no programme - but the lighting was dire for that hour and he was like a skeletal underlit shadow - though I loved the two hits he sang - (If Paradise was) Half as Nice and Wide Eyed and Legless - I don't thing the setting did him justice. Eric played for over 2 hours and came back for an encore, which helped us forgive his being detached. There was a great atmosphere in the O2 but we were constantly being trodden on by people in and out for booze - I will never understand why people go to concerts and spend their time there in and out to the bar. Dublin's Big Wheel, Revolver, beckoned temptingly but I couldn't persuade hubby to overcome his vertigo to give it a go and see Dublin by night. That's something for the bucket list.

We were on a high after it and got a taxi back to Drumcondra where we'd left the car. We were back home by 3am - I slept for most of the journey and had the Tuesday off to recover. I went to the morning session of my knitting circle, and enjoyed the company of a bunch of formidable women with good chat and tea and cakes enhancing the quality of the knitting.

There are a few more gigs I'd have on my bucket list, Springsteen being tops and one I hope to fulfill this on his next Irish visit.

A Historic Week - and Conference Craic in Kilkenny

2011-05-10T23:04:00.000+01:00

Having a laugh with colleagues from the Waterford Branch

Getting ready to party at the Gala Dinner

This past week has been memorable for many reasons - it was a bit of a rollercoaster as Friday saw the Royal Wedding where all commentators suspended reasoned judgement and went into sycophancy overdrive. In Ireland where we scorn such monarchic shenanigans as unworthy of a republic there was a dip in ESB Electricity usage for the duration of the broadcasting - indicating that the only appliance in use was the TV - nary a kettle or a cooker in sight! Seems they can monitor such things, and it reflects our ADLs (as in the Barthel Index used in nursing assessment) - our Activities of Daily Living! Despite that little aside - I did watch what was on view in the various homes I visited and saw the bride's arrival at the altar. Kate did look good, but her sister Pippa looked better. True to form, within hours there was a Facebook fan page set up for her rear-end attributes. The sheath dress she wore called for a total ban on any surplus adipose tissue (=fat) or cellulite - or the Spanx-type compression undies that haven't been seen since Victorian corsetry and wasp-waists were the order of the day and which many of my generation can't live without at functions and weddings. I have refused thus far to be reined in by such a garment and WYSIWYG in my gladrags. Comfort rules above convention and at my age I will endeavour to look good but to enjoy myself as well.

Minister for Health Dr. James O'Reilly's Address

Which brings me on to the social events that went with the Annual Delegate Conference of the INMO - tge Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (some day they'll have to put in apostrophes - I know, it pains my inner grammar geek). This was held in Kilkenny and we had a busy 3 days of motions, debate, addresses, keynote speakers (the new Minister for Health, Dr. James O'Reilly) and lots of card-waving to pass or reject motions. That was by day - come evening and we let our hair down as only nurses know how - and we partied into the night. It always amazes me that regardless of how much partying nurses get up to they are fresh and ready the following morning - whether for duty or for another round of debates.

I had a motion to speak to from our PHN (Public Health Nursing) section and unfortunately it didn't get an airing until late on the last day by which point everyone's motioned out and there was no time for debate - just voting. It was carried unanimously so there was no problems bar my difficulty in limiting my address to the requisite max of 3 minutes - even after judicious editing I was timed out by the bell.

Claire and Mary (with the Gobnait O'Connell Award for Outstanding Service to the Branch) with Liam Doran Gen. Sec. INMO

Me and my new Twitter friend Dean

On a lighter note, I was tweeting a bit during the lulls in the debates and between speakers and discovered another tweeter at the conference - a young student nurse from the Sligo branch. We met up at the Gala Dinner on the final evening and had a bit of a laugh at the joys of Twitter, as he had been chatting with Fergal Bowers, the RTE Health Correspondent, who was reporting on the Minister's address. The media got a hammering over their negative reporting on the public sector - we have been so vilified in recent years that you'd think we were responsible for all the woes in the country.

Nicholas Mosse Pottery Shop, Bennettsbridge

Kilkenny is a lovely small city with narrow streets and a lot of lovely old buildings. It rained almost incessantly for the duration of the conference but on our free afternoon the sun appeared so I went to see the Nicholas Mosse pottery in Bennettsbridge and the gallery in Kilkenny Castle. The Kilkenny Craft Exhibition was on and had some lovely pieces on display. Unfortunately I was too late to see inside the Castle and one of the main galleries, the Butler, was closed but I enjoyed the bit of culture - there were lots of ceramics on display.

Dessert mmmm.....!

As is now the norm at these conferences we had a Table Quiz for local charities on the opening night, which was a good laugh even though we didn't win. The following night we were entertained by the Kilkenny Gospel Choir which was upbeat and uplifting. That was followed by an Irish Dance troupe who were brilliant - none of the wigs and fake tan that's become synonymous with Irish Dancing Championships like the recent World Championships in Dublin which brought down the wrath of the public over the homogenisation of the dancers - like Oompah-loompahs with mop heads, all distracting from the marvellous skills they have. Thankfully our troupe were more Riverdance than St. Tropez and their elegance was matched by their expertise. To everyone's delight, one of the student midwives, Danny Oakes from Alaska and Dundalk put on a spontaneous show of spectacular skill. You can enjoy the video clip below. Michael Flatley won't want for a successor if this guy decides to do a nixer from the labour ward.

The final evening's Gala Dinner was good fun though everyone was pretty exhausted by that stage. We had lovely food and danced if off afterwards, and the camaraderie and craic made it an enjoyable few days which has become a bit of an annual reunion for the nursing diaspora of Ireland.

Given the goings on in the rest of the world - Osama taken out by Obama - what a difference a letter makes!- and the triumphal euphoria of the West being slowly replaced by cautious optimism as the radicals threaten revenge, it has been a strange week of polarisation. Ireland awoke on Saturday morning to the prophet of doom Morgan Kelly's diatribe against the Central Bank director Patrick Honohan over the bank bailout - he predicted bankruptcy for Ireland in the coming year or two as we struggle to bring our head above water let alone keep it there. It was so vitriolic and personal that I wondered - as did most of the Twitterati - what agenda is being played out.

Today hubby and me are heading to Dublin to see Eric Clapton at the O2 - a birthday treat for Jan who loves Clapton forever. I'm looking forward to it too, one of the rock stars I'll enjoy seeing before he hangs up his Stratocaster.

Immrama 2011 Launch - An Evening of Anticipation in Lismore Castle

2011-04-22T18:46:00.000+01:00

Lismore Castle in evening shadows

Last Tuesday saw the launch of the Immrama 2011 - the 9th Lismore Festival of Travel Writing - in Lismore Castle's renowned Pugin Room. As in previous years, the launch is a much anticipated event as people wait to see what the lineup for this year will be. As ever it didn't disappoint and while the names may not be as familiar to everyone as in other years it still promises to be a great weekend. It has become a tradition for me to blog about the launch and the fundraising events like Devonshire Day and the Table Quiz, so I'll continue that with this short post and some photos.

If you click on the link to the Immrama blog on the website here, you will see the entire programme on a page - and the revamped website hosted as usual by Déise Design (see, the Deise name - with or without the fada - keeps cropping up in Waterford!) from Dungarvan. There is no point in repeating everything that you can read from that blog; suffice to say that there is already a surge in bookings and there will be as good a following as in previous years - the brand alone inspires such loyalty that people book from year to year without even knowing the line-up.

Jan and me at the launch (thanks to David Clynch, Photographer)

Conor O'Clery, the peripatetic former Irish Times correspondent, is the keynote speaker on the Saturday afternoon, and he should be an entertaining and riveting speaker, with his 33 years of foreign correspondence and his books to draw on for inspiration. What I also like about this year's Immrama is the recognition of blogging in travel writing with the presence of Rolf Potts and a conversation forum on blogging with veteran friend of Immrama and former literary breakfast speaker Manchán Magan facilitating. He will include couchsurfing, a terrific phenomenon I wish had been there in my backpacking youth and which is embraced by one friend here in Lismore with great enthusiasm - go Jane! Social media in this era of Twitter and Facebook can't be ignored and it is good to elevate the oft-maligned world of blogging to give it some parity with the published hard-copy written word.

Ed Lynch, MC for the evening

Other speakers include Alex Von Tunzelmann and Sara Wheeler, Irish Poet Theo Dorgan, and Anthony Sattin and William Blacker, whose book inspired the theme title for Immrama 2011 - Along the Enchanted Way...Travellers Past and Present.Of course there's a nod to On Raglan Road, that wonderful Irish poem by Patrick Kavanagh turned hit ballad by Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, which includes the line Along the Enchanted Way.

Peter Dowd, Immrama President

A large part of the attraction is the venue of Lismore as a beautiful town with its own charms and this has been documented far and wide by previous Immrama visitors and speakers. This includes luminaries like the aforementioned Manchán Magan, the eccentric Irish writer, eclectic traveller to far-flung parts and intrepid house-builder of an eco-dwelling extraordinaire in the Irish midlands which has earned him the soubriquet of an Irish Hermit by John Murray in a recent Radio One programme on people who chose to live outside society as we have come to know it! He's written glowingly on Lismore here in his Irish Times Travel Supplement - there's a whole archive of his articles but many of the older ones are subscription only (which is really stingy of the Times).

More internationally, Michael Shapiro, who visited Lismore last year for Immrama with his fiancée Jacqueline Yao, wrote a great piece on Lismore and Immrama that has a lovly romantic twist at the end! There's an audio link here to an interview he did recently for Arthur Frommer's Travel Show He's interviewed Dervla Murphy, our own Lismore travel writer of acclaim, and she has lent her illustrious name to Teen Travel Writing Award, a new venture for Immrama supported by the County Library. Fitting, as Dervla's Lismore roots began when her father arrived here to take up the County Librarian post a few months before she was born in 1931.

All in all we had a pleasant couple of hours in the Pugin Room of the castle. There was a nice crowd there, a mix of Immrama organisers and committee members, officials from the Co. Council who have seconded some staff to the festival, and the many friends and supporters of Immrama over the years, without whom the festival just wouldn't happen as their goodwill as well as financial sponsorship is crucial for the ongoing success of such a community venture. We are very proud here in Lismore of Immrama's commitment to maintaining its community core - long may it continue well into its second decade. As the Chairman of Immrama said at the launch - it would only work in Lismore - take it out of this location and it just wouldn't be the same.

Orla Russell, Mayor of Lismore

Ger Barron, Deputy County Mayor

Ray O'Dwyer County Manager

Margaret O'Sullivan, Immrama programmer

Bernard Leddy Immrama Chairman

Audience at Immrama Launch

Attentive Audience

I hope you enjoy the photos and get a sense of the launch atmosphere - it wasn't just all speeches, there was a lot of chatting and cheese and wine - and afterwards we repaired to Foley's on The Mall for a few scoops, as they say. It wasn't great to have such an event in the midweek with work the next day but I was very prudent, and was home not too long after midnight!

Ladies who Launch - At the Lismore Castle Arts Summer 2011 Exhibition

2011-04-16T02:16:00.002+01:00

Last Friday evening I went to Lismore Castle Arts to the
opening of the Summer Exhibition 2011 - Still Life is the name of the exhibition and it has paintings on the walls again - a far cry from last year's way too avant-garde video installations in a blacked-out gallery. I took some nice photos and met some friends there - like any gallery opening it was an eclectic and diverse group with a lot of quite plummy posh people from the art world who stood around knowingly stroking their beards/chins - while I wandered around looking like a lady who launches for a living!

I love the opening events at the castle as there is a good buzz around and plenty of people milling about genteelly. With the setting sun casting slanting shadows across the gardens the atmosphere was magical. I was here about a month earlier at Devonshire Day and it was amazing to see the change in the gardens in such a short time; the tulips and wallflowers were in full bloom and the daffodils were starting to straggle. The blossom on the trees was at various stages of bloom, with some early cherry trees already past their prime and shedding.

The gallery housed the majority of the works on display and after the glass of wine and the wander around, I wallked through the gardens to the only outdoor exhibit - the Monkey Tower, which had a makeover from 2009 Turner Prizewinner Richard Wright that was delightfully quirky. The walls of this circular tower at the corner of the Lower Gardens were stamped with a series of symmetrical triangles on a white background, and it was very pop-arty with a trompe l'oeil effect incorporating the window recesses and the doorframe. That was one of my favourite pieces. Another one that I liked was the video installation of the robot reflecting the room on a continuous 20 minute loop, called Made in 'Eaven, 2004, by Mark Leckey. Weird but pretty cool, like a Philip Starck kitchen gadget - it's been in the Tate and he was the Turner Prizewinner in 2008

There were a lot of floral paintings by Gillian Carnegie, you can see the photos above. The photos of the Open Book series by Anne Collier were nice, if a bit I-could-have-done-that-myself -ish! But that's modern art for you - and at least it was aesthetically pleasing, even if I didn't quite get it - is it art or photography as art? Oh dear, I'm just such a philistine when it comes to the whole art thing.

This year I missed my favourite exhibition of the year in the Castle, the Sotheby's Irish Sale Preview - it was on in early March and I didn't check the dates, expecting it to be in April as in other years. A missed blog opportunity as well as a wander through history. I'll not be so remiss next year!

Another exhibit were three plasticised polystyrene bomber jackets by Seth Price - one of them was slightly in meltdown, and they didn't really do it for me as they were just vacuum packed reliefs of bomber jackets in the plastic. Probably technically great but art? I dunno!

Aspens in Flagstaff made an impact from a distance - it was clever as they were all pictures of the same image of aspen trees - a photo in a large frame - all placed on the wall to make one big exhibit. Sherrie Levine was the artist, and again you could say I-could-have-done-that. And probably add - why-didn't-I? and that would be because I'm not an artist and wouldn't have thought of it!

There is a video installation in another venue in Lismore, St. Carthage's Hall, which has served as a satellite gallery for the Castle Arts last year as well. I haven't yet been, so that will be for another weekend. I enjoyed the stroll through the lovely gardens, and we are very lucky in Lismore to have easy access to the beautiful castle and its gardens, and the boundaries between the aristocracy and the locals have become very blurred, in that the castle incumbent, Lord William Burlington, is a very pleasant chap who doesn't put on any airs and graces and is as friendly and chatty as the next person, as is his wife Laura. They have two little kids, and they spend a lot of time in Lismore, and our son has played cricket with Lismore over in Chatsworth, the main gaff of the Devonshires.

I haven't yet captioned the photos - just have a look and see whether you can match them up from the descriptions I've given. Most are pretty self-explanatory.

Next week I'll be back (like Arnie) for the launch of Immrama 2011 in the Pugin Room and will report on that illustrious event in Dispatches from the Deise. Watch this space!

A Wonderful Event - Livia, our new Granddaughter is born!

2011-04-07T23:51:00.000+01:00

Livia's first car journey

There's been a lot happening in the past fortnight and I am only now catching up on sharing the good news. Before I start to sound like a tent revivalist preaching to the converted - this isn't a polemic or a sermon! On March 26th our beautiful second granddaughter, Livia Lena Martina, was born to Jany and Shayne in Cork University Maternity Hospital, where Sofia, her big sister, was born over a year ago. I had planned a week's leave from work to be on hand to babysit Sofia, so the timing was perfect as Jany went into labour on first day of my holidays - broken waters, and off to the hospital in the middle of the night. I headed of to Cork where Jany was already admitted to CUMH.

The first photo of Livia in CUMH

The next day was the waiting game, as Jany started regular contractions that evening and little Livia was born at 11:19p.m., weighing in at 8lbs 10ozs. or for the metric among you 3.9kg. I was delighted and relived when the call from Shayne came through and I spent half the night on the phone with the family, and went to see Jany the next afternoon. Unfortunately Livia had some fluid on her lungs and rapid breathing at delivery so she went to the Neonatal Unit for observation, and was given antibiotics. She was kept there for longer than expected at first, as she had a raised blood test that could have indicated infection, even though she was fine in every way. The end result was none of the family except Shayne and Jany saw her until she was six days old, as only parents were allowed into the neonatal unit. It was really weird watching the popular TV series From Here to Maternity which looks at birth stories from CUMH, from the human interest perspective, when your own grandchild is in there.

Livia home at last

She is a real beauty with a head of hair exceeding Sofia's and she is settling into life in Cork with her big sister and her doting parents! I came home after 5 days in Cork once Jany got home on Wednesday, and then I went back to bring her home on Friday.

On Saturday her granddad Jan and me went to Tralee for the funeral of a cousin, Tom, who lived to the ripe old age of 97, and on the way home we called to see the family in Cork.

Sunday was Shayne's birthday so we spent the afternoon and evening in Cork celebrating, and I baked a nice fruity cake. Graphic Design son Martin designed the birth cards which are like a film flyer - I love it! What do you think? It's a very Dutch institution, personalised birth announcement cards, and it is catching on here more and more.

Livia in Neonatal Unit CUMH

Coffee on the terrace in CUMH - waiting day!

Meeting Granddad/Opa

Proud Granny with Livia

Proud dad feeding Livia!

The other big event is that Shayne got a new job, and will start on Monday, in a customer services centre in Cork, and our youngest son William also starts there next week. It is great that they have jobs after intermittent work, and Shayne's been doing a back-to-education course for the past six months. It's very timely now as he finishes the course just as he starts the new job

Jany with her little beauty!

With middle son Martin in Dublin working in the Westbury Hotel for the past month or so, they are all gainfully employed, albeit not in their field. They're pretty well over-qualified for the work they're doing now but in this recession it's great to have a job, and selfishly I am glad they'll be in the country and not have to emigrate just yet. As you need savings to go to Australia or Canada or N. Zealand, this will be a stepping stone to that end if they so decide. When I was their ages I had been and gone and come back from Bangladesh, so I can't really come over all Irish Mammy on them and guilt-trip them into staying here just to keep me happy!

Sofia the Jaffa Cake Kid!

Sofia playing Incy Wincy Spider!

Birth Announcement Card!

I am back at work this week, and enjoying the lovely spring weather - tomorrow the forecast is for 21C - high summer temps - so if this is global warming it's hard to complain! I love that we had a BBQ this evening and could sit out till nearly 9p.m. with the stretch in the evenings since the clocks went forward last Saturday week - just after Livia's birth. There was a great piece in the Irish Times recently which I'll link - Ireland in 100 Euphemisms - and certainly you could add "There's a great stretch in the evenings" to that list if it's not in there already!

Fruity Birthday Cake

I'll post a few photos of Livia and Sofia - and random stuff - and more posts will keep you updated on Livia's progress through the first year, as with Sofia. We are so happy that she is well and healthy and good luck to them all in their new journey!

An Apple a Day: My birthday iPhone - and Macs Past and Present

2011-03-26T19:17:00.000Z

The Birthday Present...

Yesterday was my birthday and I got a lovely new iPhone 4! It was a pleasant surprise to discover I was entitled to an upgrade so that was my birthday wishlist fulfilled in one fell swoop. I hope I'll get years of fun and use from it - I am not normally in the frontline for the latest gadget but I was more than prepared to make an exception in the case of the iPhone.

Hubby Jan got one last year and it really is the business, he uses it a lot for everything and on bill-pay with Vodafoneit is actually cheaper than the old price plan he had. He has a 1GB Data download limit whereas I only have 500MB for the same price plan which is a mean move on Vodafone's part. I was almost tempted to switch providers to 3Mobile who have an unlimited Data download for now but that could change in the future.

One reason I stuck with Vodafone - apart from some innate unexplained conservative nature where brand loyalty is concerned - was the unlimited free calls and texts to other Vodafone users, and the 150mins and texts to all other networks per month. That and the fact that I can use WiFi to access the internet and apps when at home or in a WiFi zone and just use the 3G data thingy when I'm out and about.

...and again

...again...

I have a thing about Macintosh products and would love a Mac computer like graphic designer son has - it is so cool and the desktop alone is lovely. I sometimes use Safari the Mac web browser -purely for aesthetic enjoyment - but it just doesn't work as well as Firefox on my PC laptop.

iPod Classic 30GB

I have a vintage iPod Classic 30G in white, from an earlier birthday about 5 years ago. I get daily listening pleasure from it when I go for an evening walk with the dog around town. I just hope I don't frighten any locals I might encounter with my maniacal laughter at some of the wackier podcasts I subscribe to, as I find it hard to keep a straight face when listening to Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion's News from Lake Wobegon, or BBC Radio 4's comedy The Now Show or The News Quiz, both of which are topical satirical panel programmes on current affairs. Sandi Toksvig and Hugh Dennis, Mitch Benn and Jeremy Hardy are always good for a laugh and their near-libellous commentary is hilarious. Nob Nation from 2FM on RTE is another laugh-a-minute.

Mac PowerBook (early 1990s)

Writing this just reminds me of other Macs in our life down the decades. Our first computer doesn't count as it was the trusty floppy-disk Amstrad PC 1512DD - unencumbered by a Hard Disk it had to be started up with those 5.25-inch floppies, and it was revolutionary back in 1987. It travelled from Wales to Tanzania with us, and served us well with PacMan, Brickbats, Dungeons and Dragons, and lots of preschool games and word-processing for the next few years. By the mid-90s we had B&W Mac Classics and Power Books at work, which were amazing. I got familiar with MS Word and Excel and became a whiz touch-typist, self-taught, and a long way from the portable Remington I'd had at some stage in the 80s.

Mac LC11 (1994)

We moved to Lao PDR (Laos) in 1995 and there bought a new Mac- LC11. That had a 40 or 80MB Hard Disk, which was massive compared to the 0MB of the Amstrad. We played games like Snood and wrote letters home. We didn't have email till 1997, just before we left Laos, and we could get the Irish Times for £80 a year delivered in our email box - no pictures or formatting, just pages of text in the body of the mail - not even an attachment! How times have changed, and we couldn't have imagined back then what a revolution would take place over the next decade in communications, culminating in the Smartphone and the internet in your pocket.

Mac Performa PC (1996)

When we came to live in Ireland in 1997 we bought another Mac - this time a Performa PC and it had a 500MB disk, a jump from our previous one. It was an all-in-one unit with the monitor over the CPU - no big boxes under the desk for Mac users - it was way ahead of the PC brigade even back then, and so it remains. This computer saw us into the dial-up internet age with every second counting in those pre-broadband days and we really had to ration our internet use or face huge phone bills. It was another four or five years before we moved to broadband, and it's hard to believe that you can now run a number of home computers from the wireless broadband.

In the Millenium year hubby had a significant birthday and got a new iMac - the hottest computer on the block. It was bright blue and shiny and see-through - and we all loved its aeshetic beauty. It had a massive 10GB hard drive and we were now downloading and storing masses of PDF files as we used it as a study hub when I was in UCC and the boys were going through secondary school and college. We always had Epson printers to go with the Macs and still have an Epson 3-in-1 which is perfect.

So, while we have succumbed to the mass appeal and affordability of the ubiquitous PC over Apple Mac in our daily lives with our Dell desktop and our Toshiba laptop, we'll always love and covet the Apple just like Eve back in the day in the Garden of Eden. And remember, an iPhone's not just for birthdays - it's for life!

Knit-Crochet Hybrid: Hippie Headbands - More Reversible than the Recession

2011-03-18T12:02:00.000Z

Headband - Fisherman's Rib side

I was admiring a lovely fuchsia silk scarf worn by a good friend last Sunday at Devonshire Day, and she said a hat or headband would be lovely to have to go with it. In my optimistic post-election regime-change euphoria, I offered to make her one. So I decided to knit rather than crochet, as I had previously done for the teenagers in our midst.

Reverse side of headband

For inspiration and a new pattern idea I turned to my trusty knitting bible "How To Knit" which is really great as it has load of tips for the likes of me who's been knitting since God was a boy but never knew why I did things the way I did. This included tips like when to use the various casting on different methods (thumb, two needles) and the right seam to use in different situations, and how to turn a sock heel, as well as lots of pattern/design swatches, not to mention lots of practical patterns.

Wearing the headband Rib side.

Me with the reversed headband

From the design swatches I got the pattern sequence for the stitch I used in this headband - Fisherman's Rib. I hadn't ever used this in a garment before, though I'd seen lots of chunky manly jumpers knitted in it when I was growing up. It seemed to be the rib-du-jour for army surplus sweaters, which featured lots of leather elbow patches and shoulder yokes, which were downright ugly, so no wonder I was never attracted by its charms.

Grey headband - Fisherman's Rib side

Grey headband - reverse side

Somehow I've changed! After a few false starts with too many/too few stitches, I settled on a pattern I liked and ran it up in a few hours, spread over a few days as I seemed to have only an hour here or there to snatch at it. I spent a couple of half-hours of my lunch-hour relaxing in Dungarvan library reading and knitting a bit of the band, and then I finished it off last night with the crochet flower - ubiquitous by now on many of my caps and headbands, and which comes from terrific Teresa's crochet patterns. You can find her great tutorials here on YouTube, and then there's a link to download the written pattern.

Apart from that my headband is my own design, simple and easy, so I want to share it with any interested bloggers out there. As I neared the end - using my head as a guide - I realised the reverse was a lovely design in itself, so decided to try and make it reversible. That necessitated putting the flower on a band that could be turned to either side, simplicity itself. So it's double the value with two headbands in one

I used Double-Knitting/US Worsted/8-ply yarn, acrylic and washable, and the tension gauge is immaterial as I used thick 6mm/10 US/4UK needles which is usually advised for chunky wool, but worked fine here - proof that there's always exceptions to the rule. I used crochet hook 4mm for the flower and flower-band, so it's a bit of a hybrid headband - hence the alliterative title of this post!

Hybrid Headband

Using either Thumb or Two Needles Method, Cast on 17 or 19 or 21 stitches - depending on desired width - I used 19 for the cerise band.
Row 1: Purl to end.
Row 2: *P1, knit next st in the row below; rep from *,P1.
Repeat above 2 rows until headband is the desired length - allow for some stretch if yarn is elasticky. Mine was for a 55-56cm/22in head circumference.
Cast/Bind off
Join end-to-end with simple whip-stitch seam.
This is a flat seam and suitable for the headband.

Crochet Flower

How to Add Rounds

(Written by Teresa Richardson of the YouTube tutorial above)
Abbreviations
FPSC - Front Post Single Crochet
SC - Single Crochet
SL ST - Slip Stitch
DC - Double Crochet
TC - Triple Crochet

Chain 5, Join
Round 1: 10 SC through the loop, join in the beginning single crochet.
Round 2: CH 1, *SC in the same stitch, CH 3, SK 1 SC, SC in the next, complete 5 times total from *, the last chain 3 will be a slip stitch to join. (5 chain 3 loops total)
Round 3: *CH 1, 6 DC in loop, CH 1, SL ST in the next SC, complete 5 times total from *. (5 Petals Total)
Second Set of Petals
Round 4: CH 1, *BPSC around the post of the SC on round 2. CH 5. Complete 5 times total from *, SL ST to join in beginning SC. (5 Chain 5 loops total
This section will provide two alternative petals.
Method 1 -
Round 5: *CH 1, 9 DC in the loop, CH 1 SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 9 double crochet each )
Method 2 -
Round 5: *CH 1, 3 DC, 3 TC, 3 DC, CH 1, SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 3 double crochet, 3 Triple Crochet, 3 Double Crochet, total)
Third Set of Petals
Round 6: SL ST to the center of the previous petal on round 5, CH 1, *SC between the stitches of the petal, CH 5, Complete 5 times total from *. SL ST the last chain to the SC at the beginning of the round. (5 Chain 5 loops total)
This section will provide two alternative petals.
Method 1 -
Round 7: *CH 1, 11 DC in the loop, CH 1 SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 11 double crochet each )
Method 2 -
Round 7: *CH 1, 4 DC, 3 TC, 4 DC, CH 1, SL ST in the next SC, Complete 5 times total from *.
(5 sets of petals total, with 4 double crochet, 3 Triple Crochet, 4 Double Crochet, total)

Loop for holding flower

Crochet Chain 15
Row 1 - SC into each chain, turn
Row 2 - SC into top of each SC of Row 1
Cut yarn 10cm long after final SC and pull through final chain to secure.

To Assemble

Put Loop around the Headband and stitch end-to-end.
Attach flower to Loop by securely stitching back of flower to the loop.
Ensure it is not stitched through to the headband as the loop needs to turn freely to make the headband easily reversible.

The Headband can be worn either side out - the rib or the more textured reverse, which looks a little like Moss/Seed Stitch. The flower can be moved to the side being worn thanks to the loop.

As Aleksandr of Meerkat Manor says - "Simples!"

Hopefully this headband pattern with the videoclips will make it an attractive project for you - an evening in front of the telly should suffice to finish one - I made the grey one today, St. Patrick's Day, when I relaxed at home knitting, garden-cleaning and reading on the sunny patio and it was done in a few hours. We even had a hybrid BBQ - cooked outside and eaten inside as the evening was too chilly for alfresco dining.

Hubby keeping warm by the BBQ on St. Patrick's Day - 1st BBQ of the year!

Devonshire Day 2011 - A Special Spring Preview of Lismore Castle Gardens

2011-03-14T01:47:00.000Z

Enjoying cream tea in the Pugin Room Lismore Castle

Today was a beautiful crisp sunny Spring day - the birds were singing, there was a coating of hoar frost on the grass and cars and rooftops this morning before the early sun slanted across the shadows to thaw everything and burn a few shrubs with leaf-burn - but as it was Devonshire Day 2011 all we were interested in was the actual weather, as Ross O'Carroll-Kelly might say.

When I went to bed last night - quite late as is my wont in the weekends - the cars were white with frost, as forecasted. This morning dawned bright crisp and sunny. Perfect for the event that's become enshrined in Lismore fundraising folklore as a day to be enjoyed by visitors from far and near.

Farmers' Market Lismore Castle Avenue

It's the second event after the Table Quiz in January that's become a fixture as a fundraiser for Immrama Festival of Travel Writing, and we have been involved since the outset 8 years ago. The event receives widespread publicity in the local and national press, and people from all over come to it, many who return year after year.

This year we were delighted to welcome our most recent distinguished guest - Ciara Conway TD - our newly elected Labour Party member for Waterford about whom I've blogged extensively in the run-up to and beyond the election.

Bernard gives his talk on Lismore history

Chris talking about the Castle and gardens

The day consists of a cream tea in the Pugin Room of Lismore Castle, which is a privilege in itself as the Pugin Room is never open to the public during the rest of the year. It is only on Devonshire Day when people get to see and hear the history of the castle which is in private ownership of the Duke of Devonshire, who's had it on and off for centuries. A last bastion of colonialism, it has shrunk in size considerably since the days of Sir Walter Raleigh when it was a huge estate. The Land Acts returned a lot of the arable land to the people and the Castle retains about 10,000 acres of which 8,000 is forested woodland. The rest is a working farm with managers and staff. The castle runs itself by being an upmarket B&B with rates of (those of you who've read previous posts on Devonshire Day will be familiar with this) about €35,000 per week for a party of 12! So it's obviously only for the well-heeled.

The gardens looked lovely despite the harsh cold winter - compared to last year's Devonshire Day, which followed a really hard late winter, this year's winter was earlier and by January and February the weather was warmer and spring had sprung a few weeks ago. The daffodils were starting to flower and the magnolias were in bloom, although one pink magnolia had its blossoms burnt by the recent night frosts. There was evidence of a lot of plant damage from frost and frost burn.

Castle from Courtyar

The yucca-like palms didn't survive the -15C temps of the past winter and a number had to be cut down, and a lovely Mimosa and Chilean Myrtle have also been damaged beyond resurrection. The Mimosa is normally ablaze with yellow blossom at this time, in-keeping with its International Women's Day symbolism - and this year the entire tree is deadwood. The Myrtle might survive but it seems unlikely, as only a few branches are in leaf.

The Castle from the Courtyard

It was lovely to walk around the garden with the groups of visitors and Chris Tull the extremely knowledgeable Head Gardener kept everyone entertained and informed in each of the five tours he conducted. People really enjoy having the guided tour as it's the only time it happens. The gardens are open from March - October but not with guided tours. The Lismore Castle Arts gallery is also open during the summer and this year these artists will be exhibiting.

Part of the draw of Devonshire Day is the Cream Tea served in the famed Pugin Room or Ballroom (the former Chapel) while Immrama Chairman Bernard Leddy and Immrama President Peter Dowd give very informative talks on the Castle's history in the context of the history of Lismore, which is pretty amazing as it encompasses the Book of Lismore, an illuminated manuscript from the 15th Century in Irish which documents the travels of Marco Polo. Another famed travel link to Lismore, along with the more contemporary Dervla Murphy link!

First group enjoying the noon sun

Carlisle Tower Lismore Castle

View from Courtyard

Chris standing on the Ice House grid. Gallery in Tower

Chris Tull, the aforementioned Head Gardener, gives a talk on the Castle and the Gardens, with their links to Joseph Paxton (the Greenhouse) and the Devonshire's links to the Kennedy clan and Fred Astaire. (A sister of President Kennedy's should have been the Duchess of Devonshire but she and her husband - the Duke-in-waiting - were killed in separate aviation accidents during and after WW11). The incumbent Duke's mother was one of the famous Mitford sisters - Deborah, the Dowager Duchess, who was the least controversial of the Mitfords - and recent visitors to the Castle included Prince Charles and his now-wife Camilla Parker-Bowles, who came here in 2004. Our sons were then working as butlers in the castle for summer jobs and were serving them their dinner - surely something for them to dine out on but they're not fazed by fame at all - they leave those bragging rights to their mother!

I'm on duty as the health and safety first aider but thankfully I have never had any problems, other than the odd fall during bad weather when the ground becomes slippy underfoot. Today was uneventful but I still have to be there to accompany the groups on their walkabout, just in case. The Farmers' Market reopened for the season today and we can enjoy this every Sunday until October.

Camellia

All in all it was a great day; I am at home now with aching legs from all the walking around the uneven terrain and garden steps, writing this up and sharing some of the photos with you. I hope you enjoy them and that they give an idea of the lovely day we had. Compared to last year the garden was further on but compared to the previous year it was still very late.

Carlisle Tower from Lower Gardens

As we have seen in the tragedy of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, we mess with nature at our peril and we have to bow to the strength of the forces of nature. When they are unleashed we are pretty powerless to do anything, and it was heartening to hear Chris in his role as head gardener of the castle extol the virtues of symbiosis with nature, working with rather than against it in being as organic as possible, crop diversity and selection of indigenous and not exotic plants, and not using chemicals at all as there are none without consequences. The results are seen in the wonderful working kitchen gardens that are ready for planting now, to provide the house and guests with fresh produce throughout the season.

Arbutus tree planted by Pres. Mary Robinson 1991

Chris and Antony Gormley sculpture

Crest over entrance "God's Providence Our Inheritance 1615 "

An Irish Man (1907) Unknown Artist

"Up and Over" Irish Artist

Me with Mary Roche and family

The Yellow Jackets - me with Jan and the boys!

Pugin Chandelier in Dining Room - Note D for Devonshire

Joseph Paxton greenhouse

Accurate Sundial

A Historic Day Out in Dublin - the Labour Special Delegate Conference

2011-03-08T02:41:00.001Z

Labour Women - Ciara, me and Kirsi Hanafin

Kirsi, Jan and Ciara at the Conference

I felt very proud yesterday to share a part of the history of our beloved albeit beleaguered country when hubby Jan and me set off to Dublin (with me knitting all the way) for the Labour Party's Special Delegate Conference - the conference being special, not necessarily the delegates! Around a thousand delegates from all over the country gathered in the O'Reilly Hall in UCD in Belfield to listen to the proposal of the party leadership to go into government in partnership with Fine Gael, the largest party with 76 seats, with Labour being the second largest party with 37 seats. We were equally proud to see among the new TDs Waterford's own Ciara Conway, up there on the stage with the biggest parliamentary party Labour's ever had. We cheered as each new TD was introduced to the delegates, and especially loudly when Ciara's name was called.

Ciara Conway TD speaking to the motion

Fianna Fail have been reduced to a fraction of their former seats - losing 58 they are down to 20, which is a huge humiliation and a vindication of the anger of the people of Ireland at the mess they left us in after 14 years in government - a time marked by a Celtic Tiger boom and vulgar conspicuous consumption that was all built on the sand of a building and property development bubble, that when it burst two years ago left us high and dry.

I have already mentioned in previous posts about the ghost estates littering every county of Ireland, where apartment blocks and ticky-tacky housing estates sprung up overnight in remote villages where there was no sustainability in terms of schools, jobs or infrastructure. Even water and sewage supplies weren't able to cope with the size of some of the developments, which have left so many families living in negative equity in the middle of a building site morass of unfinished roads, footpaths and half-finished houses.

The developers have long since fled the scene while the banks who lent them money are now being bailed out by us, the taxpayers and citizens, and to enable that we have been bailed out by the IMF and the ECB. It's a tale of GUBU proportions (Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented - the acronym famously attributed to Charlie Haughey's reaction to the double murderer Malcolm McArthur hiding out in the apartment of the Attorney General while he was on holidays).

Programme for National Government 2011-16

Yesterday's conference was called for the party membership to debate and vote on the revised Programme for Government that was drafted after 5 days of tortuous negotiations between Fine Gael and Labour's negotiating teams. The Labour Team was headed by veteran TD and deputy Speaker/Ceann Comhairle Brendan Howlin, with Joan Burton TD, Finance spokesperson and Deputy Party Leader, and Pat Rabbitte TD and Justice spokesperson with the razor-sharp wit.

That same sardonic wit and rhetoric entertained us during dull days of the 30th Dáil, as when Pat famously excoriated the Greens for a full 10 minutes - without interruption, which was probably due to the timely presence of Brendan Howlin in the Chair that day. It became known as the day Rabbitte ate his Greens - and with good reason. You can have a look back at the YouTube clip here and it's also on my blog sidebar. The funniest part is seeing Conor "Kebabs" Lenihan (who just lost his seat as Fianna Fail TD) in stitches over beside the Taoiseach Brian "Biffo" Cowen (soon-to-be-ex as the 31st Dáil meets on Wednesday).

Rabbitte eats his Greens - Budget speech 2009

The buzz at the Conference was palpable, as there was a charge in the air that change was afoot; that we were about to vote for the motion that would give the green light to Labour's leadership to follow through on the mandate given them by the voters and the people the canvassers and candidates met on the campaign trail. There was an overwhelming sense that Labour had to take the reins and go into government if invited to join a coalition with Fine Gael as to not do so would be letting down the people who voted for the most Labour TDs ever seen in Ireland's history.

Eamon Gilmore, Ciara, Brian O'Shea, Ita McAuliffe

Many speakers against the motion had strong arguments for staying out of coalition, but the sense I got was they were arguing for the possibility of providing a robust opposition (true, they would and could) and be returned as a party with a popular majority to lead government in 2016. But Joan Burton summed up the feeling of the majority of delegates and TDs by saying that "Power postponed is not an option". That is very true, as most of us canvassers found that people were wary of Fine Gael going into single party government, that untrammeled they could wreak havoc on the public sector, being a party of the right with vested interests in the private sector, and they would need to be marked and kept in check by Labour.

The document "Towards Recovery: Programme for a National Government 2011-2016" contains a lot of the Labour Party's Election Manifesto, and while there are compromises, there is a lot to be positive about, as this provides a framework for working out the finer detail of the various plans. Labour are in a much stronger position than that of the Greens at the start of the last government when they went into coalition with Fianna Fail with six seats, and they were totally out of their depth with the cunning ploys of the party that wrote the handbook for cute hoorism and cunning plans Irish-style. Not for nothing did Charlie Haughey call Bertie Ahern "the most cunning, the most devious and the most ruthless of them all".

After three hours of pro-con debaters on the podium, we were all ready for the vote, which was overwhelmingly carried by a show of cards. It was a powerful moment and a proud one, to see the reality of a change of regime in Leinster House so imminent, and the hope that will shadow this government will give them the momentum to carry through their programme committments, and deliver a new and improved economy over the course of the 31st Dáil.

The best chipper in Dublin - Perki Chick on Dorset Street.

We went home following the conference after visiting son Martin over in Drumcondra where we had a delicious fast-food supper from the best Chipper in Dublin - in my humble opinion - from the Perki Chick on Dorset Street, beloved of punters to Croke Park at many an All-Ireland Sunday Game. I enjoyed a large curry chips and fresh battered cod from that august establishment that's been around since my student days in the 1970s - and probably long beforehand.

Bloggers' Book Club - The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

2011-03-07T01:07:00.001Z

I have to confess that I read this book a few years ago and didn't get a chance or time to re-read it - it was a library copy and I know it is still in the library here but I haven't had a minute to get back there- and I also was being distracted by reading the marvellous new book by Jonathan Franzen, Freedom. I adored that book, as I did his last book, The Corrections, and as I'd read The Reader before, I didn't feel too guilty. Thanks to Lorna for recommending it.

Also I saw the DVD of the film with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes a year or two ago. It was one of those rare films that was faithful to the book. It captured my impressions of the book's atmosphere - lyrical and very evocative of the era in which it is set, which is post-war 1950s Germany when Michael is a teenager and meets Hanna and their affair starts, right to the war trials of the 1960s which are underway when he's a law student.

I remember the book left an impression as a powerful read, which has stayed with me in its general context rather than the detail. Michael's whole life is changed and affected by his encounter with the older woman who is Hanna, whom he meets when he is sick near her apartment and who takes him in to care for him. The initial meeting leads to revisits and the start of a torrid affair. He knows little or nothing about her other than her work as a tram conductor, and her secret of illiteracy is only discovered by him much later on.

The title of the book comes from Michael's role in their relationship, that of her reader, when he reads aloud the German classics, in a post-coital haze, and this pattern shapes their encounters. It's an intense relationship, excluding all others, and its eroticism precludes too much information. When the denouement of her Nazi past is disclosed in such a shocking manner to Michael when he turns up at her war crimes trial it's a life-changer for him. He has to come to terms with the fact that his lover was an SS guard at a camp for women prisoners, 300 of whom died in a fire in a church on the death march from Auschwitz, and her illiteracy is such a secret shame she accepts responsibility for a report on the fire rather than admit illiteracy. She also admitted to selections at Auschwitz of women who ended up in the gas chambers.

As she had left him suddenly at the height of their affair years earlier, he never got over her and had no chance to expunge her from his impressionable youth, and this lasting damage led to his subsequent marriage breakdown, and his sad and lonely future is well portrayed out when he renews his relationship with Hanna - albeit on a platonic level - in prison. He sends her tapes of his readings, and she learns to read by following the recordings with the books in the prison library. He seems to treat her like a benevolent nephew but he never visits her in her 18 years in jail. On her release he agrees to find her a place to live, but she hangs herself prior to her release, and he discovers her conquest of illiteracy through his readings.

I liked Schlink's style of writing. It's a very spare and sparsely written book, and he chooses his words very thoughtfully. I found the eroticism almost contradictory to the spare style of the writing, yet paradoxically it fitted into the intensity of an affair predicated on lust, secrecy and isolation - they were locked away from the wider world in their own bubble, and it's full of conflicting emotion, and the old debate on German collective guilt is well illustrated. It's not a very long book, and I remember it as a gripping read at the time. I think I would re-read it again, if and when I have a minute. Would I recommend it to friends or our book club? I think it would be a great trigger for a good heated debate, and well worth the effort.

Don't forget to visit the other members of the Bloggers' Book Club - Lily is the terrific moderator who keeps us all coordinated, and as it's late and I'm wrecked after a day in Dublin at the Labour Party Special Delegate Conference deciding to go into Government with Fine Gael later this week, I won't list the other members here - rather you can find them over at Lily's blog. Read their reviews, always entertaining and informative and they're a great bunch of women(thus far, no men, but I'm sure that's always open to change!)

I have our own Book Club tomorrow night and have a few chapters to finish of our chosen book - Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill - who was on BBC World Service this morning on The Interview which was a bit of a blagger's guide for me! Serendipity I can live with, as I enjoyed putting a voice on this feisty 90 year old.

Spring has sprung - Road Art Spotted around Co. Waterford

2011-03-03T22:04:00.000Z

Golden Harvest by Colm Brennan - Kilmac bypass, N25

Today was one of those glorious spring days that started off with a sharp hoar frost whitening everything and a dense fog that took a few hours to clear and led to a few pile-ups on the motorways up the country. No-one hurt but lots of inconvenienced motorists and closed lanes. The sun shone through around mid-morning and some things just begged to be photographed - like this shot of the sun glistening on the sea off Helvick Head in Ring, and the view from Helvick across to Mine Head.

Golden Harvest, N25 on Kilmacthomas Bypass

Falla na Sioga by Alan Counihan, Windgap,Dungarvan-N25

I feel really lucky to work in a job that involves driving around the beautiful scenic south coast of Co. Waterford, and quickly forget the days of winter ice and snow and dark dense fog that never clears and totally disorientates even the most seasoned drivers, particularly around Old Parish, which is an upland area near the coast that often seems to be the only foggy part of the county!

Falla na Sioga detail-Alan Counihan,Windgap,Dungarvan-N25

Falla na Sioga (Fairy's Wall) Alan Counihan,N25 Windgap

The election posters are nearly all gone- tomorrow's the deadline after which there'll be hell (and fines) to pay, so every candidate's making trojan efforts to get rid of them. I took this last billboard standing of Ciara and Eamon Gilmore today near Ring Cross on the N25, with nicely bilingual Thank You stickers attached.

Falla na Sioga by Alan Counihan, Windgap,Dungarvan-N25

Falla na Sioga -detail of inscription-Windgap,Dungarvan-N25

Last Billboard Standing in West Waterford! N25 Ring Cross

Sun over Atlantic Ocean from Helvick Head today

Then this evening I was checking my phone in a lay-by near The Sweep on the same N25 up near Windgap, when I thought to photograph this piece of road art in the lay-by. The funny thing is that the gap in the wall is art which I erroneously attributed to a botched County Council repair job, until I realised it had a name - Falla na Síoga (Wall of the Fairies) and an inscription - and what's even more bizarre, I'd met the sculptor (Alan Counihan) and his partner Gypsy Ray (to whom it's dedicated) a number of years ago in Lismore at travel writer Dervla Murphy's house. He is also an actor who played in a stage production of Yasmina Reza's The Unexpected Man in Lismore some years ago, which I really enjoyed. On the Co.Council's website photo they only show the doughnut and not the inscribed wall.

There's a fascinating piece of well-known road art on the N25 at the Kilmacthomas Bypass - Golden Harvest by Colm Brennan - which represents sheaves of waving corn. It's a lovely prominent piece of sculpture which always gladdens my heart on the road to Waterford - especially if it's for some interminable meeting.

Panoramic vista from Helvick Head to Mine Head today

So I hope you like the first days of spring which seems to have sprung in West Waterford- we can live with the cold frosty nights as long as the days are warm and sunny - and nothing like the stretch in the evenings with the setting sun blinding me on the drive home every evening. Another three weeks or so and the clocks go forward. "Spring Forward, Fall Back" is my mnemonic for Daylight Saving - I hate it when the clocks go back in October and love it when they go forward in March - even if I lose an hour's sleep!

The Changing Face of Irish Politics - An Electoral Triumph for the Next Generation

2011-02-28T01:16:00.000Z

We are all in a state of euphoria in Ireland this weekend as the General Election results roll in - still four constituencies count goes on ...and on...and into recount territory. But the good news is - Ciara Conway, Labour's candidate for Waterford, got elected on the tenth count to the third seat in Waterford, following the elimination of her running mate Seamus Ryan, whose transfers went a long way to securing the third seat of four. In fact when the final tally was in, she had the second seat from the transfers. I've blogged about Ciara's launch already here, and this is the sequel!

The Ciara Camp at the Selection Convention, Jan. 2011

Ciara speaking at launch

The Government party Fianna Fail has been eviscerated, as have their former bedfellows, the Green Party - who lost all six of their seats to return a big fat zero. Fianna Fail have dropped from 77 seats in 2007 to a current 18 with little chance of more than one or two more seats. This is such a historic election as there is only one FF TD in Dublin - Brian Lenihan - and no woman TD elected. Their talk of regrouping is all a bit hollow given the anger of the public towards their arrogant behaviour regarding expenses and salaries and pensions - many ministers get such wonderful pensions that a number didn't bother standing for re-election knowing their chances were nil, and instead they'll be spending more time with their pensions and lump sums!

Ciara with Labour leader Eamon Gilmore

It was a nail biting evening - and I wasn't even at the Count Centre in Butlerstown in Waterford City. Hubby Jan was Ciara's Director of Elections and he has been busy for the past month running the campaign and organising canvassing schedules all over the county and city of Waterford. It was a major exercise to try and cover as much of the constituency as possible but it certainly paid off! Our three sons were at the count as Tallymen, and it was a very close call. I find it bizarre how accurate the Tallymen can be, as it seems so chaotic and random in the Count Centre.

The total to date for Labour is 36 seats, Fine Gael 70, Fianna Fail 18, Sinn Féin 13 and Others 18 00:15hrs on Monday 27th - there are still 15 or 16 seats undecided

Ciara and Jan, her Director of Elections, at the launch

I was with the team on two days canvassing in Tramore, and then I spent a number of evenings canvassing in Lismore with Jane, another Labour member and stalwart supporter of Ciara. We got a great reception on the doorsteps as many people said we were the only party to call and they hadn't any Fianna Fail canvassers or candidates - they were only leaflet-dropping and running along!

I suppose given the state they left the country in they hadn't the bottle to knock and face an electorate whose lives have been thrown into turmoil from job losses, negative equity in home-owners, and children forced into emigration. That's a far cry from the voluntary emigration of my own experience, not driven by unemployment but by a sense of adventure and altruism that moved me to become a development worker and volunteer.

Ciara with Jane and me at her campaign launch

So I thought it worth sharing the good news of the election of Ciara, a new young woman TD (MP) to the 31st Dáil Eireann (Irish Parliament) which will convene on March 9th. Whether Labour will form a coalition with the majority Fine Gael Party is yet undecided as Eamon Gilmore the Labour leader hasn't been approached yet by Enda Kenny the Fine Gael leader who will lead the next government as Taoiseach (Prime Minister).

Ciara and Aoife

The results are not all in - Ciara was elected at 3:25am Sunday morning after a gruelling ten counts to the third seat - a process of Irish democracy that took from when the Count started at 9:00am on Saturday morning. I won't even begin to describe the Irish system of PR-STV - Proportional Representation by Single Transferable Vote. It is an arcane, complex and exciting system that differs from the first-past-the-post system that the UK operates. It beats Electronic Voting (which the Irish trialled disastrously in 2002 and has been a notorious white elephant ever since - just ask former TD Nora Owen how heartless it was to lose a seat in a heartbeat on election night) for the thrill of count and transfers and recounts and it gives political junkies like me a day or more of nail-biting anticipation glued to the TV, Radio and this year for the first time, Twitter and Facebook as well as numerous websites.

The WLRFM Candidates' Debate, Dungarvan

RTÉ was one of those offering live coverage yet it fell behind the live Twitter streams from the various Hashtag sites. I followed #GE11, #wd (Waterford constituency resultshttp://www.rte.ie/news/election2011/results/waterford.html) and #RTE which gave a good general overview. There was a lot of criticism of the dearth of TV coverage of the Waterford count, and they only focused on the first two TDs elected, Fine Gael's John Deasy and Paudie Coffey. Deasy was returned as TD, and Coffey was a first time elected TD, having lost in 2007 and gained a Senate seat as recompense. That sort of nepotism might all be a thing of the past as the Senate's future looks bleak. Having two houses of parliament is seen as a bit excessive in a country of 4 million so it might bite the dust as it was mooted by Fine Gael and Labour as part of their Election Manifesto.

About to exercise my democratic franchise on Friday!

The photos show the path to Leinster House for Ciara since Eamon Gilmore came to Waterford in January for a Constituency meeting, to the Selection convention and the Campaign launch and the WLRFM Town Hall Candidates' Debate last week. Then there's one of me going into the polling station to cast my vote.

We are delighted to have a talented and energetic young woman like Ciara representing Waterford in the 31st Dáil and wish her every success and good luck!

Spot the Typo - and beat the Pre-Election Moratorium

2011-02-24T21:02:00.038Z

Today I was in Dungarvan Library at lunchtime, reading and knitting (a cap to match the lovely ballerina cardigan in the photo) my way through a relaxing lunch hour. The library's a little haven of tranquility and I go there fairly often when I don't have to dash around Lidl or if I'm not going to lunch with friends or colleagues. I hasten to add that while I don't quite fit the label of "Ladies who Lunch", I do go to a nice place at least once a week for a great value lunch - the Local in Grattan Square. It deserves a little plug and for those who haven't been, don't miss their wonderful healthy option - Spicy Chicken Pitta - it's the business if you're ever in Dungarvan (or Fungarvan as it's sometimes designated!)

I was finishing off Jonathan Franzen's terrific Freedom, and when that was done, I read the Irish Times, to catch up on the last-minute pre-election news, before the Broadcast Media Moratorium kicked in at 2p.m. this afternoon. I was listening to the news at one on my phone radio, listening to the various Party Leaders' final desperate pleas to the electorate before the news blackout began. I don't know if this is a phenomenon peculiar to Irish Elections, or an internationally recognised practice, but it is the norm here that there will be a total ban on any Election-related broadcasting on TV or Radio (all stations) from the day before the Election to the close of polling on voting day.

This campaign has been a whirlwind, and we are all rooting for the local Labour Candidates, Ciara Conway and Séamus Ryan, who are both aiming to retain the Labour seat vacated by Brian O'Shea, who held it for 24 years, and even hoping for a second seat. Hubby is Director of Elections for Ciara, and she has run a great campaign, which I've been involved in from the periphery, in that I joined the canvass a couple of days in Tramore and spent four or five evenings canvassing in Lismore. We got a great reception overall, with the recurrent refrain of "You're the first/only ones to come knocking on the doors" or "the rest of them are just leaflet dropping and running away"! This seems to apply particularly to the outgoing Government Party Fianna Fail who have really banjaxed the country with sellouts to the IMF and ECB, as I've previously ranted about. We are hopeful for a positive change of regime, with a strong Labour presence in a coalition being the most realistic outcome.

Where was I? Oh yes, this was to be about the Terrible (or wonderful!) Typo that jumped out at me from this O2 ad on the front page of the Irish Times. Out with the camera and captured for posterity and a blogpost. I feel an anorak attack coming on, but I'll take the tablets! (I'm guessing you can all spot it - it's a real sore point with an apostrophe nerd like me!)

We all need a laugh and while I'm at it I'll share the best of the satirical asides from the plethora of Election and Current Affairs programmes on Irish TV at the moment - it's Mario Rosenstock on Tonight with Vincent Browne Show on TV3 - a terrifically animated programme that electrifies audiences nightly from 11:10p.m. to 12:30a.m. The Twitter stream for #vinb is too busy to follow live, such is the reaction it provokes.

Enjoy Mario as Vincent, Willie "Crackshot" O'Dea and Micheál "Choirboy" Martyr (Martin). It may be a bit obscure to those not in the know of Irish politics at present but it's hilarious as a stand-alone. Suffice to say, Vincent takes no prisoners, Willie famously posed with a gun for the media when Minister of Defence, and Micheál is the current Fianna Fail leader after Brian "Biffo" Cowen (was) stood down, and he has gaffed spectacularly last week by doing a bad imitation of a Chinese accent á la Prince Philip - he's hardly racist but it had a surreal Father Ted feel to it - "should we all be racists now, father? what's the official line the church is takin on this? only, the farm takes up most of the day, and at night i just like a cup of tea, so i might not be able to devote meself full-time to the old racism." That's an episode worth checking out!

Happy Voting tomorrow for all of you in the Constituencies - just remember the old adage - "Vote Early and Often"!

My First Sock Pattern - Variation on a few Themes

2011-02-20T22:23:00.000Z

Et voilà - the finished sock!

I've been asked to share the knitting pattern for my latest sock project, and as it's an adapted one and not a straightforward copy, I am going to try to write it as a pattern should be written. This is a new challenge as I have to strive to be accurate, but I might manage it. I met a lady yesterday who's an avid knitter and she has also bought the lovely pre-patterned wool from Lidl that is specifically (but not solely - hey, unintended pun but I like it so it stays!) for socks.

Having made a half-dozen pairs of socks over recent months, I decided to go for these with variations. I used the stitch numbers as per the pattern with the sock wool (Lidl are great for enclosing patterns and sometimes needles with their knit-kits.)

My Lidl Sock Stash - with first completed sock

I have tried plain stocking stitch (Stockinette in US) and it is just too baggy for socks, unless you've very elasticky yarn, which I'm not sure this wool-mix is (75% pure wool, 25% Polyamide).

So I made it a K2P2 rib throughout, except for the sole and gusset which is in plain stocking stitch, and the heel flap which is nicely textured in a fancy rib.

Ribbed Socks

Gauge for these socks = 42 rows and 30 stitches over 10x10cm)
(Use 4 DPN (Double-Pointed Needles -Size 3mm/ )

Sock as in pattern

Some Abbreviations:

RS = Right Side; WS = Wrong Side; Sl = Slip (take stitch off left-hand needle without knitting it)
N = Needle K or k = Knit; P or p = Purl; sl1,k1,psso = slip 1, knit 1, pass slip stitch over knit stitch (you can use ssk instead = slip1, slip1, knit 2 tog.)

Socks Pattern
Cast on 60 stitches and divide between 3 needles - 20 per needle (duh!)
K2 P2 rib for desired length - about 6-7 inches is fine for ankle boot socks

Heel Flap

Knit 30 stitches onto one needle and put remaining 30 stitches on Stitch Holder (or a big nappy/safety pin!)
Knit back and forth on heel flap as follows:

Heel & Gusset close-up

Row 1 (RS) - Slip 1, K1, *P1, K2 Repeat from * to end
Row 2 (WS) -Slip 1, P1, *K1, P2 Repeat from * to end
Repeat these 2 rows total of 15 times - you'll have 15 slip stitches along edge of heel flap.

Turning Heel

(I used stocking stitch, but you could continue the K2 P2 rib of main sock if you prefer - gives a springy sole!)

R1(RS) – Sl 1, k16, ssk, k1, turn.
R2(WS) – Sl 1, p5, p2tog, p1, turn.
R3 – Sl 1, k6, ssk, k1, turn.
R4 – Sl 1, p7, p2tog, p1, turn.
R5 – Sl 1, k8, ssk, k1, turn.
R6 – Sl 1, p9, p2tog, p1, turn.
R7 – Sl 1, k10, ssk, k1, turn.
R8 – Sl 1, p11, p2tog, p1, turn.
R9 – Sl 1, k12, ssk, k1, turn.
R10 – Sl 1, p13, p2tog, p1, turn.
R11 – Sl 1, k14, ssk, k1, turn.

Modelling the sock!

R12 – Sl 1, p15, p2tog, p1, turn. (18 sts. remain)

Slip 1, knit 8 sts (to middle of heel), this will now be the beginning of round.

(I copied and pasted this part from a Ravelry downloaded PDF pattern for SKYP Rib Socks by Adrienne Ku - here is the link)

Heel – gusset
Set-up Round

Needle 1 - knit remaining 9 stitches from heel turn, pick up and knit 15 stitches along heel edge flap plus 1 extra between flap and instep. (Total = 25 stitches)
Needle 2 - transfer instep stitches from needle holder to needle and K2 P2 Rib across instep.
Needle 3 - pick up and knit 1 stitch between instep and heel flap, pick up and knit 15 stitches along heel edge, K 9 from sole.

There are now 3 needles with 25, 30, and 25 stitches.
You will need to decrease 1 stitch at instep edge of alternate rows until you are back to 15, 30 and 15 stitches.
Do this as follows:

Round 1 -N1 - K to last 3 stitches, k2 tog., k1. N 2 - Continue K2 P2 rib across instep. N 3 = k1, sl1,k1,psso, k to end
Round 2 - Knit N 1 & 3, K2 P2 rib on instep
Repeat these 2 rounds until you are left with 15, 30 and 15 stitches on each needle.

Foot

Continue sock foot in rounds until 2 ins/4cm shorter than length of foot (allow for some stretch)

Another angle

Toe shaping

Round 1: Knit
Round 2:
N1: K to last 3 stitches - k2 tog. k1.
N2: k1, sl1,k1,psso, k to last 3 stitches, k2 tog. k1.
N3: k1, sl1,k1,psso, k to end.
Continue these 2 rounds until 16 stitches remain. (4, 8, 4). Put 4+4 on one needle = 2 needles of 8 stitches. Graft toe with Kitchener Stitch. This is a neat seamless finish for a toe.

Here's a video clip of how it's done

Kitchener Stitch Video Clip

Finishing can also be done by casting off two stitches together (One stitch from each needle knitted as one, then knit next stitch from each needle as one and pass the 1st one over the last one. Repeat until all cast off, then weave in cut ends of yarn. I am sure there's a video for that method too but I haven't found it yet. I'll be back like Arnie when I do!

There are endless variations possible with these socks. You can use the SKYP Rib Socks I referenced above, or a simpler ribby pattern, liek K4 P2 or K2 P1. I hope you see it as a basic pattern, and I might make it a PDF to upload to Ravelry in the future, when the General Election's over and I get my life back to normal - this time next week all will be revealed - let's hope Labour will have a new woman TD from Waterford!

The 2011 Irish Blog Awards: And the Nominees include...me!

2011-02-15T23:15:00.000Z

2011 Nomination!

I noticed on Twitter the other night that the nominations had been posted for the 2011Irish Blog Awards and I am delighted that I got nominated - in two categories!

I got a nomination in the Best Personal and Best Food//Drink Blogs. Thanks a million to my nominees - you know who you are, even if I'm just guessing! I promise I won't make a cringe-making Oscar/Bafta/Ifta-style acceptance speech - unless I make it to the shortlist or the finalist list!

There are a multitude of great blogs in the numerous categories - Humour, Newcomer, Political, Politician, Best Post, Personal, Food/Drink, Youth, Irish Language (eat your heart out Fine Gael!) and so I am delighted to get to the longlist.

Last year I was lucky enough to make the shortlist and while I didn't win, it was great to follow the progress of the awards and to read so many new (for me) blogs. So I hope you enjoy them as much as I do - life's too short to be reading them all (and do other stuff as well, like work and knit and read!) but there are plenty of good ones out there.

I already recognise a lot of the names in the various categories, some that I follow and some who follow me - and there is a great camaraderie in the blogosphere that makes everyone happy for their fellow-bloggers when they appear on the list. At least that's how I see it; maybe I'm hopelessly out of tune and everyone's really gritting their teeth to see their nemesis nominated! Well, I'll keep up my Pollyanna-ish faith in human nature and believe in my theory - there's plenty of room in the Twittersphere for acerbic wit and cutting-edge scathing commentary!

If nothing else, it's great to see the increased traffic to my blog in the past few days - for a while there I felt I was blogging for myself as there seemed to be a decline in visitor numbers, but it's turned around since the list went up, so it definitely has an impact.

I've mused before on blogging and its appeal - and while I do it mainly because I enjoy writing and sharing recipes and reviews and ideas on issues that interest me, I'd be disingenuous if I said I didn't get a buzz from having new followers and seeing comments - so keep up the ego-massage, people!

Keep on visiting, commenting and following - and I'll keep on posting Dispatches from a cold and damp Déise!

I'm a Stylish Blogger - or so the Award says!

2011-02-13T14:29:00.002Z

I was chuffed when I got this award recently - it's been a couple of weeks ago but better late than never, Stylish Blogger no less! - from Laura in California who blogs at Our Scented Cottage, well worth a visit. Thanks a lot Laura!

I will now tell you what the Award sharing entails, for those of you who will receive it from me - if you wish to share with your fellow-bloggers just follow the guidelines below. I don't think this one is too onerous; I have refused to pass on Awards in the past that were too difficult or intrusive, so it's entirely up to you what to do. It's all a bit of fun, not something to agonise over accuracy or factual verification thereof - even if you're using a bit of poetic/artistic licence to embellish it's not a hanging offence!

To Accept The Award Requirements: Thank and Link Back to the Blogger Who Awarded You With The Award and Share 7 Things About Yourself. Award 15 Recently Discovered Great Bloggers and contact the bloggers, inform them of the award.

Right - here goes - Seven things about me (that you were afraid to ask?!)

1. I love reading - I am in a real-world book club and an online Bloggers' Book Club - which is worth checking out and much thanks to Lily for setting it up. I am not always great at reading the required books as I am always short on time - but I try. I enjoy sharing the reviews and seeing other people's opinions on a favourite read. Our house is full of books - hubby keeps wondering where we're going to fit any more and yet there's a certain elasticity in our bookshelves! I am always reading some book or other, usually multitasking it with something else like knitting (see 2 below!)

My latest socks project - ribbed wool socks

2. My current favourite hobby is knitting - small projects like socks (See photo) which can be done anywhere - in the car, the coffee shop, watching TV, waiting around for people, hospital appointments - it makes the wait tolerable and combined with No. 1 above is the perfect relaxation. I do enjoy crochet but I am not as good at it as I once was so I defer to my daughter-in-law-to-be who has become a whiz at it since I showed her how to make a pot-holder a few short months ago - now she's teaching me her wonderful projects! Check out her Facebook Group (Jany's Cozy Crochets) for her work. Also the advent of YouTube tutorials on knitting and crochet make it accessible to the masses and the plethora of wonderful crafty books now available have reawakened interest in these terrific pastimes.

Sofia's No. 1 Cake!

3. I have always loved baking since learning the craft from my late mother as a child - I also had a friend whose grandfather had a bakery and she taught me how to make yeast bread, something not very common in Ireland - home of the Soda Bread (brown bread made with buttermilk and with Bread Soda (Soda Bicarbonate) as the raising agent. No waiting around for proving or rising and knocking down, it's a simple fast mixing method - can be wet or dry as wished, depending on whether you want to bake in a loaf tin or shaped round or whatever you fancy. Now I mostly bake cakes, buns (cupcakes) and tarts and pies. And I have a Facebook Group (Cakes, Bakes and Tasty Treats) which showcases some of my favourite recipes, all of which I've blogged about. My most recent was Sofia's First Birthday Cake which you can see here - we celebrated the big day yesterday!

4. I never travelled outside of Ireland until I was 17, when I went overland on a youth pilgrimage to Lourdes in southern France, the famous Marian shrine. I was a helper to a disabled girl, as were a a number of classmates who'd signed up for a bit of adventure, which was in short supply in the Black and White TV days of the early 70s! We had a blast - something not usually associated with pilgrimages, but perhaps there's a clue if I say the pilgrimage was led by that notorious party animal Bishop Eamon Casey. He was quite the man-about-town then, little did we know then what we knew twenty years later - that he was a father in more than the religious title, which was disclosed by the mother of his then 17 yr old son, a handsome American lad, whose mother had fallen for the popular Bishop's charms all those years earlier. Sadly, he was vilified by the church and sent into exile in the South American missions, in contrast to all those paedophile priests whose crimes came to light years later which were covered up by the institution all the way to the Vatican. If ever there was a case for married priest and an end to compulsory celibacy, Bishop Casey epitomised it. He was a coward of course, in that he ditched Annie Murphy and embezzled diocesan funds to pay maintenance for the kid, and he never acknowledged him until Annie Murphy went public. But theirs was a consenting adult relationship, and as such should have been acknowledged by the hierarchy.

5. I never flew until I was 22, when I went to Tenerife on my first and only package holiday after I'd finished my midwifery. Nine of us went, all girls, all just-qualified midwives, and we were ready to party. I remember being more excited by the flight than the holiday destination - until I arrived. I had little experience of sub-tropical climes to then, and revelled in two weeks of glorious sunshine in a then largely unspoilt island just discovering its tourist potential. We climbed Mount Tiede, the highest volcano/peak in Europe (not the mainland of course, but the Canary Islands are part of Spain so they are European even though they lie off the coast of Morocco, near the Western Sahara end.

6. I lived without electricity or running water for over a year - in the African bush in the mid-80s when we worked withTutsi refugees from Rwanda near Lake Burigi, the most beautiful place between Lake Victoria and Rwanda. We drew water from the river and in the rainy season collected rainwater in a tank. That was our most basic living ever - we had a small generator which would run a light bulb or two but if you put on the cooker it would dim the lights. I cooked on charcoal and got very creative - anyone who knows those little charcoal jikos or stoves knows they're slow to fire up and can be temperamental, but I ended up baking bread with two African cooking pots - like a bastable oven, one had the bread, the other sat on top with more hot coals in it, and that baked perfect bread. Murder on the tin pots though, as the heat of the charcoal on a dry pot burnt it away after a couple of uses. Happy days, the kids were small and it was pretty idyllic for them, aged 4 and 1, and I was 8 months pregnant with no. 3 when we left for the relative civilisation of Wales and a study break.

7. I was taught Irish for 13 years in school and I still don't speak it comfortably or anywhere near fluency. This is probably a damning indictment of the school system in how it teaches Irish as a compulsory subject which was foisted on us, as it still is. In fact, it was so forced that if you failed Irish in the Leaving Cert you failed the whole exam, regardless of the rest of the exam - straight As or not. That requirement is now gone, but the baggage it carries for my generation is irreparable. I work in an Irish-speaking area and did a conversation course a few years ago which showed me how much I could recall and it was a fun way to learn. I see kids going to Gaelscoileanna where they're taught everything through Irish and they seem fine with it, and there's a resurgence outside Gaeltacht areas. I think future generations will be okay with the language but the teaching has to change and be relevant to everyday life. I speak near-fluent Dutch, am very comfortable in Kiswahili after years in Tanzania, and could even cope with some Lao, a tortuously difficult script and tonal language (like Thai)e that would make Serbo-Croat look like a walk in the park!

So that's some random things to share - I tried to get a different perspective than in a previous list for the Versatile Blogger Award I got from Mimi last year, so I hope I achieved that. I will now forward it to the following bloggers I enjoy and who won't mind being tagged with an award - I will not send it to any award-free zone!

It's been fun to do and I hope you enjoy it too, pass it on and hopefully bring a lot more readers and followers to your blog - which is always nice. Though I write this because I enjoy the process of writing an open diary - as I see a blog - and it documents my life in a way I'm happy to share in the blogosphere.

And the Award goes to.....

Mimi @ MimiinDublin
Rudee @ A Knitting Nurse
Ann @ Inkpots n'Quills
Alycia @ The Curious Pug
Susan @ Joyous Flowers
Brownieville Girl @ Brownieville Girl
Corry & Heleen @ Dutch Sisters
Michelle @ MichelleTeacress
Peggy @ Organic Growing Pains
ShannonAnn @ One Size Knits All
Lilly @ Stuff I make, bake and love
Barbara @ Tanzania 5.0
Maeve @ The Delights of Tea and Other Things
Kitty Cat @ Red Lemonade
Barbara @ From my Kitchen Table

Irish Blog Awards 2011 - Nomination Time again.

2011-02-03T02:14:00.000Z

Hard to believe it's a year since the Irish Blog Awards and they have rolled around again. I was lucky last year to get nominated and shortlisted to the last 25 which was a great morale boost for this blogger. I was nominated in two categories, Personal Blog and Food Blog. It was great fun browsing the nominations and seeing the quality of the blogs was a humbling experience.

As far as I know I haven't been nominated thus far, so I will be delighted if any readers see fit to put my blog forward in any category they think it fits. It will be a great honour and very exciting if I do get nominated onto a category, and I will be looking through the blogs I follow to nominate some of them, as they are surely deserving.

It's fun to follow the progress of the blogs through to the finals, and to see who the ultimate winners are.The finals are in Belfast on March 19th and the only criteria for entry is to have been actively blogging between March and December 2010.

Have a look at the website and nominations page and perhaps you will find a category that fits some of the Irish blogs you follow, and you'll have a friend for life if you nominate that blog.

Happy browsing and keep in touch with the awards site as it updates through the heats. I will continue blogging my heart out for the foreseeable future as it is a nice outlet for writing about everything day-to-day in life - from the sublime to the ridiculous.

This is especially relevant now that it's open season on venting and rants with the 2011 General Election about three weeks away. Happy days will be here again, as we all hope for change, echoing Labour leader Eamon "Happy" Gilmore, the persistent poll-topper for Taoiseach. Let's see if the polls' accuracy stands up to scrutiny after the election. Watch this space!

A Labour of Love in the General Election 2011

2011-02-01T22:21:00.000Z

Lismore Labour Women with Ciara the Candidate!

Today has been a historic one for Ireland - the 30th Dáil (Parliament) has just been dissolved and the road to the General Election 2011 Campaign is open. Until the dissolution of the Dáil the campaign posters couldn't go up in public places - not that that stopped some of them stealing a march on their opponents - I saw posters for another candidate (not Labour!) this afternoon in Waterford City - about 3 hours too early!

The Labour Selection Convention 25th January 2011 Waterford

Since two Labour Party Candidates for Waterford Constituency were selected last week I've hardly seen hubby Jan - he's been appointed Director of Elections for Ciara Conway's campaign. Seamus Ryan is the other candidate for Labour. He's based in Waterford City and Ciara in Dungarvan, so there's good countywide representation. Hopefully they'll both get plenty of canvassing done across the county in the coming four weeks leading up to the General Election which will take place on Feburary 25th. If you like you can scan the Labour Party policies which they will bring into government should they be in that position in a few weeks time - which looks like a distinct possibility, if they can negotiate a coalition deal with Fine Gael.

Labour Waterford Women supporting Ciara for the Dáil

The ruling ~~junta~~ party Fianna Fail (take as read - there should be a fada (á accent) over the "a" in Fail but I prefer it without - more appropriate!) has just bit the dust after being in power for 61 of the last 79 years. For the past 14 years they have brought the country to its knees with their self-serving economic stroke politics of favouring jobs for the boys, propping up dynastic political families with no claim to serve other than taking over the seat of a father or uncle, and creating a housing and property bubble that made millionaires out of developers while crippling people with mortgages for inflated house prices that will never recoup their original value, leaving thousands in negative equity and with job losses, at risk of repossession.

Ciara's campaign launch - Director of Elections Jan speaking

It's probably a good idea to comfort eat our way through this recession. My previous post is a good example of this, with the recipe for a slow-cooker casserole. Cheap cuts of meat do well in slow-cookers too, so that's another plus! Since the start of the year I am down about €150 a month nett with the new USC - an nice innocuous-sounding acronym for the most inequitable charge we've seen since the pension levies of 2009. This Universal Social Charge is hitting poorer lower-paid workers far more than higher earners, as it draws into its net people previously exempt, because they were deemed too poor to pay levies like health and income levies if they had a medical card.

Ciara speaking at campaign launch

Ciara and her Director of Elections Jan

The charge is now levied on all earning above €4000 p.a. - in other words, everyone in work. So while I might be hit with €150 per month less take-home pay, someone on half my salary could be disproportionately hit and lose €100 - €150. By the way, under the Croke Park deal the public sector didn't get any wage cut - our gross pay stays the same. Just what's in our pocket at the end of the month is down. So it's like a pay cut of about €2000p.a. for me, and I would bet if I was being means-tested for anything like a grant for college it's my gross pay that'd count!

I wanted to mark this historic day as I hope we're on the cusp of a new age in Irish politics, with Labour at the forefront, even in coalition, where they'll bring in their key policies of Jobs, Reform and Fairness. These aren't mere waffle, as their modus operandi is clearly outlined in the Policy document.

We had Ciara's launch last night in Dungarvan and there will be canvassing and campaigning ad infinitum and ad nauseum for the next three weeks. Fianna Fail canvassers will get a rough time on the campaign trail so even though they go into the campaign with a new leader after Biffo/Brian Cowen bowed to the inevitable opprobrium heaped on him by his own fellow party members, Micheál Martin, his successor, is tainted with being in the cabinet and Minister of key portfolios during the years of excess and waste otherwise known as the Celtic Tiger.

Surely the words of former Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy will come back to haunt the Soldiers of Destiny (a.k.a. Fianna Fail) - If I have it, I'll spend it, was his style during his giveaway budgets during the boom years. Trouble was, we didn't actually have it, it was all built on the bubble of property and development that was totally unsustainable and has come crashing down around us in the past two years, leading us to the arms of the IMF and the ECB, our new taskmasters. It looks like we'll be indentured to them for many years to come. Time for Bono to start a Drop the Debt campaign, as I suggested in another post. Little chance of that!

Slow Cooker Crockpot Casserole - Comfort Food for those January Blues

2011-01-31T01:51:00.000Z

The 30-year old Tower bible!

Today I made a nice beef casserole in my Slow Cooker which is fantastic. I love it, and it is great when I'm going out for the day.I went to Cork to visit son Shayne, fiancée Jany and granddaughter Sofia who's almost a year. Where did the time go?

I had been to Dublin yesterday for a meeting and visiting friends and middle son Martin afterwards, and travelled up and down with another friend who was meeting her daughter in Dublin, so it's been quite a weekend. When I came home tonight - dinner was ready. I just had to do the spuds (for teen daughter and me) and heat some rice for hubby, and that was that. No pressure.

Lovely colourful warm stew

Pre-fry everything if you have time - no worries if not!

I made my own combo of about three different recipes and it turned out lovely - I used a beef stew base but as I had some pork I added that, with seasoning from another recipe in a Slow Cooker book I have. It's great comfort food for the January blues.

We got our Slow Cooker as a wedding present nearly 30 years ago - it's a Tower and has a 2-litre capacity, so it's not enormous - but it's more than adequate for four-six people if they've got average appetites! I resurrected it in the past few months after years of not using it or only occasionally taking it down to see if it still worked, as a friend had been raving about hers. So I have enjoyed making some great comfort food with it. Today was great as I put on the dinner before going to Cork and when I came home about six hours later the dinner was done to perfection.

Beef and Pork Casserole with Mixed Vegetables

Ingredients

Finished dish

500g/1lb stewing beef - cubed
300g/12ozs pork chops/steak - cubed
500ml/1pint beef stock (use a quality stock cube if no home made stock about)
250ml/glass red wine
6 chopped tomatoes
3tbsp tomato puree/paste
1 teasp. sweet paprika
1 teasp. hot paprika (optional - I use delicious smoked paprika from Spain, wonderful!)
1 teasp. Allspice
1 teasp. ground coriander
1 teasp. mixed herbs
1 tbsp fresh parsley chopped
3 carrots - sliced
3 peeled potatoes - diced
small turnip/swede - diced
150g/6 oz button mushrooms - halved if big
2 onions - chopped
2 cloves garlic - chopped
2 Bay leaves.
At the start of cooking

(These spices and herbs give it a lovely North African exotic flavour but it's still non-threatening to traditionalists who love their casseroles tasty but not fiery!)

Method

Preheat the Slow Cooker on High for about 30 mins.
If you have time, brown the meat and onions and garlic in a little oil in a pan. This gives a bit of extra flavour to the dish.
Add all the other ingredients and mix well.
Transfer to the warmed Slow Cooker and mix well.
Cover and cook for 4 hours on High, or if leaving all day turn it down to Low after a half-hour or so, and cook for around 7 hours.
If you leave it longer don't worry as you can't burn the food or do too much damage as it doesn't really overcook.

Handy Hint:

Cut root vegetables smaller than you might for a stovetop dish as they take longer than the meat to cook to soft. Nothing worse than hard potatoes in a casserole! So ensure you leave enough time to thoroughly cook them. I assure you 4-5 hours on High was enough to cook them through for me.

Enjoy with boiled Basmati Rice or for the ultimate in comfort food - mashed potatotes. I used Rooster spuds with lots of butter, a little milk, sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Hard to beat it, worth a try. Hope you enjoy it and don't be put off by the long list of stuff you need. It's mostly in your kitchen cupboards.

Nearly gone!

Ready to go!

Winter Woollies - StayingToasty in Turbulent Times

2011-01-23T01:50:00.001Z

Cap and Scarf in Super-Chunky wool

I have been busy knitting warm woollies to help me cope with our winter of discontent. Not alone has the weather been unseasonably cold for Ireland and we've had to cope with frozen pipes and a waterless Christmas, it's now clear that this was but a portend of the disastrous political turmoil of the past week.

Today the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen resigned as the main government coalition party leader but decided to stay on as Taoiseach. This brings us back to GUBU days - no, not Glory Days, but Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented. This famous acronym dates back to 1982 when a double murderer was found to be hiding out in the apartment of the Attorney General, and the term was coined by Conor Cruise O'Brien apropos of the controversy in which the then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey found himelf embroiled. We wonder now if the planned General Election - announced last week for March 11th - will be brought forward again as the confidence in the government plummets to new depths.

They say that a week is a long time in politics -well here's a timeline to what went on in the past week and as the week wore on it became apparent that an hour is a long time in Irish politics - the farce could have been written by any one of our wonderful playwrights - though John B. Keane would probably have done it fair justice, what with his acute eye for morality in the human condition, not to mention political shenanigans. The Field, one of his most famous plays, is now showing in Dublin and the radio ad for it is prescient - the voiceover of the Bull McCabe asks - "would we rather have our principles or be millionaires?"

Well, it's evident that the political rulers of the past 14 years veered spectacularly towards the latter, and in the words of Charlie McCreevy, then Minister for Finance in one of the giveaway budgets of the boom years - "when we have it, we spend it". Quite. And now we're left holding the baby the IMF has given us - a debt of billions that will be a legacy for future generations and is going into the black hole of the banks that went under due to the lack of proper regulation.

The woolly gloves

That it coincided with week after proverbial Blue Monday just added to the irony, and it is proving hard for all us political junkies to keep up with the daily upheavals. I won't even go into the detail, suffice to say for those living on Mars for the past few weeks that the country is now being misled by a government with a rudderless party.

Today the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Brian Cowen resigned as the main government coalition party leader but decided to stay on as Taoiseach. This brings us back to GUBU days - no, not Glory Days, but Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented. This famous acronym dates back to 1982 when a double murderer was found to be hiding out in the apartment of the Attorney General, and the term was coined by Conor Cruise O'Brien apropos of the controversy in which the then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey found himelf embroiled.

So you can understand why I immerse myself in reading and knitting or crochet. Of late I have been mostly
knitting scarves, hats and gloves - and in warm winter russet tones. You can see the fruits of my January labours in these photos - even the self-consciously self-timed one gives an idea of the hat and scarf set, which was made with James C. Brett's super-chunky Marble yarn, which I got in the lovely Lismore Design Workshop from Angela - she has only been open for a few months but already has inspired a lot of knitters to get their needles out and she has also got a knitting circle up and running on Tuesdays - morning and evening! I went last week and it was a lovely few hours, spent sitting by an open fire chatting away to fellow-knitters. The gloves are pure wool, which have to be hand-washed, a slight drawback offset by their cosy warmth.

Mary, Paul and Catherine - the Knitting Circle Table Quiz team (& me!)

We even got a team together for the Table Quiz last night in Ballyrafter House Hotel - a fundraiser for our Travel Writing Festival, Immrama, which happens in June each year. I have blogged about it frequently. We came 5th overall, not bad with a score of 61 out of a possible 72.

Coincidentally, today's Irish Times had two articles about Lismore and its environs - both by Immrama speakers. One was by Manchán Magan, on the joys of staying in Lismore in rhododendron or any season, and the other by Thomas McCarthy, a poet of international renown from nearby Cappoquin, who name-checks Lismore in his writings on the downfall of Fianna Fail, the current political pariah party

This post has just touched on the events of the past week - the Labour Party is coasting towards the General Election and we have a Selection Convention on Monday night in Waterford to formally nominate two candidates - a man and a woman - to contest for the four-seat Waterford Constituency. We hope they will double the representation by securing a second seat this time - watch this space for updates!

Book Tokens and Reviews - from Knitting to Nemesis

2011-01-12T22:45:00.000Z

I got these books - the Knitting and Crochet one was in the bargain bin, but Nemesis was full whack - with my the last of my book tokens which I won in the Terrible Typos competition in the Irish Times a few months back. The Knitting and Crochet book has some great patterns and I look forward to idling away the dark winter evenings with some cool and colourful projects which will be shared and blogged about in due course.

Nemesis was a nice treat as I rarely buy new hardback novels, preferring to wait for the paperback or go to the library. The cheapskate in me rails against such extravagance, but I'm always prepared to make an exception and Philip Roth is one of my favourite authors, in the same league as Updike, Ford and Franzen in my humble opinion. I read Portnoy's Complaint back in the '70s for the salaciousness of it being a widely-banned book, but since then I've returned for the literary merit and not the smut!

Nemesis is a deceptive book. It's written in an understated narrative style, with a structured formality - the story is told by a student of the protagonist, Bucky Cantor, a phys ed teacher who worked as a playground director during the summer of 1944 when polio ravaged Newark and beyond in a relentless epidemic.

Bucky is a young man old before his time after being dealt a number of short straws in life - his mother died giving birth to him, his father was a jailbird and he grew up never knowing parents but with loving grandparents in the Jewish Weequahic suburb of Newark. He is in love with a girl Marcia, from a wealthy family, who's also a teacher and spending the summer working in a summer camp in the Poconos mountains, Indian Hill. The contrast between the two locations couldn't be starker - the urban one full of disease, fear and helplessness, and the rural idyll with clean air, sure to keep polio at bay. The reality is very different.

The story focuses on Bucky's struggles with his demons. Marcia urges him to join her in the summer camp and escape the city with all its danger. He is torn between going as he feels honour-bound to staying with the playground kids, yet he succumbs to the lure of the lovely Marcia.

Soon after he leaves, the playground closes when the epidemic gets out of control, and he realises he wouldn't have had to resign and incur the wrath of his boss who castigates him as a coward, had he stayed on a few more days.

Developments at Indian Hill take a sinister but predictable turn, and Bucky's guilt comes back to haunt him. The relationship with Marcia is intense and she is an uncomplicated sincere woman while Bucky is decent and honest but has low self-esteem which makes him feel unworthy of her love.

The ending was unexpected but understandable when the character of Bucky was considered, and it is very poignant and sad to see how a life can be shaped by events completely outside someone's control, and when one's sense of responsibility can be so extreme as to be hubristic, as I think it was in this case - Bucky blames himself for everything and when logic dictates otherwise he doesn't want to know.

I loved the way Roth writes; he has a lyrical descriptive style which draws the reader to the time and place, and is a great analyst of the human spirit and condition. In recent years I've read Exit Ghost and The Human Stain and other Zuckerman novels, and while this was not a Zuckerman book it was riveting in its simplicity and beauty. It was more like a novella than a full-length novel as it was such a page-turner, despite its 269 pages.

The topic of polio is an emotive one, and it has touched our family - my mother's father had polio as a child in the 1880s and it shaped his life - he became a master tailor as it was a skill for which he didn't need two good legs, instead of the farm labourer which would have been his destiny. Yet this was the first novel I'd read on the subject.

I've read The Cutter Incident which looked at the epidemics of the 1950s in the USA when a batch of polio vaccine was tainted with live virus that infected numerous children, killing some. Patrick Cockburn's The Broken Boy looks at a personal journey through polio in the Irish epidemic of the 50s and how it ravaged Cork in particular. These are all worth reading as much for social commentary of the day as well as human interest. Most of us will never experience the horrors of polio and the fear of the unknown legacy - iron lungs and calipers defined it for so many, and I am old enough to remember schoolmates who had polio and were permanently affected.

The tragedy is now the number of post-polio syndrome victims who are affected, 50 or more years after their original infection, with a debilitating malaise.

To all anti-vaccine campaigners out there, this book should be required reading.