A Party Break in Dublin - Both Birthday and Political

The Spire - Dublin's newly iconic landmark

We're just back from a two-day break in Dublin which was very pleasant. We were invited to my cousin Betty's 80th birthday party a few weeks ago, a significant event taking place in Sutton Golf Club. As she was widowed only last October when her husband Kevin passed away, it marked a milestone in her life, and it was a lovely occasion, poignant yet happy, with lots of memories for many people.

Betty is my first cousin; our fathers were brothers, and while my father died shortly before my third birthday, I knew her parents well, and sadly now all that generation has passed on. There were 12 boys in my father's family and he was second-youngest. In the 1911 Census he is listed as a 4 year old, which I find very moving as I never really got the chance to get to know him. He seems to have belonged to a warm loving close family, and I had lost contact with them over the years of being abroad, and also growing up away from Dublin where they all lived, as my mother and me moved back to her family home in Lismore after my dad died.

At the party there was some wonderful entertainment, as Betty and Kevin were very involved in Variety, the children's charity, and were heading up the Dublin arm of it over many years. They had many friends in showbusiness in Ireland and Brian Hoey, a renowned tenor, was the MC at the birthday party. He has a wonderful singing voice and a broad repertoire, singing a variety of songs from past times. He was joined by the soprano Niamh Murray who sang some wonderful pieces from The Merry Widow and other operettas. My mother would have remembered seeing her at the Pioneer Centenary Celebrations in Croke Park in 1999 which was a nice link for me.

Betty with her family

A lovely touch at the party was the singing of the favourite song of each of the twelve brothers, as  far as could be remembered, by either a family member or by Brian Hoey. I was moved to tears when my father's favourite song was sung by my cousin Paddy - the lovely ballad The Old Rustic Bridge by the Mill. I hadn't known that was his favourite song, and each family meeting in recent years has increased my store of information about my father and fills more  blanks. He and my mother were less than four years married when he died so there's a whole history from his earlier years I am only now learning. It was lovely to renew links with long lost cousins, some of whom I hadn't met since we were children. Hubby Jan is great on the genealogy and has enjoyed filling in the blanks in the extended family tree, and sharing it with interested cousins.

The view from our room -  with Howth Head at sunrise

We stayed in the Marine Hotel in Sutton, about a five minute drive from the golf club - or would be had we not got lost on our first attempt and driven around a few blocks but not quite getting there. We'd no mind to drive miles after the party to a distant hotel, so it was just ideal. The hotel was lovely, reasonably priced for such a venue - I'd booked on Booking.com and it was 99Euro for B&B for two. Perfect location if you were looking for an out-of-town yet close to amenities as the Dart railway station was just down the road, and the buses run by the gate. We woke in the morning to the most lovely vista of the sunrise over Dublin Bay and Howth Head in the near distance. We could see all the way down to the Dublin Mountains, and I took some photos from the room with a view. We didn't have time to use the pool or the leisure centre, maybe next time!

Bull Island & the Bull Wall from Sutton-Dublin

After a lovely breakfast we drove into town to go to Wynn's Hotel where there was a Labour Members' Forum hosting a number of eminent speakers on the political situation and the place of the Labour Party in the current government and into the future. I won't go into too much detail as politics can be very contentious at the moment - suffice to say that this forum was hosted by a loose gathering of grassroots Labour members who are anxious that the party not sellout to its partner in government, Fine Gael, or to the wider temptation of the trappings of power. The link above will give a good overview to those interested readers.

There's palpable public anger at the cutbacks, we're all trying our damnedest to be understanding of the invidious situation the country is in and the government are in a damned-if-they-do and damned-if-they-don't place. What we don't want is that the  leadership become arrogant and complacent in their position of political power and stay stuck in the moment because they were elected to instigate the reforms that were promised in the election manifesto and the programme for government. We all know there's compromises where there's coalition, but Labour are at risk of being subsumed into the larger party if they don't put a red line under certain issues and claim credit for the good things that get done by their initiation and not have the larger party take all the credit, wittingly or otherwise. It was good to see many TDs (MPs) and Councillors in attendance, our own Ciara Conway TD was there along with many of the other younger elected members.

Labour Members Forum in Wynn's Hotel

A variety of speakers from economists to trades unionists to the National Women's Council of Ireland spoke of alternatives to austerity by deferring payments to the bondholders under the IMF/ECB rulings we're in thrall to since losing our economic sovereignty. They spoke on the impact of cuts and austerity measures on single parents and vulnerable groups dependent on welfare in the absence of jobs. Best line of the day came from Trade Unionist Sam Nolan from the floor - "Give a man a gun and he'll rob a bank; give a man a bank and he'll rob the world." It was a good debate platform with plenty of opportunity for audience participation, and it reflected the mood of the party grassroots who are at pains to protect the integrity of the party we belong to and whose ethos we hold dear. I'm glad we had the chance to attend this conference, and you can get the mood from Twitter by following #labourmembers.

We hit the road home after the conference and it's lovely driving in the lengthening evenings into the sunset - with hubby driving and me knitting we must make an eccentric sight - but it sure whiles away the miles!

I'll do another blogpost on my lazy city afternoons in the past week. They deserve a separate platform!

Happy Christmas 2010 - thoughts on Round Robins and Recessions

Happy Christmas 2010!

Dear friends,

Family gathering for Jan's birthday celebrations (minus William)

It's that time of year again – the Round Robin's bob-bobbing along to a mailbox near you as yet again the annual missive that is our Christmas Newsletter wings its way around the globe. I just realised that this is the 21^st Anniversary of our Newsletter – the first one was written on a portable typewriter in Iringa in 1989 and photocopied – badly – and sent off to far-flung corners of the globe from the Southern Highlands of Tanzania!

We are coasting downhill to the Christmas and the New Year with more trepidation than we've collectively felt in my lifetime. There's a strong sense of déjà vu – last year was bad but this year Ireland has a post-apocalyptic feeling now after our €85billion bailout by the IMF and the EU – an intervention much denied by our benighted government in the run-up to their arrival. These sheriffs have been and gone but will keep a close eye on us to make sure we're doing as we're told to keep the banks afloat and raise the taxes to do so, all the while paying the lenders enough interest would run the health service every year. The ignominy of having our affairs handed over to outside forces is a bitter pill to swallow as we have certainly lost our financial sovereignty – not quite back to the old colonial days but economically somewhat similar.

The dreaded budget was unveiled on Tuesday – there's a deficit of €6 billion to fund this year, part of the €14 billion we have to find by 2014. The years of wheeling and dealing have finally caught up with a government who had no grasp on economics as they led us into a bubble of property development borrowing from toxic banks that was totally unsustainable. We're all crashing to earth after builder developers abandon the ghost estates that litter the rural hinterland, while the banksters are all exposed as bluffers who profited from the light touch regulation and deference of the government. What it means to me is a drop in take-home pay of around €2K p.a. and that's just speculative – we won't know till mid-January as there're so many new and combined levies we have a job calculating it all till our first paycheques.

Jan and me at his birthday party May 2010

Back to the news from the Rotte-Murray family – and what a year it's been. We've seen the best of times and the worst of times, to borrow a line from Charles Dickens. We were blessed with the birth of our first grandchild, a beautiful little girl, Sofia, born to Shayne and Jany in Cork on February 11^th. She is a joy and delight for all of us, as she grows to a lively active baby, well on the way to being a toddler who'll keep everyone on their toes this Christmas. Then three weeks later, on March 5^th, we were plunged into sadness with the death of my beloved mother at the great age of 94. She had been declining over recent years, and she had a peaceful passing for which we are all grateful – she didn't suffer and I was blessed to be able to spend so much time with her in her last weeks in St. Joseph's Hospital in Dungarvan. It has been an awful loss as we were so close, but these last years have been a long goodbye, with her decline into dementia. She was buried in Lismore with her beloved parents, and Jan gave a beautiful eulogy at her funeral Mass. I have great memories of her, and I can look out our window to the graveyard at the back of our garden where she's at rest, and there's a comfort in that for me. We are all glad that the whole family were together with her a few days before she died, and we took treasured photos of her with Sofia and all of us.

Sofia's Christening Day, 4^th September, with her parents

Shayne and Jany have settled into life in Cork, and they are expecting a second baby next March! Shayne had been working with Concern in direct fundraising but was let go in February. Jany then got a job in Marriott International in April, and Shayne is looking after Sofia and doing a business course – Jan or me babysit on the days he's at college. They are in a nice house in Blackrock, close to shops and bus routes. They went to Holland in August to bring Sofia to see Jany's family and friends. It is lovely having them in Ireland after all the years Shayne was in Spain, and we would miss them so much if they weren't here –so the timing was perfect when they came back – another year and they might have been put off by the dire economic situation. We had a lovely ceremony for Sofia's Christening in Lismore in September – she looked sweet in our family heirloom Christening robe – the 4^th or 5^th generation – and had a BBQ in the garden here afterwards, as we had a good summer this year.

Me and Sofia - October

Martin and us at his MA graduation DIT - Oct. 2010

 Martin has just finished his Master's Degree in Professional Design Practice in DIT (Dublin Institute of Technology in Bolton Street) and we had a lovely day at his recent graduation in St. Patrick's Cathedral. He is still living in Dublin, and is trying to find a job, without much luck so far though he has an interview this week. He enjoyed his MA and it is a damning indictment of the system to see so many well-educated graduates on the dole and unable to get work in their professional field- he has done unpaid interning to get experience for his CV, so I hope it pays off. There's so much emigration now that the government is factoring it into the projections for the social welfare costs for the next four years and they are also claiming the figures on the live register are dropping (the Social Welfare register) – that's all because of the emigration. I don't want the boys to have to go abroad – when we went it was from choice, not necessity. That's a whole different ball-game.

William and us at his BA graduation UL August 2010

William finished his BA in Physical Education and Geography in the University of Limerick and we celebrated with his graduation in August. He moved to Cork when he got a job as a waiter in the Airport Hotel, and as he was getting very few hours there he got another job this week in Amazon in Cork. He has applied for teaching in the UK as there seems very little in teaching in Ireland – the public service embargo is affecting new grads worse than experienced teachers as they are all competing for the few substitute jobs or maternity cover or the private schools unaffected by the ban on recruitment in the public sector. All very demoralising for the lads and their parents aren't too happy either – but we are very proud of all of them for getting to adulthood with a positive outlook on life and not giving up on Ireland – just yet anyway.

Maeve has just had her 15^th birthday with a sleepover weekend here at home with five or six of her friends – we lifted the term-time ban on sleepovers for the occasion and she made the best of it. With her Junior Cert looming in June, she has had to knuckle down to the books – and having to do supervised study doesn't really appeal but it concentrates the study to the afternoon and she doesn't have that much to do after dinner. As we didn't go abroad for holidays this year – sign of the times – she spent the summer camping in the garden in a big tent we got in Argos, and they had good fun with that. I took four of the girls to Dublin for a weekend in July – we stayed in the Skylon Hotel and they shopped till I dropped. They enjoyed it and I was able to drop them to Blanchardstown Centre and spend time with Martin and also visit old friends Tom and Darina.
 
Jan had a very significant birthday this year – he turned sixty in May! All his family came over from Holland for a week and we marked the big occasion with a party in Ballyrafter House Hotel with the family and our friends. I baked a huge cake and we had a lovely night, and he didn't look a day over fifty (!) as we danced the night away to a local combo. The family all stayed in Youghal in holiday homes, and did a lot of sightseeing as well as spending time with us in Lismore during the week – we had a BBQ at home and then hired a bus for a day trip around the Ring of Kerry, which was a highlight for all of us. It was over thirty years since I had been there in my hitch-hiking student days. It's still a beautiful scenic route – a 90 mile round trip from Killarney and some hair-raising bends – no wonder the tour buses can only go one-way! Jan is still active in the local Town Council for Labour and on the national town councillors' committee, as well as Concern's council, and the national festival association.

Shayne, Sofia and Jany

This year's Immrama festival of Travel Writing was another great success, with big names like Ranulph Fiennes speaking about his Boy's Own adventures to various frozen wastes of the world, his self-amputation of his fingers after a nasty dose of frostbite, and other tales of derring-do. Tim Severin was also there, telling of his high seas adventures in the wake of Sinbad and St. Brendan and other great voyagers, and veteran writer Jan Morris rounded off a terrific weekend of armchair travel in wonderful settings around Lismore. It proved a great respite from the recession, and hopefully 2011 will be as big an event – many old faces return for the fringe events, and its international reputation keeps growing. Jan is kept busy as the festival manager, and plans are already underway for next year. We took part in the Seán Kelly Charity Tour of Waterford in August, with Jan doing 90km while Shayne and me did 50km, and Shayne did 90km in the Cork Rebel Tour in September. I got a lot of fun from my birthday present of a lipstick-red hybrid tour/trek cross bike.

I'm still working away in Old Parish area as the public health nurse, although I moved office to Dungarvan in May. With the snow we've had in Ireland in recent weeks – Snowvember as some called it – there have been parts of my area impassable by car, and the coastguard jeep had to do shopping for some isolated folk in the uplands. I don't think Ireland does snow and bad weather too well, as is the norm in so many countries, but we literally grind to a halt when there's more than a few days of snow and ice. We had the Big Freeze in 2009/10 and it looks like it may be round 2 already, with plenty more forecast. I continue to enjoy my job despite the constraints of cutbacks, as the recruitment ban means that posts aren't always automatically filled, and now there're plans to reduce numbers by 6000 in the coming years, half of which may be frontline nursing staff. With beds closing, hospitals overcrowded, and morale very low, it's hard to know where it will all end. There's even talk of returning the beleaguered HSE to the old Health Boards system to improve accountability.

That's about it for our news this year – we weren't away for any holiday, rather the family came to us in May and in late March an old friend Tandy came for a visit – we hadn't met since we lived in Iringa where our kids grew up together, so we'd a lot of catching up to do. We spent some of the time sightseeing around lovely West Waterford and had some knitting lessons – which she has kept up since returning to London. Jany has discovered a previously unknown talent for crochet, and I knitted some funky socks for myself as well as some baby clothes for Sofia. I'm still reading avidly, and in the book club, as well as an online Bloggers' book club, where there's a lot of overlap with the real world club. I enjoy blogging as an outlet for writing – mostly recipes, book reviews, knitting, family events, and current affairs ranting. Check it out – I was chuffed to be shortlisted for two categories in the Irish Blog Awards, even though I didn't win it was a nice accolade.

We're looking forward to having all the family together for Christmas in Lismore, even though it'll be sad as the first one without Ma, and she'll be in our thoughts. May you all have a wonderful Christmas, and drop in if you're around Lismore – we've an open door here and love to catch up on old friends in real time as well as all those we keep in contact with through Skype, Facebook and email, which have all changed the way the world communicates. We wish you all much happiness in 2011 and look forward to hearing from you in the coming weeks and over the festive season.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all,

Love from



Jan and Catherine, Shayne, Jany and Sofia, Maeve, William and Martin, and Ben the dog.

Double-take Birthday Cakes - Supersized and Minimized

I promised I'd post the recipe for the birthday cake I made for hubby Jan's big birthday celebration recently, which I wrote about here.

So here it is - it's simply a very big Victoria sponge cake with butter icing - lots of it. It went down a treat at the party, people seemed genuinely surprised that I'd made it which made me wonder if baking is really going out of style.

There are lots of specialist bakeries now which do amazing things with photos in edible icing on top of the cakes, or cartoon characters, but I guess they rely on the technology of edible teeshirt-printing equivalence.

I still prefer the home-made cakes to the shop-bought ones as the home-made variety have more substance and can have a fair bit of style as well - at least that's what I was aiming for, and I hope I achieved it to some extent.

Here goes - not for the fainthearted and have plenty of ingredients in stock - and at least a day to prepare and bake unless you have a couple of roasting tins and a large oven. I don't, so I made one cake at a time, and baked them individually in the same roasting tin, lined with baking parchment. I made three large cakes but only used two and a half - I kept the other half for a small cake on the actual birthday which was the Saturday after Thursday's party. You can see both cakes - little and large - in this post.

Prepare a sturdy cake board if you don't have one - I cut some strong cardboard from boxes that housed some garden chairs from Lidl, and stuck two big squares together with packing tape and covered them with tinfoil/aluminium foil. The cake board will have to carry a few kilos of finished cake!


Ingredients (for each cake)

1. 500gm/1lb Self-Raising Flour (or plain flour and 5 teaspoons baking powder)
2. 500gm/1lb Vanilla Sugar (I use normal white/caster sugar kept in a Kilner jar with some vanilla pods - the best flavour and beats concentrated vanilla essence hands down. If you use essence, get natural vanilla)
3. 500gm/1lb Butter, softened
4. 8 Eggs
5. 4-5 tablespoons hot water

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 189 degrees Centigrade/350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Place all the ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Using a hand-held electric mixer, mix all the ingredients to a soft dropping consistency.
4. (You can be purist about this and cream the butter and sugar before adding the eggs and flour slowly - I find the one-step method worked fine and didn't curdle on me. I like short cuts!)
5. Spoon the mix into a large square or rectangular tin - a roasting tin is ideal - lined with Baking Parchment (Waxed paper).
6. Bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven for 30-40 minutes until well risen and golden brown, and firm in the centre - test with a skewer or knitting needle in the middle, which should come out dry.
7. Cool in tin for 10 minutes, then carefully lift out by wax paper and leave to cool on a wire rack.
8. Bake two or three of these cakes, then when completely cool, prepare to decorate to your liking.

Butter Icing /Frosting

1. 1.5kg/3lbs Icing Sugar
2. 750gms/1.5 lbs Butter, softened
3. 1 tablespoon Lemon Juice to tone down the sweetness, if liked

Icing Variations:

• Cocoa powder - if making Chocolate Icing.
• Food Colouring - if making coloured icing
• Instant Coffee dissolved in a little hot water - if making Coffee Icing
• Orange juice and zest - if making Orange Icing

Beat the butter in large bowl, then sieve in the sugar and continue beating until smooth and creamy, and add lemon juice or any preferred flavourings/colouring.

Preparation

1. Place one cake upside down on foil cake board, and cut another cake to square if off if you like a square cake. Otherwise a rectangle is fine.
2. Spread with Strawberry Jam.
3. Spread stiff whipped cream on the jam.
4. Place the second cake on top of the cream - right side up.
5. Spread butter icing over top and sides of cake.
6. Decorate as wished - I used Chocolate icing for piping and writing, and 70% chocolate buttons/chips to decorate border.

Handy Tip

I used a piping syringe and nozzle to pipe the top decorations and then another nozzle for the continuous border around the cake sides near the board.
For the writing I didn't have a fine writing nozzle - lost in the mists of time and the kitchens of Africa or Asia - and I improvised with a freezer bag - put the icing into the bag, a few tablespoons is enough for writing a few words like I did - and snip a very small bit off the corner so you can squeeze a small trail of the icing through and guide it for writing whatever you wish.
No need for fancy sets, I know you can make greaseproof piping bags, but this was handier as I think you need nozzles for the greaseproof paper bags.

Enjoy the end product - I did enjoy making it, the guests loved it and then we had a small cream sponge cake with the leftovers for the birthday itself, which had a candle per decade!

It keeps well for a few days, once in an airtight tin or wrapped in greaseproof paper.

A Birthday Celebration - and a Cake Challenge!

Last week we celebrated a significant birthday for hubby Jan in a local hotel, Ballyrafter House Hotel in Lismore, which is the perfect venue for a family and friends gathering such as this. We had planned it for some months and it wasn't a surprise as all his family from Holland were coming to Ireland for a holiday the week of the birthday to celebrate it. As they were going back on a Saturday, we decided to have the party on the Thursday night. Not the best night for a party, but it was the best option, as we had our trip to the Ring of Kerry (which I already wrote about here) on the Tuesday, and they had other local sightseeing trips in the Cork/Waterford area on the other days, as well as spending time hanging out at our place for the odd barbecue.

The party was lovely, and attended by our good friends from the area as well as the family. We had lovely buffet food, sandwiches and finger food - vol-au-vents and stuffed mushrooms, prawns in filo pastry, sausages, chicken and wedges - which was served around 10.30pm, and then we had the cake and Jan blew out his candles - to spare his lungs we got numbered candles rather than a large number of individual ones - we could have had problems lighting so many besides! The cake was my only contribution to the catering, and I was justifiably proud of it as I hadn't made a huge cake like this before, or even a large birthday cake since the days of the kids' parties, when style over substance was the golden rule. I relied heavily on a wonderful book, my Party Cakes bible by Jane Asher (the Yummy Mummy of the 1980s turned actress - or vice versa, not sure - and still going strong if I see her website!) and her decorated marvels graced many a party table in Tanzania and Laos and Ireland throughout the past 27 years. Now it was a chance to get creative in a slightly more restrained and tasteful fashion with a proper grown-up cake. I kept it simple - a golden rule when doing something a bit unfamiliar in the kitchen - and it worked a treat. Understated and tasteful - as well as tasty - and everyone concurred and loved it, which was endorsement enough for me! The proprietor asked me "Did you make that cake yourself?" which I could take as a compliment or otherwise - if she was surprised should I be offended? Anyway I took it as a compliment - albeit slightly backhanded - is it such a surprise that I could make something impressive?

We had a great night, with music by Billy and Liam, a duo guitar-keyboard combo from Lismore who play a wide range of music and get people out on the floor - teenagers excepted who were too cool for school to dance. They played a mix of country, pop, rock, trad, and even rolled out some Dubliners for the Dutch visitors. One of our friends, Noreen, did a Hornpipe Irish dance for the guests, and she wowed them with her energy and perfect foot-tapping - true Riverdance style, ramrod stiff arms-at-side style. So it was a good night with craic and camaraderie, and it was lovely to see our friends and family all enjoying the evening. Jan made a short thank you speech in Schouwse, his Dutch dialect from the island Schouwen-Duiveland in Zeeland, which is quite different from Dutch and which I think I can follow pretty well though I balk at talking it. Dutch is challenge enough for me!

We were home by about 2a.m. which was not a late night but as the next day was a work day for a lot of the guests we didn't expect it to be a late night. Jan opened his pressies when we got home, and he got some lovely things, and some hilarious cards - all about the mind over matter of being 60! I think you're as young as you feel (or as the woman you feel, depending on the card you read and your point of view!) and he's a very young 60-year old - anyone who can cycle 100km on a Sunday afternoon can't be too over the hill - and he's already signed up for this year's Seán Kelly Tour.

Here are some of the photos - I will post the cake recipe separately if anyone is interested, as it is all proportion and cutting to shape - and is very manageable but you would need to work on if over two days.