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

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!)

Happy Christmas - from the Frozen Wastes of a Waterless West Waterford

Happy Christmas - Cake with fondant and royal icing

We are after the coldest Christmas Day in my memory - it was -11Centigrade in Dungarvan on Christmas morning according to the weather widget thingy on my laptop - and I'm not going to argue with technology. It is now +6Centigrade, so that's an improvement and we were due a thaw over the coming days. Hopefully it will suffice to thaw the frozen water pipes that have returned us to bush living (without the tropical heat) over the past week or more. It's been quite an experience having no water over Christmas and our house has been full - there were eight of us for Christmas dinner and it was a lovely day - I was made sit down after dinner while the kitchen was blitzed by the gang and everything left pristine.

After the first slice!

Little and Large - cake for son on left - loaf-tin baked

 We've been drawing water from the Spout, a spring near the town, by Lismore Castle, and it has been seeing queues of people for the past week, as there are so many households and farms without water. So we are relying on the kindness of friends for washing clothes, and offers of showers and people are really helping each other out at this time. We've had New Year's Eve parties for the past few years which have been great fun, and a nice way to meet up with everyone over Christmas - but this year's looks in doubt unless a miracle happens and water returns well before then.

  Years with water shortages in Africa were the norm for us, but there you are prepped for it and it seemed less hassle. We had a pit latrine for starters - that's the biggest drawback for flush loos - the water supply should be reliable. (That old adage from Meet the Parents comes to mind - "If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down"!)

Lismore Canal on Christmas Eve

River Blackwater at the "Kitchen Hole" - N72 Cappoquin-Lismore road - on Christmas Eve

Jan and me with his internet radio

 I iced our Christmas cakes disgracefully late this year - I put the marzipan on two days ago and the white icing last night - and we've already had a slice. The "proper" way to do Christmas cakes according to the purists is to bake them in October, do the marzipan in late November, wait a week or two and then put on the fondant or royal icing at least a week before serving. Oh dear, I breached each and every one of those guidelines - and there's me preaching with my recipes on Facebook and the blog! So like nurses are the worst at looking after their own health, I guess bakers are somewhat similar - not practising what they preach! In any event, the cake is delicious and the slightly softer-than-usual marzipan and half-set royal icing is actually very tasty. So sometimes breaking the rules isn't so bad after all!

My Outnumbered DVDs - with teen daughter

Sofia and her sit'n'ride rocker - and her godmother

 We'd a lovely day as it was Sofia's first Christmas and she got lots of presents, and Santa came back to the house after an absence of some years - luckily he hadn't forgotten the way. I got some lovely pressies - jewellery from hubby Jan, a gold necklace and matching earrings - the whole series of subversive comedy Outnumbered from the boys, and another DVD from teen daughter - Evelyn with Pierce Brosnan, while clever Sofia gave her granny a Swedish DVD - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - which I read last year for book club! Santa brought Philip Roth's Nemesis - much coveted - and friends gave me more books - chicklit writer Jennifer Weiner's Best Friends Forever from my own very literary BFF in New Jersey, and next month's book club choice (real world, not bloggers!) Winter Bones by Daniel Woodrell. from another friend.

Sofia and her dad

Design son with book

 A family DVD was watched last night - Les Miserables' 25th Anniversary show from London this year - brilliant performance which was live-streamed to cinemas globally and which Shayne and Jany went to see in Dungarvan's SGC cinema at the time. So I will be busy for the coming weeks. Hubby's pressie from me was a Roberts Internet and DAB radio which will give a lot of pleasure - BBC World Service will be crackle-free and round the clock instead of erratic and fadey and non-existent in Ireland - not far enough away to need the World Service on longwave but not near enough to have it on FM the thinking! I believe there are about 10,000 stations globally available - that's gonna need time to navigate!

Sofia got a rocker/sit and ride toy from us, and lots of other toys including her own baby zimmer frame - a push activity toy. Designer son got graphic and typography books, and sporty son got sporty gear and a heart-rate monitor, teen daughter a lavender new mobile phone, while Jany got a sewing machine and books, and Shayne got books and games. All this after Mass and before the turkey dinner, and we went to visit Ma's grave before dinner as well, in the brilliant winter sunshine, as we're thinking of our first Christmas without her.

Here are some photos of the winter wonderland scenery around this Christmas with snow and ice - and frozen rivers, and some of our Christmas day pressie pics. Have a great holiday season and Happy rest of Christmas and New Year!

Jany with Singer sewing machine

Socks, Scarves and Snowflakes - coping with the Big Freeze at Christmas

Modelling the Curly-Wurly Ruffle Scarf

I've been trying to keep my mind off the state of the nation (not an easy task) by immersing myself in knitting and crochet mini-projects. It may be a sign of the times that I can't get down to a single big project like a jumper or jacket, as there's just too much going on with work, home and Christmas less than a week away to concentrate on something demanding a lot of time and attention. That's what the grim gloom of January and February is for! Jany (our d-i-l-to-be) has totally taken to crochet since I showed her how to do it a few months back, and has made some wonderful hats and scarves since then, some of which I posted about recently. She has got me hooked (sorry, couldn't resist that!) on it as well, and as it is much quicker than knitting there's a certain attraction when you want something in a hurry.

This weekend I made a lovely curly-wurly ruffle scarf, in chunky random-dyed wool from the local shop - Angela's Design Workshop - which has reawakened interest in a lot of dormant knitters and crocheters. This coral reef style pattern was so easy and fast to work I couldn't believe it - a scarf in a couple of hours. I can see myself making presents of these for friends - so watch out!

Curly-Wurly Ruffle Scarf

I also got some terrific wool in Lidl which awaits my attention but is such good value you couldn't leave it - especially as Lidl only very occasionally has wool for sale, and when it's there you grab it. There were whole kits - wool, pattern and a circular needle for a jumper for about €5 - ridiculous and yet unmissable. The small independent shops can't compete with that so I don't abandon our local shop which has terrific bargain basement wool - balls of 100g DK for €3, perfectly serviceable and the makings of a scarf or a pair of socks. How bad is that?

Curly-Wurly Ruffle Scarf detail

Cable and Basketweave Socks

Heel detail of  Cable and Basketweave socks

A couple of weeks ago I finished a pair of socks - pattern from Ravelry I think - Cable and Basketweave design. They are very chunky and warm, only suitable with my trainers which is fine, but too thick for my ankle boots. I love them, and they were trimmed with remnants from my stash, so very good for using up scraps. I had a disaster with another pair - my lovely peachy socks I posted about a while back - when second son washed his jeans in the same load. They emerged sludge grey and the little heel hole I'd planned on darning had expanded to beyond repair level - even if they'd retained their colour. So into the bin, before their time. The trials and tribulations of hand knit socks - they don't always wear as well as the shop socks but then that's not why I make them!

Seafoam Scarf

Snowflake for the tree!

I got some random-dyed wool blend a few weeks ago and made this lovely loopy seafoam scarf, and that was another pattern from one of the many online sites I wander around. You can see the original pattern and I made it in a different blend of colours. It was easy to make and ran up very quickly.

This weekend I made a lovely crochet snowflake - it was from a Lion Brand Yarn free download pattern - and Jany made two or three more - they are all delightful and adorn our tree, so that's something I'll do again. There are so many talented designers out there - all I do is knit and crochet, not design anything. 

So I hope you get some inspiration from this post - I hadn't knitted or crocheted anything for  years and only took it up a few years ago, and now I find it a great hobby with a nice end product - and I love that I've shown some others how to knit (Tandy who came in March and is now knitting in London!) and Jany. She has passed me out by leaps and bounds and last night we laughed when she showed me how to do a 3D flower in crochet, while she was a beginner only a few short months ago. There are hundreds of online tutorials for knitting and crochet projects, so check them out on YouTube - just search for them by name and you'll be busy for some time. Most of them are also available as printed patterns, if you prefer.

Toll Plaza on M8 Cork-Dublin motorway at Watergrasshill, Co. Cork

As we are in the middle of the coldest December in my memory with snow and sub-zero temperatures I wish you all a very Happy Christmas. Hope you enjoyed my last post with all our news from the year, and I am loving reading all the cards and letter coming by snail mail each day through our letter box. You can't beat the old ways - even though I only hand-write at Christmas since the advent of email and blogging!

Here's a photo of the road from Cork today after bringing Shayne, Jany and little Sofia home after a weekend with us in Lismore. They'll all be here for Christmas which will be terrific.