On cheap shopping and cheating at bread-baking

A few weekends ago I baked some delicious yeast bread. Nothing unusual in that, except that I felt a bit of a fraud as there was an element of cheating involved. I am not beating myself up over it, rather I felt a bit chuffed at how tasty it was given that this should be the nemesis of true home-bakers everywhere - Bread Mix! This was bread mix with a difference though, as it turned out closer to home-baked bread than I'd expected.

My (potentially!) guilty secret is out - the breadmix came from Lidl, that ubiquitous German store that has, as I told Lynda in a comment on her post, revolutionised shopping in Ireland in the past decade.

Lidl and its rival, fellow-German chain Aldi have hit the Irish multiples where it hurts - on their bottom line. The good news for the hapless consumer who was previously held to ransom by the cartel-like inflated prices of the Irish multiples was that their entry to the marketplace led to real price wars, and drove down prices across all food and non-food goods. Tesco upped the ante with a huge discounting campaign but they are coming under fire for cutting Irish suppliers in favour of cheaper imported products from the UK. Of course with the recession in full swing there is fierce competition for our dwindling paypackets at the checkout, and we are certainly voting with our feet.

There was a terrific price war in the border towns last Christmas, when there was a mass exodus from the Irish Republic (our Official Title) to Northern Ireland (where, being part of the UK, everything is cheaper) and a number of retailers south of the border went bust. Suddenly loyalty was being touted as a virtue and we were being guilt-tripped by the government to shop local and buy Irish. As this was seen as rich coming from a government mired in corruption and scandal on a daily basis, it was greeted with due derision, and rightly ignored.

The protection of Irish jobs, workers and businesses suddenly became a patriotic priority and a civic duty, but as the government were at that moment bailing out banks and developers with our taxes and doing nothing to look after the small businesses , the cynics and sceptics among us became even more despairing.


In the case of Lidl, there was huge snobbery about its potential impact on the Irish "housewife" who was patronised in the media as someone needing protection from herself should she be tempted into the dens of iniquity that these cheeky interlopers represented. Luckily most people aren't fools and could spot a bargain at 100 miles, so flocked in droves to the newcomers. Result- Irish tastes expanded to accommodate the exotic smoked meats and cheese that we could previously get in expensive chi-chi delis or smuggle back from our annual sun holiday.



Nowadays there's a certain perverse cachet to shopping in these stores, and many a yummy mummy is seen loading up the still-ubiquitous SUV in the car park with her purchases. Hard to credit that it's only a couple of years since the chattering classes wouldn't be seen dead in these shops, seeing them as the preserve of some underclass who actually had to watch the pennies. Now that conspicuous consumption - and even the SUV is disparaged as an "Axle of Evil" - is becoming increasingly vulgar in these frugal and recessionary times, the discount supermarket's day has finally arrived. Those of us who always shopped there are having the last laugh at the discomfort of those who make excuses when spotted on the premises, e.g. I'm only here for the marvellous extra virgin olive oil, darling!

In case all this sounds like the death-knell for the small shopkeeper, the corner shop still has its place in every village and suburb, and it is great that there are Farmers' Markets springing up all over the country. Ireland's cookbook industry is thriving, and cookery programmes are being syndicated globally, so all is not utilitarian drabness and a throwback to wartime rationing.

Back to the bread - this wasn't meant to be a polemic anti-government rant (did enough of them earlier in the year and nothing has improved since) - I hasten to add that bread mix does not equate to short cuts.

Method

1. The yeast, flour and salt are pre-mixed but the warm water must be added and the mix kneaded with dough hooks in the food mixer (or a bread maker if you have one - I don't so can't speak with authoritiy here).
2. Then the dough is left to rise in a warm place for 3-40 minutes, and again kneaded down, and put in oiled bread tins to rise for another 30-40 minutes.
3. I use bread tins instead of making rolls or a shaped bread, as it is a wetter mixture than my own home made bread, which is much easier to hand knead after mixing, and it holds the finished shape better in a tin.
4. Baked for about 40 minutes at 200 degrees Centigrade, then turned out and cooled on a rack, it is delicious warm with butter and jam, as toast with your breakfast boiled egg, or whatever takes your fancy.

Top Tip

To really get the best from this bread, a nice cuppa tea is essential. I have some funky Gaudí-inspired mugs from Barcelona - the triangular one was a gift for my son, which I secretly covet - and they are guaranteed to cheer up anyone, even on the most miserable Irish summer's day.

As those of you in the know will agree, that's no mean feat this year.

More Videoclips from Much Ado About Nothing in Lismore Castle - and an embedded tutorial

The videoclip I included in my post on Much Ado About Nothing from Off the Ground Touring Company in Lismore Castle last week got very positive feedback from many of those commenting, so I thought I would add two more clips I uploaded to YouTube to this blog post. These are taken after nightfall, so the atmosphere is totally different to the daylight of my last post's clip.



This is a scene from the play, plenty of passion and high emotions going on here between the characters as they plot and scheme their romantic intrigues

I have only just recently learnt how to upload clips to YouTube and am pretty chuffed with my techie abilities so this is just to give me more bragging rights! Uploading takes time, much to my surprise, as I thought a clip of a minute or two would be uploaded in similar time, but no, takes about a half-hour on our broadband (maybe yours is faster, ours is about 7mb which is reasonable I believe - as I haven't a clue what that means, only that it's faster than the 3mb we had initially). You see, I discovered with the last post that I could actually embed videoclips in the body of the post, not just in the sidebar, which I had been doing.



This was the grand finale - a rousing song-and-dance routine to Anything Goes, they got the entire audience up dancing for this one in an encore and it was a great end to the evening

It's really simple, (said she with the 20-20 vision of hindsight) - all you do is copy the code from YouTube where it says embed (at the side of the clip under the description) and paste said code in the body of the text where you want the clip to appear. It only shows up in Preview mode, and all you see in the Compose window is the gobbledegooky Html code, which looks like it shouldn't be there.

Those of you who know all this can smirk smugly, and those who don't will thank me as you can now go on to embellish your blogs with your favourite videos.

Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare in Lismore Castle

Last Monday night the long-awaited annual play from the touring UK company, Off the Ground, was held in the courtyard of Lismore Castle. This is their 15th year and they have been coming to Lismore for a number of years as part of their Irish open-air tour. They are a troupe from England who are extremely professional and innovative and they bring the classics to the masses, ensuring that their interpretations have universal appeal to all ages.

This year they did Shakespeare's great comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, but not as you know it! This was no mediaeval Italian court setting, rather it was a High Society 1930s setting, with tuxedos and floral frocks in abundance.

The evening can frequently be hijacked by our inclement weather, but this year we were lucky as it stayed warm and dry, if dull. So the blankets and umbrellas weren't needed, though they were brought along by the punters who knew - from bitter experience - to be prepared for all eventualities.

The audience come from far and wide, with many children who sit on the ground at the edge of the "stage". Many bring picnic hampers and lots of dainty crackers and cheese with wine, so posh nosh is much in evidence, as we try to recreate a mini-Glyndebourne experience in Lismore.

As I am always rushing after work my basket tends to have a mix of whatever snacks are around the house, and perhaps a stop at the shop en route for the sugar rush snacks favoured by whatever kids are coming along with teen daughter like packets of crisps - Tayto or Pringles - that crackle embarrassingly during the performance, bars of chocolate and pick'n'mix sweets, and cartons of orange juice. The girls brought a duvet and pillows to sit on, and wraps and sweatshirts to keep the midges at bay.



As you can see from the photos and video clip, the play was not as the Bard intended, with its modern setting and the interspersing with song and dance routines, but it is a perfect evening's entertainment, with everyone joining in the fun, and at the last dance the whole audience was up dancing with the cast. They remain true to the script and it all works - so you never really think that this was intended for an Italian Court setting, with aristocracy from that period.

The great thing about Off the Ground is that they really engage with the audience and make the often scary classics accessible to all. They are a young troupe and the same core members are now like old friends, and we look forward to the show every year. I have been introduced to Shakespeare plays that I would otherwise never have seen or known the storyline of, and many other greats as well. Last year's play was Cyrano de Bergerac, the year before The Merry Wives of Windsor, and others have included Twelfth Night, Robin Hood, Swing in The Willows, and King Arthur and the Round Table.

If they come your way, make the effort to see them as you will be richly rewarded. If it is in the setting like Lismore Castle or another of the eclectic settings they visit in Ireland, it's an added bonus. Either way, wrap up well, bring a bit of food and a drink, and sit back to enjoy a great evening.

The view from my laptop - thoughts from the kitchen table

I was inspired for this short post by Lynda who posted a lovely photo of the view from her desk. She mentions the banana trees on her wonderful African horizon, something that I miss since we left Tanzania over 14 years ago, yet which is still as fresh in my memory as if it were only last week. To bring touches of the tropics into our lives in an Ireland that seems to be in a constant rainy season (to paraphrase Aslan on Narnia - here it's always raining but never summer ) we have some banana trees in our garden and another banana plant in our sunroom. As I use the kitchen table as my desk, this is the view from my laptop. It is incredibly calming to look up and see an enormous banana tree with two suckers, both sprouted since we got the plant about 2 years ago, and we delight in seeing the speed at which it grows. It has nearly reached the vaulted ceiling in the sunroom now, and I am curious to see if it will grow much taller or actually produce a flower and fruit! I know if it flowers that is the end of that plant, so in a way I hope it doesn't until the suckers are much bigger.
The first two photos show the view - standing and sitting - from my laptop

In the garden we have a number of tropical plants in a bed near the patio, just outside the back door from the sunroom. There's a hardy banana tree, again with two suckers, a plant that dies off at the first frost and starts to grow anew every summer. This year we couldn't tell if it had survived the frost and snow of the winter, as it had completely died off, so we were very pleased to see it putting up green shoots around May. The speed at which it grows thereafter is very impressive, and we live in hope of a nice purple flower and a bunch of bananas sometime in the future.

We have two palm trees in the garden and two more in pots. Even though they are hardy, we bring them indoors for the winter, as they are nice fan palms and brighten up the place. We also have various bamboo in the garden, all near the patio and house, and a row of lavender brings a bit of Provence into our lives. It might seem a bit sad and silly to try to recapture our years in Africa and Asia through the plants in the house and garden, it is a very effective way to bring back happy memories and instantly transport us to our bush shamba in Rukwa, and to the banana and coffee shambas of Kagera, near Uganda.

Indoor banana tree, grown an extra leaf in the past week; garden banana - taken today and exactly one month ago - how much it's grown! ...and spot the bamboos
To recapture another aspect of our African lives, strangely enough the Ikea bentwood chairs in the sunroom evoke our early years there just as much as do the banana plants. I wrote about our Ikea - Africa connection in my post here - quite rational, in case you might think all those years in the tropical sun has somehow fried my brain.

The beautiful capiz shell hanging lamp you see in the corner is from the Philippines, where hubby lived before we met. It had been waiting for a home for nearly 30 years before it found its niche among our jungle greenery. At night the light reflected in the glass casts a warm glow over the entire area.

From my laptop vantage point I can see our shelf of African and Asian memorabilia, each piece carrying a store of memories and places, including the Tinga-Tinga paintings which Lynda will know all about - she has even blogged on that particularly Tanzanian art form. We have many more artefacts that have no display space, and I will have to work out some kind of museum-like rotation to do justice to the Ethiopian icon paintings and Bangladeshi brassware and Lao silk wall-hangings that have yet to see daylight in this house.

Perhaps another extension is the answer as the sunroom is maxed out on memorabilia - the struggle goes on as we strive to balance desirable minimalism with an acceptable level of clutter. I hope the photos give a sense of my lovely vantage point as I write this post and browse the web.

Ethnic artefacts - paintings from Tanzania: Tinga-Tinga poster and paintings, village scene and Kilimanjaro/elephant market paintings; batik of Ugandan musical instruments; Lao pan pipes and flute, African mbira (thumb piano) and Rwandan banjo.

Barcelona - from the Bus Turístic and beyond

I already wrote here that I went to Spain last month for a short holiday to visit our son and his partner in Malgrat de Mar, a beach resort town on the Costa Maresme (which I always thought was the Costa Brava but is technically one town away from the start of the Costa Brava which goes all the way from Blanes up to the French border near Dalí's house in Cadaqués at Port Lligat). While there we met up with an old friend from my nursing days and her two teenage girls, and spent two days with them in Barcelona, doing the whole tourist thing.

Barcelona is a beautiful city with a great history and heritage. Artistically and architecturally it is probably unsurpassed in Spain, with its Gaudí buildings and the links with Miró and Picasso, and its pride in hosting the 1992 Olympic Games. I had been to Sagrada Familia, Gaudí's iconic and unfinished cathedral, and Casa Batllo and La Pedrera in a previous visit so was happy to visit new places this time. As I went to Camp Nou, the home of Barcelona Football (soccer) Club, with the kids in 2004, I didn't return this time.

We had both been intrepid travellers in the past, having backpacked all over the Subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka) between 1978 and 1980 when we lived and worked in Bangladesh, as well as doing Europe on Inter-Rail in our student days. So this was our first opportunity to do some sightseeing and it took us right back to our hippie trail days! As we had done all the major Indian and European cities at breakneck speed and packed in every major must-see sight in a few days back then, we didn't see why this time should be any different in Barcelona. Hence our plan to pack in as much as possible in the few days we had together.

To see Barcelona when time is limited, there is probably no better way than to take the ubiquitous Bus Turístic, the open-topped buses that ply the streets from morning to night. There are 3 colour-coded routes, red, blue and green, and at €27 for a 2-day ticket it is pretty good value. We both spent about 5 hours going on a recce on all 3 routes just to get a feel for the city and a sense of orientation, flagging what we would revisit over the few days.

We spent an afternoon at Tibidabo, the mountain to the north of Barcelona that makes a natural city boundary, and tried out some of the various rides in the amusement park. This park is not at all glitzy or Disney-esque, but has been around for years and has simple carousel rides and a 1929 white-knuckle ride - sedate by todays' rollercoaster standards - on a plane that goes out over the clifftop, a thrill at the time when airtravel was not the everyday cattletruck experience that it has become. We went to the top of the church of Sagrat Cor (Sacred Heart) where for €2 a lift takes you to the roof and you can walk further up to the statue on the top. The views were spectacular and I could see Montserrat where I had been a few times in previous years. That is a monastery atop a rocky outcrop - the serrated mountain or Montserrat - and is another great day trip about an hour from Barcelona.

To get to Tibidabo you have to get the Tramvia Blau (a lovely old wooden tram) and a funicular railway to the top. These are always good fun, although the funicular at Montserrat is much steeper and vertigo-inducing. Tibidabo features in the film Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which I have yet to see, and the city is capitalising on the connections. My first encounter with Tibidabo was in The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón where a lot of the action takes place, and as that is set in the pre-Civil War days it shows how long the park has been a Barcelona attraction, pre-dating tourism and somehow making it more real than theme parks and interpretive centres.

We spent a pleasant few hours in El Poble Espanyol, a Folk Park that was built for the 1929 international exhibition and should have been dismantled but was left there as it was so popular. It showcases house types from all over Spain, and is a really tranquil oasis in Montjuic, the mountain on the coastal side of Barcelona, which also housed the Olympic Stadium, now the home of Espanyol football club, Barca's nemesis. We took a short cable car ride to Castell Montjuic, a fortress where Catalans were executed during the Civil War for opposing Franco, now housing a military museum, which has amazing views over the port, and we took another cable car across the bay, from Miramar on Montjuic, over the port and harbour, to the Blue Flag beach of San Sebastian. This is my kind of scary ride, as I don't do white-knuckle park rides, and being suspended in a glass box 80 metres above ground and sea is quite enough thrill for me.

This cable car also features in the climactic closing sequence of The Angel's Game, Carlos Ruiz Zafón's new book, which I read on this holiday. His books are a bit too much magical realism for me, but they evoke Barcelona beautifully, and for this they are perfect location books. I have read Antony Beevor's seminal History of the Spanish Civil War and Giles Tremlett's The Ghosts of Spain on previous Spanish holidays. These books, along with George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia are must-reads for anyone interested in some background history on Barcelona and Catalan nationalism and where it all fits in today's Spain.

Another wonderful place is Parc Guell, which Gaudí also built but like the Sagrada Familia, never finished. While Gaudí is loved now as an incredibly talented maverick artist, he was probably too avant-garde for most of his patrons or their wives. This may be why Casa Mila (La Pedrera) was controversial for having no right angles or corners as well as breaching city planning laws, and along with Parc Guell has more curves than a Hollywood starlet. We wandered all over the park and posed on the famous curvilinear tiled bench atop the doric columned hall, which was to be the market.

Placa Catalunya at the top of the Ramblas, the tree-lined main drag in Barcelona, is a good jumping off spot for soaking up the atmosphere of the city. We wandered around there both evenings, went shopping in La Boqueria market, and the old city or Barri Gotic, enjoying the nocturnal buzz of street jugglers and mime artists and onto the Rambla de Mar, the Boardwalk on the waterfront. The Ramblas is notorious for pickpockets and inflated prices, which we found out when a mediocre meal of tapas and paella on a terrace there cost twice what we had expected or would have paid back on the Costa.

Two days was nowhere near enough to do justice to Barcelona but it was terrific to spend some time with an old friend and catch up on the years, and the Bus Turístic was the way to go; definitely to be recommended to anyone planning a break in this lovely Mediterranean city.

To see all the photos from my holiday, click on the Picasa slide show on the sidebar - Spain 2009 - and enjoy the journey with me!

Thoughts on summer sun holidays - and the Irish "summer"

In July I went to Spain with teenage daughter for a short break, as our eldest son has lived north of Barcelona in a seaside resort town for the past eight years. We have been there almost every year, and we only go because he's there, resort towns and package holidays generally not being my thing. However it is a great place to just chillax and unwind after the stresses and strains of the Irish "summer", which we look forward to throughout the bleak winter months, only to be disappointed yet again.

What I left behind....at home....


...and from the plane in Shannon....

No wonder we can't muster enthusiasm for the killjoy environmentalists who go on bemoaning global warming, as we'd love some to have some here, thanks very much, during what laughably passes for our summer months. We have had virtually non-stop rain since the end of June, after about two nice weeks in the middle of June. July was the wettest on record, and August looks equally dismal. So we have little to look forward to for the rest of the so-called summer.

Kids are bored, teenagers mutinous, and parents driven to distraction trying to keep sane during the school holidays. Newspapers are full of tips on how to keep the kids entertained during the Irish three-month long school holiday, which must be the longest in the world. (No wonder Irish teachers say when asked what they like about their job - June, July and August!). Irish kids are probably no different to kids everywhere in the Western world, spoilt by a plethora of Playstation and Wii and Nintendo DS game consoles, and go into terminal catatonia at parental suggestions that they go for a nice walk/cycle/read a book or something equally improving that doesn't involve MSN-ing, Facebook-ing or Bebo-ing each other. (Come to think of it, in this house those are mostly parental activities so maybe I can't afford to preach!)

....and what I saw on arrival!

Back to sun holidays - I only ever went on one package holiday to the sun; that was to Tenerife when I was 22, and it was my first time ever flying, so it was a first in many ways! I was with a group of 9 or 10 other midwives, we had just finished our training and were ready to party. I had a ball but even then was a free spirit who wasn't quite ready to be regimented in the package holiday modus operandi. I had been round Europe a few years earlier Inter-Railing and that was one of the best holidays ever, and I would love to do it again now that the age limit is gone. Time was you had to be under-21, then 26, and now with life-long learning the norm, they seem to have acknowledged that we can be perpetual students!

This year I was meeting the same friend who had done the Inter-Railing trip with me as she was in Barcelona the same time as I was visiting Spain, so we planned our reunion, and as she had her teenage girls in tow, it was a hit with my teenager as well. We had a wonderful two days in Barcelona, and she spent two days on the costa with us as well. As we caught up on the years, we both agreed Barcelona was a great place to visit and the Costa Brava a great place to spend some down time on the beach recharging the batteries for the rest of the year.

Since coming home just over a week ago it has been virtually non-stop rain and flooding, and as you can see in the photo over here when I say floods I mean monsoon-like rains! Today is the August Bank Holiday Monday and is usually associated with sun and traffic jams on the way to the beach, but alas today is par for the course and another wet day. It is also cold enough to warrant wearing jeans and a jumper (sweater) - not a tee-shirt day at all. We are debating ordering our winter heating oil in August as if this continues we will be putting on the heating pretty soon.

I met someone in the supermarket today who is just back from a sun holiday in Spain and we agreed that it didn't matter where you were, it is essential to get your sunshine fix to face down the winter here. Someone said on Niamh's post (where I was a guest blogger last Friday - take a look!) regarding Ikea and their whole concept of cheap'n'cheerful home furnishings (which I wrote about in my last post), that in Scandinavia with its long dark winters people spend more time indoors so home becomes more important and change is more common than in hot countries. Maybe there is something to that. When we lived in Africa so much of our life was spent outdoors - garden or balcony/patio - that the interior was less important than it is here. Or maybe I am not enough of a houseproud "hausfrau"!

I will post my holiday pics on a sidebar Picasa slideshow, for those remotely interested in having a look, and will blog a bit on Barcelona which was absolutely wonderful, it has to be one of Europe's best cities and I would love to spend longer there exploring and wandering. One day, maybe one day...

IKEA in Ireland - flatpack heaven at last!

Last Tuesday Ikea the Swedish home furnishings store opened its first store in Ireland, in Dublin. There is one in Belfast but this one was long awaited, and its arrival was hyped up beyond all, with newspaper articles, and TV news items flagging the opening party-like atmosphere. I was in Dublin today so it was definitely something on my to-do list, if only to say I was in my first Ikea store!

Ikea and us go back a while and have a bit of a history. For years we lived in the African bush, working in a refugee programme that was funded by (among others) the Scandinavian Lutheran churches. DanChurchAid, the Danish wing of the church, donated part of their aid as team support in the form of furnishing staff houses. The result was all the expats lived incongruously in Ikea-furnished houses, and became experts at wielding the Allen key which is integral to flatpack assembly. Every year we could peruse a new Ikea catalogue and the height of this bizarre-ness for us was when we lived in a small Swedish container house in a very remote refugee settlement in Burigi, near Lake Victoria in Tanzania, which was full of Ikea pine furniture! So we have a fondness for the flatpack ever since.

I went to the Dublin store with great anticipation and it was like a little outing - teenage daughter came along and was seriously underwhelmed and more than a tad embarassed by my enthusiasm and it became positively cringe-worthy for her when I took some photos, especially of my Ikea lunch. To be able to get a prawn and egg salad open rye sandwich for €2.75 in Ireland was something I wasn't going to let pass uncelebrated, not to mention the €1.00 tea (or coffee) with free refills. I understand the free refill is common in some countries but not this one, so hopefully Ikea will set a precedent and others will quickly follow suit. Maeve had the Swedish meatballs with potatoes for €2.00. I had a dessert to die for - a Swedishly unpronounceable slice of crunchy chocolate-topped layered cookie-style cake - for €1.00! Now in Rip-off Republic we are just not used to these prices at any level -coffee in a petrol station is nearly €3.00. Anyone from Ireland reading this will know exactly what I mean.

Back to shopping - Ikea is an institution and is not for the faint-hearted especially if you are in any hurry. Then don't go. It needs navigating and with a massive car park already conspiring to get you lost on arrival (I couldn't locate the car park, let alone the car, on my departure!) you need to take some time to follow the process as well as the arrows on the floors. You can look at lovely showrooms on the first floor and select and note your planned purchases, then go to the warehouse to pick them up yourself. For Irish people this is a first, as even in Argos the goods are delivered to you from the warehouse. It is incredibly efficiently done, as every item has a code and a collection point and off you go, even I mastered it.

I went to look at chairs and sofas - I left with two "Poang" beech bentwood chairs, some food storage containers and an Ikea shopping bag in the iconic blue and yellow. In fact the place was so awash with blue and yellow from the staff to the bags, and also the juggler on stilts at the entrance, that you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd entered a convention for the Tipperary GAA Team. There is an intriguing Swedish food hall which I didn't get to today, maybe next time. The only disappointment was that the chairs which I wanted and were on offer were out of stock, and they didn't know if they were getting more. So I paid about €20 more for the non-bargain ones, and they are lovely.

We must have walked a few miles today, as I kept getting lost between showrooms, warehouse and car park. No wonder Maeve's patience wore a bit thin! Three hours after entering the store, we were once again south-bound and a few hours later got home, where hubby assembled the chairs with all the enthusiasm flat-pack man greets every new arrival! He isn't too proud to RTFM (Read the ******* Manual) as he got the Allen key into starting position, and got the chairs finished within minutes.They are perfect in the sunroom and are light enough to be moved easily around the house.

I am already planning to go back in a few weeks when I am next in Dublin, as I want to see the things I missed today - like all the homewares I didn't know existed on the ground floor, and I would say to anyone in Dublin who hasn't been there - get on your bike, sunshine! The world just got that bit smaller this week.

Flatpack Man at work and the end result - a nice chair!

On Being a Guest Blogger - Reverse Culture Shock

I have been very neglectful of the blog in July - my lame excuse is that I've been in Spain for ten days and haven't yet got around to writing a post on it - I will eventually. However I was asked by fellow-Irish blogger Niamh at Writer on the Way Home to contribute a piece on experiences of a returning Irish person to these shores. I was happy to do so and she has posted the guest blog over on her blog if you would like to take a look here.

Niamh has been back in Ireland for about six months and is finding many things about Ireland take some getting used to. I know the feeling! She plans to post some more bits from my Guest Post in the coming weeks so it may go on for a while as I had comments on a few aspects of Irish life.

I plan to be back soon with a new post, trying to compensate for my poor turnout in July - perhaps the dastardly Irish summer is getting to me - I think the above photo illustrates it perfectly!

Of Books and Book Clubs

I have been a member of a Book Club in Lismore for the past nine years, and it has opened a window to a world of books and authors that I might otherwise never have read. I have always loved reading and was a prolific reader growing up as an only child - Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven, as well as her school series, Richmal Crompton's "William" books, the "Jennings" school series, Billy Bunter, "What Katy did" series, Charles Dickens, Little Women, and many more. I was pretty eclectic and read comics and annuals which I still have and the kids have enjoyed - Beano and Dandy with their beloved Dennis the Menace and his trusty pets Gnasher and Rasher, and Desperate Dan with his cow pie, and the more girly comics like Bunty, Judy, and June and School Friend. We then moved on to teen mags like Fab 208, which celebrated the long-defunct Radio Luxembourg, which introduced my generation to pop culture as much as BBC Radio One did some years later. Ireland had a long way to go to catch up on the rest of the world, with the clergy decrying the evils of rock'n'roll and groups like the Beatles from the pulpit at every opportunity.

Then I went through the chick-lit years of Patricia Scanlon and Maeve Binchy, and read all of James Michener during the 70s and 80s, and living in Africa and Asia led to books with those settings, like Kipling and M.M. Kaye's Indian books, and Paul Scott's Raj Quartet. The African books included everything from Wilbur Smith's historic novels to Thomas Pakenham's Scramble for Africa, which I already wrote about here, to accounts of the Rwandan genocide which was very close to our lives. In case this all sounds dreadfully worthy and dull, I read all of Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole books, and still love Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's running autobiography penned by his alter ego Paul Howard. They are a peculiarly Irish phenomenon and many of you may not know them - but they are hilarious! They incorporate a whole new world of Irish rhyming slang which probably take some lateral thinking to fully comprehend (e.g. " Roy" = eager - as in Roy (sometime Irish soccer player) Keane = keen. I know, it takes some local knowledge but this site helps!). Given that Ross was invented as a send-up of the worst types that unearned entitlement threw up in the boom years of the Celtic Tiger, and was adopted as a hero by the very people he was spoofing, with a total lack of irony, says a lot for the shallowness of same tiger cubs! I am just finishing off the newest book - We need to talk about Ross - and enjoying it as a light summer laugh.

I wanted to name some of the book club reads we had lately, as we have a list up to 2005 and thereafter it's guesswork. We each select a book for discussion and the only criteria is that the selector must have read the book, and it is in print and in paperback.

About our Book Club

We are not affiliated to the library book clubs that have sprung up around Ireland but are a group of women from diverse backgrounds who like reading and got together to start the book club ten years ago. Men aren't banned (we're not sexist like some golf clubs!) but it was decided at the outset that partners and husbands wouldn't join, just to avoid any inhibitions I suppose - books could be a flashpoint if there were wildly varying opinion and we didn't want anyone holding back. It can get quite heated at times, and we all love a lively debate.

We meet on neutral ground which is currently a room above a local pub. This is in contrast to a lot of book clubs which meet in the members' houses on a rotating basis. I have to confess a preference for our method for a variety of reasons, as follows:

Advantages of meeting on neutral ground

• It gets us out of the house on a weeknight - we meet up on a Monday each month in a room above a local pub.



• It removes the status anxiety inherent in having the book club at home, perhaps tidying up, dispatching kids and partners from the room and generally ensuring a child and man-free zone - not an easy task in today's open-plan homes.


• It prevents grandstanding in the cookery/baking/snacks stake.



• We can have a nice cuppa tea or coffee or a glass of wine or whatever we like, depending on mode of transport home - for me, that's walking.



• We don't have to get all glammed up as it's not like we're going clubbing or to the theatre, so smart casual is as fashionable as it gets.



• There is no danger of anyone eavesdropping if scintillating gossip is being shared.



• We enjoy the camaraderie of shared interests and female friendship.
  
  
• All of us have such busy lives it is crucial to have an interest that extends into totally new territory.
  
  
• We get to borrow books from each other and read new writers - I found Sue Miller , Barbara Kingsolver and Barbara Trapido here, and am very grateful!



• We have a good excuse to have a big night out occasionally - usually a good meal out in January to combat the post-Christmas blues.
  

Disadvantages

• We don't get to snoop at other members' houses.
  
  
• We don't have a nice meal/cakes/snacks every month in home comfort.

I can't think of any other drawbacks - if you can, all comments welcome!

I have reviewed a number of books on Living Social and Library Thing which I will try to link. Library Thing is a sidebar widget on this blog so look it up and add it to your blog as it is a great resource. I review books not as an ego trip to show how clever I am but because I forget so quickly what I have read and it is a way to recall the delights of an enjoyable book with my appalling retention - I have difficulty remembering the last book I read so it focuses the mind to review them and if it is read by other readers that's a bonus, not the intention.

I had the pleasure albeit embarrassing at the time of having a book review read by the author who turned up as a speaker at Immrama in 2008. We had read Blood River by Tim Butcher and had a great discussion on it, as we had all pretty much unanimously decided that Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible was a group favourite and this was also set in the Congo, over 40 years later. Tim read my review on Facebooks Living Social application, and was very gracious about it, lucky it was a positive one!

The recent books in no particular order include the following list:

• Stasiland - Anna Funder



• The March - E.L. Doctorow



• The Lay of the Land - Richard Ford (my selection - love the Frank Bascombe trilogy)



• Dance Dance Dance - Haruki Murakami



• The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry (Brilliant Irish novel, very fact-based events)



• Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf



• The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion



• Dreams of my Father - Barack Obama



• Stealing Water - Tim Ecott

Of these, I did not enjoy The March as American Civil War books just don't appeal to me. Nor did the Murakami book which was the first of his I'd read, just too anarchic and soulless, and while it seems churlish to speak ill of the dead, I found the Joan Didion book way too hard to even read as she had to deal with way too much grief for anyone to bear at one go - husband keeling over after dinner and adult daughter on life support following catastrophic brain damage. Her book was probably cathartic and made a wonderful stage show by all accounts but it was hard going for this reader.

I loved the others. Stasiland was a brilliant insight to the lives of ordinary and extraordinary people in the former East Germany and inspired me to see the film The Lives of Others (Das leben der Anderen) about the paranoia and the impact of the state on ordinary people which must still resonate today.

Sebastian Barry's book was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and as we say in Ireland - he was robbed - but then he won the Costa prize and that was a vindication of a brilliant book. It was criticised for a twist at the end but I felt it didn't detract from the book even if it was a bit too contrived. Many Irish people were locked away from society in asylums, if they were seen as a threat by being different or anti-establishment. We have a long history in that whole area - I wrote about the Ryan report on Institutional Child Abuse here and this was another sorry saga in our dysfunctional collective psyche.

Richard Ford has written three great American novels in the Frank Bascombe Trilogy and I have reviewed all of them on Living Social here. He is up there with the great contemporary writers like John Updike in his Rabbit books and Philip Roth with the Zuckerman books.

We have a long Russian read over the summer recess - Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I have yet to get it and while it is online at Gutenberg project website I don't think I'd have the stamina to read such a weighty tome on my laptop! We have yet to embrace the Electronic book readers like Sony and Kindle in Ireland - in fact I don't think Kindle works here even if you got it on Amazon.

Perhaps that will be the next big thing and the prophets of doom will be predicting the end of the written word as we know it, but if the internet hasn't destroyed the book industry I doubt if it'll fall prey to the e-book readers. There will always be the pleasure of the physical sense of a book, and like newspapers online, there is no way that I read the Irish Times in the same detail online as I do the print edition. I have stopped buying the daily paper though, as I realised I was often only reading the preferred features and skimming the news anyway, and now I do that online but still buy the Saturday edition for the magazine and the Weekend review supplement.

One of the joys of the Immrama Travel Writing Festival is the opportunity to buy a lot of books of the presenters and get them signed, items to treasure long after they are read.

This is long enough for a literary reflection - if you have any recommendations let me know - there are plenty of avid bookworms out there and I would love to have some more book-posts in my blog but there's no point in blogging on books if it eats into reading time.

Barbecue Days - Reflections on the Irish Summer

I haven't blogged in almost two weeks and perhaps I have been waiting for something momentous to happen in my life. All I have done since Immrama is worked during the week and relaxed at the weekends - messing about in the garden when the weather is good and looking at the plants instead of weeding or doing something useful. You can see some of the plants in full bloom now, the lily was short-lived but spectacular, and the banana trees bring a bit of tropical memory into our lives. I still marvel that they thrive every summer while they die off at the first frost.

We had some lovely fine weather after the Immrama festival and decided on the spur of the moment the following weekend to get a new barbecue. Off we went to Toss Bryan's in Fermoy, a nearby market town in north-east Co. Cork, only about 15 miles from Lismore but a world away as it is across the county border, with its fierce GAA inter-county rivalry which manifests itself whenever Cork and Waterford are playing each other in hurling. Then the red and white of Cork pits itself against the blue and white of Waterford and local loyalties come to the fore.




But I digress. The barbecue has a unique place in Irish life, as we are a cold northern European country with erratic and unpredictable weather patterns when we can have all four seasons in one day, but we like to think we have a sunny Mediterranean outlook on life. Hence the first sighting of the summer sun is guaranteed to bring out the inner hunter/gatherer hidden deep in the psyche of all Irish males (or Irish-based ones, as hubby isn't Irish!) and they rush to grill any piece of meat within reach. This sometimes results in mass food poisoning when "cremated on the outside, raw on the inside" occurs, and there are terrifying public service ads on the radio every summer attesting to the hazards of such wanton folly.



It's a bit like the Irish response to the sun when all caution is thrown to the winds and we strip down to skimpy shorts and tops, resulting in the transformation of alabaster-white flesh turning an alarming lobster pink over the course of a day or two, with the trademark bra-strap stripes, and the promise of pain to follow as we won't risk missing out on a minute of potential tanning by applying anything with a higher SPF than about 5. We also revel in that peculiarity known only to the Irish male as the "man tan" where the arms and neck go pink and perhaps brown, or freckly, and when this manly specimen bares the torso on the beach he appears to have a t-shirt on, such is the demarcation of the man-tan!



We have been home for twelve years now, and have always had charcoal barbecues, perhaps a touch of nostalgia for the ubiquitous "jiko ya mkaa" or charcoal stoves we had in Africa, there of necessity rather than choice. We eschewed the gas barbie as being too easy and not quite pukka, not the real deal and maybe we were a bit too smug about our allegiance to the labour-intensive charcoal. Waiting an hour to get the glowing coals seemed quite normal, and you can't beat the all-pervasive smell of chargrilled food. We had gone through two or three stoves in the past decade, as the coal just seemed to burn through the base or the cast-iron was too heavy for the legs and they just broke, and we ended up putting the base up on blocks. It was high time for a move upmarket and we agreed to go for a nice gas barbie with lava rocks to replace the charcoal and give that smoky flavour.

Hubby is one of those decisive types when shopping - unlike me who can dither for Ireland, and spend days and weeks agonising over the merits of one item over another before (almost invariably) deciding on the item I saw first - he will enter a shop and leave within 10 minutes having completed the purchase. I can't get used to it after over 30 years, and it has me convinced that men really are from another planet when it comes to shopping. (It's the same with clothes, and that is definitely a gender thing, as the boys are exactly the same, in and out of Dunnes or Penneys in minutes, whereas teenage daughter and myself can browse for hours though I am no way a shopaholic!)



Within minutes we were the proud owners of a fancy gas barbecue, with lots of bells and whistles, figuratively speaking, and we went home salivating in anticipation of the culinary delights that beckoned. First the thing had to be assembled, which, as every Ikea flat-pack veteran knows, involves how-to leaflets, with odd diagrams and even odder piles of equipment. This is strictly a boy zone and I leave them to it while I marinade the meat and prepare the salad, spuds, garlic bread and fried rice, which is what we had with our inaugural barbie this summer. Imagine, not having our first barbie until late June! That has to be a record as the earliest we had one was in an unusually warm March some years back. Somehow global warming has passed Ireland by - if it's out there somewhere, no-one's told us about it, and we certainly haven't got much to show for it. There are days like during the torrential thunderstorms this week that we'd happily say - bring it on!

We had barbies every day for that week, with hubby at the helm with the new BBQ weapons of mass destruction to hand, though he drew the line at the canvas apron they all came wrapped up in. The barbie even thoughtfully has a beercan/glass holder! We thoroughly enjoyed eating alfresco every evening, pretending we were in Spain or Africa or anywhere that good weather is a given, with a midweek glass of wine almost de rigueur. Then last Sunday the good weather broke and we had a week of humidity with monsoon rains, thunderstorms, flash flooding and all the ensuing havoc. In other words, normal life resumed, just in case we were getting too complacent! Our barbie has gone back to the shed, and we look forward to its next outing, in the hope of an early release! Carpe diem really does apply to Ireland and its weather, and perhaps it should be a motto for living our lives all the time.