More crimes on grammar - and Lismore Courthouse Theatre.

I haven't had a minute to blog lately but I haven't gone away, just busy. These two gems of mangling of the English language came into my radar in recent days and I just couldn't let them pass without sharing. Such blatant assaults on the English language are something that bring out my inner anorak and inspire "word rage". Suffice to say - Lynne Truss, watch out! The kids call it an "Eats Shoots and Leaves" moment and they are probably right - I was always intolerant of the "Greengrocer's Apostrophe" of superfluous and misplaced possessive apostrophes where plurals were intended, and the newspaper headline seems to combine a number of atrocities!

The words you and yours (or you're!) and its variants seem to cause endless headaches - I know spell-checkers are a get out of jail card for many but in an editing situation surely letting a glaring grammatical faux-pas like this headline for the local elections pass into print is unforgiveable. I won't even identify the offending paper, to avoid unnecessary blushes. Suffice to say it ain't a million miles away from here!

The other photo was seen in a college bar in Ireland and happily entreats the patrons to leave the premises "quitely" in order to respect the neighbours and young "familys". This might seem like I'm being even more pedantic than usual but I don't know how this got past proofing to printing at a signmakers, and as it did I despair for the standards of grammar in current usage. Now I sound like a right grumpy git, but believe me I had a good laugh at it.



And finally... I just had to share a photo of the lovely fruit hamper I won in the raffle at the show in Lismore some weeks back, A Night at the Movies, which was absolutely fabulous - staged by the Lismore Dramatic Society with a large cast of local talent - including our daughter and lots of other teenagers. They did song and dance selections from Grease, High School Musical, Hairspray and Mamma Mia and it ran for five nights over the May Bank Holiday weekend, for almost three hours a night. The standard was excellent (I know, I'm biased) and they played to a packed house each night, fully booked out in advance.

The Lismore Courthouse Theatre is a great intimate venue for the Dramatic Society plays and musicals, and shows how well the creative use of space works -it is also the venue for the local district court which sits monthly, some might say for more theatrical drama!

You can see the Courthouse in the photo at the top of my Blog - it's the big stone building with the clock tower and is at the heart of the town.

The theatre will host a number of the events at next month's Immrama Festival which I wrote about earlier here. Watch this space for more news on that great gig!

Tourist Trails, Scenic Routes and Election Posters

I decided to come home from last week's Irish Nurses Organisation conference in Killarney via the scenic route of Kenmare and Glengarriff, as it was a lovely warm and sunny day. This was an opportunity to see Killarney's amazing mountain and lake scenery in all its glory, and I wasn't going to miss it. The road from Lismore via Fermoy and Mallow is pretty uninspiring on the stretch from Fermoy to Killarney, and is in appalling condition, with more potholes than the worst roads in Africa, so the tourist trail I took was a pleasant alternative. Kerry is one of Ireland's prime tourist counties, with the Ring of Kerry, the Dingle Peninsula, and Killarney being the main draws, not to mention the rather dated pageantry of the Rose of Tralee. I have plenty of Kerry blood in my veins, so I can take some proprietal pride in the county.

I dropped into Muckross Gardens just outside Killarney and walked down by the lake and the house, though I didn't go in, it has guided tours and I did that at the last conference there 18 months back.

Here are some nice photos of the house and gardens, overlooking the lake, somewhat similar to Belvedere House in Mullingar which I wrote about here.

Muckross seems to be the base for the jarveys and their jaunting cars that take tourists around the lakeshore drives, and I was nearly mowed down by a few enthusiastic horses! I climbed to the top of Torc Waterfall which has more steps that the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and nearly as crooked and disorientating, and realised how unfit I am, so it's time for a summer exercise programme of plenty of walking!

I had coffee at Lady's View overlooking the Lakes of Killarney, and dropped into that bastion of yummy-mummy-ness, the Avoca Shop and Café, at Moll's Gap near Kenmare. Certainly no recession in evidence there, with prices to match the quality of the wares. Most of the shops in Kerry have an abundance of shamrockery - Aran sweaters and scratchy Tweed scarves vie for space beside keyrings, mugs and glassware adorned in shamrocks and leprechauns - and are very tourist-oriented, which is understandable given that the season is so short but it does reinforce Ireland's well-earned reputation as a pricey place to visit.


Glengarriff looked positively Mediterranean in the evening sunshine, and it has a balmy climate - believe it or not Ireland's south-west has lots of sub-tropical plants as it rarely freezes there thanks to the proximity of the Gulf Stream and its warm air. The first time I visited Glengarriff in 1974 on a hitch-hiking trip around Ireland with my best friend from nursing student days it lashed rain in August - just after Nixon's resignation - and we squelched around Garnish Island in soaking jeans and trainers! I hadn't been along this road for about six years, when we went to Kerry for a weekend, and what I had remembered were the tunnels in the mountains between Killarney and Kenmare; I thought there were a lot more of them and that they were longer, but they are quite short and some are just like sea-arches only on the road.

Ireland really has some spectacular scenery and while Lismore has very lush and wooded landscapes, Kerry is very wild and rugged, and the mountains are barer than our Knockmealdowns - more like our Comeraghs. A trip like this reinforces my appreciation of our lovely scenery, and while I moan a lot about the political mess we're in as a nation, and all the economic doom, we do have a lovely country and if it was blessed with decent weather - why, we might even stop complaining about everything else!

My only other political comment on this post is a mention of the blight on the lovely landscape of the election posters. There wasn't a pole untouched in all of Cork and Kerry, and even Waterford has a few, though Lismore has a local agreement whereby none of the candidates for the town council - hubby included - will put up posters in the town. That won't stop all the county and European candidates and I spotted the first European one in Lismore today, much to my disgust. Labour's county candidate, John Pratt, and the South's European candidate, Alan Kelly, have both agreed to the Lismore Council's decision and won't be seen on a pole within sight of the town, though it remains to be seen whether the other party candidates will comply.


What is extremely noticeable by its absence is the near-invisibility of the government's Fianna Fáil name and logo from their election posters. (Just try to spot the FF party logo on this European Election poster at a Cork roundabout! Yes I thought so too, not easy - have they something to hide?)

This has been noted by media pundits as well as the opposition, much to their amusement, as it is seen as a ploy to distance the local candidates from guilt of being tainted by association with the party that has sunk the country through bad governing over too many years. It struck me on the way to Killarney how many Labour and Fine Gael posters there were and that I was seeing no Fianna Fáil posters, till the penny dropped! They are thin on the canvassing ground as well, and it is becoming a point of much hilarity to spot the elusive FF candidate on the stump. They are like the sightings of the first cuckoo, much anticipated and reported in the letters pages of the Irish Times!





I hope you like the photos and I might make a slide show of the better ones from this trip - the long way round - Irish style!

Conference and "Craic" in Killarney

I have spent the past three days in Killarney at the Irish Nurses Organisation's Annual Delegate Conference ( or INO ADC -we prefer acronyms for brevity!) The conference took place at one of the largest conference venues in the country, the Gleneagle Hotel and Conference Centre, which makes it about the fourth time I've been there in recent years. Killarney and Cavan's Slieve Russel Hotel are about the only two venues outside of Dublin's Citywest that can accomodate the 350-odd delegates under one roof.

Liam Doran, INO Secretary General.



There are plenty of conference centres big enough but not many that can house us all, which is one of the bonuses of the INO conference, as I have been to others like the Labour Party conferences where we've had to find a B&B nearby. Nothing ruins the ambience of the evening more than the prospect of heading out in the rain and cold (usually!) inadequately clad in party attire and probably killer heels to head back to the often cold dark confines of a B&B at 3 a.m. This usually entails either waiting in the hotel lobby for ages for a taxi and missing the fun in the hotel bar, or having to abstain all evening as the designated driver if you decide to bring the car - not that I'm a mad drinker but I like a glass of wine with my dinner and a Bailey's afterwards, and wouldn't risk driving after even one glass, though I might be technically under the Irish limit.

This event is a good opportunity to meet up with colleagues from around the country and there is a social aspect to the conference as well as very full days of talks, debates on the various motions submitted by the branches and sections. I am in the Waterford branch and also the PHN (Public Health Nurse) section, so there is a wide range of interest for me along with the broader policy and national issues.

The state of the economy underpinned practically every debate at the conference as the cutbacks in health have such far-reaching impact. In earlier posts I have alluded to these, and things are not getting better. So while the INO might be seen as only dealing with members' pay and conditions, which of course is any trade unions' remit, it also highlights the patient advocacy role of nurses, and indeed the conference theme was patient safety.





The conference debated the impact of cutbacks and their many adverse human and economic consequences. The fact that there will be few if any jobs for the newly graduating nurses, many of whom will emigrate demonstrates this as a poor investment return for Ireland - it costs about €80,000 to train a nurse over 4 college years - and if they leave never to return it doesn't make economic sense. The Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney, spoke yesterday and got a fairly cool if polite reception. Her support for increasing privatisation of the health services in Ireland is strongly opposed by the INO as it will only worsen the existing inequity in our unique two-tier public-private healthcare system. Healthcare has to be based on the patient's needs, not ability to pay, and this should be fundamental to any civilised country.


A number of delegates took time to support colleagues in Killarney Community Hospital who had a lunchtime protest against the loss of a senior nursing post in their hospital. They are a small hospital and it was a good morale boost to have 3 busloads of delegates join them on the picket line for an hour and hopefully the accompanying media spotlight will help their cause.





Some of the Waterford branch members - Mary, Kerry, Claire and myself.
The weather was dreadful for most of the conference, but as we were in a bubble for most of the time in a huge hall with no natural light we didn't really mind. It was nice to go for a swim in the leisure centre at the end of the day, and we enjoyed the "craic" or fun of the social evenings. There was a fun table quiz on the first night, which raised over €1,000 for a Cambodian street childrens' charity that a Killarney nurse is involved with. The questions, set by Dave Hughes, the deputy Gen. Sec., were often cryptic and raised much laughter, and a clever delegate incorporated many of them the following day when speaking to her branch's motion!

The food was excellent and we all overindulged, force-fed like Gascogny geese - a detox for the next week or so seems very appealing right now. We danced to local musicians on two evenings, and were entertained after the lastnight's gala dinner by comedian Alan Shortt of RTE's Bull Island fame, who did some very funny impersonations of various politicians. This year is the INO's 90th Anniversary which is certainly a cause for celebration; from very small beginnings to a union with over 40,000 members is no mean feat. They had a wonderful cake to mark the anniversary (see above photo) and a DVD with the history of the organisation from 1919-2009. Hope I'll be around for the Centenary celebrations - and not pensioned off !

Launch of Immrama 2009 - a Lismore Cultural Landmark

Last Thursday evening saw the long-awaited launch of the 2009 Lismore Immrama Festival of Travel Writing in Lismore Castle's Ballroom, which I have already written about when I wrote a post on Devonshire Day. There is more than the ballroom linking these two events, as Devonshire Day is the key fundraiser for the Immrama Festival. For those readers who have no idea what Immrama is all about, have a look at the website for the details. June 11th - 14th are this year's dates for your diary!

Mayor of Lismore - Jan Rotte

It is Ireland's only Festival of Travel Writing and as far as I am aware the only one of its kind in the world. I notice there is a Traveller's Tales Festival in the UK but it seems a more commercial venture organised by a training agency for travel writers and photographers, whereas Immrama is a community festival with origins in the Lismore Mochuda Development Group, a voluntary body that serves to promote and support Lismore's artistic, cultural and business development.

Immrama began in 2003 after a diverse group of interested locals got together to brainstorm for ideas for an iconic festival to celebrate

Lismore in a unique fashion. Immrama is the result as it seemed very logical to celebrate travel in a town that is home to one of the most famous contemporary travel writers, Dervla Murphy. (There are so many sites about her on Google I chose this one as it is a recent article written by herself in The Guardian rather than an insipid biopic on Wikipedia!)

I declare a bias here as Dervla is a personal friend and an amazing woman - a truly intrepid traveller in the grand tradition of famous women travellers over the centuries, from Isabel Burton and Mary Kingsley to Freya Stark, and she lives a simple life in Lismore in between her travels, which seem to be as daring as ever even in her mid-70s.

This is the seventh year of Immrama and each year it goes from strength to strength. It has been a wonderful success, after a somewhat shaky start, where the travel theme formed part of a range of events rather than being central. Subsequently it has been primarily focused on the theme of travel writing with a literary perspective, not the Lonely Planet or Rough Guide sense, and each year has been driven by a theme. Africa, The Silk Road, Journeys to the Top of the World, and Travel and Conflict have all been Immrama themes.

Lismore Town (Jan) and County Waterford (Ger Barron) Mayors with Fáilte Ireland's Gary Breen

The festival is now recognised nationally and internationally as a uniquely iconic boutique festival, and visitors come from all corners of the world. Lismore has had a rich heritage of links with travel, going back to Thackeray and Marco Polo, right up to Dervla Murphy. The Marco Polo link inspired the Silk Road theme, as there is a translation in Irish of the Travels of Marco Polo in the Book of Lismore, an illuminated manuscript similar to the Book of Kells, one of Ireland's most visited tourist attractions in Trinity College Library in Dublin. The Book of Lismore was found in the walls of Lismore Castle during renovations in the 19th century and is now in Chatsworth House, while there is a facsimile in Ireland in the Lismore Heritage Centre.

As hubby is the Immrama administrator I get a sneak preview of the line-up each year, but am sworn to masonic secrecy not to leak anything, which is not too difficult. If anyone fishes, I just say - If I told you I'd have to kill you - which generally works! There are tantalising hints dropped if the theme is mentioned at either Devonshire Day or the January Table Quiz fundraiser - a great night in Ballyrafter House Hotel - which whets the appetite and leads to massive speculation, usually way wide of the mark.

Me, hubby Jan and Mary Houlihan, Heritage Centre manager

This year's theme is Extraordinary Travels- Extraordinary Lives, and has a great line-up of renowned speakers, including writers and journalists Kate Adie and Fergal Keane and Dervla Murphy herself being interviewed by Manchán Magan, who is probably better known in Ireland among Irish languge aficionados, as he has done a number of travel shows as Gaeilge (= in Irish). Catherine de Courcy and Dermot Somers will be making return visits to Immrama albeit in a different capacity than previously, and there will be Irish language children's literary activities from Aine Uí Foghlú from Ring in Gaeltacht na nDéise (the Waterford enclave - my work area - where Irish is the main language). Rory MacLean is a Canadian who seems to have written hilarious books which I look forward to reading.

There will be creative writing workshops from sometime-Lismore dweller Annie Rogers (whose memoir writing courses I enjoyed over a few summers in the early Noughties), and poet Mary Branley. There are a number of well-established fringe events over the weekend and a family fun afternoon in the Millenium Park on the Sunday afternoon. Poetry open mic sessions and a Literary Breakfast are part of the weekend, and Fortwilliam House will be the setting for Dervla's interview. The booking office opened the morning after the launch and already some sessions are nearly booked out!

Immrama Committee and friends

I will post about the festival after the event, but the build-up is always exciting, as we are so close to it. Though my involvement is from the health and saftey aspect and as at Devonshire Day I will be once again at all the gigs tastefully clad in my trusty yellow Hi-Viz jacket armed with a First-Aid kit, I do get to enjoy the events from the sidelines.

The Launch was hosted as usual by Lismore Castle who are great supporters of Immrama, and we enjoyed cheese and wine while the Mayors of town (hubby) and county spoke, the head of Tourism South East launched the festival, and there was a climactic slide presentation culminating in the announcement of the keynote speakers by the manager of Lismore Heritage Company. I took some photos and as I was wielding hubby's SLR as well as my little camera I was nearly mistaken for one of the local press photographers!

Meanwhile, hubby will be busy being Mayor, administrator for the festival and canvassing for the local elections (which take place with the European elections on 5th June, the week before Immrama).

It will be a hectic few weeks, and I am off to the INO (Irish Nurses Organisation) Annual Delegate Conference in Killarney this week for a few days debate and discussion on the state of our crumbling health services. Watch this space for a post on the sights of Killarney which I plan to see at some stage between motions and various other heated debates!

Crescent moon over Lismore Castle

A group of local artists (Corina Duyn, Alan Murphy and Jane Jermyn) enjoying the launch with Margaret O'Brien of Lismore

Courtyard of Lismore Castle at dusk

Rhubarb Tart and Trivia - with a Twist

This is rhubarb season and ours is growing like a weed with all the rain. I made a few lovely rhubarb tarts over the past week and I must say there's great satisfaction to be had in making something that's picked fresh from the garden - from veg plot to fork in about an hour! We have these rhubarb stools in their present bed near the house, beside a high stone wall, for the two years. As this is their third year in this plot, according to the anorak's guide to rhubarb, we should consider dividing and replanting next year.

I discovered this strange lotus-like bud growing in the middle of one of the plants last week, and on asking hubby and Google, it seems it is a flower bud. This will have to be nipped in the bud, literally and metaphorically, as it will leach all the energy that should go into the stalks. It doesn't seem to mark the end of its life, but is a feature of mature plants so probably needs replanting next year.

It is a fascinating plant as it thrives on repeated frost exposure - no problem there so - and it can be forced to grow out of season either in the ground using a forcer pot, or as I used, an upturned bucket. This gives small leaves and pale whitish stalks, which are less acidic. They don't look very attractive, but these anaemic stalks are sweeter and more tender, thus more desirable and probably give their grower bragging rights. The redder the stalks, the more acidic and bitter the flavour. That's easily countered with plenty of sugar in the finished dish.

I always handle rhubarb with great respect as the leaves are toxic - they contain oxalic acid which is a cousin of cyanide but you would have to eat about 5kg/11lbs of leaves to get the lethal dose - which I can't imagine anyone having the will or the stamina to do! The cooked stalks are non-toxic, lucky for me or any rhubarb fans out there.



For anyone who's interested I discovered (through the miracle of Google) that contrary to my erroneous belief, you can compost rhubarb leaves. I have been dumping them with the non-compostable garden waste, but no more. They are destined for the green compost bin which has yielded a wonderfully rich dark humus-y compost now enriching our polytunnel strawberries. It is a bit home-made looking with recognisable eggshell bits and teabags throughout, but these don't seem to hinder it and the strawberries are in full flower, with the promise of a rich harvest in a couple of months.

That's enough rhubarb trivia to keep any anorak happy for some time; there is so much out there on the web that it's apparent there are plenty of anoraks abroad, much to my amazement. This link has everything you ever wanted to know about rhubarb but were afraid to ask, and I think it must come from someone who has waayyy too much free time!

Time to turn to the primary purpose of this post, the recipe for one my favourite tarts (besides apple). The twist in the tale is that I have made this one with Self-Raising flour instead of plain flour, and was pleasantly surprised that it worked very well, giving a light shortbread pastry that is subtly different from the plain flour pastry, with a biscuit-y texture. I hope you enjoy it!

RHUBARB TART

Pastry

8ozs/250gm Self-Raising Flour

4ozs/125gm butter or hard margarine (preferably butter)

1oz/25gm icing sugar

1 egg

Filling

Rhubarb stalks - about 4-6, washed and diced into 1cm/half-inch pieces

Sugar to taste

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Centigrade/350degrees Fahrenheit

Method

Using pastry attachment on food processor (I have one on my nice new Kenwood and it is still a treat, and makes great pastry!) mix flour and butter to crumbly texture.

If no processor, rub in butter to flour lightly with fingertips.

Add icing sugar
Add egg to bind and knead lightly
Roll pastry to size of pie dish on floured surface
Line base of dish
Fill with rhubarb pieces

Sprinkle liberally with sugar
Cover with pastry rolled out to size
Moisten edges of pastry and seal
Decorate top if desired - leaf or flower pattern is nice
Bake in oven until golden brown, reduce heat to 150 degrees Centigrade/300 degrees Fahrenheit after 15 mins.

Serve warm with lashings of whipped cream and enjoy with the ubiquitous nice cuppa tea!
Cool on wire rack, sprinkle with icing sugar

Running of the Bulls in Ballinrobe, and random Irish Bull

Here is a still from a YouTube video clip , which is simply irresistable and hilarious! I wanted to share it with my blog readers as I have already posted it to my Facebook profile and it's on the sidebar of this blog.

Tonight's RTE news had this clip on its "...and finally..." slot. We have been inundated with bad news for so long that the sight of a bull on the loose in a Mayo supermarket was something to lift the heart of the nation. The parallels with Pamplona's famed Bull-Running San Fermin Festival are undeniable, particularly where the farmer is legging it out the supermarket door with the bull in hot pursuit.

I watch the news lately with trepidation as I know it will bring more budget cuts, health cuts, staffing cuts, redundancies, layoffs, "downsizing" and other euphemisms, with a few factory closures thrown in. I see my payslip diminishing every fortnight since the March pension levy came into force, and I know that this is only the start of the slippery slope, as we await further cuts and levies - read taxes - in our May payslips.

One of these levies is laughably called a Health Levy which is meant to go towards the public health service, and it was introduced ten or fifteen years ago as an interim measure. Interim is a term open to very loose interpretation and the levy is now firmly entrenched in our Social Insurance (like National Insurance in the UK), never to be rescinded. It has now been doubled from 2% of all income to 4%, and there is a doubling of the Income Levy as well. Don't ask, I have no idea what it's for either, but it sounds suitably ominous and necessary, doesn't it?

There was a government semi-putsch yesterday which nearly caused a palace revolution. Biffo (remember him?) did a cull of the Junior Ministers or Ministers of State, reducing their inflated numbers from 20 to 15, a somewhat token reduction but giving him scope to enhance cronyism with some new appointments in the reshuffle. The distressed displaced and dispatched former junior ministers sang like canaries of their displeasure; showing no stoic acceptance of the hand of Cowen, their party loyalty took a sabbatical, possibly permanent, as they considered their fate.

As I drove home from my Nurses' Union meeting in Waterford last night, I enjoyed listening to The Late Debate, where the hapless Conor "Kebabs" Lenihan (brother of Brian of Budget and Finance fame) who came out to bat for the government reshuffle was roundly hammered by Ruairi Quinn of Labour who wiped the floor with him.

Some of those who were cut off in their political prime had laid their public lives on the line with their constituents by attempting to uphold and defent the indefensible budget cuts on the elderly last October (Maire Hoctor from North Tipperary), while the deeply unpopular downgrading of services at some of the smaller general hospitals, like Sligo was opposed by Jimmy Devins of Sligo, a step tantamount to political suicide, where his demise was predictable. The most trenchantly vocal critic of the cull was victim John McGuinness from Kilkenny, whose ministerial demise was largely unanticipated by the media.

Some were no surprise, as they were seen as pretty ineffective in their given brief, and it never ceases to amaze me how skill or knowledge seems not to count when appointments are made in a particular area, e.g. the junior minister with responsibility for older people. These vague, woolly titles lead to total lack of achievement as there are no quantifiable targets set out, and junior ministries are seen by the cynics (i.e. everyone in opposition to the government) as a loyalty card for TDs, to keep them on side and toeing the party line. This gives the opposition unending fodder for satire, as immortalised by my earlier YouTube clip of Pat Rabbitte of Labour "eating his Greens", where he derides Trevor Sargent as the minister with responsibility for turnips and parsnips or some such vegetarian reference to his post as Minister for State in the Dept. of Agriculture.

So I hope you enjoy the video clip, and my update on the ever-changing political and economic home front.

The Lesser-Spotted Google Earth Street View Car

Yesterday I was driving on my rounds at work and around lunchtime I was planning a visit to a remote farmhouse down a very narrow country road. Imagine my surprise when I turned into the road to find myself behind a very odd looking car, a brand new red Opel Astra - 09 registration - with a tripod on the roof-rack topped with a weird looking object that I knew to be the Google Earth Street-view Camera.

These strange cars have been spotted like rare birds in the vicinity of Dungarvan in West Waterford in recent weeks and this is the third time I've seen them. This time I was prepared and like a true anorak I whipped out my trusty Panasonic Lumix digital camera and took a few photos.

I have been amused at the indignation that has been expressed over privacy invasion and civil liberties in the UK in recent weeks (where Street View has gone live and been given a mixed reception) by the "victims" of this cruising camera car. There have been some hilarious stories of people spotted where they shouldn't have been, or cars that weren't pixelated out (number plates and faces are supposed to be pixellated but there have been glitches) and identified by spouses as being where they weren't meant to be. Also people have been indignant that their des res isn't all it's cracked up to be on the property pages when the prospective buyers can google earth it in its original street view!

I absolutely adore Google Earth and Google Maps - I think it was made for nosey parkers like me who love to see where places are and how they look, and since discovering it some years back I visit regularly. I know where my friend in New Jersey lives, and what her street looks like, and I also know that my son's rooftop of his apartment block is visible quite clearly on it, and I am annoyed that Lismore is not given an enhanced view, and is quite blurry, unlike other cities and towns of Ireland.

Another thing I love about it is that there are plenty of photos posted by various people, and they give a totally different impression of a place. When hubby visited Reykjavik in Iceland last year I was able to see the places he was raving about, like the geysir and the blue lagoon - hot springs in February snow! In Tanzania I can go on a nostalgia trip through Dar-es-Salaam and track the roads I drove daily to and from the International School, or out to Bahari Beach and the Kunduchi guest house where we spent many happy days on visits from Iringa. I can visit Iringa and my old haunts like India Street, Lulu's, Hasty Tasty, and Gangilonga Rock.

Of course I can also see these places on the wonderful groups that have sprung up on Facebook to celebrate places we love. One of my favourite is the group "I know Iringa inside out" and I have posted a number of photos of the kids in their homeschool days there, much to their cringing embarassment!

So if you haven't already got it, get downloading Google Earth for free and enjoy more time-wasting than Facebooking or blogging combined. You can justify it by its vaguely educational geographical appeal, if you need to appease your conscience or your partner! There's even a blogger widget which might be fun to add.

The internet is a wonderful place to connect and reconnect with people, when it is used as such, and I have renewed links with old friends from years ago through this very modern medium.

So the art of letter writing might be dead but as long as it is replaced by good communication by email and blogging I think I can live with it! It's a paradigm shift as the boffins might say but I am glad to be able to join in and go with the flow, and am heartened to see so many of my generation linked up through cyberspace. It makes the world seem a much smaller and more connected place - a global village in a positive way.

To finish up, I want to share this lovely photo of the cherry blossom in full bloom on the N25 ring road in Dungarvan yesterday. It might even end up on Street View!

Recession-proof Art - Sotheby's Irish Sale Preview at Lismore Castle

Easter weekend is over and one of the things on my to-do list was to visit the Sotheby's Irish Sale preview at Lismore Castle Art Gallery which took place on Friday and Saturday, an event that was free to all. I had missed this gig since its inception a few years ago, either because I didn't know it was on, and heard of it after the event, or I was away that weekend. So when I saw the piece in the Irish Times the previous weekend I flagged it as a must-see for the Easter weekend.





The gallery in Lismore Castle is a fairly recent innovation, the brainchild of the current resident of the Castle, Lord William Burlington, son of the Duke of Devonshire who lives in Chatsworth House in Derbyshire in England. I have referred to this family in my blog post on Devonshire Day last month. Lord Burlington had the West Wing of the Castle renovated from dereliction to its present ultra-modern minimalist state, a wonderfully lit art gallery with some side rooms and a round tower, and a smaller room at each end of the main gallery.

Last year there was a number of installations and weird sculpture on display, including a steel plate that the artist had urinated on to make it rust! I guess this is art in the Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin tradition of, well, different! There has been a previous Turner Prize winning entry here on display also, Richard Long's Slate Walk, which was only dismantled this year, and returned to the UK. This has left a long rectangular bed in the lower garden, which would make a nice vegetable patch or flower bed.

This exhibition showed the artworks that will go under the hammer in Sotheby's in London on May 7th from the Irish Sale, and it is fascinating to read the online catalogue with all the detail of the paintings and the artists. I was too stingy to spend €20 on the catalogue at the preview, given the recessionary times we live in, and bearing in mind that the that the Emergency/Mini/Supplementary Budget was still burning a major hole in my pocket I was pretty unprepared psychologically for the reserves on some of these works. I suppose I was surprised some were not dearer, given how well-known the artists are, and also surprised at the high cost of others that I had not heard much about.

This petrol pump painting was one of my favourites - it is so lifelike that I thought it was a photograph - but on closer inspection it is a painting by John Doherty entitled "Pay double this amount" and is oil on canvas with a reserve of £35-45,000/€38-48,000. It reminded me of those paintings of Edward Hopper that evoke rural isolation; gas stations on lonely roads, whimsical and nostalgic. Alain de Botton, the contemporary philosopher and social commentator depicted his works in his lovely book "The Art of Travel" which we read for our book club a few years ago. So for this alone I am glad I saw the exhibition; paintings can trigger happy memories too!

I was absolutely blown away by the more famous works, which I felt really privileged to see, as most were from private collections and going to auction on May 7th in Sotheby's in London, after a preview at Lismore, and two other venues on the island of Ireland, one in Belfast and one in Dublin.

What intrigues me is that so many of these works of Irish Masters past and present are in private collections, and that they are turning up for auction, some for the second year in succession, as Noll by William Orpen was on display last year. Is it being re-sold, or did it remain unsold? I am not sure, and I only heard that it is doing the rounds again through a friend who was at last year's show. It has a hefty reserve of between €250,000 and €350,000, and you would want to have a good large wall to display it.

Now I am not an art connoisseur, and claim no knowledge above that of the ordinary Joe Soap of art and their value, but I was pretty amazed at some of what passes for art and wonder if there isn't a bit of the Emperor's new clothes about it all! I can appreciate beauty and I am probably a traditionalist in that I prefer art that conveys some meaning rather than very abstract modern art. I absolutely love the surreal works of Dalí even though I abhor his Francoist/fascist politics, and have managed to separate them in my mind, whether this is ethical or not, and his Teatro Museum in Figueras is one of my favourite places to visit on the Costa Brava. I also love Picasso and Míro, though I haven't seen so much of their art.

So I was equally thrilled to see the works of Paul Henry, with his Connemara landscapes, and Jack B. Yeats, and also intrigued to see Louis le Brocquy's very abstract impressions of Francis Bacon and Beckett, and thought they would be way dearer. On the other hand I was pretty underwhelmed by the naive modern work by Scott of kitchen pots and pans, and thought I would put €500,000 to much better use, and likewise with the Roderic O'Conor Breton seascape. The latter was beautifully lit and had very vibrant colour but I didn't realise his work was commanding such value. The work by Sean Scully who is a leading contemporary Irish artist was very abstract and I guess I don't know enough art to fully appreciate it.

I was able to take photos with a clear conscience as I had the flash turned off, and the light was good enough to get a pretty good picture of most, except those with glass in the frames. They inevitably reflected the light and this affected their clarity. You can see all the pictures in the online catalogue if you wish, as I only took the photos for my pleasure and yours, and didn't realise they were all easy to view online.

Roderic O'Conor's Breton Seascape "Rocks and Foam, St Guénolé" (£300-£500,000)

It is fascinating to read the background to the paintings in the catalogue, as it gives a snapshot of the history of the time in pre- and post-colonial Ireland.

It certainly puts the recession into perspective, as there is no evidence of any constraint when it comes to private investment in art; perhaps people think there will be less likelihood of an "art bubble" than a property one.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if these great works could be bought by the State for the National Gallery instead of going yet again into anonymous private collections? We sometimes have our priorities skewed when it comes to showing national pride, and it could do wonders for our collective morale to have a stake in this art - surely we can claim it as much our heritage as are Joyce, Yeats and Synge, to name a but a few.

In any event, I wish them all a good home - meanwhile we can all enjoy the fruits of the artists' labours while the haves and the have-yachts agonise over their bids on May 7th in London!

The William Scott (See label below)

A selection of Louis le Brocquy - a tapestry and the Francis Bacon study

The entrance to the gallery at Lismore Castle Arts