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

Bobby and Martin in Lismore

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

Abu Dhabi first stop!

Martin with William, Shayne, Jany and the girls

Irish Mammy moment in Dublin

JP, Bobby, Martin and Ricky in Lismore

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

Father and son before heading to the Airport!

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

Hope the scales isn't loaded!

Yes I packed it myself...!

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

A final coffee - delaying the goodbyes!

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

Into the future!

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

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

Terminal 2 - the deserted airport!

Knitting and Related Craftiness - and an Intro to Knitmas

My Secret Santa gift for Knitmas!

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

The sincerest form of flattery - my cowl copy!

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

Assorted iPhone covers  from Monika's pattern.

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

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

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

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

Happy 2012 rom Lismore!

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

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

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

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

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

           Happy Christmas 2011

Dear Friends,

The Christening Party

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

Livia in her Christening Robe

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

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

Livia's Christening Party

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

With Theo in the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin

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

Shayne, Jany and Sofia and Livia

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

Godfather Martin with Livia

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

Godfather William with Sofia

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Family Milestone - Celebrating Livia's Christening Day

Livia in the family Christening Robe

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

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

Livia with her parents, sister and Godparents

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

After the Christening in our garden

With Fr. Cullinan at the Font

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



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

The Cake (proud me!)

Fairy cakes on my new Cakestand!

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

The gathering on the patio

Livia with Godparents - Martin and Machteld

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

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

Livia, Sofia, Shayne and Jany

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

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

Alice down the Rabbit Hole

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





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

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



Painting the trees for the Queen of Hearts

• a Twix Bar - for more sugar rushes. 

Song and dance with Alice

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

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser!

Alice in Wonderland

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

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

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

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

With Sean Kelly in Villierstown

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

Certified Cyclists!

Jany and Shayne and kids

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

Waiting for the starting countdown

Jany & Livia, Shayne & Sofia

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

Jan and John Treacy

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

Jan arrives back in Dungarvan - 90km on.

The Hindu-Gothic Bridge at Villierstown

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

The dappled road from Villierstown to Cappoquin

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