The Journal Erica Van Horn 30 January 2010 Saturday A long time ago, we all filled in forms down at Nugents. It was some kind of promotion by Guinness, and Rose was eager to get as many forms completed as possible. It would somehow reflect well on her pub to show that she had a huge crowd of customers. I did not want to fill one in as I do not even like Guinness but she said that did not matter. Everyone filled them in and some people filled them in for other people who were not there, or for other people who could neither read nor write. Everyone was promised a free pint just for filling in the form. As a result of this form filling in, we have received mailings from Guinness ever since. At Christmas there is a free pint in the post. This summer was the 250th anniversary of Guinness so the printed note said: Erica! There is a free pint of Guinness Draught waiting for you in Nugents. At the time coming up to our birthdays, there has always been a card with A Birthday Pint Waiting for You at Nugents. Since I do not drink Guinness, Simon always has my pints as well as his own. A lot of older men have been rushing into the bar this month, complaining to Rose that they did not receive their Christmas Pint from Guinness. Another sign of the new Austerity. I suppose the birthday pints will disappear too. 29 January 2010 Friday Em and I walked around this morning in howling wind. Each time I reached a turning or a rise in a hill or a dip in the land, I thought the force of the wind might drop. I thought that instead of me striding against the wind, it might hit me from a different side and maybe even push me along from behind. No such luck. It was against me the whole way. Even Em seemed to be struggling with it, and she is a lot closer to the ground than I am. When I looked back to see her straggling far behind me, I put on the big, gruff voice which I only ever use to demand Give Me That Stick! This is my method to make her accelerate. It works every time. It works if she is very far in front of me, or if she is far behind me. It only works if she is carrying a stick. Today she had a small stubby stick which looked very much like a cigar coming out the side of her mouth. She picked it up as we left the yard and she carried it the whole way without ever once being distracted into dropping it. Later, I heard that the winds had been so strong in Cork that the B had been blown off the sign for the Butter Museum. 28 January 2010 Thursday The stream down below is so full and so loud, it sounds as though we live above a huge and roaring river, instead of a tiny meandering stream at the bottom of the meadow. We still can't walk through the big lake to go up the boreen. 25 January 2010 Monday The Public Service Announcements come on the local radio station after the news. I used to wonder how everyone knew when someone had died. I assumed there was an amazing network of people telephoning each other with the news. Every time there is a removal, the street in front of the church is full of people by the time the hearse arrives. Finally I learned that everyone listens to Tipp FM. The name of the person and where he or she died is read, then there is an added note of the townland from which the person came. For married women, the maiden name is read too so that the family she came from can be known. Sometimes the visiting hours are at a funeral home, but often they say He will repose at home until being taken to the church, for arrival at 8 pm. I am especially fond of the expression He will repose at home. People can go to pay their respects at the funeral parlour or they can just go to the person's own home, or they can await the arrival at the church. A lot of options get listed in the very brief radio announcement. In the village here, the funeral is always the next day, and it is always at 11 am. 24 January 2010 Sunday Snowdrops are popping up everywhere. Even though I basically know where the bulbs are planted, they manage to arrive as a surprise every year. Yesterday, we had to zig zag our way through them all the way to the sauna. Luckily, there was enough white bud showing in the frosty grass so that my lantern was able to light the way without me stepping on a single one. 23 January 2010 Saturday Last night we went down to Rose's for an early drink. By 7.15, the whole place was filling up with people in anticipation of the big Rugby match. Munster was playing someone in a final. I have forgotten who it was already (Northampton?) but it was big and important. A load of local people had gone off to the actual match in Limerick. We said hello to a lot of people as we finished our drinks and prepared to leave. The pre-game discussions were already up on the television screen, as was the little white outline drawing of a pint glass in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. I always look for the glass. Rose had told us about this little drawing a while ago. When a pub or a restaurant has a subscription to Sky Sports, this little icon comes up on the screen whenever the station is being aired. It's presence means that the venue has paid it's Special Entertainment Charge. Without paying the fee, which I understand is very high, the venue has no right to be showing the station. The idea is that the venue is probably raking in the money with the extra audience brought in to watch the match. A spy, or inspector, for Sky Sports can walk into any bar during a sports event and if the little white glass is not on the screen, they will fine the bar. The fine is very high. To get around the punitive fines and exorbitant charges, some landlords have taken to painting the little pint glass onto their own screen with Tipp-ex. Somebody has even designed a tiny stencil to make it easier for those people who might not be very good at drawing. 21 January 2010 Thursday Simon went in to the Turkish barber in Clonmel. He asked for his hair to be cut very short. The barber said, It is a brave man who cuts his hair short at this time of year. 20 January 2010 Wednesday It has been difficult to work down in the barn this winter. Even now that the weather is warmer, the inside of the barn has held a hard deep cold. We were silly not to get the heat sorted out earlier. Now the walls are holding weeks and months of cold. Each time I go down to do something, I wear an extra sweater and a heavy overshirt or coat. I wear a hat. I wear a scarf. I stand on heavy floor mats. With all of this extra protection I still do not last very long. We keep bringing jobs up to the house. It is easier to rush up and down, and inside and out, with the cutting mat and straight edges and this and that, than it is to stay down there. The big room up in the house has the huge table and good light and warmth. I would rather make twelve trips back and forth than stay down there for one hour. I long for spring and the wide open door and the birds diving in and out. There is a long wait before that will happen again. It is only mid-January. It is too early to be fed up with winter weather. 19 January 2010 Tuesday When I ask Alma how she is, she always answers "There's no fear in us!". When she asks how how I am, she says " So, there's no fear in you?" 18 January 2010 Monday Em has taken to Walking the Houses. Tommie always used the expression Walking The Houses. He would come up here when we were away and he would take long and purposeful strides as he walked around each building. He was checking to be sure that all of the doors were shut and all of the windows were unbroken and securely closed. He was checking to see that all was as it should be. He once showed me exactly how he Walked the Houses. He wanted to let me know that he took his responsibility seriously. When Em Walks the Houses, she only goes around this house. She sniffs at everything all along the way, and inspects the bird feeding areas to see if anything good has dropped down to the ground. Sometimes she races very fast all around the house, stopping for nothing and looking at nothing. Other times she runs very fast all around barking like mad and turning her head this way and that as she goes. I love looking out a window and seeing her race past. This is all quite new behaviour. It is just since the very cold weather. She does not circle the barns in the same specific and choreographed way. Throughout the day she rushes around a lot in all directions and down the meadow and out into the big fields, so all areas are covered, but it is not the same. It is not Walking the Houses. It is just Walking the House. 17 January 2010 Sunday There is a piece of white cardboard beside the petrol pumps at O'Dwyer's. It is nicely printed out by hand in clear big black letters. At the top of the card are the words: EMERGENCY NUMBERS. It lists all the telephone numbers one might need for the Fire Brigade, the Garda, local doctors, and the ambulance. The first number on the list is for the priest. Things have changed a lot in this country and the relationship to the church has changed enormously, but in certain kinds of emergencies, I guess the priest is still the first man to ring. 16 January 2010 Saturday Several places locally have signs out front advertising Dental Repairs. These are often houses in the middle of the countryside. I presume there is a workshop in the shed or in a spare room. If the sign states While U Wait, there must be a waiting area where the person in need of repair can sit quietly while they wait for their dentures to be fixed. Maybe some people drop off their teeth and return later to collect them. Maybe they have a spare, older set at home or maybe they are happy to spend the day toothless. I never see one these repair places without thinking of an arranged meeting with elderly friends at a pub some years ago. They wanted to buy us a lunch in order to thank us for something we had done. They thought it would be more special if we ate out somewhere. Mostly, I think the woman was longing to be somewhere other than at her own table for a change. The food was the usual sort of fare in these places: Some kind of roast meat and roast potatoes and boiled potatoes and mashed potatoes, along with a selection of overcooked vegetables. While I was reeling in shock at the enormous mound of food on my plate, the wife nudged me. She wanted to explain why she was removing her teeth and placing them in her handbag. She wanted to explain before the teeth were out of her mouth. She said that the local man who did dental repairs charged too much, so her son had done her repairs for her. He used Super Glue, which I am sure was never intended to be inside a human mouth. The repairs were so thorough that although she was happy with the fixing, she was unable to eat anything at all with her teeth now. 15 January 2010 Friday My various bird feeding devices have had uneven success rates. Several of them just blew away in the big winds the other night. One became a container full of a sodden porridgey mess, as I had failed to think about drainage when I made it. The ones on the table were visited by a rat. I watched the rat climbing up the table leg as I stood in the kitchen. That was disturbing. Now I am trying to provide only hanging options for birds and nothing at all for rats. I went looking for birdfeeders in the village and thought I might copy their ideas or just buy a good strong feeder if the price was right. Kevin told me that he has not one birdfeeder, nor any bird food, nor seeds, nor peanuts. He told me there is no bird anything available to buy. The whole country is feeding birds. This is good for the birds. I came home and made another hanging thing from a small square wooden cigar box. I drilled a few holes into the bottom of the box . It hangs from three points so it should remain stable. My other successful one hangs at a dangerous tilt as it hangs from only two points. The birds are able to perch on it's sides without the whole thing tipping over. It does not look very good but it works. 14 January 2010 Thursday I took a quick look at my library books and I panicked when I thought they were overdue. I saw January 10 stamped on the insert. They actually read 26 January 10. I am not used to this 10 yet. Without fail, each time I write the date on a check or on a letter, I write 2009. I am now trying to write 2010 as often as possible to make it normal for myself. 2010. 13 January 2010 Wednesday It seems impossible, but Ireland is running out of water. All through the very deep cold, people tried to stop their pipes from freezing by leaving their faucets running. I do not know if the faucets were left just dripping or if they were on full force. This excessive use has been exacerbated by many burst pipes within the system. These leaks are added to the already old and leaky pipes of the various water supplies. Quite a number of cities and councils have been both begging and demanding that people stop leaving their water running. They are asking everyone to reduce their water use in as many ways as possible. None of the requests and orders have achieved much, so now the water is being turned off from 10 at night until the morning. 12 January 2010 Tuesday The water is working again. A torrential rain came and melted all of the snow and most of the ice and it was obviously enough to convince the well to start flowing again. I met an elderly man who was walking along carefully with his stick for support. He was very cheerful. He said, Isn't this a Fine Variety of weather we are having! 10 January 2010 Sunday The pipes are still frozen. Greg and Breda walked from their house pushing a wheelbarrow with two large containers of water. It was wonderful of them to do this. The trip took them about 40 minutes as the road is so icey. On a normal day, it would take 25 minutes to walk from there to here. We still cannot drive in nor drive out. We brought in a few more loads of firewood. There are always two piles stacked on either side of the wood stove. Now we have made large extra stacks at either end of the sofa, just so that they are warming and drying in advance of us needing to use them. The cold from outside is so deep within the wood that the piles are still radiating cold after several hours. It is too cold to sit on the sofa at all now. The house is not so warm, so maybe this is no surprise. Our refrigerator broke at the beginning of December, but it has been so cold, both inside and out, that we have not yet needed to replace it. For quite a while we were bringing the gas canister for the cooking stove in every night so that it would not freeze, but we gave up on that and now we just use the Rayburn. 8 January 2010 Friday Our pipes are frozen. We have been expecting it for so long that it is not really a surprise. The surprise is in how much of an inconvenience it is. A milkchurn full of water was delivered from the farm above. We have the churn standing in the kitchen with a ladle hanging inside it. Simon has calculated that it takes exactly twelve ladles of water to make a pot of tea. 6 January 2010 Wednesday With all of the snow on the ground, everything looks very different. We are used to seeing our lives here against a constant backdrop of bright green. I was looking out at the book barn today and noticing the smattering of white which is spread over it's stone walls. This white is the remnants of a lime wash from long ago. When Tom Browne was working on the barn he took out a small window which was in the center of the wall and just under the roof. We had decided that we did not need this window. He filled the space with stones. He worked hard to make certain that the stone work fit in with all of the stone work around it. He was bothered that the stones which he used had none of the lime residue that was on all of the rest of the wall. He told us to take a little white paint, on a sponge, and to dab it carefully over the new stones so that they would blend in with the others around them. He said not to use too much paint. I promised that I would do it the very next time I had the paint out for another job. It is years ago now and I have still never done it. Tom Browne is sitting in a wheelchair in the Cottage Hospital after his many strokes. He has been there for several years. As I look at the barn and see the white of the snow and the white of the old lime wash, it all looks very beautiful together. The area where I never added the paint stands out a mile. Maybe it is just my eyes that notice this. Tom Brown would have spotted it right away. Tom Brown always had an eye for detail. He was right about this. 4 January 2010 Monday It is still cold. It is very, very cold. We are quite pleased with the bright blue skies and the hard dry cold, but not everyone is so happy. When it is icey, the roads are impassable. When there is snow falling, the roads are deadly. No one has snow tyres. There are four snowplows in the entire country. There is not enough grit to put down on the roads. Absolutely every issue is a terrible surprise and absolutely every issue has not been prepared for as these issues are rare here. A lot of people are losing their electricity. Other people have frozen or burst water pipes. We are kind of surprised that our water has not frozen. I have filled buckets and pans of water and they are everywhere, both indoors and outdoors. The ones indoors are mostly in the way. I try to think of them positively. I try to think of them as insurance. My mother speaks of her always accumulating pile of books to be read as her insurance. We will be happy for this saved water if the well freezes up on us. I put little bowls of water on the outdoor tables for the birds everyday. The farmers have much bigger problems trying to keep water in a liquid state for their cows and their sheep. Peggy Byrne ripped a finger open as she attempted to hack into a water trough for her calves with a pickaxe. 2 January 2010 Saturday The weather woman spoke tonight of snow and storms impinging on the northwest coast of the country. I was surprised to hear her using the word impinge like that so I went to look it up. The dictionary defines TO IMPINGE as to strike or to encroach. It still seems an odd word for an impending snow storm. There is a lot of language here that souinds to me like it comes from another time. People often use the word AVAIL. i.e. There is a new fruit and vegetable shop in town and you should be sure to avail of its many choices. This is not a word I ever heard in everyday conversation until I came to live here. I am glad that there are so many surprises. 31 December Thursday I heard on the radio that there was to be both a full moon and a complete eclipse on New Year's Eve. It was to be the first time these three things had happened all together in 353 years. In truth, I mishead the bit about the complete eclipse and it was only a partial eclipse. We ran in and out and checked on the moon and we looked out the windows and kept track of it all, and only when we knew that it was over did I realize that it was never going to be a full eclipse. This second full moon in one month was a blue moon, which was of course another reason for excitement. The clarity and crispness of the night was perfect. 29 December Tuesday The New Year's card has been rejected. I cannot convince Simon that the roughness of it is part of its charm. He does not do rough. He really hates the whole thing. It is getting very late to do something. Will this be our first ever foray into the world of e-cards? I am not very happy about that as an idea. We make things on paper. This is what we do. I feel like an imposter sending something electronic even though it is both cheaper and environmentally sound. I like to receive things in the post and I must assume that other people like to receive things in the post. An Post is only delivering and moving mail on Wednesday and Thursday this week. We had a delivery on the 23rd, but there was nothing on Christmas Eve, which was a Thursday. I guess nothing will get back to normal until the 4th or the 5th of Janauary. We might have time to get another card going by then. 28 December Monday More dry and icey cold. As Em and I walked through the fields and onto the dirt track, I could hear a hard echo of my footfalls on the frozen mud. Simon spent the entire day in the print shed. He ran an extension lead out the window and turned on the halogen lamp which eventually warmed up the space. It also provided light for his work. He took the wind-up radio too. He wore a hat and a heavy sweater and stood on a thick mat. He was out there to print our New Year's greeting. He started with some very uneven bits of old grey card which made every single aspect of registration really difficult. He came into the house between printings to warm his feet and to get each new colour of ink. The inks were lined up near the stove so that they had a chance to thaw a bit before he needed them. By the end of the day he was frozen solid and completely fed up with the entire job. He threatened to throw away the whole lot. There is no doubt that he tried to do too many different printings with an awkward starting material. So many printings in such a low temperature was a bad idea too. 26 December Stephen's Day Everything is covered with ice. The roads are completely impassable, even on foot. There does not seem to be any system in place for gritting or salting the roads. This is not normal weather for here so there are no normal solutions. As Em and I struggled to walk up the hill from Joe's gate, we had to walk on the grassy verge. The verge is covered with snow so it is not visibly grassy, but the grass underneath allowed for at least some traction. I had a stick with me so I could use that to help but as I squished onto the side of the road, I had a new problem of being grabbed at by the brambles. When I got stuck in the thorns, it was hard to turn and release myself without stepping out onto the iced over road and then making a wild skid. We walked onto the place where one of the dead foxes has been rotting for many weeks now. I was right in the middle of it before I recognized the bits of rough fur and a broken bit of skull and some vertebrae mixed with the snow underfoot. I spent many days walking well around the spot so that I did not need to smell nor to see the decomposition. It is so far from being a fox, or even a corpse now, that Em does not even stop for a sniff as she passes. 24 December Thursday Heavy snow began last night and continued through this morning. Everything is white and new and beautiful. We have never seen so much snow in the whole time we have lived here. We dropped every plan for the day and put on our boots and walked the 3 1/2 miles to the village. Almost no cars were moving about and there is that lovely snow stillness in the air. We made some holiday visits and did some errands for people who could not get out. Then we had a drink at Rose's. We talked with Patsy Lonergan about the turkeys and chickens which he used to raise and sell every year. He stopped doing it because his hip was bad and he said that there was nothing in it as the price of the feed made the birds too expensive for anyone to buy. We are sorry about this because we found his chickens so very delicious. He was disgusted when we said that we were eating fish on Christmas. We were delighted with our fresh fish from the farmer's market on Wednesday. We have fish for the 24th and fish for the 25th. What could be nicer. Everyone here eats both a turkey and a ham on the 25th. There is absolutely no exception to this unless perhaps you are alone, or maybe just two people, and then it is acceptable to have a chicken instead of a turkey. This conversation in the mid-afternoon in the pub was unusual. Everyone appeared to have slowed down. Instead of rushing about because Christmas is coming, people seem to have decided that it is already here. The walk back up hill was slower and very slippery. The wind was much colder and it was against us. We were invited in for a hot whiskey about a third of the way up. That helped to fuel the final leg of the journey. Em rushed right into the house and ate her supper at top speed, before collapsing into a heap of sleep. 23 December Wednesday I saw Dessie as I walked around today. He has been off doing a course in Limerick for a few weeks. In his absence, his sister has been feeding his new cat. When he set off for the course there were four huge bags of kitty litter on the windowsill in the porch.. I watched them disappear one by one over the weeks. Now they are all gone and Dessie is back home. We talked about his very fine new spacious driveway which is covered in gravel and has room for several cars. He said Yes, isn't it sad that I waited a year for the driveway and now I will be leaving. He has been offered a house over near Burncourt with more space for gardening so he will be moving soon. All of the very substantial fencing he made to keep the dogs contained has been designed to be removed and taken with him. The fences were made by taking apart old pallettes and re-using the timber boards. Some of the fence lengths have elaborate curved tops. These curvey bits are covered with white plastic. He explained that this covering was made by slicing open electric cable piping. The reason he put it on the tops of his fencing is not for the decoration but to keep the water from soaking into the end grain of his fence. The opposite piece of the fence, the piece which he cut off to make the curve, is lower down on the ground so that from the window he sees two wavey horizons topped with white. 21 December Monday The winter solstice. It is the shortest day of the year. I am always glad to have this day over with so that we can at least pretend that the days are getting longer. More importantly, today is the day that John the Plumber came to hook up the new sink and to sort out various aspects of the plumbing for the seemingly never to be finished kitchen. It has been months and months since we started this work and I do wonder if it will ever be complete. Too much travel and time away has made the job like a stutter. When other people do a job like this, they say they are re-doing their kitchen and they have someone else come in to do the work. Sadly, we do it all ourselves (except the plumbing). When we say we are doing it, we are indeed doing it. We figure out what is happening as we go. Each step illuminates a new set of problems and we resolve the next step with invented solutions, sometimes the same solutions that I guess anyone would use. Some solutions are more specific. We often resort to going out to the printing shed to fetch a bit of printing furniture to help to make a little adjustment. What do other people do if they don't have a printing press and printing furniture? 19 December Saturday When we go to the supermarket before Christmas, there is always one day, like today, when we are greeted by someone from a charitable organization who gives each customer a paper bag. The idea is that while we are doing our own shopping, we will also buy some things for other more needy people. The person giving out the bags suggests the things that might be useful and appreciated. When we leave the check-out, we each separate our purchases and put the things to be donated into the paper bag. On the way out of the store, we hand over our bag full of food. I have never seen this exact system anywhere else. 18 December Friday Instead of everyone sitting at home and watching their own DVDs and televisions in these cash-strapped times, there is a big surge in cinema attendance throughout the country. I wonder if it is maybe that the cinemas are warmer than peoples' own houses or if people just want to feel that they are part of a group. Going out to see a film is cheaper than going out to dinner. And here there is the added advantage of the double seats. When we were first here, we noticed that the far ends of each row had a double seat. We discussed this between ourselves and finally we decided that perhaps it was a thoughtful gesture for overweight people. Eventually we learned that these seats were designed for young couples so that they could sit cosily together without so much as an armrest to separate them from each other. 17 December Thursday Another Pre-Christmas ritual around here is that people go to the cemetery to clean the graves of their loved ones. New flowers or plants are placed in position. Old dead or dusty plants are removed. The gravel, if there is any around the stone, is raked and the headstone polished up a bit. This is in preparation for a visit to the grave on Christmas morning, either before or after Mass. 14 December Monday Kenneth the Window Cleaner came by to see if we wanted our windows cleaned this morning. We do want our windows cleaned but it was far too cold and frosty for that today, so we had a cup of tea instead. We talked about this obsession the Irish have to have their windows cleaned before Christmas. It is an Absolute Must for them. I don't know why, unless it is just because everyone is getting their windows cleaned so everyone else thinks they must do it too. There is a lot of that kind of activity here. We decided to wait till January. Kenneth remarked on our complete lack of Christmas decor and then told us that they do not celebrate Christmas at all. Kenneth is a Jehovah's Witness. I never knew that they did not celebrate Christmas. Actually I know very little about them at all, but I believe they are always supposed to be spreading the word and seeking converts. We have known Kenneth for many years now and he only once said something about spirituality. Mostly we talk about politics. Since he is from Scotland, he and Simon enjoy raging together about UK issues and politicians. They used to curse about Tony Blair, but now they are just as happy to complain about Gordon Brown. 12 December Saturday I was in the supermarket looking for the coffee. Everything had been moved and nothing was where it used to be. I asked a boy who worked there where the coffee had gone. He directed me to the biscuit section. He said, It's only logical. Sure, you wouldn't want a coffee without a biscuit, now would you? 11 December Friday Today is the one year anniversary of Em's Imprisonment for the Healing of Her Cruciate Ligament and the Imposition of the Strict Diet. To look at her now, it is hard to remember that terrible limp. It is easy to remember her as a fat dog though, as we have so many photographs of her like that. People were always very diplomatic, in ironic kind of ways. They said She's a well fed dog. She has no trouble with eating her dinner. She will not be wasting away anytime soon. Now that she is so slim, she moves better and more youthfully and some people even think that she is a new, younger dog. That is a great compliment, but I am very glad that she is the same dog. There is no sign of the limp. She runs and races and chases and swims happily. Our walks are full of excitement. 9 December Wednesday The oil men came down to fill the tank with heating fuel. We have only turned on the heat in the last few days. We hate to get going with the heat as it heralds the real beginning of winter. Old houses used to be desirable with their charactor and drafts and idiosyncracies. Now they appear more and more like obsolete monsters. A well-designed energy efficient house feels pretty marvelous and very enviable on a cold day. Some friends living in an envelope house use one piece of wood to heat the whole house for a whole day. Of course, if we had one of those wonderful houses we might not see our friendly oil men. Because our boreen is too narrow for a normal oil truck, we used to get a mobile tank delivered. The tank would be left here and Simon would pump it all out and into our tank by hand. Then, in a day or too, he would take the empty tank back to the oil company in the Nire. After a while, we found someone else who had a mobile tank which could be plugged in to our electricity, through a bedroom window, and the pumping out was much easier. Now the tank is brought on a small truck and it has its own generator. The pumping out and into our tank is even easier. The delivery is still made by two men, and we always invite them in for tea and biscuits. They like having tea and a chat, and I wonder if that is why the two of them come together. They say that they rarely have tea with anyone these days as no one is at home when they deliver. Everyone is out at work. They are also very complimentary about our tea because the water from our well has no chemistry in it and it does make a lovely cup of tea. They are not the only people to comment favourably about our tea. We sat and talked about many things. One of them has lost his wife since last year. We discussed that and we discussed the predictions for this afternoon's Budget. I offered two kinds of biscuits and pointed out that one kind was a ginger biscuit. I have noticed that a lot of people here do not like ginger biscuits, even if they are coated with chocolate. I mention the presence of ginger ever since an elderly friend took one bite and left the rest of his biscuit on the table. He never said a word but he has been skittish about any cookies offered here ever since. These two men loved the ginger biscuits, and they loved the almond biscuits. They did not even mind that we had no proper milk and that we gave them soya milk in their tea. When they left they thanked us for their lovely Christmas Party. 8 December Tuesday Today is the day when traditionally the country people all went to Dublin for the beginning of their Christmas shopping. The trains and buses were full of people going to town for the day. Lunch and later some drinks at one of the big hotels was part of the day. Now everybody has a car, and the traffic around and inside Dublin is horrible. Everyone goes everywhere all the time. I wonder if the 8th of December is still a special shopping day for anyone. 3 December Thursday The geese are flying by, heading south in huge flocks. The noise is often so loud that I rush outside to see them. It is just too big a sound to ignore. Every time it happens it is exciting. And every year it is exciting all over again. Em barks and races along the ground underneath what looks like a thousand geese. 2 December Wednesday I saw Ken today for the first time in a long time. I asked him if the rumours were true. I asked if he was indeed getting married. He said yes, and he blushed and said yes, indeed it has been known to happen and now it is happening to me. I told him that I was very happy for him. I am not sure if the marriage has taken place yet or not, but he is living over in Ardfinnan with his lady. That is why I rarely see him anymore. Ken is in his fifties and very religious. I have always thought of him as a confirmed bachelor. As we talked, I saw Snoopy in an upstairs window, pushing the curtains aside and barking at us. I told Ken that I was a bit worried about Snoopy who is at home there all the time and mostly alone. He used to be outside all day long running about and barking like mad at anyone who passed. He also had Partner for company. Partner barked like mad too, but sometimes he would let himself out of the yard. Then he would walk calmly down the road and around. He was completely friendly and quiet when he was out and only barked from the safety of the fenced in yard. In the last year he became very deaf and a bit blind too, so he would often forget to bark unless Snoopy bumped into him in excitement. Now Partner is dead and gone, and Ken is away most of the time, day and night. Snoopy is in the house as a guard dog. When I told Ken that I was worried about Snoopy, he said What do you mean? He's fine! He's got an electric blanket in there and everything. 1 December Tuesday Mary told me that an old house cannot be knocked down unless the old chimney has fallen. People who want to build a new house on the site of an old one will often go to the site and knock the chimney a bit to insure that the permission for a new house will go ahead. A fallen down chimney means it is okay to tear the rest of the house down. 30 November Monday A phone call from Liam Harper was a big surprise. We had switched our electricity from the ESB to Airtricity to use a greener source. For many years Airtricity was only interested in commercial customers and we could not convince them that our remote locale was a viable business address. Once the switch was finally organized we never expected to hear from Liam Harper again. When he phoned, he said it did not matter who we bought our electricity from, because he was still the meter reader. We were happy to chat with him, and Simon went up on the stool with the torch and read the numbers out. I repeated those numbers into the telephone to Liam Harper. 26 November Thursday It is Thanksgiving Day in America, but it is not Thanksgiving here. Some years ago I tried to make a Thanksgiving dinner at various times and I included other people but it is just silly to try to import a ritual which means considerably less than nothing to people who were not brought up with it. Simon has never been any help with Thanksgiving as he hates turkey and refuses to believe that it might ever be done well. If he is in the United States on that day, he will accept the occasion and the food with good grace, but when imposed anywhere else he considers it an unnecessary affectation. And that is probably realistic. For anyone who is not American, why would you be sitting down for a big feast in the middle of a Thursday afternoon. I cannot expect it to make sense. So we had some lovely pasta and a beautiful tarte tatin, some wine and cheese. Just a lovely evening repast interrupted by various phone calls from a holiday some where else. 25 November Wednesday It is dry and cold today with a threat of rain in the sky, but Em and I walked up the watery boreen and all around without the rain actually coming. The stream is so swollen and flooded at the bottom of the meadow that we now have a large lake. Earlier we had a little lake, but there is nothing little about this lake. Simon has always fancied having a lake there. It is not easy to get though but at least today it was possible. For the last weeks it has been so deep that even rubber boots were not enough. When we got all the way up and around on the road, Em raced like mad to reach the stream. This is the same stream that passes below our meadow and which is now feeding the new lake. At the road, the stream is well below the level of the road and reached by a short steep banking. For years now, the ritual has been that Em rushes ahead to the gap and down to the stream. She then stands in the water looking up and waiting for me to throw a stick down into the water. Since her ligament recovery, I have usually stopped her from going down the banking because I do not want her to overdo and harm her freshly healed self. Today she just took off before I even thought to say anything. The usual beginning was for me to start looking for a good stick well before we got near the stream. She would register my looking as her signal to rush down the road and get into position in the water. If I failed to look for a stick ahead of time, I would end up near the stream with her waiting in the water and no sticks available. That is a always bad area for sticks. And that is where I was today. Not a decent stick in sight and Em in very deep rushing water. No barking, just waiting. I found a lousy little stick which hit the water and was carried off quickly before she could even get near to it. I threw one more like this and then I just left and continued my walk. Eventually she left the water and caught up with me well down the road. By then I had found a better and stronger stick which I threw just ahead of us onto the track and which she happily carried off towards home. This was an adjusted second part of the stream ritual. The rescued stick from the water is supposed to be carried all the way home. Today we got as far as the bend in the boreen near Scully's wood and the fox was suddenly beside us. We all three froze. Then Em dropped her stick and the fox ran away and we returned to the house. I am so happy to see our fox after so many weeks. I am happy to know that he is not one of the dead foxes by the road. 23 November Monday There appears to be a new version of supermarket shopping. Very few people take a trolley, nor even a small wire basket. They walk around with as much as they are going to buy in their arms, or they buy only as much as they can carry. I wonder if this is a form of self-regulation. 21 November Saturday Simon headed off to Cashel in the afternoon to do a talk about our books. The weather was still terrible. The weather is still terrible. With the roads flooded and detours everywhere, we were not sure if he would get there nor if there would even be an audience for him if he did get there. The talk was in the Bolton Library, which is on the grounds of the cathedral. His talk was being followed by another talk called THE MEANING OF LIFE. The priest who was doing that talk sat right beside Simon and looked at all the books as they were passed around. The audience was lively and the discussion good. Some of the people had come for Simon's talk and some had come for the priest's talk. Some seemed to be there for both talks, but some had come early for the priest's talk because of the weather and the inability to plan how long any journey might take. They were just there because they had made it through the rain in less time than they expected. Simon returned home wishing that he had asked the audience how many of them had actually come to hear him talk about books. 19 November Thursday It is hard to talk about the hugeness of this rain and the devastation everywhere. I can see the news and listen to the radio but I only can see what I see here. Any place else is not really real. I have heard it reported that this is the worst rain and flooding for two years. It is the worst rain in Living Memory. It is the worst rain for 24 years. It is the worst rain for 1000 years. Everyone is trying to define how bad it is. We have not lost electricity, nor our water supply, as so many people have. We are sitting high and dry on our hillside. The news of bridges collapsing and being closed sounds terrifying. The power of rushing water is hard to believe. Thousand of people are evacuated from their homes and thousands of cattle and sheep are stranded. One man on the radio today spoke of an area near the Shannon where 60,000 acres of farmland are underwater. I cannot picture 60,000 acres. That is just one example. Ireland is Underwater. As I walk out, I examine the places where the road is just ripped away. Gravel and tar and stones are just gouged out of the road and huge long and deep gashes remain. Subside and submerge are oft-repeated words. 18 November Wednesday A lot of our mail arrives, when it arrives, with the note: NO ACCESS ROAD FLOODED and the date pencilled on the top envelope. 7 November Saturday The sound of ceaseless rain is driving me mad. The ground is soggy and the teasels are falling over. The grass is a brilliant shade of green and it is still growing. Everything is conspiring to make the wetness as unpleasant as it can. I looked into the cupboard under the bed and saw my old black and white photograph of Le Sommeil des Mages on the inside of the door. It is a 12th century sculpture from the cathedral in Autun. I love it. I made several painted versions of this sculpture years ago. I love to see the three kings sort of piled up on top of each other. I love finding this old photograph inside my cupboard. I have a few things on the inside of doors so that I can find them when I am looking for something else. I put an old chart of NUTS AND BOLTS on the inside of Simon's clothes cupboard door. I think it is from the 1920s. The drawings are lovely and so carefully done. I do not think that Simon ever looks at it, but I do. These are small things which cheer me as I live with this rain. 6 November Friday Dance bands were very popular here in the fifties and the sixties but if they were trying to earn money playing the dance halls, they had to leave the country during Lent as there was be no dancing allowed. They would book themselves into the dance halls in Britain and eventually the US. Some of them did so much better there that they never came back. Some came back much later when they were famous. 5 November Thursday TJ, the blacksmith, has a brand new trailer out beside the road. It is chained to the gate with a lock and a sign saying FOR SALE. It is his usual sort of trailer. It is an open trailer welded of strong metal. The outside is painted blue and the inside is painted a rich rusty brown-red colour. Most people around here know that TJ makes trailers and most people who have a trailer have one of TJ's trailers. We all know where he lives so anyone around here who wanted a trailer would just go by and talk to him. I have never seen one out on display like this. This is another sign of hard times and things for sale by the road. 4 November Wednesday Em and I decided to go up the boreen even though I know it is terribly muddy and wet. The stream has been overflowing for days and for a while we had a real pond down there. Now the stream has subsided and the pond is gone, but the long grass is all stretched out flat on the ground in the direction that the water was flowing. I took a big heavy stick along to help me jump through the muck,and it was useful for going though the mud and slippery stones up the path. Since it was a heavy stick, I sort of assumed I would get rid of it when I got to the top of the hill. I kept walking with it and then I realized that I still had it by the time we had reached the Lonely Llama way down the road. The llama ran over to see us when we arrived near to his gate. Against my better judgement, I am getting fond of this Llama. He belongs in Peru. It seems cruel for him to be stuck alone in a field in Tipperary. I kept walking with the heavy stick wanting to get rid of it but not wanting to just drop it. It really was a very fine stout stick. I thought to leave it near the stone wall close to Teresa and Seamus' so that maybe Seamus would find it and use it when he went out for a walk with his dogs. I often see him walking with stick. This stick was more his size than my size. I had a chat with Teresa over the wall and when I left her, I still had the stick. I thought to leave it near the stream for someone else to find, but I didn't. Em took it from me and dragged it along for a while, but it was too huge and awkward to be fun, so she dropped it in the middle of the road. I picked it up again. I thought to maybe leave it near the sign, or maybe at the left turn into the boreen. Every time I thought about where it might be best to leave it and I made a decision to leave it at that spot when I got to that spot, but by the time I got to the spot I was already thinking of something else and I walked all the way home with the stick. It is now leaning near the back door. 3 November Tuesday Throughout all of the rainy days we have been up and down to the barn collating Susan Howe's POEMS FROM A PIONEER MUSEUM. At one point I did not know which thing was making me the most weary. Picking up the 32 small white and 2 small green cards and putting them in order became an almost endless job. Marching around the table to collect each one, and to make certain that I had only picked up ONE, was like developing a stutter. Each time the act was finished it was exactly like the time before and sometimes I could not remember if I had already done that or if I was just doing it again. It is finished now. All the little sets are in their little green boxes, signed and numbered and put away. And the rain has stopped. 2 November Monday The meadow walk with Em in amazing bright moonlight. I think the moon is full. I turned off the torch and the night was so bright that we ran up and down the paths in perfect blue/yellow light. Was it blue or was it yellow? It was so bright and so eerie at the same time. I am not sure what colour it really was. It was just beautiful, mostly because it had been bucketing with rain less than 30 minutes earlier. The whole day has been like this. Horrific heavy rain and then bright skies and dancing clouds. Tonight we had the rushing clouds in the bright moonlit sky, and now, as I write, the rain is lashing on the roof again. 1 November Sunday As I walk out, I am looking looking looking for the fox. I am looking for our fox. I am looking to see a fox scooting down the field or maybe back up the field towards Scully's wood. I am hoping to see the fox tumbling over in surprise as I come around the corner in the boreen. I am ready to see him scramble to his feet only a few feet from me. I am eager to see him take off at speed. I just want to see the fox and to be absolutely certain that our fox is not one of those two dead foxes which are lying along the ditch on the upper road. 31 October Saturday Three more nicknames, in common useage, which I never heard before I lived here: Mossie, Toss, and Batt. They are short for Maurice, Thomas, and Bartholomew. 30 October Friday How can I keep writing about rain? How can I not keep writing about rain? What am I doing on this grey, sodden, bankrupt island? This greyness is making me feel like I am losing my mind. We were out walking today and the wind was so wild and the rain so noisy that I could not hear if any cars were coming. On any road bits of our walks, I usually walk right down the middle of the very narrow road, and Em dashes back and forth according to the smells which interest her. When we hear a car or a tractor approaching from either direction, we move to the nearest side and stand in the grass. Today's noisy wind made it impossible to tell if anything was coming until they were right near us. There were only two cars in the whole distance, and when one of them came along, I looked down and noticed that there was a dead fox at my feet. It was a freshly dead fox and it did not look like it had been hit by a car. It looked like it was asleep but its body was in a running position, not curled up. Both Em and I examined it carefully and then continued on our way. Half a kilometer later, we were passed by the second car of the day. Moving onto the opposite side of the road from our first stop, we saw a second fox. Again the fox was dead, but not messy in a way that would suggest a car accident. This fox was laid out in just the same way as the first one. I think both of these foxes must have been shot somewhere else and dumped here beside the road. It is just too strange a coincidence to see two very healthy looking grown foxes dead in the same position and so near together on the road. I did not look for bullet wounds, but I have been thinking about them all day. 29 October Thursday There are huge piles of wood, pallettes, and junk in various fields. The piles have begun to get bigger and bigger in the last few weeks. These are for the Halloween night bonfires which will be lit all over the countryside in the darkness. They will be accompanied by fireworks. There is so much wet everywhere I wonder if any of the fires will even light. Yesterday was dry, but I think a week of dry sunshine might not be enough to dry the land and the wood. We have our own wet weather problem. The new (used) car which we bought in the spring was inexpensive and did not have very many miles on it. Our mechanic friend told us that it was a good brand and that it was cheap because the Irish do not like the Seat. He said it is in the Volkswagon family and that it is a good car, just unpopular here. I thought the car a very ugly shade of green and I thought the name Ibiza was dumb, but the price was right. We did not think to ask WHY people here do not like the Seat. Now we know. When this car goes through deep puddles and the distributor gets wet, the car loses power until it is just forced to stop. The car will not start again until the distributor has had time to dry out. This has happened twice and both times the car just had to stay overnight down in the village until it was ready to drive again. It is crazy to live down an old rough boreen which has very lengthy and deep puddles in multiple locations after every heavy rain. Heavy rain is not a surprise here. It is crazy to own a car that we cannot drive in the rain. The car is made for Spain. 28 October It was a beautiful, blue sky day today. I had to go to town to the doctor, which was a bit of a pity as I would have loved to be out in the garden. As much as I dislike sitting in the waiting room with its ratty magazines and noisy television set, I enjoy seeing my doctor as we always have interesting conversations. The first time I went to her she stood up as I entered her office and she sang me a song in German in a sweet and quavery voice. It was a song about the flower Erica growing in the mountains. She finished the song and then she sat down. She had never met anyone named Erica so she felt she just had to sing that for me. Since then we have been good friends. She is now thinking about her impending retirement. She does not want to retire because she loves her work and loves keeping abreast of new medical developments and challenges. She hates the idea of missing anything. Her sister, who was another kind of doctor in Dublin, retired a few years ago. She was at a bit of a loss for a while and then she began to work as an extra in films. She has since become addicted to the very early morning starts on a film set, and to the hours of waiting around for ones little bit of an appearance. She loves the communtiy of people on the sets and she loves finding out what all of them did before they came together for that particular movie. Doctor Rosaleen feels reasssured by this and now trusts that her own retirement will open up a new world for her too. 27 October Tuesday It is one of those wild, rainy days. Again. Everything is blowing and gusting. At the shop, one lady said me: "This weather is so bad that if you hang a wash you nearly need to be standing there beside it". Nothing seems to dry wherever it is anyway. We have these old Horrible Towels which I put down on the rugs when Em comes in from outdoors during extended wet weather. Her first act is always to throw herself down on a rug and to begin to clean herself. The towels on top of the rugs keep the rugs vaguely cleaner, but the towels themselves are horrible to see. One of them used to be a gold colour and the other one used to be green. They are now both very faded and grey and filthy looking, even after they have been washed. We get very used to having them down on the floor, and we walk over them as though they are the normal floor covering. No matter how muddy and wet she gets, Em always cleans herself perfectly. We frequently receive compliments about her beautiful coat, and sometimes I am asked what sort of shampoo we use on her. No one believes that we never actually wash her unless she has rolled in a dead animal or something very, very smelly. She is an obsessive self-cleaner. 26 October Monday The Tri-colour house has been painted! It is all painted, from top to bottom. No more cement colour and no more white. It is all yellow. When I started to discuss the cement colour, it was explained to me that cement is the compound which is mixed with sand to make concrete. Everything here is made of cement, but a set area of cement is called concrete. So a house is not made of cement. It is made with cement. I am still confused if the colour is called cement or concrete. I can call it gray but I cannot call it natural. 20 October Tuesday The Lonely Llama has taken to racing over to the gate when we walk past. It never comes close enough for me to touch, but it seems very curious. The eyes are sort of far apart and on each side of it's head so the llama turns this way and that as it looks at me or down at Em. It does not look straight ahead. I do not really have any urge to pet the llama and I have no idea if this is a good or bad natured animal. Will it nip at me if I reach out to stroke it? I do not want to grow fond of this creature as its very presence here feels so wrong to me. Still, it has been all alone in this field for many months now. The baby llama is gone. Or maybe the partner and the baby are gone. I do not know if this one is a male or a female. It has sort of bowed legs and looks like a cartoon version of itself. I fear I am becoming more interested than I would like to be. 19 October Monday Suddenly the rose beside the lower book barn has begun to blossom. Throughout our miserable wet summer, we have had very few roses. Now, as the nights get colder and the days get shorter, this plant has decided to make up for lost time. It is a climbing rose which I bought as a gift for Simon eight years ago. It has well formed blooms, cream coloured and edged with deep pink. Ordinarily the flowers are freely produced over a long season. Not knowing a great deal about roses, I bought it because it was called HANDEL, and at the time, we were obsessed by Handel's "Where 'er you walk....". We were listening to it over and over again. For some reason which I do not understand, we have since taken to calling that rose THE EDWARD ELGAR, and neither of us can ever remember that we have the wrong musician in mind. I guess we have changed the name of the rose. We have another climbing rose which is even more prolific but whose blossoms last only for one day. That one is on the side of the building where my studio is, and it is one of the few plants which was here when we arrived. I have been told that it was a favourite of Kathie English, who lived in this house for her whole life. I have tried hard to keep it healthy for her. This rose is a soft pink and is called Albertine, but it too had a bad summer. 17 October Saturday Everyone at the Farmers Market was a little bit nervous today as the Health Lady was going around with a man and a clipboard inspecting everyone for cleanliness and adherence to hygiene rules. The cheese lady said that the Inspector is very stern and critical when she is on duty. On other weeks she just comes to the market as a regular person doing her shopping. The lady who makes the various pates has the most attractive and clever method for keeping her things chilled. She has filled some golden brown balloons with a small amount of water before knotting them. When they are frozen they apppear a bit fuller and more solid, about the size of a small fist. As the market progresses, they get limper. The mass of balloons together is beautiful. Her various bowls of mushroom, liver, or fish pates sit nicely in the nest of balloons, and the brown is a beautiful colour. I do not think I have ever seen brown balloons. 16 October Friday I confused Em when we went out for her night run through the meadow last night. I had a few things to hang on the washing line, so I went the opposite direction from usual, and then I had a struggle to pin the wet things onto the line in the dark. It was very dark. Very, very dark. I tried to hold a torch in my hand but I could not shine light on my actions at the same time as I was doing the pegging out. I just did not have enough hands. Marianne has a light which is attached to a head band. I think it is the kind of thing that people use when they are exploring caves. She uses it to go into the garden at night and catch slugs and snails. This might be a good idea for me ( the torch, not the slug hunting). 14 OctoberWednesday The new house just after the corner turn-off towards Neddins has been painted again, but not finished, again. For a long time it was just a gray, cement coloured house. I thought for sure it was going to stay that way. Many years ago I overheard two women discussing the one's newly built house. The one asked the other is they were planning to paint the house, or would they just leave it Natural? To me there is nothing natural about concrete. The colour of wood may be called natural, but not concrete. Anyway, this house was gray (natural) for a long time. Then it was painted white up to a certain height. I could not decide if the reason for it not being completely covered with white paint was that they had run out of paint, or if the ladders just were not long enough to go up into the gable ends. It stayed half painted white for 6 or 8 months, or more. Now it has been painted yellow but the yellow stops before the white stopped so now it is a three coloured house. I am interested to see how this will develop. 9 October Friday It has been just beautiful, day after day. The sky is blue and clear and it is warm and sunny and lovely to eat lunch outside and to have tea while sitting in the late afternoon warmth. When the sun drops it gets cold very quickly. The dilemma at this time of year is wanting to have the doors wide open to feel the air and to continue with the feeling of summer. In the case of this past gloomy summer, it is more like trying to maintain an illusion of a summer which we never had. It is important to not let the doors stay open as this is the time of year when the mice are looking for an indoor option. We are struggling to keep the door shut, or at least the bottom half of the kitchen door. Em gets annoyed by any closed doors. She believes it is her right to wander in and out all day long, keeping track of which building we are in and what is happening. Closed doors restrict her freedom. In truth, the mice will squeeze in wherever they want to so it is not a certain way to keep them out. We are probably just trying to train ourselves for the coming winter cold. 22 September Tuesday The Polish shops in the area seem to move about a lot. I am not sure if this is about short term leases or what it is, but sometimes there are three or four of them in Clonmel and then for a while there will be only one. The Polish and Lithuanians (Foreign Nationals) like to have their own foods and there is a big business now importing these things. I am a big fan of the Lithuanian breads and of the pickles.They seem to carry everything from magazines to meats, and biscuits to salt. Absolutely everything is being imported so that home does not seem so far away. Most of the suupermarkets carry a section of eastern European foods now too.. One shop that has lasted for quite a long time now is just outside the West Gate in Irishtown. It is called CHANCE or CHANGE. I am never sure which name is correct. The letters are hand painted on the wall above the windows on both sides of the corner location. The letters are about fifteen inches high, painted in dark red with a black shadow outline. I keep meaning to go in to ask what the name really is, but I have decided for myself that it is CHANGE. The shop used to be an equestrian supply shop and its windows were full of saddles and boots and horse feeds. Later it became a bridal shop with windows full of white fluffy dresses and various bits of wedding paraphanalia. I liked that it had gone from Bridle to Bridal. That is enough reason for me to call it CHANGE. 19 September Saturday We weighed Em at the vet's office this morning. She rushes right in the door and gets up on the scales as if she is as concerned as we are about her weight. Unfortunately once she is there she is very wiggly and wants to rush right off again to find the resident cat and if not to find him, then to eat from his dish. We kept her for long enough to find that she has dropped to 17.8 kilos. This is such happy news. The regular walks added to the strict diet are succeeding. The walks are better and better and we are no longer restricted to the short Perimeter Walks. In fact we seem to go off in many different routes depending on the weather or the mood or if the postman is about to come racing down the boreen. It is no treat to meet him as there is not enough room to get out of the way of his van. If we are taken by surprise by the sound of his motor, we have to press right into the brambles and hope that getting unstuck from them is not too difficult. Sometimes I feel like every day's walk is blurring into the last walk,or into last week's walk. I look at the same things but they really are never the same and always a little different. A field just cut or well chewed over by the cows quickly becomes a field full of grass again. Maybe the variations over months and years are just more familiar. Does the familiar walk make it easier to clear the mind and to think about other things or do all of the little changes mean that there is so much to keep track of visually that I really do not think of that many things besides the walk. There are wet walks and dry walks. There are road walks and field walks. Most walks are combinations of several things and most walks are the only walk that I think about when I am walking. 18 September Friday When money is being transferred from a bank to somewhere else or maybe just from bank to bank, the Irish Army is called into action. Soldiers in fatigues and carrying guns stand and guard the van which I assume is full of money and they walk in and out of the bank along with the special container. Sometimes traffic is stopped while this happens. Except for this domestic job, the Irish Army seems to mostly be off on peace keeping missions in other parts of the world. 17 September Thursday There is no further development on the kitchen. We are just living with the things that we have done so far. Having a drawer to put the silverware into is wonderful. Forks and knives no longer sit in a tray full of crumbs and grated carrot. The new stove is such a delight that we hardly need to do anything else. The stove top does double as a place for a dish drainer, but this is not forever. If we are not careful this level of temporary will become the new permanent and another nine years might pass. There is a lot of book finishing work to do, and the out of doors is desperate for more attention. Somehow the push to get the kitchen finished does not feel so imperative, but that might be because the sun is out. 16 September Wednesday The discussions about Swine Flu appeared to have gone quiet. We were not being overwhelmed by Swine Flu in the newspapers nor on the radio nor on the television. There are a lot of little bottles of disinfecting hand cleaner scattered about but the subject seemed to have settled down. Suddenly there is a new problem. When people go to a funeral or a wake, the priest suggests at a certain moment that everyone make contact with their neighbour. At this signal, everyone in the church, all of whom are standing up, are supposed to turn and shake hands with each other, and with everyone sitting in front of them and in the rows behind them. With the possibility of Swine Flue, to not shake hands is to appear un-Christian but to shake all those hands is tantamount to a death wish. A whole new reason for panic needs to be confronted. 15 September Tuesday I went to the Recycling Depot at Legaun today. I went yesterday too, but they have suddenly decided to be closed on Monday. While I was writing down the new hours on a piece of paper, an old man got out of his car and came over to talk with me. He was the self appointed guard of the saw mill next door. I do not know where the saw mill men had gone. This man was quite disparaging about the new hours and the new regime at the dump. It is run by the Department for the Environment now and no longer by the council. As a result, no one is allowed to take anything away that they might find and want from there. He told me of an angle grinder which he had found a few years ago. He took it home and replaced a spring or a coil and then it worked like a dream. He did not have much use for an angle grinder but he was happy to have it just the same. Then someone told him that the Garda needed 193 guns cut up. These were guns which had been seized and which had no legal right to exist in the country. They paid him to destroy the 193 guns with his angle grinder, while a Garda stood on duty making sure all of the guns were rendered unuseable. 14 September Monday After breakfast, Em follows me from room to room and indoors and outdoors. She mithers me without cease in the fear that I might forget that we have to go out for a walk. How can I forget? At any moment she could race across the fields or up and into Scully's wood by herself. She could run up the boreen or down the boreen. She does not need me to get exercise. She is not a city dog, nor even a town or suburban dog with a restricted little yard. She is a Free Dog. She is a country dog. The door is wide open. She can come in and go out freely. She can run about without any restrictions. Maybe once a month she is clipped onto a lead but for the rest of the time she is free to walk or run or explore without constraint. But the morning walk is all about ritual. Ritual must be maintained without exception. To ensure that we do not miss our walk, she follows as close to my legs as possible wherever I move in the house. Often I trip over her. When I change direction abruptly she is sometimes flustered as she does not seem to be able to back up. Do all dogs have an inability to back up or is this just her problem? I do not think I ever noticed that dogs do not back up. 13 September Sunday I saw Michael O'Conner today for the first time in some months. He was standing outside his house and he saluted as I went past. As always, he was wearing a clean and well ironed white shirt, a tie with a tie clasp and his navy blue blazer with gold buttons. I stopped to say hello and to ask how he was. He called me American Lady, so I know that he recognized me. Sometimes he does not really know who he is talking to. For many years he called Simon The Austrailian. Then he was suddenly The Scotsman. Michael worked for many years in England. He was in the British army and then he worked in a car factory in Coventry. When we first came here, he used to ride his bicycle down to the village to get his messages and to go and have a pint at Rose's. He would buy ten or twenty scratch cards at a time and sit and study them for hours over a pint of Guinness. Sometimes he would pull up the sleeves of his blazer and show everyone that he was wearing 5 wristwatches on each arm. He was also prone to pulling up his trouser leg to display a wound or a partially healed scab from a fall off his bike. It was not unusual to come across Michael a long way in any direction from his house and as one approached in a car, he would stop and stand at full salute until the car had passed. These days he does not wander very far from home. 12 September Saturday Em and I walked around the Flemingstown route today. It was very misty as all the recent mornings have been. The early mornings are cold and the long grass is very wet.When the mist burns off the days become hot and sultry. Then we feel like we are in Italy. As we walked over the fields we couldn't see Joe's cows anywhere, and suddenly they were just there right in front of us. The fog was so thick that we had very little distance visibility. Once we were on the road, we saw Michael driving along. He stopped his tractor in the middle of the road, turned off the motor, and opened the door so that we could have a chat. Everyone has time and everyone is in a good mood with this fine weather. After a little while, Peter Ryan came along in his red van and we had to end our conversation as the road was not wide enough for him to go around the tractor. It is probably just as well, as Michael was just getting going about Obama's health care legislation and that discussion would have kept us there for a long time. 9 September Wednesday I was just about to do some page folding, and suddenly I found myself in my blue paint suit painting two walls in the kitchen so that we could get the stove hooked up and in position. Every time I paint anything I put on my long sleeved zip up paint suit. Every time I put it on, Simon says You don't need your paint suit for this as it is just a little job. I never listen to him and I always wear my paint suit. He does not seem to understand the freedom the suit gives me. I am completely covered so there is no need to be timid. I can wipe my hands on myself. I am much more efficient when wearing my paint suit, but he makes fun of me and it everytime. 5 September Saturday We went and bought a new stove today. This is a huge thing for us. For all the years we have been living here, the kitchen has been in an extended state of temporary. We have used a camping stove and a small convection oven for cooking and everything has been very makeshift and very rough. Most people are shocked by it, but now that we have started to fix it up, they keep tell us that they feel sad about it changing. Of course, they have not had to live with it. With each change that we make we have to sit back and look at things for a few days before we do more. It is now in a new state of temporary, but the temporary is changing more often. That means that it really is temporary, rather than the temporary that had become permanent. When we bought the stove, the man in the shop gave us an attachment and some small clips for the hose which has to go through the wall and outside for the gas canister. He held the items in his hand and looked around for a while until he saw a paper bag in the wastepaper basket. He emptied a coffee cup and cake wrapping out of the bag and then put our clips into it. He handed it over with a big smile and he said "I'm recycling". 1 September Tuesday Pat told me that the width of a boreen was determined by the length of a cow measured from head to tail. A farmer did not want to give up any more of his arable land than was absolutely necessary. This was considered the minimum, and the bor of the word boreen was the word for cow. Do I believe this? 31 August Monday I took a little afternoon tea break sitting in the sunshine in the green chair. The green chair is an old wicker chair which belonged to Simon's parents. We brought it here some years ago, and it has recently been moved from indoors to outdoors. It has floated around outside for a while, without ever finding a permanent place. For the last few months I have had it positioned very near to the wooden fence, just to the right of the stile. I enjoy sitting there and looking out across the hill, and down to the meadow and beyond to the foothills of the Comeraghs. Because the chair is very low to the ground, I look through the top and bottom boards of the fence. The rectangular space made by the fencing makes a frame. Most times, as I sit and look, the picture is just a very quiet landscape. I could call it a still-life. If the wind is blowing gently, I can see grass and trees and bushes moving slightly. Sometimes, Em goes out into the field and walks around. Then my landscape becomes a little film. 28 August Friday Today has been a big day for Emily. She and I walked up the old mass path in the boreen to Johnny Mackin's place and all around the old route. She has not been on this walk since early December. I have been buildiing up her leg strength with our daily Perimeter Walks and I just felt today was a good time to try something more. It was a good day for her. She flushed a pheasant, raced up and down bankings, got barked at by several dogs, looked in the gate at the Llama and met Oscar. This and loads of sniffing and peeing. Since she came home she has been sleeping on her woolly mat . She did not even wake up to let me know that it was supper time. The fact that it was autumnal and cool on this August morning meant that I could wear two long sleeved shirts and long trousers to protect me from the overgrown nettles and the brambles. I got lots of stings. My legs and arms still tingle these many hours later. I was nervous about walking past Dessie's place because I did not know how his young Staffordshire mastiff or bull terrier or whatever it is would deal with Em. I met someone before I got there who told me that the dog, whose name I never learned or chose not to remember, had become a constant problem. Everyone was afraid of it and everyone complained. Dessie's mother refused to have it back and Kenneth said he would take it but he never did. The higher the fences and the more elaborate the structures which Dessie devised to contain the him, the dog always escaped. Titch, his other small dog, was very sick for a few days and finally he decided he just couldn't deal with it all. He took the Staff to the dog shelter where the people there told him that someone would have the dog within ten minutes. He said people in the town want these scarey dogs. When Dessie came back home, Titch was dead. Apparently it was a case of poisoning, but no one could tell what kind of poison it was. Someone else further up the road lost two dogs to poisoning earlier this summer. 26 August Wednesday When Joe came to collect the cows for milking yesterday evening, he stopped his tractor up in the high corner of the field. With some kind of cutting or pulling forked device on the front of the tractor, he started to rip at the trees on the corner of the wood. It made a terrible noise. I could not imagine why he was attacking the trees. He did a bit more further up the way and then stopped, rounded up the cows and drove them away over the fields to the farm. When Em and I walked up there this morning I realized that he had been using the dead and torn trees to block off the ever widening ramps into the wood. I think of these as the entry ways for the fox, or foxes, who live in the wood. Sometimes Em and I go in there. It is very dark and there is almost no undergrowth any more as the ceiling of branches and leaves no longer let any light in. It is a gloomy wood not a dappled wood. We don't enter very often. The cows must have been climbing up the banking and going in to walk about and explore. By closing off the entrances with branches, Joe no longer risks a cow breaking a leg while trying to scramble back down the banking. 24 August Monday We finished planting a little row of Yews along side of the slate path. As with all digging here, we thought it would be a quick job. As usual,we were very wrong. The copious amounts of shale mean that every job is half digging and half scrabbling through the soil by hand pulling out rocks and stones. When we first dug out the vegetable patch some years ago, Simon promised he would do it in an afternoon. Instead, it took a week of both of us working very hard. There are three huge piles of rocky stuff beside the line of yews. Now we have to find a place that needs to be filed with these rocks. 22 August Saturday Before we went to the Saturday Market, we stopped at Keating's Cross to wait for the bicycle race to pass. We were the first to arrive and there was only a single Garda waiting at the road to stop traffic at the right moment. We had been told that the cyclists would leave Clonmel at 10, and that they would be in Ardfinnan at 10.21. These were very specific times, so we did not want to miss them. We stood in the sunshine and talked to the Garda about it all. The ride for the day was from Clonmel to Killarney, which is 196 kms, with about 8 very, very steep kilometres up the Vee before they go over the Knockmealdowns. He told us that the last vehicle in the support team would have a sweeping brush sticking up from its back to signify that it was the last of the race: The Sweeper. Apparently this is normal for every bike race but I never knew it. As we chatted, all sorts of neighbours and local acquaintances began to arrive. It became a very social event. Everyone was excited that the famous Lance Armstrong would be among the riders, but no one mentioned the names of Marco Pinotti or Mark Cavendish. We all knew that it did not really matter who is in the race as they ride so fast and pass so quickly that it is not possible to recognize any one rider. That did not stop a lot of cameras being readied. All the Garda motorcycles and the support vehicles and media cars went racing along, then came the cyclists in a dense and colourful pack, and then some more support vehicles with all the extra bikes on their roofs, and more media and an ambulance and then came The Sweeper and then it was over. As we drove on to Ardfinnan on our way to Cahir there were still lots of people dotted along the road, chatting and enjoying the sun and waving to cars that passed. 21 August Friday I feel a bit like Christopher Robin every time I walk out over the fields wearing my shorts and my rubber boots. Today we saw the fox as we reached the top corner of the far field. As usual, I do not know which of the three of us was more surprised. The fox hesitated and then raced into the woods. Em hesitated too and then she raced to the place where the fox had been. I always think that she likes to be sure that he gets away before she has any chance of getting near. 20 August Thursday Dessie has been doing a lot of work on his place. First, large piles of wooden palettes arrived and he started to make fences with them. The wooden slats were nailed on to the already existing fence. Sometimes they are just tied up to the fence with wire or with string. The idea of the new fence is to try to keep the new dog inside. He told me one day that the dog is never out and about when he is not at home. We all know that the dog is always out and running free when he is not at home. I do not know if the dog goes back into whatever place he has been assigned when Dessie comes home so that the illusion is maintained. The fencing which he is building is getting more and more elaborate. It is as if there is another building around his building. The stone wall which he knocked to make a parking place has been rebuilt very nicely. It is a rounded end to the wall and it looks good. The bumper which was off his car for a year or so and sitting on the pile of rubble is now back on his car too. 18 August Tuesday Driving out in any direction, I see that everybody has something to sell. In some areas, the roads seem to be lined with stuff. Things are outside houses and in lay-bys. Mostly, it is cars and motorcycles being offered for sale. Today I also saw a ride-on lawnmower, several car trailers, and a pair of elaborate gates with gold painted tops and an electronic opening device. There was also a long white Rolls Royce being offered for servicing weddings. Actually, I am not sure if the Rolls was being offered as a service to weddings, or if it was for sale and the seller was suggesting a possible use for a potential buyer. 17 August Monday I just found a newspaper clipping which I had saved from a few weeks ago. I still marvel about it. This is it: "Deliberations in the trial of five men accused of involvement in a 2.28 million euro 'tiger kidnapping' robbery will not begin until next week because several jurors had tickets for last night's U2 concert." 15 August Saturday The Wexford strawberry vans are everywhere. The little covered trailers are all along the sides of roads. There is never a car near the trailers so I guess they are just towed and dropped off there for the weeks of the strawberry season and used during the day as a tiny, opene ended storage place for the strawberries and whatever else is ripe and ready. The little trailers have small wheels, often painted white. I don't know if the wheels are just an axle end awaiting a tire or if these are just some very small wheels. I do not thnk they are made for going very long distances. Each trailer is white with hand painted strawberries on the outside, usually just one big berry per side. These painted berries are visible from far along the road. They are not very well painted but I do enjoy seeing the variations around the area. It would be easy to make a stencil and to have all of the strawberries look the same, but each of these strawberries is different from the others, different from the ones on the various sides of the van and different from any strawberrries further down the road. It makes it very interesting to keep an eye out for the next one. There might be another sign leaning up against something which uses painted words to offer New Potatoes, Plums or Apple Juice. Only the strawberries are given pictoral form. A young person sits in a chair beside the little trailer, usually with a book and a small table. If it is raining there is an umbrella up over the table. I am not sure how many hours the salesperson has to sit there, but on a cold rainy and miserable day, any amount of time would be too long. The salespeople never have a car or a bicycle near the stand so they must all be collected by a van at the end of the day. 12 August Wednesday Simon has made a second fig tart. The first was mixed with plums and had a very lemony crust. This one is all figs and is more like a cake. They have both been fantastic. If the figs continue to ripen at this rate we will be eating fig tarts and fig cakes every day for a month. Today Em had her yearly check up and her shot and a flea and tick dose. She is healthy and weighs in at 18.2 kilos.  We will keep at the diet to reach 17. No visible limp and she is enjoying the daily small walks. She is a new dog.  Her growing out hair gives her a rather scruffy presence these days, but it does show off her new slim shape. She liked seeing the black cat who lives at the vet's office, but she did not like having a thermometer shoved up her bottom.  Well, who would like that? 11 August Tuesday A beautiful sunny day. It has just been a perfect day. We spent a few hours filling the craters left by the invasion of the cows. We are lucky that these escapes do not happen more often. The woman reading the weather on the radio has such a terrible cold that it is difficult to understand what she is forecasting. 10 August Monday I have just learned that my laundry basket is not a laundry basket. It is an oyster basket. We saw a bit on television about the oyster beds out in Galway, and they had the exact same basket. They are made of some metal alloy and painted dark green. They appear to be made in several sizes. Some are very tall. The one I have is short. The basket is placed in the water and is heavy enough not to be pushed along by the water when it is empty. All of the openness allows the water to flow through it and the oysters are just dropped into it until it is full. When the full basket is lifted up, all the water drains out and it is just full of oysters. This explains why it is a heavier and sturdier laundry basket than any other I have ever seen or used, but I am very fond of it. Sometimes the weight of it when it is full of wet washing is nearly too much for me. I do like that I can leave it out in the rain and it never rusts. Of course, a plastic one would not rust either and it would be much lighter. 6 August Thursday The woman from the Environmental Health office came down to test the water in our well. She was outraged at the state of the boreen and was convinced that her car has been irreparably damaged by the brambles and branches. She was wearing little white ballet slipper shoes. I did not think she was very appropriately dressed for going off into rural places to take water samples. Most people who have wells do not live in the middle of towns. People in the middle of towns do not have wells, but they usually have nice tarred roads and clear access. I gently suggested all of this to her but she was not very interested. We had a bacteriological sample taken but decided to forego the chemical sample this year. The cost of the chemical test has gone from 35 euro to 100 euro. This is a shocking jump in price. Have they not heard of Border Shopping? 4 August Tuesday At about 10.30 last night there was a huge racket outside. Cows were moaning, and mooing, and the tearing and chomping of grass seemed louder than ever. We ignored it for a while, but then I looked out the window and saw the yard full of cows. They had broken out of the field into the garden. I am not sure if it was a break out or a break in. All the cows who were left out in the big field were racing about and charging the fence and making a lot of noise, while the ones in here were just eating like mad things. We rang Joe and then we both went out with sticks and torches to try to keep the cows who were here under control. Two of them raced off down the meadow. We could not figure out exactly where they had broken through, so we just tried to contain the group. It was very dark and moonless. We were lucky that they were black and white cows because the white parts made them easier to keep track of. I think there were about seven of them up here. They were delighted to be eating bamboo, and tansy, and the cherry tree. Michael arrived down the boreen in his truck and eventually Joe appeared across the fields with his tractor. I am always amazed at how many lights there can be on a tractor. It was very exciting. He used the tractor to start to round up all of the bellowing crowd on the field side of the fence. There was a really hysterical feeling out there and the cows started jumping and racing and running in many different directions. Joe's daughter and I went up the boreen and stayed near the gate there which Michael had opened. As he drove the escaped cows up towards us, our job was to send them back into the field. Simon ran down into the meadow and chased the two who were down there up and all around the house and eventually up the track with the others. It was all very relaxed and very chaotic at the same time. I loved it and I could hardly go to sleep later because I kept thinking about all of it. This morning, the grass looks like it has huge polka dots all over it. The heavy hoofs have made a real mess of the very wet lawn, and lots of things are very chewed over and ravaged, but nothing is destoyed. I expected everything to look much worse in the morning. 3 August Monday This has been an especially bleak day. We appear to be living in twilight perpetually. In perpetual twilight? The few moments of sunlight are not enough to replace the gloom. One good thing was that I found and picked the first blackberries of the year today. It was just a small handful but the taste was wonderful. Blackberries do not seem to care if they get much sun. The plants are so tough that they just grow and grow and produce without giving a damn about anything like weather. From now on I will have to take small bags or cups with me whenever I go out. I am not sure if it is just the weather but the service for our mobile phones is worse than ever. We are quite used to not being able to speak or to receive calls here, but usually texts can come and go freely. I tried to send a text today and since it would not go, I kept wandering around, first in the house and then outside. Eventually I found myself standing up on the stile at the edge of the field waving my phone back and forth in the air above my head, in the rain. The text did go. 2 August Sunday Em is walking at least twenty minutes each day. Somedays she looks like she could do more and somedays she looks exhausted by what she has done. I often go for a second walk after taking her out as twenty minutes is not enough for me. She has dropped another few grams and is now weighing in at 18.3. Today we walked on the track past an entire field of reclining cows. They saw us and suddenly they were all jumping up and running over to the fence. To a cow, they all started mooing or braying and jostling to get a good look at us. There were about 50 of them and I worried that one might get trampled in the mayhem. Joe has told me that occasionally they do kill one of their own in their excitement about something. He implied that it was usually about food. Today was about Em, and she avoided it all by skirting way away from the fence and going deep into the field on the other side of the track. 1 August Saturday There are pink rose petals in the bathtub. There is no water in the tub, just a small scattering of tiny petals. The old ceramic ink pot on the narrow shelf has a few Albertine roses and a cutting of honeysuckle in it. I put the flowers there so that they would reflect in the mirror. Now the petals in the tub have made another kind of reflection. 31 July Friday Wednesday afternoon and evening and all day Thursday passed without any rain. It was still grey and overcast but it did not rain. By early afternoon on Thursday, the sound of tractors, combines and all of the machinery for bringing in the hay and winter wheat were going. The sound of machines came from all directions and it continued into the night. At midnight we could still see lights from tractors working on the hills way across the valley. Now there are golden fields cut short with huge round bales of hay sitting out and waiting to be collected. The farmers who got their hay cut and baled yesterday must be feeling happy and maybe a bit smug, but probably more relieved than any thing else, as today the rain has been falling all day long without a break. I've never known exactly what the Pioneers were. I knew that they wore little lapel pins and that they did not drink any alcohol. That is all I knew. Now I know that they are an organisation affiliated with the Catholic Church. When young people are about to make their confirmation and communion, they are asked to sign a pledge saying that they will not drink any alcohol until they are 18 or 21. (I think it used to be one age and now it is the other). After that age they have the choice to re-make the pledge, which some people do, and some people do not. There are regular meetings of Pioneers, but they do not appear to be out and about seeking converts all the time. That is what I thought they did. They are just a church club of like-minded people. I assumed that they would never ever set foot in a bar. Apparently they sometimes join together to make up a team and to participate in pub quizzes. After 25 years of abstinance, a special pin is awarded. 30 July Thursday I keep telling myself that I need to make a bigger effort to work and think with metric measurement. I am so conditioned to think with inches, feet and miles. Although many things here are metric, nothing is consistant. For many years, all of the major road signs gave distances in kilometers, but the speed limits were still in miles per hour. Now the miles per hour are changed to kilometers per hour but the car's odometer still records our speed in miles per hour. And not all signs have been changed. On back roads, it is common to come across an old cast metal sign that will still give the distance to a destination in miles. The sign would not mention miles. For someone from somewhere else, there might be the assumption that this sign was stating kilometers. They would be wrong. At the butcher shop or the green grocers' we can order our food in either pounds and ounces, or in kilos and grams. It would be easier for me if we just had one method. If I had to desert my old ways and only use metric measurement, I would get better at it more quickly. I would have to throw away all of the rulers that are in inches, and I would buy a measuring tape that was only metric and does not offer an option. I always revert to inches when I have a chance. 29 July Wednesday Em and I took a short stroll through wet fields.. There is watery sunshine, but it is not the kind of sunshine that cheers me up. The lower parts of the fields were so wet that we simply could not walk down there. This weather is annoying. We are all tired of talking about it. We are tired of listening to the promises for more. We are tired of complaining and we are tired of listening to other people complaining. I, for one, am very tired of the word DESPERATE. Another word used in conjunction with the rain is PERSISTANT.. When the weather report says that "There will be scattered showers in the morning, clearing and giving way to persistant rain", it doesn't mean clearing in any sense that the rain will be clearing. It means that there will no longer be any clear bits, there will just be the persistant rain. In spite of all the dampness, it is warm and many vegetables are coming along well. We have been eating potatoes in a wide variety of forms. Rostii, potato and garlic soup, gnocchi, mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, and probably some more modes that I am forgetting. The courgettes have been small and few, but very delicious. The cavolo nero is fantastic and the beautiful bushy coriander plant is the bestever. The salads are doing well although I need to get some more plants started. The various red leaf lettuces are usually quite unattractive to slugs but this year there is such a boost in the slug population that they are everywhere. Washing leaves before lunch is a job for which I now need my reading glasses. When we walk down through the meadow in the evening, the mown paths are teeming with long slugs, some black, some brown, all horrible and prehistoric looking. It is impossible not to step on them. There are more than you can count, if indeed you wanted to count them. Somehow, and luckily so, these are not the ones in the vegetable garden. Or not that I have seen. Sadly, I am coming to the conclusion that it is not really a good idea to grow vegetables in Ireland without a polytunnel. It might be fine if the proposed harvest is just to be potatoes and cabbage. I am not very fond of polytunnels, but maybe I can learn to love one. 28 July Tuesday We have been on a big search for a typewriter. Once we decided to use carbon paper for a project, we had to have a typewriter. Computers can do most things that typewriters can do, but they are not made for carbon paper. Our own old Olympia was down in the book barn with a hopelessly jammed carriage. We have a few people out on the hunt for us now. Who would have thought it would be so hard to locate a typewriter. 27 July Monday I went to the dental hygenist this morning. The hygenist's room is very small. At some point someone cut a rectangular hole into the door. It looked like it was waiting to have a small window fitted. It has been like this for many years. Now, I think the idea is that the hole is just there for the air. There is a large wall clock leaning against the wall on top of the radiator. When I lie back in the chair I can tell the time by looking down between my feet. I always assumed that the clock was leaning there just waiting for someone to hang it on the wall. This has also been like this for many years. Today I noticed that the room has been freshly painted and the clock, which must have been removed for the painting, is back in its place on the radiator. 26 July Sunday If half of the cows in a field are lying down and half of the cows are standing up, we know that it will rain. If all of the cows are lying down, we know that it will rain. Probably if none of the cows are lying down, it will rain anyway. We expect nothing less at this point. This has been announced as the wettest July since records began. Em and I went through some really wet and muddy places in the lower fields today. At one point I was in water to the top of my rubber boots. Em even swam at bit. We have been extending the Perimeter Walk a little bit each day. In doing so, we found two old and gnarled hawthorn trees where there is a little path that circles around and behind each tree. When we get to these trees we both take the little turn-off route behind the tree. For a minute, or a few seconds, we are invisible from the field. It is hard to figure out how these little ways were made. Do Joe's cows walk around there the way that we do, and by repetition make these paths?. How can they go through here and not break their legs on the roots or the rocks? Do they like the feeling of being invisible the way that we do? 25 July Saturday I painted the new little fence a very soft green which makes it rest very quietly against the long grass. As I was finishing the second coat, and expecting a downpour at any minute, the men from the broadband company arrived to check up on our very erratic signal. It has been in and out all week, and making us a little bit crazy. We thought one man would arrive on Friday but when he did not we thought we would have to wait till Monday. Instead, at 6 o'clock, three huge Landrovers arrived with great long ladders on two of the vehicles. There was one Irish man, and four Polish men (Foreign Nationals). One of the guys went into the house with Simon to check on the computer and to attempt re-setting the signal. Another one of them fetched a pair of binoculars which were eighteen inches long, the longest ones I have ever seen. He was trying to make sure that our Line of Sight was still working. We recieve our signal off Michael Hickey's roof just over into County Waterford. These radio signals bounce all down the country from place to place. We still find it amazing that we can even get it here in this valley. The Irish man, who was huge and fat, walked around outside smoking cigarettes and the other two Polish guys came out of the house and started to ask me about finding mushrooms in the area. They said they try to stop in woods and forests on their way home every night to forage for mushrooms. They like to get at least enough for that nights' supper. They cannot believe that the Irish seem to have no interest in finding mushrooms. They said this is a national family activity in Poland. I was pretty useless at directing them to a source. Later, I realized that they must have noticed the copy of La Cuisine des Champignons en 200 Recettes which was lying on the table in the big room. That is why they thought I might know where to look. They managed to get the Broadband sorted without using any ladders. 24 July Friday I have spent parts of the last two days painting grey rain on blue card. I am making a postcard version of my windscreen wipers, but this time I am painting the rain with a brush instead of with spray. I got the colour right so that it is not clear which colour is painted on to which colour. It is a pleasing bit of illusion. The rain outside is lashing down off and on as I work. Whichever direction I painted my rain was okay. It is all realism with the wind blowing and thrashing it around. 23 July Thursday The newest offer from the world of supermarkets is what is called Border Shopping. For several years now, people from the Republic have been driving over the border into Northern Ireland to do their shopping. Everything there is much cheaper. In the last year, with the English pound dropping and the Euro getting stronger, there were buses being hired to take loads of people up from Dublin to Belfast and Newry. Sometimes the buses were free. Everyone returned laden with bargains and savings. Many of the savings were at stores which have branches on both sides of the border. It became increasingly hard for them to justify these enormous price discrepencies, especially when some of them really like to market themselves as being Irish companies. The first sign of change was when some stores dropped their euro prices to the same level as pound prices for an area as far as 15 miles south of the Northern border. That prompted questions for the rest of the country. If the prices can be lower there then why not here? Now we have this treat called Border Shopping being offered. And here we are, nearly 200 miles south of the border. It does not excuse the rampant inflation of everything else down here but maybe it is a start. I fear it won't last. 22 July Wednesday Maisie's house is gone. I walked up by there the other day and saw that the slate roof and all of the windows had been removed. I thought this meant that the house would be retained, and rebuilt. But the entire building is gone now and there are two large piles of rubble off to one side. The rubble was the house and now it is just rubble. Maisie Gleason lived there for a long time. I don't know exactly how long but I think it was a very long time. She was the housekeeper for Tom Cooney's aunt and uncle. When they died they left Tom all of the land and the house. He told Maisie that she could stay there for as long as she wanted and needed. When she died a few years ago, she was 93. By the time she died, she had an enormous number of cats living inside with her. I had the impression that she and the cats lived mostly in the kitchen but I never went inside to verify this. The smell was impossible. I usually spoke to her from outside the kitchen door or from outside the gate on the road. When she invited me in, I always made excuses about being in a hurry. The smell of cat pee, both old and new, was overwhelming, even from outdoors. I gag now just thinking about it. When I consider the permeating quality of these smells maybe it is better that the house was torn down. Still, I feel sad that another old building has disappeared and will most likely be replaced by something awful and ugly. Thinking of Maisie reminds me of how consistently surprising and interesting it is to be surrounded by women with names like Maud and Maisie, Fidelma and Geraldine, Breda and Philomena. Some of these are the names of saints but some are just old-fashioned names. They are names which never stopped being in fashion here. I never thought I would know people with these names. Actually, I never thought of these names at all. Many years ago we were at Cork airport about to go somewhere, and we realized that my ticket was incorrectly written. It was for a Breda Van Horn, and of course, the name did not match my passport We phoned the travel agent and asked for an explanation and hopefully for an immediate solution to the dilemma. Her immediate response was: But don't you have a Breda in your house? 21 July Tuesday Five days of the joyful Perimeter Walk, and suddenly Em has started to limp a little. Where has this come from? It must be cat chasing as the walk has been the same and gentle. No walk tomorrow. I shall give her a rest. We came up from the meadow in the evening and stopped to watch a crow climbing up the slates of the roof. It clawed its way up and then slid back down. This went on a for quite a few tries. Em got bored before I did and she went inside to have her night time biscuits. I could not figure out why the bird did not just fly up to the top of the roof, instead of this slipping slipping on the wet slates. 20 July Monday The intermittant rain has become annoying. The sunny moments are beautiful, hot and drying, but the rain is winning and we are all sick of it. Desperate is the word. The Irish do not have 300 words for rain. They have DESPERATE and SOFT. There are probably a few more that I can't think of right now, but those are the two most used around here. The farmers are very fed up and there is a lot of concern about getting enough hay and silage in to get their cows through the winter. There is less and less money each time an animal or a pint of milk is sold. Someone told me that a farmer has to sell of six pints of milk to get the price of one pint of Guinness. 19 July Sunday Simon finished the two tables that he has been working on. The repaired big table on the grass now has strengthened legs and a new top of some wide and well seasoned boards which had been being saved for just the right thing. He built a whole new table for the patio. The patio is not really a patio by any one else's standards. It is just a concrete platform that connects to the floor of the former milking shed. When we were removing walls in what is now The Big Room, there was a huge amount of rubble, three walls worth, to get rid of. It was big work to get it all out of the house.We had to decide whether to take it down the hill and bury it in a pit, or what to do with it. Finally, Simon and Tom Browne made a frame and put all the rubble into it and then poured cement into the frame so that we have a platform on the edge of the slope, with a fantastic view down the valley. It is a completely different place to sit than at the table on the grass. We haven't used the patio for a while as it's table was so old and weather-worn that it drooped in the middle and felt to be on the verge of collapse. The new tabletop is made up of some odd lengths of larch which were left over from the walls of The Big Room. Simon keeps telling me that it is very Japanese. I don't think it is even vaguely Japanese but it is a good and strong table and I like how it gives the patio a new life. The two sections of wooden fence which were the mainstay of Em's non-functioning holding pen are attached (how?) to the end of the downhill side of the patio, with a space between them to walk through. We will have to make a step as the drop off from the platform is a bit steep and before this opening became so inviting, no one would have ever gone that way. Now it is an invitation to a broken ankle or leg. At least we can sit at the new table and drink a coffee while we discuss how to best make one step or two steps. 18 July Saturday After the Farmers' Market, we stopped at the vet's to buy a new sack of Low Fat Dog Food and to weigh Em. 18.5 kilos is the good news. 18.5 kilos and no limp. All the news is good news. Suddenly 17 kilos does not seem like an impossible goal. We walked another round of the Perimeter Walk. I think we will continue this for a week, and then extend the journey a bit. She is a bit tired even at the end of this very short route. By walking this way, so close to the edges of these fields I have located some fantastic places for blackberry picking. There are masses of flowers with the promise of a lot of berries in a month or so, and the access is easy and low to the ground compared to many of my usual locations. 17 July Friday I took Em for a small walk this morning. It was her first walk since early December, not counting the Kerry walk. We went to the top corner of the High Field and then down the dirt track for a while and we circled back along the edges. This is the walk I call the Perimeter Walk as it is just that. It is a good walk for a late winter afternoon when it is almost dark but I just need a bit of a stretch. It seemed a good walk on soft terrain for a small dog who couldn't believe her luck to actually be off for a real walk, somewhere out and beyond. She wanted to keep going and going, but we want to keep the progress slow and gentle. No limp visible! 15 July Wednesday I met a woman out walking with her dog today. I did not recognize her and thought she might be new in the area. We spoke a little and I found that she is not new, but that she has just taken to walking in a bigger loop from her house. I knew her family and their fields and it was interesting to put her into context. She knew me by sight and knew our house. She said Ah, yes, you are the people who live in the house with words on it. I was interested that that is how our house is described. We have three of Simon's poems letttered on the exterior walls. THE IVORY VEINS OF IVY is now obliterated by ivy, but still, we know it is there. The large (22 inches high) metal letters of Hotel Metropole go around the corner on the boreen side of the house. We saw these in a skip in Cork many years ago and thought they were too good to go to waste. When Jenna was about to open a shop, we tried to get her to create the shop name from some of these letters, but she wasn't interested in the offer. She named her shop Atomic Age, instead. The shop didn't last long and the letters are still here. 13 July Monday The potatoes were good. I cannot say that they were the best potatoes that I have ever eaten, but they were good and not very floury. They had a fine taste and that unmistakeable freshness of just dug potaotes. I think we probably could have been eating them for several weeks now, but I just sort of forgot about checking up on them. Now I thinkI should probably dig them all up so that they don't rot or get eaten by slugs and bugs. Storing them somewhere cool and dark is the question. I fear the mice might find them in the shed. I have to think this one through carefully. Once, years ago, we stored three big crates of apples in the book barn before it was finished. We were away when the mice found them. They ate every single one. We are keeping a careful eye on the fig tree. The figs so far are really big, but there will be a moment in their ripening when we are in big competition with the birds to see who will get the most fruit. So far, we have never had particularly good ones for eating as they are always a little bit woody. This is Tipperary. I think it is astonishing that we can grow any figs at all here. So far they have always been fantastic for cooking. There is the promise of a lovely fig tart in the very near future. 12 July Sunday All day long we have gone back and forth between bucketing, lashing, hard rain and glorious hot, hot sun. The wildness and intensity of each kind of weather reminds us yet again of our life on an island. Surprisingly, we managed to get quite a lot done outside, as the sun was so warming and the breezes were so thoroughly drying. Simon started work on converting the huge old outdoor table into a newer slightly less huge version of the table. I already love it. We trimmed the overhanging roses and blackberries and nettles that were lashing at cars as they drove down the boreen, causing the postman to complain. It was getting a bit dangerous as with an open window, you might have your face torn by a thorny intrusion. We wandered up one side and down the other as far as the farm, using just clippers and garden shears. It is about half a kilometer each way. We did it in three installments between showers. And this after Simon did a big job with the strimmer just a month ago. Later there will be the man and a big tractor hedge cutting machine job, but for now, this makes daily passage possible. I guess we will need to do the other bit, between the farm and the road too. Em has been busily chasing both the fox and a cat and she has been running and running with no sign of her limp. I dug up the first of my potatoes and filled a huge bucket. I know they are going to be floury and that I will probably be terribly disappointed when I finally eat them, but for now I am nearly exploding with pride and I keep detouring to the kitchen just to admire them in their soil covered state. 11 July Saturday There has been torrential rain ever since the early afternoon. Flood Alerts are in effect all over the country. We took a sauna this evening and I walked out to it with an umbrella. My shoulders were hunched and I was cold in my dressing gown, and wishing that I was not outside. By the time I walked back from the heat, I did not feel anything but good and the rain felt refreshing and lovely. 9 July Thursday The Polish, Latvians aand Lithuanians who have been living and working in Ireland for the past few years are always referred to in the news as Foreign Nationals. I am not sure about the reason for this. I do not think that a French or German or English person working here is called a Foreign National. In fact, all of these people are part of Europe. Maybe the fact that these newer Europeans are still more foreign-seeming is why they get a special form of description. There is a spot beside the river in Cahir where some of the Foreign Nationals regularly gather and drink beer. Sometimes I think they do some fishing there too. There used to be big piles of empty aluminum drink cans at the base of the wall. Now someone puts black bin liners on a home-made device by the wall and on a Saturday morning when we go to the market and walk along that river path, there are usually two bags already full and neatly tied at the top and two more bags fitted into the hanging devices. This may be the same for every morning. The term Foreign Nationals is just a way to clump them all together as most of us cannot tell the difference between a Polish person or a Latvian. There seem to be a number of Moldovians locally too. 29 June Monday ALL THE OLD THINGS ARE GONE NOW AND THE PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT. We have had this quote from Jonathan Williams up on the blackboard for more than a year now. I wrote it there at some time in the months after Jonathan died. We were both reading a lot of his work. We were going back and finding favourite bits and discovering new things. We would point out passages or poems to each other as if one person would not find that exact thing unless the other of us made a point of directing them to it. It was a way of feeling that conversation with Jonathan was still happening and that that conversation would continue. I think this was something that he wrote about his own father's death. Already I have forgotten it's context, but I look up often, re-read it, and I feel time passing. 28 June Sunday The weather just continues to be wonderful. Dessie, at Mary Corbett's old cottage (The Murder Cottage) has got all sorts of things growing on the dry stone wall in front of the house. First he had Grow Bags opened and distributed along the top. These are large bags of soil that are made to be split open and used for the growing of tomatoes or whatever. I gather they are planned to have just the right sort of a mixture of soil in them so that there is no need for a transplant to a pot or a bed. I don't know if they have holes in the bottom for drainage or how the excess water gets out. I do not think they are designed to be on such display. They are just desigend to be useful in a particular kind of place. The bright printed plastic is very gaudy lined up along a stone wall, and really there is no need for flowers in them as all you can see is the bag. Anyway, he has had his very colourful flowers growing along the wall in these Grow Bags with a black plastic plant pot in between each bag. Just the other day he put long pieces of wood along the sides of each Grow Bag, I don't know if this was to cover up the noisy looking plastic or if it was to keep the bags from toppling off the wall. The back fender of his car is still on the heap of rubble along with an old gate and lots of roots and rocks. The car without its bumper looks a little naked from behind. 26 June Friday Em continues to move well. She is favouring the bad leg only a tiny bit and not too often. We see it early in the morning or when she has been a little too active, with a visiting dog or after pursuing the wild cats who come down the boreen to investigate things here. We are still barricading the sofa at night so that she can't climb up onto it. I think that the half sleepy push to get up or down from there was an unnecessary strain on the healing ligament. A few more weeks of no walks and then we will slowly begin to give her more exercise. She was very nice today when I smashed my head coming out from under the lean-to too fast. I fell hard onto the ground, crying and clutching my head. After a few minutes of noisy sobbing, I was reduced to a quiet cry. I felt her warm body pressing against my side. She waited very gently for the ten minutes or so until I opened my eyes. She had placed her rubber hamburger just beside my face so that it would be the first thing I would see when I opened my eyes. 24 June Wednesday The long bench outside of my workroom was a good idea. When we made it, we planned it for sitting and for admiring the view from a pleasing vantage point. The deep overhang of the eaves means the bench is protected from most rain. It spans the length of the front of the building between the two doors. It is five and a half metres long and a little bit higher than I would like. When I sit on it, my feet dangle off the ground. It ended up a bit high because when the blacksmith came with the metal brackets he had made, he had to put them into the stone wall in a place where the wall would take them. There was a bit of lumpiness down near the bottom so the bench got higher off the ground. The smooth wooden boards make a wide and comfortable surface, but in spite of the generosity of the width, the bench seems to be used for everything except sitting. Underneath it has become one of our firewood storage places. It is a good and protected spot for wood, and what is stored there now is dry and will be ready for next winter. I use the bench as a kind of table, an extension of my workroom. Right now, I have lined up a fine selection of the rusted objects I have found and collected, both here and from up above at Johnny Mackin's old place. It looks as if I might be opening a little shop. We spent a lot of time as children making shops to sell groceries. We emptied my mothers cupboards of the cans and containers. We made labels for empty boxes and assorted packages to further fill our shelves. I do not remember ever getting to the point where we sold anything to anyone. The whole activity was about setting up the shop. My line-up of rusty things is for no purpose. It is just nice to see them together and to admire them as I walk past. Sometimes I bring things inside to make drawings of them. There are a few carved pieces of slate at the far end of the bench. Two of them are square shapes with letter carved permutations of the Ivy poem. The long tall one is Aerial Propaganda. These are works of Simon's which he leaned up against the wall at some moment and they have been here ever since. The wall is very fine. It is a white wall made by mixing cement with a fine white sand. It is whiter than a white from paint and different from a white painted with lime. The wall is luminous. The bench is a bit high and the view is lovely, if and when I choose to sit down. 23 June Tuesday I found a pigeon beside the road as I walked out this morning. I stopped to look at it to see if it was hurt and to ask why it was walking. I went up very close and it did not seem nervous or frightened or eager to get away. It just continued an unhurried little movement through the verge. As I looked more closely I saw that it had two little bands with numbers, one on each leg. One band was yellow and one was orange. I think these are the identification bands for Homing Pigeons. I don't know if this bird was lost or just resting. She did not seem to be wounded in any way. I tried to think if I know anyone who is a Pigeon Fancier, so that I could ask what to do, but I don't, so I continued my journey and I assume that she continued hers. 22 June Monday Yesterday was the Summer Solstice. It was the longest day and it was a lovely day. It was still brightly light at 10.30 in the evening, and after that the light just dropped slowly slowly until it was night. This summer just seems to be progressing from one pleasant day to another. So much of the horrific heavy rain that has been threatened has not come and that which does come is often at night and just exactly what we need. The breezes in the daytime, which are cooling and comfortable, are drying out the soil a bit more than we might like. After all of my manic haste to get the Elderflowers gathered and made into the cordial syrup, I look around now at masses of beautiful blossoms in every direction. There was absolutely no need to rush. They are everywhere and they are beautiful. Alexanders have replaced the Cow Parsley in the hedgrows. In one way they are not so different from Cow Parsley but in fact, they are completely different. I love the delicate flowers and stems of the Cow Parsley. Alexanders are so sturdy and clunky in comparison. I understand the stems can be peeled, and cooked like asparagus and eaten, but we have yet to try this. It is an interesting fact but still does not make me any fonder of them. All of these umbel blossoms at the same time. They are so varied and all white. The wild honeysuckle in the hedgerows is rampant too. As I walk in the narrow confines of the boreen the heavy sweet smell makes me dizzy. Bringing even the smallest bunch of the honeysuckle into the house fills the room with perfume. The Eternal Flame still burns. We really got this one wrong. 21 June Sunday We use the simple wooden table outside the kitchen door as an extension of the kitchen. Simon used it to open oysters today. Often it is where something taken off the stove is put to cool. We eat on this table, but only for lunch and only when it is just the two of us. The other two outdoor tables are better places for eating outside and for being in the open and for having a view. We store things on this table. We pod peas while sitting on the bench there, and we sort salad leaves. The first kitchen door table was made out of a wooden pallet, but this one is built with pieced together planks of wood. It is strong and probably a little bit big for it's location. We simply cannot live without it. I wonder often how other people manage without such an outdoor table. People who have bigger kitchens probably don't need an outdoor table. I don't think this is just about need. We really like doing kitchen jobs outside. 20 June Saturday I have all of these things which I mean to ask people about at various times. I should carry my list around with me and look at it carefully and choose who to ask about what. I don't know who I could ask about the blinds. Everywhere there are scalloped blinds in the windows of houses. Sometimes they are a repeat scalloped shape, and sometimes they are a scallop and a wave-like shape intermixed. They never seem to be just straight-edged blinds. They are almost always white, or light coloured. If the house is a bungalow, the blinds are pulled down to a height about one quarter of the way down the window. This height is repeated in every window all across the front of the house. Every blind is at exactly the same height and the line is even all across the house. If the house has two-stories, the blinds upstairs and downstairs will all be at the same level. Is this a discussed and long decided plan? Do people talk about it or do they just do it? Every house is sporting their decorative blinds at the same height. Every house has the same variations of decorative blinds. If someone has their blinds up and down at all higgledy piggedly heights, does it mean their world will think less of them? Do people really care this much to conform like this? Heaven knows how far down the order we must be since our house is without any blinds at all. 19 June Friday The Eternal Flame is STILL going. This bottle of gas just refuses to run out. And as long as it continues, we can only continue to marvel and to comment on it each time it makes another pot of coffee or cooks another supper. We may need to take bets on how much longer it will last. I have begun to take Em down the meadow again at night. Every since we were in Kerry where she had both a good walk and a little swim, her leg seems to be better. That was the first real walk she has had since December and I was fearful that she would be nearly crippled again the next day. She was a little bit limpy, but after one day she recovered and now she is like a new dog. We are still not taking her for every day walks. I think we will give this a few more weeks, but going down and through the meadow at night is a big and exciting step. Each time we go out, she goes only as far as the vegetable bed and then turns to look at me. When I nod or say yes, she takes off like a mad thing and barks and races down and around. She is so happy to have this ritual back in her life. So am I. I like to examine the various trees and the growing apples. I like to admire the wildflower meadow which is truly wonderful this year. There is a lot of sniffing around that she does. I guess I am just sniffing around too. Sometimes we both end up back at the top at the same time, and sometimes one of us has to wait for the other. We are back to our old habits exactly as if not a day had been missed. 18 June Thursday I drove along the valley road from Clogheen back to Newcastle. At a house near to the turn off for the Vee, there was a sign saying FUNERAL IN PROGRESS GO SLOW. There were lots of cars parked on both sides of the narrow road near a house, but not another house nor a hearse nor a graveyard anywhere nearby. Perhaps this was the wake. I asked in Newcastle who had died out Goatenbridge way. Rose thought it might be a certain woman, but Seamus corrected her and said No, she can't be dead because she's dead already. 17 June Wednesday I forgot to note that Em had her yearly haircut on 5 June. It is almost two weeks now since I took her to Debbie. The shock has worn off for us, but each time someone sees her who has not seen her for a while, we are reminded at how foolish and different she looks. Her ears seems very long and pointed and with her new svelte-ish shape, people often think we have a new dog. She is a lot cooler in the heat and seems to move differently. I never get this business of CALL and RING right. When I say to someone that I will call later, I mean that I will telephone but they think that I mean that I will drop by or call in. They say, Oh, no need to call, just give us a ring. 16 June Tuesday We took down the little fenced-in prison around Em's house today. We have not even bothered to try to shut her in for many weeks now. The door has been dangling open and she has been wandering in and out of her house through the little pen, just ignoring it. It all looked so ugly and the grass inside was long and there was a huge wildflower that was becoming a shrub and blocking her entry and exit a bit. I can never remember the name of this one. It has long narrow leaves and becomes more and more of a shrub the more years that it grows in one spot. The flowers are purple and a little bit thistle like, but not prickly. They are soft and I really should remember the name. I will remember, but not now. The complete failure of a holding pen is gone. The grass is trimmed. The wildflower stays the same but now she just veers a little to the right as she leaves the door of her house in order to miss it. She does like being in her house at moments during the day, and spends a lot of time in there if it is raining. She takes a lot of things like yoghurt pots and rubber toys inside with her. Over the years I have put a lot of photographs of other people's dogs in there on the right hand wall. On the left are photos of cats. It is more of an office than a house as she never sleeps there at night. It is just somewhere to go during the day. 15 June Monday Last night I strained and bottled up the cordial. I ended up with nine bottles of half a litre each. The ninth bottle is not quite full. Simon printed my labels for me with the drawing of a single blossom which I use every year. This time we gave the label a greenish tint which is nice, but not so nice that I would do it again. Also I must remember to make the labels a little bigger next year. But these are fine and I cut them up and glued them onto the bottles. As always, I rubber stamped the date onto the labels, and noted that the stamp had not been used since my last years' batch which was made on 20 June 2008. When we offered some cordial to someone recently, we had to explain that only a small amount is poured into the glass and then water, plain or sparkling, is added to taste. This man asked if I was planning to sell the cordial. I said no, it is just for us and for our friends. He was completely confused as to why in the world I would make such a carefully printed label if I was not planning to sell it. I was obviously talking to the wrong person, otherwise I might have been able to say that making the labels is just about my favourite part of the process. I do enjoy lining up the neatly labelled bottles and admiring my work and feeling the same feeling of wealth that a well stacked pile of wood gives me. The Eternal Flame still burns. 13 June Saturday At the end of the afternoon, I heard the weather and then checked the forecast for the week. We are promised ceaseless rain and wild winds. I feared for my cordial making and decided that I must rush out and pick the flowers immediately in the bright sunlight. I have always been told that picking the blooms in overcast conditions results in the cordial tasting like cat pee. I don't know if this is true or not but this is not a risk that I want to take. As usual, the blossoms, which look to be everywhere, are very hard to reach. I was wearing rubber boots and shorts and most of the bushes were surrounded by great high growths of nettles. There was too much bare leg for so many nettles. It was not easy to get my sixty blooms but I finally did it by wandering out of the fields and a long way up the boreen and even out onto the road. Two batches have been made and are now soaking in a bowl for 24 hours. 12 June Friday We boxed up my little edition of ten Rosemary plaques. The cardboard boxes were a little deeper than they should have been so after a long look around we found some spongy green rubber material which was just perfect as padding and filler. There were two different kinds of this matting kind of stuff and it took a while before we remembered what we had bought it for. We have a wooden chair which Roger Ackling made in 1982. The chair has long narrow slits cut into it, and originally it had some green rubbery material woven in and out of the openings on both the back and the seat. The material eventually cracked and these two kinds of rubber that we found were bought in the hopes of re-weaving and replacing the original, but the two versions bought were both too fat for the slots. So now we are reminded once again to try to repair the chair but meanwhile my enamel plaques have nice little beds of rubber. I sort of wish I would put a photograph of the plaque in here but I am not sure how to add photos into this journal. If I start to fill this up with photographs, I shall probably become lazier about describing things. 11 June Thursday Back this evening from a few days in Kerry where the sun was shining. The threatened rain has still not arrived. We stopped in at Rose's before arriving home. We bumped into Paddy there and listened to his anger about the changes in the world at large, and more specifically in his world. He spoke of going out with the dog in the early morning and not hearing any of the starting up sounds of machinery. This, to him, says the most about the lack of work in construction and the recession biting. The quarries are quiet. He said Daphne is most obsessed with the rubbish that is being dumped in the woods. People are trying to save money by any means possible so they are trashing the woods rather than paying bin charges or driving to the dump. Since they don't walk there, they do not give a damn. She is very depressed by it all. Her beautiful and peaceful world is being violated. I am noticing how many men I see walking children to and from school or pushing prams, or in the grocery store with small children in tow. This has not been a weekday sight here until very recently. 8 June Monday The landscape is suddenly full of the ripe blooms of elderflower. They look like huge gatherings of polka dots. The creamy yellowish white blossoms, while looking beautiful, threw me into a panic. I have not done a thing to get ready for the making of my Elderflower Cordial. I went into two different pharmacies in Cahir to buy Citric Acid. I needed to get enough for two batches so that meant 75 grams for each batch. I had 30 grams left from last year, so in fact I only needed 120 more. One shop had one container of 50 grams. I bought that and went down the street to another shop where they had several containers, this time 100 grams each. I have never been able to buy my supply from one place and every single pharmacy sells it in a different quantity. Sometimes it is in pots of 60, and sometimes 80 and this year 50 and 100. Now my big question is do I use the 30 grams left from last year or just go quickly and easily with the 100 + 50 and leave my 30 grams for another time? This is like a mathemetical exam question. After all these years in Britain and Ireland, I have still never bothered to learn to weigh things for baking or cooking. I revert to cups and tablespoons or I just wing things by eye. The Eternal Flame is still burning. More than four weeks ago, we bought a new canister of gas for the kitchen stove as we thought it was almost empty and Simon did not want to run out while cooking dinner for visiting friends. It has gone on and on and on and still it has not run out. Every time we use it we remark on it yet again. 7 June Sunday After yesterday's torrential rain and the promise of more to come in the week, I thought I should get everything that was still in a small pot or planting tray out and into the garden. Some of the plants were really struggling to stay alive in the pots. The coming rain and cold might kill them but at least they will die out in the real world. I worked in a frenzy for a lot of the afternoon expecting to be rained on at any point. The rain never came and I got everything into the soil. The onions which were planted many weeks ago are doing really well, but for someone who has never grown onions before I now have a sizeable plantation. The little bulbs were sent by a friend in France and I felt I had to plant every single one of them, since she had taken the trouble to post them. I must look up some things about onions. I don't know how you know when they are ready since everything is happening underground. And the dreaded floury potatoes are doing well. There is a lot of salad, probably too much with all I put in today, but no doubt the slugs will get a bit of that. I put little plastic collars around each little plant to protect it for the start. These same little collars, cut from plastic water bottles come out every year. Since we almost never buy water or drinks in plastic bottles, it took me ages to build up such a collection and at the end of each planting year I put them all away and then get them out again in the spring. 6 June Saturday All this rain! It is a shock. We have had ten days of hot, dry and sultry weather. It has been the kind of weather that almost immediately feels like normal. It feels like it will always be like that. It has been hard to do much, especially out doors. Having this wretched cold gave me further cause to just stop. I couldn't do anything anyway. Now the rain has arrived and suddenly that too feels normal. This too feels like it will always be like this. 1 June Monday We sat out in the still warm evening sun with three friends last night. We moved chairs every once and a while as bits of shade fell upon us. We ate walnuts and then oysters. We drank beer or wine or elderflower cordial, according to taste. We discussed the very rectangular and handsome woodpile which we used on this years' New Year's card. It was right near us in the garden and it had a really large convex bulge in it. We could not help but notice and comment on it. Simon reassured us that it was stable and that it was three logs deep and not going anywhere, or at least not till the winter when the wood might be dry enough and ready to use. In spite of this reassurance, no one wanted to sit very close to it. We woke up this morning to find logs all over the grass. The pile had collapsed (or exploded) in the night. It is much too hot to re-stack it. 8 May Friday We are waking at 5 am everyday with a cacaophony of birdsong. It is an extraordinary amount of noise and a high contrast from the tearing of grass which is the cow sound. That is really quiet in comparision to this bird chatter. I should be calling it the dawn chorus but it is too raucous for a chorus. Right after breakfast, we had a swift in the kitchen flapping against the window and desperate to get out. It was quite a feat to get her out from behind the parsley plant and the water glasses full of lovage and dill, but we did it. Em was so excited by it all. Lots of bird action in every direction. I found a circle of woven hair and moss and sticks on the ground outside my room. This little mat was seven inches in diameter. It was mostly Em's hair, very beautifully formed together to make this part of a nest. The birds must have found the hair in the compost heap as that's where the big clumps go after a brushing. I put it back up onto the grass roof in the hopes that it will be re-found and re-incorporated into a home. 6 May Wednesday Election posters have begun to appear all around the countryside. Distances are long and some people travel far but others stay right near their homes. It is a big job for the politicians and hopefuls to get their name and face out and about. Most of the posters appear on trees and telephone poles. Sometimes they are stuck in the ground on a stick. My preferred solution to this is the little tent-like structure on a tiny trailer. The trailer is left beside a road somewhere and the two sides of the tent have a poster on each side so that they can be read from opposite directions. After a few days someone collects the little trailer and drives it to another spot for more exposure. I think the element of surprise works with this mode of advertising because just when you get used to the trailer and its candidate being there, it is gone. You might see it somewhere else, but you might not. 5 May Tuesday A man on the radio was talking about the economic situation and he said, It's another example of the old saying about Playing Handball against a Haystack. 4 May Monday The wild winds and bright sky of today have been fantastic. Once again we are reminded that we live on an island, even us here in our valley surrounded by mountains. Its a different kind of wind than usual. I am sure the direction would explain it but to me it is just everywhere and there is excitement in the air because of it. The cow parsley is back and starting to bloom. I am happy to have this white froth along the roads and paths again. 3 May Sunday In this unofficial competition to grow two kinds of potatoes, neither of which I want to grow because they are both floury and I hate floury, I have to report that the British Queens are doing really well. The Great Scotts are not even visible yet. I don't want either of them, but still, I can't help but feel proud as they appear. A long day of work in the garden. All day there was the threat of rain, so I just kept working, expecting to be interrupted at any moment. Since the rain never came, I never got to stop so I am really exhausted now. I am deeply deeply tired. There has been so much rain and everything is so sodden, that each day of dry sunshine feels like a week. Even an hour here and there feels good. The nights are still cold. I have lots of little plants in trays and I still do not dare to leave them outside over night. I cannot list all of what I did today. The garden just continues to finds work for me even as I set out to do completely other things. It would be good to get the rest of that manure spread on things in the next few days. I transplanted some more of the wild primroses from up the boreen. They are doing well along the edges of walls and in hidden places. One of my major activity seems to have become to provide sanctuary for wild things. I am moving them around and letting them proliferate and take over. An aspiration towards disheveled nature. The wild garlic is really thriving. I moved that in last year and have added some more just now. It would be fine to have the whole meadow full of it. The smell is fantastic, especially when stepped on. The taste is green, fresh and sharp. The wild teazels are rampant after a few years now. They move themselves about with complete freedom and with great authority. I can see where they have positioned themselves for this year. Simon is making a soup of green peas and nettles and lovage for supper. What could be nicer? 2 May Saturday I received a message from the Warden at the US Embassy in Dublin today. There are various bits of warning and advice about Swine Flu. Does every embassy send out this kind of information to their citizens abroad? I do not like being on their mailing list. It feels like an invasion into this quiet vallley. Often I get warnings about places that I should not travel to, even when I had no plans to travel. 30 April Thursday I was in Cork today for a few appointments. I try never to visit the town without stopping in to buy two rolls of SilverMints from the tiny shop on the corner. The old man who runs it is even now the same degree of ancient as he was when I first visited. It is a small, dark and narrow room with candy, cigarettes and not a whole lot else available for sale. There is often another elderly man inside with him when I stop in. One of them behind the counter and one on the customer side. They pretty much fill up the place. I usually feel that I am interrupting a conversation when I enter, but I also feel that they do not mind the interruption. It is gloomy because of lack of light but it is a pleasant place. The street outside is changing all the time, with new shops and building projects and scaffolding as close as right next door. I do not know how this shop has survived and not been squeezed out. It feels nearly invisible with all of the rushing and movement outside its door. I worry that no one goes in. My small very occasional purchases will not keep the shop afloat. 23 April Thursday Em is limping less. We weighed her again. 19.1. Still a long way from 17 kilos. She still behaves as though we are starving her. The enameled pot on the floor beside the Rayburn is where we brush the crumbs from the toast which we make on the hot plate. When she is feeling very starving and hard done by, and wants to let me know, she goes to the crumb jar and snuffles around in it for a long time. She snuffles for much longer than there are ever crumbs in the pot. MEDICAL HALL is a name for the pharmacy. I always feel that it sounds very grand. I am not sure if there used to be a doctor on hand at a Medical Hall, or if it was just a name to imply the serious nature of its interior and contents. Were all pharmacies called Medical Halls? Another thing to ask someone about. 22 April Wednesday I was on my way to the hospital in Kilkenny and I was late and I did not know where the hospital was. I stopped at a petrol station and asked the girl at the counter for directions. She had no idea where it was. A postman came in so I asked him for directions. He gave me a direct and simple route to get there. Even I could not get lost and I got there on time for my appointment. As I was leaving through the main entrance about two hours later, someone tapped me on the shoulder and said hey, hello! It was the postman. He was delighted that I had gotten there okay and just wanted to tell me that. 21 April Tuesday I managed to walk past Dessie's without any dog action. I noticed that the pile of rock and soil and rubble which was pushed aside for his parking place is now topped with the back bumper of his car. He had it tied on with string for quite a long time. I am not sure if he just backed into the pile and the bumper fell off or if the string gave out and he threw it there just as a place for it to be. 20 April Monday The coracle painted on the rock at the end of the boreen has been worn away by the ricochet of pebbles shot from the road. 19 April Sunday We went to the Farmers' Market in Cahir yesterday. It has been a while since we got there as we have been attending the Clonmel Market instead. Jim and Keith wanted us to explain how it was there and to find out what the competition was like. We tried to explain some things, but did not tell them that the organic vegetables are much better in Clonmel. That would make them sad, as they are the vegetable men in Cahir. We do love the friendliness of this market. The small physical space and the open attitudes of all the people make it a very welcoming place. There is an elderly man who only started there last year. He usually has a few boxes of eggs and some potted plants. I asked if he would like me to save some egg boxes for him, otherwise I would just be putting them onto the compost heap. He said yes, I would be happy to have more boxes if you think to bring them, but both are nice things to do with an egg box. I used to take empty jam jars to Mary, the cake and jam lady. After a while she would pick through whatever I had brought and reject any that were not her exact kind of jar. Some days I was leaving with as many jars as I came with so I have stopped taking jars to her. She doesn't seem to mind. She probably has a shed full of jars by now anyway. When we buy a jar of jam from her, the jar is carefully placed in an empty sugar bag. This same Mary is a huge fan of Grieg. She has made several trips to Norway. The trips are pilgrimmages. She goes to sit on Grieg's bench and to hear Grieg's piano being played. She knows every piece of music he has written and her eyes light up when she speaks of him. 17 April Friday Em has been very stinky lately. She rolled in some manure out in the field. I gave her a wash and cut off some of the clumpy and horrible bits of matted excrement and hair. It all seemed better but there was still a whiff of something sort of dead about her. It was an occasional smell, only coming in whiffs here and there, so we thought it was most likely going to disappear soon. This morning I looked into her house and saw a dead crow in the corner. The crow must have zoomed in and knocked himself out as he hit the back wall. I can't imagine that killing him, but I can't imagine Em killing him either. She is only interested in birds like starlings and swallows which swoop and dive. She races on the ground and barks at them, but she has no interest in catching them. Maybe the crow was just killed by her smothering him. She has obviously mashed him into the corner like a cushion over the recent weeks. We found a dead bird in her house some years ago, but it was older and less smelly than this one. Simon scraped this one out and threw it into the ditch. Another death: This one in the sauna and this one also a repeat. There was a dead mouse in the bucket of water the other night. Lucky for us, Simon noticed it just as he was about to throw a ladle full of both water and dead mouse onto the hot stones. The stench would have ruined the relaxation of the sauna. The last time we had a dead mouse in there was before we had a little grate over the floor drain. I don't know how this one got in. 16 April Thursday GOING TO THE ROOMS is what someone would say about going to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. It sounds to me like an expression from the past but I am not sure that AA existed in the past here, or in how recent a past. I must ask about this. I should also get some information about the Pioneers. They are people who have taken a pledge to never drink. Often people take the pledge very young and never ever drink. I assume it is a bit mixed up with the church. Pioneers often wear a little lapel button, so you know who they are. I don't know if there are meetings and such. 15 April Wednesday A completely grey and drizzly day. The hills in the distance have disappeared. This feels like a day which will never clear so I will try not to let it get on top of me. I will just live with it. Or underneath it. We woke up in the very early morning to the sound of Joe's cows chomping on grass in the field. It is a very nice sound in the dark. I did not want to let Em get into her aggressive protection mode with the cows. Rushing at them and prowling around what she considers to be her perimeters would be more strain for her leg. After breakfast, we put her into her enclosure and she accepted without too much attitude. She immediately disappeared into her house for her first nap of the day. I was delighted with the ease of it all. I looked out the window every once and a while, and stayed satisfied that she was resigned to her captivity. After an hour, I looked out just in time to see her escaping , not too easily, but more easily than I would like. She is in the house now, and the cows are clustered around the fence, excited by her pre-escape barking. Jostling right in the front is the very old cow which I followed up the track the other day. Her udder was full and drooping low, and her back was boney and she looked as though she might topple over at any moment. I spoke to Joe about her when we reached the farm. He said she is one of his oldest cows right now. She is about 11 years old. I should have asked how old a cow can get and still be a useful milker. Just the walk up and down from the fields to the milking shed twice a day must get too much eventually. But seeing this old girl jostling with the frisky young ones at the fence makes me realize she is tougher than I thought. Simon went into town in the morning, and I thought I might go with him and do some errands while he went to the dentist and then we might go out to lunch. The more we thought about it the less it seemed like a good idea. The lunch options are bleak, and even the bleak choices cost more than they should. With the exception of the falafal shop in Irishtown, we almost always feel disappointed. Recently, we went to a small cafe with a bakery and a sort of cafeteria line to go along. Halfway down the line there was a huge tray full of dozens and dozens of slices of freshly baked soda bread, each one buttered. It did not seem to matter whether someone was buying a cup of tea or a sandwich or a full hot lunch, when the person got to the cash register, the woman there asked if he or she had got their piece of bread. A slice of buttered bread came with everything. 14 April Tuesday Dessie's dogs are all over the road these days. Dessie lives in the Mary Corbett's old house, better known as the Murder Cottage. He has changed the place enormously in the year or so since he has been there. Mary would barely recognize it. After trying for months to sqeeze his car right up close to the stone wall to keep it off the very narrow road and doing various things like even clearing off all of the ivy to make the most of every teeny bit of space, he gave up. He had a friend knock down some of the stone wall and made himself a muddy parking spot. Then he cleared and made a vegetable patch, which has been covered in manure all winter. For a long time, he kept asking me if I was Canadian, but we seem to have finally got that settled. Often his little dog Titch comes racing out, barking like mad. It leaps out in front of cars and seems to have a death wish. I have rescued it several times. Dessie told me to just kick it. I said No, I don't kick dogs. He said its okay, its okay, I do it all the time. Just kick it. It's the only thing it understands. I said I would not be kicking the dog, now or ever. I said that there are other ways to train a dog. Now the other little dog which we all thought was a Pit Bull is growing up and growing taller and stronger. This is the dog which Dessie gave to his mother and which she gave back to him because she was frightened to have such a dog. It turns out that it is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier not a Pit Bull. Oscar, a very friendly Labrador from down the way, has been driven off by this dog. I spoke to Dessie about how agressively the Staffordshire is guarding the whole length of the road. I also asked if he had heard about Michael Kennedy getting attacked. He had heard, of course, and said maybe he should get a muzzle, because he did not want anyone to be afraid of the dog. He asked if I was afraid and I said yes, it is going that way as the dog gets bigger and bigger. He built a kind of pen for the two dogs with wooden pallettes. He said the Staff is never out and loose when he is not at home. Twice in this last week, the dog has been out policing the road while Titch the noisy but harmless little one is safely locked up. Dessie is not at home, and there is no muzzle in sight. I do not like where this is going. 11 April Saturday Beautiful sunny day. Simon was printing away in the little shed on his pages for ONGLET. He called me to take pages and to interleave them. He was printing images and was worried that the pages might offset onto each other. The first one was a fine (slightly larger than life-sized?) image of his mother's thimble. I was very happy to look at it 140 times as he passed each page to me. I had to hover around while he prepared the next image. I looked around to find a little job that would not make my hands dirty. I decided to sweep up some of the moss which had grown onto the cement. The ridged platform was once the floor of Willie English's milking shed. Much of my sweeping was more like scrubbing to loosen the moss. Simon had trouble getting his next printing positioned, so I got a lot done. The second printing was of a clove (clou de girofle). It was a half-tone of a clove, and again, very pleasant to look at again and again. When he had more positioning problems, I read and re-read the text on the strip of wood along the ceiling edge of the shed. It is a home-made copy of Robert Barry's 'Marcuse Piece' which reads: "A place to which we can come and for a while be free to think of what we are going to do." This long white strip of wood was up high in the front room of workfortheeyetodo in Hanbury Street and then it came along to Tipperary with us. The vinyl letters are curling and some seem ready to fall off, but it is continues to be a good thing to re-find and to re-read. 10 April Good Friday 2009 As lovely a day as yesterday was foul. The countryside has that deep silence about it. Many things are closed as usual: Bars, restaurants, banks, schools, factories. Farms, of course, keep at the work of farming and supermarkets seem to be open. I saw a sign: THERE WILL BE BAG-PACKING IN SUPER VALU ON GOOD FRIDAY AND EASTER SUNDAY IN AID OF SOUTH TIPP HOSPICE. Bag-packing is a way for various organizations to earn money for their cause or their project. At the pay out counter there will be someone there wearing a Tee shirt or a hat which advertises their good cause. We hand over our shopping bags to them and they pack up our purchased items for us. Then we are obliged to put money into their collection can. We, the customers, are a captive audience and I should think such collections are very successful as we can't really say no to their packing our groceries, and once they have done so it is difficult to not pay something in return. 9 April Thursday Wild all day rain today. It started last night with winds and noise. It has not stopped since. Sometimes it is like a billowing cloud of rain, moving to the left and then moving to the right. It's a very fast, tumbling kind of cloud. The rest of the time, it is just sheeting down in hard diagonal lines. Simon wanted to continue printing this morning but there is a leak in the shed just above where he stands to print. We tried to figure out a way to deflect the rain, with a hat, with tape or even with an umbrella, but really it is just too miserable to be in a dripping shed working with paper. His self imposed schedule for this book is to print two pages a day. He will just have to print four pages tomorrow. Yesterday was a glorious summer day. It is already hard to remember it. We ate a long, simple lunch outside. I had to wear my sunglasses because the light was so bright on my white plate. We just wanted to linger and linger over coffee, and it was difficult to make ourselves go back to work. Had we realized what today had in store for us, we would have stayed outside all day. 7 April Tuesday Every rural place has bathtubs in fields. It is a way to get rid of old tubs and it is useful for drinking water for the cows. I like a bathtub in the landscape. 5 April Sunday The big surprise this morning was to see Em trying to get INTO her pen. She wanted to get at the remnants of yesterday's bone. I let her in and closed it up and put the bricks around the bottom on the escapeable side and she settled right in to work on the leftover bone. After a while I looked out and she was sleeping. Minutes later she was scrabbling at the bottom edges, and at the previously loose side. I thought I had her securely entrapped at last so I ignored it all for a while and then looked out to see one leg and her head out and herself completely stuck in an uncomfortable and immoveable position. On release, I brought her into the house again and she has gone right to sleep. That is as good as the cage I guess. 4 April Saturday The boreen is lined with hundreds of primroses. They have really multiplied this year. There are none on the bit of track between the main road and the farm, and they only start well past the farm on the way down. That says plenty about the poisons and weed killers being used up there. 3 April Friday I took Simon to the bus in Cahir and stopped at the butcher shop to get a bone for Em. At one o'clock, when she usually has a small lunch snack, I put the bone into her new cage. She looked at me in disbelief, but I outstared her and eventually she entered the cage and began examining her bone. It was quite a big one, so she was busy with it for an hour or more. I looked out the window often. I congratulated myself on being so clever. She would accept her confinement if it came with the promise of such tasty treats. I could not provide such fattening incentive everyday, but perhaps the mere possibility of a delicacy would convince her to stay put. Some time later, I looked out and saw her wandering across the yard sniffing at bushes. Another escape. This is a very badly made cage. 2 April Thursday Another trip to the village with the big detour around to Ardfinnan . What is usually a quick jaunt has now become a very long trip. Because the weather is so fine, our world is overrun with tractors all out and about. They travel slowly, turning in and out of gates and often with big machinery attached. Some of the things are so big that it would not be possible to pass them even if the wiggly road allowed for it. There is no place for two of anything with them on the road. They are as big as the road. The slow journey was even slower as a result. They are promising to finish the construction work under the road on the village side of the the bridge by tomorrow evening. The structure of the underneath bit was eroded by water after just too many floodings. Apparently complete collapse was imminent. I needed to get to the shop to pick up a package left by Fed Ex, and I needed to buy chicken wire and some of the stakes that the farmers use for fencing. Simon did not want to do it, but I insisted that we make a small narrow caged area for Em outside her house. We had a few lengths of wooden fencing from our first plan to confine her. The vet originally said she needed an area no bigger than 1 meter 80, so that was what we hoped to provide. Her leg is much worse after the visit from our Japanese friends. She was in high spirits when they came and went right into her most hysterical hosting mode. They threw the rubber sandwich and she fetched and frolicked and had a grand time. They shouted and complimented her in Japanese and she was delighted with all of the attention. They loved it and she loved it and now she is limping like mad again. We just must fence her in if she is ever ever going to get better. We built the pen and we put her in it and she looked disgusted to be there. I worked on some weeding and small jobs nearby. I talked to her the whole time and said nice gentle cooing kinds of things to make her feel good about it all. She made no efforts to escape. After a while I went into the house to get something and within minutes she was in the house right beside me. She had just been humouring me by staying in the pen. Apparently escape was easy. Simon was delighted and very proud of her. I will have to work harder on this prison. 25 March Wednesday Michael Kennedy is a farmer. He lives right in the middle of the village and he does his farming just outside the village. He was walking his small dog at 9 am recently and a huge Staffordshire Bull Terrier came rushing out from somewhere and tried to attack his dog. Michael is a tall man, and he is strong. He picked up his dog and he held it up over his head with both arms. He kicked the Bull Terrier again and again to try to get it to stop lunging up at his dog. The dog bit his forearm and would not let go. Finally he got his own dog's lead wrapped around the neck of the attacking dog. He squeezed and squeezed until he killed the dog. Not many people would be strong enough to do that. Nor would they have the presence of mind to do it. He is wearing a big bandage on his arm. He was wearing his rubber boots when he kicked the dog and he said his foot has been hurting all week. It was like kicking a wall, he said. 24 March Tuesday There are some nice things about living in a cold house. It is sometimes hard to remember them when it is really really cold. The room with the fire in the woodstove is wonderful to enter from the bigger cold room. The warmth is as welcoming as a hug. And I always leave a glass of water on the dining table before bed. If I walk by in the night after going to the loo, the water in the glass is absolutely perfect. Cold and refreshing. 19 March Thursday We took Em in to be weighed this morning. 19.2 is better than the 19.7 which was her last weight, but I would like her to be dropping a little bit more a little bit faster. 17 kilos seems a very long way to go. She acts like I am starving her each time I present her with her supper. She is still limping off and on. There have been too many rushes out across the fields. The vet said it could take up to 6 months for complete healing, but he was talking back when her limp was barely noticeable. Now she is often regressing back to her three legged hop. Today the world outside still stinks so strongly of slurry that I have kept the door closed and therefore it was easy to keep her quietly indoors. Good for the dog but otherwise terrible to keep the door closed and the windows closed as it is another bright blue skied and sunny day. There is a cool breeze but the sun is warm. Unfortunately sitting or working outside is not an option. 18 March Wednesday Slurry spreading in Joe's fields has rendered the out of doors unbearable. The stench is awful. It is not the throat-burning kind of slurry smell. This is just your basic gagging smell with a headache that hovers in the brain. We started the day with the kitchen door wide open, and windows all open. I hung a laundry on the line. It felt like summer. But now it is summer and we are trapped inside, looking out at the perfect day. Em was annoyed as she loves cruising in and out without waiting for the door to be opened for her. The laundry can just stay out there until the smell of the slurry gets blown off it. 17 March Tuesday Patrick's Day An amazing hot and sunny day. We spent the afternoon attacking blackberry bushes on the banking and making a big fire to burn them and to burn lots of other prunings off the apple trees and other trees and bushes. A lot has piled up in five or six places even though it seems like the winter and early spring work has been erratic and weather controlled. Simon spent a lot of time tending the fire. Once he makes a fire he becomes reluctant to continue with work. The fire becomes the main work. I slogged away at the blackberries for too long and my arms are all scratched and bloody. Working in a tee shirt at this time of year was a treat but a mistake. We had hoped to finish it all, but it is a huge job and it is not easy to work on the sloping banking. Today is a national holiday and the world was very very quiet from our valley. We went for a pint. The bar was very quiet too. 15 March Sunday A fox in the upper field drove Em mad yesterday. She raced up and down and barked like crazy. Then she stopped barking and sat down. She watched the fox from the yard. The fox sat at the top edge of the field and watched her. They both sat quietly for about fifteen minutes and I think they forgot all about each other while they enjoyed the sunshine. After a while the fox just wandered off into the trees and Em limped back to her house. The leg was badly overused. It is not fair to leave her free out doors as we never know when the fox or the horses might come and encourage her to race about wildly. The ligament damage is not having time to heal. I must get tougher about it all. 12 March Thursday We went to Pa Byrne's funeral this morning. There was a large crowd. The farming community and all of the immediate neighbours were there as well as many others. People really turned out. I was very surprised to learn of his death as it seemed sudden to me. I saw him so often to wave to as he passsed in his tractor, or to chat at the fence or to call out over the ditch. I didn't remember the last time I had seen him, and I did not even know he had been in hospital. People said he had been unwell for a while. His fields are full of new lambs. He and Peggy worked so well and happily together. They always seemed to me to be the very best of friends. The priest at the service said something about them being sublime dancers. I never saw them dancing, but I like to hold this image of the two of them. Watching them in a field catching sheep showed a lovely kind of companionship and an ease of working together. The day was beautiful and sunny and dry and the procession of people walking behind the hearse up and over the bridge to the new cemetery was very moving. 3 March Tuesday While I was out walking today, I saw a dead fox on the tar road just below Teresa and Seamus' house. It is a very young one. 2 March Monday I received my free seeds and free seed potatoes today from the Irish Seed Savers Association. I have been a member for many years now, but I have never taken advantage of the offer for free seed each spring. I have had quite a few apple trees at the special member rates. I like getting the old Irish varieties. It feels important to keep planting and growing them. Every year I ask for a Mother of Household which is an old Tipperary apple, and every year I am too late. Every year they plan to graft some more and they promise me one and every year I have not had one. Yet. As for the potatoes, I have been reluctant to ask for the potatoes as I hate the very floury potatoes which the Irish love. When we were first here I remember asking a greengrocer about the potatoes he was selling. He said that they were wonderful and that they would explode in my face. For me, this was not a positive attribute. I like waxy potatoes. Here, Waxy Potatoes are called Wet, and people sort of sneer when they speak of them. Most of the potatoes offered by the Seed Savers are of the floury variety, but this year I noticed some Rattes from France and another waxy one called Ulster Sceptre. I could have chosen three kinds, but I had no idea how many free potaoes I would get. I did not want to be inundated with potatoes to grow. Today I received two little paper bags in the post, each with five potatoes in it. Both of the varieties sent were not the varieties I ordered. Both of what I received are floury varieties. I don't feel too threatened. Ten potato plants will not be an overwhelming crop. 28 February Saturday Today is the first day this year that I have been outside to hear the Ardfinnan church clock strike six. The wind needs to be in a certain direction for us to catch the sound of the bells from there. It was still light and the sky was a bright blue with big pink clouds picking up the dropping sunlight. A beautiful evening. The bells play the Angelus. If one is watching the news channel at 6 o'clock, the bells ring and there is a minute of silence, or rather a minute of bells and just silence from the listeners. On the television, we are shown people stopping and crossing themselves and listening to the bells each with a thoughtful expression on his or her face. On the radio, there is just the sound of the ringing bells. In the bar, people usually stop talking and some of them cross themselves. I am always interested that the sound of the bells comes from the TV or the radio, rather than from real outdoor bells. Even as a non-participant, it seems important to be quiet and respectful of other people's silence. 27 February Friday The Murderer (from Mary Corbett's House) was caught trying to escape from prison. He is serving a Life Sentence in Limerick Jail. He and his cell-mate, who is also a murderer from the area, were found to have a saw blade behind a poster in their room. They had been slowly sawing away at the bars of their window. In the newspaper, their methods were compared to those used in the film The Shawshank Redemption. These two also had hidden maps of Ireland and Germany. They have been now been put into separate cells. I am not sure who got to keep the maps. 24 February Tuesday Weather permitting, I have been glueing ovals (15 per book) into my ALBUM OF INTERIORS. It took months and months for me to get Simon back to cutting the ovals out on the Adana. I just couldn't do it myself. It is a height problem. And it took Stuart months and months to finish the binding. Now that I am on the job again, I realize that it is probably just as well that we have waited this long to get back to the job. I have been using the bench outside the barn to spray the glue on so that I don't kill myself with the fumes. This wouldn't have been possible even a few weeks ago because of the cold. Now I have a problem because the starlings are building their nests right above the doorway and right over the bench, as they do every year. After I got a few downy feathers stuck onto my ovals and a few near misses of bird droppings today, I set up a narrow table beside the stone wall across from the barn. It is a bird free zone, but still out of the wind. It is probably just as well that I am not spraying onto the bench as the feathers have already started to stick all over it. 21 February Saturday Cold and crisp and sunny today. For the first time this year, we sat outside the kitchen door having a cup of tea in the afternoon sun. It has been a beautiful spring day, even if it is still only February. The cows started chasing after me as I walked on the track through Joe's fields. They were all so young and frisky and light on their feet. They just rushed along with me for the sake of somewhere to go. Quite a crowd of them ended up all the way up at the barn and it was a good three hours before their milking time. When I walked through the other Joe's farm on my way back down here, another very young crowd raced along beside the stone wall and then along the fence following beside me as if where I was going was someplace to be going. 19 February Thursday The car is indeed as bad as the inspector threatened. Apparently there is a bit of brake cable that could go in a second. And that is just ONE of the problems. We have to decide if it is worth it to spend a fair amount to repair a 17 year old car yet again, or is it better to think about a new car. Old cars are very cheap right now. We should really have just one car, but with second hand cars, it seems one is always breaking down. It is difficult because we live in such a car-dependant location. I never had any fondness for this particular motor so I am not sad to say goodbye to it. I do worry what I will do with all of the cassettes that we have. That car was the only place left for playing them. It is sad to think of a lot of music that I don't have in any other form. Compilations made over the years by friends and old stuff that I would never buy again, but I do like to hear every once and a while. Has everyone else just thrown all of their cassettes away by now? 18 February Wednesday I took the little car to have its NCT test today. The whole system used to work like clockwork. Today I arrived fifteen minutes early but waited for 25 minutes past my appointed time to get seen. We were all crowded into the waiting room area. There were at least 6 people standing at any one time. My favourite part is when the inspector takes the money, car details and keys from the next person and then he or she goes out to fetch the car. They drive around the corner and into the building, tooting the horn as they go. It is very cheerful. I know they are just testing the horn but I think it makes everyone feel a little happy. Once the car is inside the testing area, there is a lot of revving of the engine. The sound is very loud in the waiting room. Everyone looks around and raises eyebrows at each other. One lady today said 6 or 8 times that her husband would never race the engine like that in a century. She seemed quite thrilled with the naughtiness of it. My car failed the test. The young man seemed very worried that I was driving away in it. He said that the brakes were really dangerous and that he wouldn't let his mother or anyone in his family drive my car. I drove away (very carefully) and went to the garage to see Mike. He thought maybe it was not as bad as the test sheet suggested. I left it with him, and he promises to put it up on the lift tomorrow. 16 February Monday Timmy the Postman died. It was very sudden. He had a stroke and was in hospital in Clonmel. They took him up to Dublin to have a stent put into his heart, but the Dublin hospital said that he had been brought on the wrong day, so they sent him back to the hospital in Clonmel where he had another stroke and died. I am sure the trip, even in an ambulance, did him no good. Why couldn't they just do the procedure, wrong day or not. It is a long way up and down to Dublin. Everyone was shocked and saddened as Timmy the Postman was a youthful and energetic 60 year old. His stroke came as a surprise and his death came as a shock for the whole community. Timmy was the postman for Newcastle. We never really knew him except to wave to. John is our postman. He is often away for union business, so we then have Lee who does the route at top speed. When Lee is on duty, our post arrives at 8 am. Otherwise it could come anywhere up until lunch time. We still never fully expect to see any post on a Monday since it is just after the weekend, and often there is nothing on Friday because it is almost the weekend. On Saturday there is never any post, except for a few weeks before Christmas. We can depend on receiving post on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. Anything after that is extra. John has been arriving in a white van for the last week. His regular green An Post van got caught in a flooded bit of road a few weeks back and the water damage was serious. He says the green van should be ready by tomorrow. 14 February Saturday Today is my birthday. There is no plan to go anywhere, especially not out for dinner. Valentine's Day has become more and more commercial. There is no pleasure in paying of money for heart-shaped red and pink food in an falsely romantic setting. Simon shopped in the English Market to prepare dinner for us here. He cooked dinner on his own birthday too. It is a way to make sure that he gets the food that he wants. Tonight's dinner will be lovely except that he is threatening turnips. I am not a big fan of turnips. These are beautiful small French navettes. I know they will be delicious, thinly sliced and buttery, but I just feel threatened by turnips. He printed out the same card for me as he did last year, but he crossed out the printed 2008 and added on 2009. It is a good bit of typography so I am happy to have it again. He is now thinking of making it up as an enamel placque to be brought out once a year. I would have loved to have gone to the sea for a walk today, but we just can't imagine going there and not taking Em. If we did take her, we would have to park well out of view of the sea. She loves the ocean in a near hysterical way. It would be cruel to get her that close and then to deny her the mad racing about in and out of the water. It is okay to just walk locally today. (Each time we go for a walk now, we leave her in the house and tell her that we are going down to the barn to work.) And it is good to stay here because the phone keeps ringing and I have been having some wonderful birthday chats. 13 February Friday The feeling of spring is permeating a little more every day. The light is lighter, the weather is milder and the days are longer. Someone told me that we are getting ten minutes more light each day. I believe it. It really feels like that much of a jump is happening. What I don't believe is the Irish belief that the first of February is the First Day of Spring. Up until a few minutes ago, we were living in what looked like Switzerland. The Galtees, the Knockmealdowns and the Comeraghs were all heavily covered with snow. The land in between the mountain ranges looked quaint and tidy. It didn't look like the Tipperary landscape we know. The disheveled quality was gone. The green fields did look like something on the way into the Alps. That is all gone now. There are a few lumpen snowmen melting in yards. Or a few lumps of what were snowmen. They are particularly bleak when they are surrounded by green grass and mud. The cows are out of their winter quarters during the daytime. They must be so happy to be eating grass again. I feel very happy for them. There are starlings nesting in the barn already. This is very early. Everything is happening and Em's leg is much better. 7 February Saturday A huge step backwards in the Emily Recovery Department. I just do not know what happened. Either she jumped out of the car in a terrible rush or at a bad angle, or maybe it was when she moved from the back of the car to the front seat, and back again. Maybe it was when she raced down the hill. She could have slipped on the iced over grass. She is limping again, using only three legs. It has not been this bad for 6 weeks. I feel completely discouraged. We have been giving her more and more freedom as she appeared to be healed. This is a terrible state of things. Even earlier today, as I took a walk, I was thinking about when she might be able to join me again. It seemed imminent, but I kept thinking we should give the healing a longer time than we deem necessary just to be certain. Every dog I meet on my walks greets me and then looks around or rushes around to find her. They still cannot believe that she is not with me, and it is almost two months now. 5 February Thursday We stopped in at Nugent's last night after picking up a book delivery at McCarra's shop. It was early, about 6.00. We were talking with some people when the phone rang. There is a pay phone in the bar and even with the many mobile phones around, the pay phone gets a lot of use. Coverage for mobiles is often a bit dodgy with the mountains, or just generally in such a rural area. Usually when the phone rings it is someone looking for someone else and whoever answers calls out to ask if that person is there. If the person is there but doesn't want to found they just shake their head and the one who answered the phone says no, he or she is not here. Often it is just someone being beckoned home because their tea is ready. I was the nearest to the phone , so I answered it. A man asked me if this was Nugent's Bar? He asked if it was Newcastle? He asked if it was County Tipperary? I said yes to all three things. Then he asked me how to get there. I asked him where he was. He said he was in Dublin. I asked the few people present who would want to give directions and John, who lives in France, volunteered. He gave the directions from Trim, in County Laois (not Dublin) to Newcastle and then he handed the phone to Christy who likes to be introduced as the Mayor of Newcastle. Christy spends most days sitting in the bar, always on the same stool. Christy asked this man why he wanted to come to Newcastle from so far away. The man said he was coming down to paint the telephone exchange building, and some Eircom men had given him the phone number of the bar to get directions. 4 February Wednesday One thing I have noticed about this New Austerity is the lack of new cars. It used to be a real sign of the New Year and a sign of the prosperity of the country to note all of the brand new cars which appeared at what seemed like the very minute that January began. This year I have not seen one single car with an 09 registration. This is a small thing but a telling one. The whole place is falling apart and it all promises to get worse. Listening to the radio yesterday, people were calling in to say what they were giving up as a result of their pensions, or their salaries, or their jobs getting cut. I was shocked to hear that so many were not going to pay for their rubbish removal any more. They will try to dump it at their workplace or in someone else's bin. 3 February Tuesday A few days of snow have been very beautiful in the morning but the snow doesn't last, especially on top of such sodden ground. The snow on the Knockmealdowns has stayed all day and it looks beautiful. And the hills we look across at are perfectly delineated by their ditches and forested areas. The whiteness makes everything look clean and good and different. I steppped on a lot of snowdrops in the grass because they disappeared in the snow. 1 February Sunday Clonmel is still all closed off. The floods from the weekends rain have made all five bridges impassable. I think at least 40 houses have been evacuated. This just keeps happening. There are lots of discussions about flood defenses and money and planning and this year there has been a lot of work done in a few places along the river. The problem is that too many things were built on the flood plains, and there is now no where for the water to go. Permission granted for all this building was a crime. Now the kinds of solutions that are being found involve building up and blocking off the river, both from the view and from the life of the town. The wood road, which we always called the river road, until we were corrected, is really a river road now. It is completely under water. 27 January Tuesday A trial has begun in Cork. A man and his son were found to have hundreds and thousands of pounds hidden in a safe in their basement. One point five million, I think. The assumption is that this is the money from the big robbery in the North. The radio report says it promises to be a long trial. The Judge has offered everyone on the jury a free flu jab, as he does not want anyone falling ill during the lengthy process. He said that the evenings will be long and light by the time this trial comes to an end. 26 January Monday Simon took the Volvo for its car test this morning. All of the men in the NCT centre left the other cars they were testing and they swarmed all over it. There is a concerted effort to get old cars off the road. Once a car passes all of the tests for emissions and safety things, they can only pick at small details. A car with more than 300,000 miles on the clock is not just a dinasaur, it is a Major Undesirable. The only things they could find wrong were a headlamp which was somehow less than perfect and the number 8 on the license plate. The top bit of the 8 was filled in with black instead of white. That will be corrected with some white paint, or some white-out as used for a typewriter. It seems a hundred years ago when I took my old Citroen van to be inspected and because it was registered as a commercial vehicle, it was supposed to have very heavy duty tyres on it. The garage where it was being fixed took the appropriate tyres off a Post Office van, and put them on my van. They told me to hurry right back after the test so that they could replace the tyres on the Post Office van. That was the old Ireland. The filled in number 8 is the new Ireland. 25 January Sunday Another Sunday of horrendous, lashing, pissing, pouring rain. It has been going all night and all day. The boreen is not a road. It is a river rushing down. It swerves just short of the house and has drowned the herb garden. We have puddles ten inches deep in places where I have never seen puddles. The sound of the rain never stopping is making me crazy. Again. 24 January Saturday We took Em over to Cahir to be weighed at the vets. 20.0. Not so good. She raced up and down the steps by the Farmers Market which was also not good. She is supposed to avoid all steps and climbing. I should have walked her around on the road. She has spent the rest of the day lightly limping. Ligaments take a long time to heal. Breda loaned me Sam's ramp. He used it to get in and out of their van when he was quite old and crippled and blind and deaf. He enjoyed getting into the van whether or not they were going anywhere. He enjoyed it more if they were actually going somewhere and he looked all around as if he could see where he was going. 23 January Friday We came off well with the electricity outages last night. Ours went off at about 10.30 and returned at 4 am. Most of the people in the village and down the valley had no power until 1 pm. Some people are saying that some swans got mixed up in the wires and that is what caused it. Cables are drooping down everywhere. Wooden fences are falling over everywhere. I don't know if that is the wind or the extraordinary amount of rain that has just softened the ground. What could stand up for long in this water? Newcastle now has a huge series of lakes around it. The lakes are full of swans. Maybe they are the swans who are usually in Ardfinnan. Or maybe some are swans and some are geese. A lot of damage is still unrepaired since last Saturday's winds. Paddy, down the road, lost the roof off his tool shed. It blew quite a good way from the building and into someone else's field. All of his tools are destroyed. This is the same Paddy who has been going back and forth to Geneva to woo a young Phillipino woman. She is a lot younger than him. They are planning to marry next month in the Phillipines. 21 January Wednesday We watched the Obama inauguration in Stanstead airport. It was not the best planning. We went into the bar and asked the manager if he could change the multiple TV screens to the inauguration instead of Skye sports but he said No. We went to the far end of the departure area and found a large screen tuned in to Washington D.C.. We all sat on plastic chairs and strained to hear above the noise of nearby construction work. Every once and a while someone consulted their watch or their phone and trundled away with their suitcase to catch a flight. Someone else quickly took their seat. Huge drilling interrupted Obama's speech, but we caught a lot of it. I think I was the only one who cried. Coming home and finding the first snowdrops in bloom was a good sign. 11 January Sunday It has been raining for almost 24 hours. I should be glad that it is mild and the bitter cold has gone, but this rain and the endless sound of wind in the ears is a bit crazy making. I went for a walk before lunch, just a short one, (without Em as is now normal, sadly....) up the boreen and around. I dressed in full waterproof gear with a wool hat under my hood. As I started up the boreen, I decided that I was glad to be outside after all. The rain seemed less pounding and the wind less wild when I was outside and in it. Of course, I was not thinking of how sheltered I was on the old Mass Path, surrounded by trees and high walls. When I came out onto the road at the top, the rain was suddenly ferocious. Rain poured off my waterproofs and onto the ground even as I rushed along. When I reached the corner, by the field of the Gloomy Donkeys, the wind nearly knocked me down. Getting from there to the turn down the boreen to home was a kilometre of very hard work. I am small and the wind was strong. I still feel completely beaten up by it. The rain continued to bucket down but I forgot it with the fight against the wind. The wool hat was a bit of a mistake. The Gloomy Donkeys (now two of them and a baby in the field) looked as miserable as ever. They are something I am now just accustomed to, but I still don't like them. What really shocked me the other day was seeing a Llama in the next field. Expensive, rare breed French donkeys are a surprise in Tipperary, but a Llama leaves me speechless. 10 January Saturday We FINALLY finished the second edition of FORTY FUNGI. They are covered, wrapped in groups of five, boxed and stored in the book shed. It seemed to take forever to do them. Many pages of reporting in today's Irish Times of the Young Scientist's awards. My favorite project was the one done by two girls from County Offaly. They found a way to use Bog Moss as a salad crop. 9 January Friday I am wondering how long we will continue to say Happy New Year to each person we see who we haven't yet seen in the new year. I don't remember how long it usually goes on. Or maybe I wonder this every year and then forget it again. There must be a cut off point when the newness of the year is not an issue anymore, and we just go back to saying Good Morning or Good Evening (afternoon) or Hello. We spent a lot of time today finishing folding on the covers of FORTY FUNGI. The day being milder was a help. When the deep deep cold was upon us it was impossible to be down in the barn for more than an hour. Even an hour was hard, and sometimes I was so bundled up that I couldn't work very quickly. It is a terrible mistake to let editions hang around for so long unfinished but in this case it was all interrupted by Japan. And we had to finish THE QUEEN OF FLOATS for Greville before we could go on to this. Two more things to finish now. 8 January Thursday Today was the big day for Em to go back to the vet. The weight was the first thing to check. She was happy to sit on the scales: 19.7 kgs. Whew. Almost a kilo was great news, and Folke was very happy with her progress. There was no limp at all that I could see, but he wants her to stay on the diet and under House Arrest for another four weeks.....no fun in sight. He has a new vet who has come from Germany to work with him. She was sort of hanging around as he examined Em and he told her all about the torn ligament condition as he had first seen it and that Em had been Grossly Obese one month ago. I protested at that. On the way out, I got a huge box full of bubble wrap from Tommie Who Runs The Office. He keeps it all behind some display units and it sticks out above the shelves when he has too much. He is delighted to get rid of it in a useful way (ie not throwing it away) and I am always delighted to get it. I used to get the bubble wrap from Tommie the Framer as he got huge flat pieces that came wrapped around sheets of glass, but I don't seem to get over to him since he moved his workshop. We post a lot of packages and since we have been getting bubble from these two Tommies, I don't think we have bought any for 5 or 6 years. There are a lot of Tommies and Toms in my life here. As always, I feel that there aren't too many different names being used in Ireland. 7 January Wednesday The bitter bitter deep cold continues. The rooves and the ground are all white and frosty and the frost never melts all day. Every day I put some bowls of water out for the birds as everywhere where they usually drink is frozen. The house is really cold. Another reason why I hate all this stone and cement. I feel happy in a wooden house. Older people here are very suspect of A House Made of a Tree. 6 January Tuesday Today is Epiphany but here it is called Little Christmas. There is a tradition for women to go out to dinner together to celebrate the end of the holiday season. No men. No children. Just women together celebrating the end of cooking and serving and cleaning and doing all of the holiday stuff that they do. I wonder if that is happening this year as the New Austerity settles upon us all. I went back to the library today to return the books I took out just before Christmas. When I walked in, I was greeted by the same elderly woman with whom I had had a chat that day. She was returning her books too. We had both been looking at the table of recent acquisitions. She told me that she found it terrifying to think of going through the Christmas period without a supply of reading material at hand. She had brought her elderly sister with her that day so that she could take out four books on her card and four books on her sister's card. All of the books were for herself. Her sister was blind and deaf, and sat quietly nearby during this conversation. I asked if she could have just brought her sister's library card and not her sister since the sister obviously couldn't look at or read the books. She said it was good for her sister to get out. She said "She is listening to us now even though she can't hear it." 1 January 2009 New Year's Day. Em used the end of the year as an excuse to do a dash down the meadow when we went out before bed. That is the first time she has managed that since the restrictions were established. I couldn't really get angry. She is just so sick of not being able to go anywhere. Her trips down to the village are her big pleasure. Barking hysterically in the car lets off masses of steam. She and I both went to sleep before midnight. I am waiting for the 20th of January for my New Year to begin. 26 December Stephen's Day No one here ever mentions a Saint's day with the word Saint. They speak of Patrick's Day and Stephen's Day. In Newcastle it has become the tradition to have a Vintage Tractor Run for charity on Stephen's Day. It started with a lot of ancient tractors being pulled out of the barns and cleaned up for the day. Now there is a lot of activity about using the old ones. A few of them get used to drive to and from the pub, on a pretty regular basis. Simon was trapped in the village as the tractors set off, so he watched the whole procession as they drove away, probably to Ardfinnan on one road and back via another road. He had gone down to collect Veronica as she wanted to go and spend the day with Tom Browne and the Ring-a-link bus was not working today. We offered to take her in and to collect her later. It would save her a lot of money in taxi fares. She was especially eager to get in as today there were big races on at Leopardstown and her job was to run down the street to the bookies and to place bets on horses for Tom and another man in a wheelchair. When Simon returned from dropping her off, he met the Tractor Run on its return loop, so he watched the whole thing again. There were a fair number of vintage cars in it and some kind of old tank too. I felt quite envious that he had seen the Run twice and I had missed it completely. When I took a walk around later (without Em!) I found a paper plate with the number 27 written in black marker. There were two little holes above the number. Simon told me these plates were tied with string into the radiator grid in the front of each tractor. I drove into Clonmel to fetch Veronica later. None of their horses came in. 23 December Tuesday We were very proud at how rigidly we are BOTH sticking to Em's diet. I went back to the vet for a weigh-in today. We took bets before I left to see where her weight would be. On the 11th, it had been 21.2 kgs. On the 16th, it was 20.6. We were both sure it would be a good drop today, but she had not lost a thing! 20.6 again. I even had Tommie help me and re-weigh her in the hopes that I had done something wrong. Very discouraging, but I guess losing weight with no exercise is twice the effort. That first week the grams just fell off as she was racing around and walking a lot compared to being in kennels. Now she is living under partial house arrest. We still have not erected the fenced in structure inside the house. We have various methods of keeping her quiet and contained in the house, and she is hardly outside at all. I know this is not enough. I guess we are being selfish. The poor dog is so confused and does not understand why everything is different. No ball throwing. No walks. No snacks. I brush her often, but as a treat I think that offers limited appeal. Every night we were making elaborate structures to keep her off the couch at night. She got passed everything we made, so now we have given up. Jumping up, and down off a sofa cannot be good. John Carney came today and replaced the pump on the heating system. Yesterday the stove man was here and did some electrical replacements but the pump had to be done for the whole system to work again. Five days without heat was enough. We were afraid we would have to wait until after the New Year as most everything closes down here for the Christmas /New Year period. 20 December Saturday The heat is still not working. Simon keeps thinking he can solve it and the stove people never seem to answer their phone. These days you wonder if that means they have gone out of business. Now we have to wait till Monday even to pursue them. The post arrived today which was a surprise. I forgot that this is the extra Christmas push by An Post to get everyone's everything everywhere. There will be a delivery on Sunday too. 18 December Thursday We were off to Kilkenny today so we thought we would take Em in the back of the Volvo, as that was a restricted space and she would stay quietly there and sleep. Also, she enjoys being in towns where she can watch the people and activity from the windows. I think of it as her version of going to the cinema. We don't have one of those metal grid things that keep animals from moving around the car, so Simon said he would make something. He made a little wooden frame and said there was absolutely no way she could get through that. We left her in the parked car with a bowl of water and her new car bed and the new barricade. About an hour later I returned to drop some shopping into the motor before lunch. Em was sitting in the front seat, behind the steering wheel. She had climbed past Simon's device without dislodging it, and dropped into the back seat and squeezed though to the front. None of this good for the ligament, I'm sure. We stopped at Pollard's and asked Kevin to make a little picket fence structure to put into the big room so that we can reduce her movements but still have her in the middle of our lives, as usual. We don't really want to do it, but we know we must. 17 December Wednesday Simon went to the bank to change some Yen into Euro. When the woman gave him the rate and the price for the money exchange, he asked if the fee should not be waived as he was over 60. The woman looked up his account details and said he was not registered for GOLDEN YEARS. He said okay, but Look at Me. Can't you see my age by looking at me? She waived the fee. Trying to stop Em from moving is giving us a lot to think about. When I took her out last night for her evening rush down the meadow, I had to shout to tell her to stop and not go down. The wild barking and the wagging tail stopped and she looked at me as if I had hit her. All joy evaporated. I stood there and wept as she had her quiet little pee and followed me slowly inside. 16 December Tuesday We took Em in to the vet for her X-rays this morning at 9 am and picked her up later in the afternoon. Folke took us into a room and showed all of the x-rays and said that her condition is a Cruciate Ligament Tear. He explained that the cruciate is a ligament that crosses over the dog's equivalent of a knee. We could see the wear on the bones as a result of the ligament not working correctly anymore. There are various options possible but for the moment we need to get her weight down. I had been doing well with this before we left for Japan, but one month at the kennels and hanging around in Alma's kitchen put loads of weight back on. Fat dogs are more apt to get this ailment and if it is not solved the other leg will go too. The surgeon in Cork who specializes in this won't even consider operating on a fat dog. So we have three weeks to reduce her volume and hopefully with the help of anti-inflammatory drugs and box-rest, we might not need the surgery. Box-rest is a scarey thing. Folke said she should be kept in a space no bigger than 1 metre 80 square. He said we should then carry her outside and put her on the grass to do her business. Em is far too lady-like for that. The closest to the house she would go is out behind the barn, never in proximity to the house and never in any one else's sight. 11 December Thursday I took Em to the Vet in the afternoon. She is still limping and holding her left rear foot off the ground whenever possible. I thought the medicine and the rest at Alma's might have solved this by now. It is now more than two months of this limp. We must return on Tuesday for x-rays. 10 December Wednesday We are back from one month in Japan. There is so much that could be said about that that I don't think I can say anything. Maybe it will come later, but for now we must get over this jet-lag. I feel really ill with it. 6 November Thursday Already the excitement and joy of the Obama victory is being absorbed into life here and gloomy predictions abound. The national news and our postman are grumbling about how he will woo all of the American businesses back from Ireland, and even more jobs will be lost here. Since the tax incentives are not as good as they were and the labour is not cheap and running costs are crazily expensive, many businesses have been moving out already, and not just the American ones. This is not being commented on. Already Obama is taking the blame, and he has not even taken office yet. In contrast, the small village of Moneygall is very excited. They claim a distant relationship with Obama's mother. They are anticipating their village becoming a place of pilgimage for old and wealthy Americans who want to pay tribute to their President's roots. They know that Obama will visit when he comes to Ireland, so they are happy to be put on the map just like Ballyporeen was elevated for attention by Ronald Reagen. 5 November Wednesday There is just nothing more to say about the Obama victory last night. We have used up all of the words for wonderful. We stayed up until 4.30 in the morning watching and watching and listening to all of the results and discussions. Brian phoned from Chicago and held up his phone so that we could hear the crowds. It wasn't like being there but it was pretty good. Nothing could be like being there, but I am so happy that this anxious feeling has finally lifted. This is a happy day. 3 November Monday Teresa rang last night to say that the puppy had been claimed. Dessie, the man who is renting Mary Corbett's house (The Murder Cottage), came by asking if they had seen the puppy. I knew he had a small dog, and I know what it looked like so I never even considered that this would be his dog. He told Teresa that it was his mother's dog. What kind of mother has a pit bull as a pet? Then he told her that he had given it to his mother and then she decided that she didn't want it so she gave it back to him. What kind of son gives his mother a pit bull terrier as a pet? 2 November Sunday It has been a busy day and it is only lunchtime now. Em and I walked up the boreen and around. We saw Seamus and Teresa outside in their yard. They had a shiney brown puppy with them. It had arrived the night before and they were loathe to put it out onto the road. It was a friendly little fellow, obviously fed and cared for. We thought it might have been frightened by the halloween fireworks and run away from it's home. Both of their dogs and Em ignored it and the cats were not interested either. Seamus kept moaning that he was hopeless about animals and that he would never be able to turn one away. He didn't want another dog but how could he refuse. He and I put it onto a lead with a collar borrowed from Sandy, their little dog, and we walked down the road to ask at a few houses. The Lonergans were checking cows in their field and had no idea whose it was but determined that it was a pit bull puppy. My feelings for it changed immediately. We went futher down the road. Kenneth had been up a ladder painting his house a bit before going to mass. He had pulled on his work overalls, but now, on taking them off, he found the top of his suit jacket and his tie and shirt and shoes were all speckled with primrose yellow. His trousers were paint free. He didn't recognize the dog. Seamus went further along the road to talk to some other people. Teresa had phoned around and they were to be outside waiting for Seamus so they could have a look at the lost dog. Em + I continued on our way home. We jumped into the car as soon as we returned to go down and get the Sunday papers. As I neared the new graveyard at Moloughtown, there were dozens of cars parked on both sides of the road. There was a small sign saying Funeral in Progress, so I slowed down and continued on down the hill. Then I met the entire funeral coming up the hill toward me. The hearse was driving very slowly and everyone was walking along behind it. I didn't know what to do so I just stopped the car and turned off the motor and sat quietly in the car. The hearse moved over a bit and the people went over to the side of the road and sort of oozed around me. Em sat quietly in the back. The people were quiet. It was all very quiet. Just toward the end of the people, Kathleen O'Keefe separated from the crowd and ran over to my window. She said a bucket had been standing inside the church door to take a collection for the Clogheen Hospice. She had forgotton to take it with her. She asked if I could collect it and take it into the shop for her to pick up later. I said of course, and then I asked whose funeral it was. She said oh, it's my sister, and dashed back to join the mourners. There was a great long line of motor cars following the people, and the village was full of parked cars too. It was a huge funeral. The collection bucket was right where she said it would be, so I took it to the shop, as requested. 30 October Thursday Suddenly there is a buzz of excitement about the US election here. I have been sporting my badges and my bumper stickers for a long time now, but there has not been much discussion out and about. During the primaries there was a lot of Pro-Hillary conversation because it was understood that of course she would be a friend of Ireland since her husband had been a friend of Ireland. Even if it that was true, there was no possibility that she might have her own mind about things. The issue of green cards and the recent US clamp-down on illegal residents was the other main thing to be considered about any candidate. Simon has great conversations with the pharmacist who is always on line hearing every Obama speech and knowing every detail of the entire election. He told us this week that Paddy Powers (the bookies) were already paying out on bets for an Obama victory. I am too anxious to be that certain! Three women in the opticiens were all in a state and said if he does not win, then it is a fix. They said it cannot be like the last election otherwise the world cannot respect the USA on any level. 29 October Wednesday The road is still closed between here and Grange. People are driving all over the place to get small distances. I met the milk truck on a terrifyingly narrow bit of lane up past Tullaghmeelan yesterday. It was supposed to be one week of closure for this work, but it is more than two already. Someone told me they had driven the equivalent of going to Dublin and back twice. And this man doesn't even drive. 27 October Monday The big move around is still going on down at the shop. Now there is a huge empty space in the middle as you walk in. I told Martina that they could have a dance in that space. She said it was all ready for THE SEIGE OF VENICE. I had no idea what that could be. She told me that it is a dance done with lots of people at a wedding party, changing partners and making lines. I didn't really understand it but now I hope to be invited to a wedding where it happens. 21 October Tuesday The car broke down yesterday. I think it was the accelerator cable. It was a lot of trouble. A very nice man helped me and I eventually managed to get down in to the village at about two miles an hour. I got Veronica and her groceries home, and then John gave me and two big boxes of books a ride home. He even carried them down to the barn for me. He looked at our new very square wood pile and asked if that was wood for fuel or just for decoration. Today the tow truck picked up the car and took it to Mike. I can't think how many times I have broken down in that car. 18 October Saturday A beautiful and dry mild day was forecast, so I went down to the shop to buy the papers and some undercoat for the door frame in the kitchen. Jack told me he had sold loads of paint this morning. Everyone is trying to do those last few outside, and open door jobs before the hard weather comes upon us. We got loads done outside. Simon cleaned out his wooden gutters on both the barns and the house, and we planted the sour cherry trees. I put the Sweet Williams into the ground. Simon's beautiful new long and tall glass piece with the 'eyelids/eyelets...oeillets des poetes' sits on the windowsill waiting to somehow be incorporated into the growing Sweet Williams.....I don't know what he will do with it exactly, but I hope the plants from the old man at the market take. It seems very cold to be planting outside, but the man said now was the time to do it so I did it. 16 October Thursday The clock has stopped. Again. I don't know if it is because we failed to wind it or because it has just stopped again. I spoke on the telephone with my mother and I mentioned that it was working. She was pleased. She and dad spent a lot of effort trying to get it into good working order before they gave it to us. Somehow our conversation got onto the dampness. I think I told her that the shoes in our closet had mould on them. She was horrified. I can't really blame her. I am not too happy about it myself. She tried, in a very diplomatic and tentative way, to suggest that maybe we need a de-humidifier. I told her that we own FOUR de-humidifiers and that I feel my days are marked out by emptying the ones in the book barns and the two in the house....it is too bloody damp in this country. A summer without a summer has made it hopeless for anything to dry out. 15 October Wednesday The cutting-out of the envelope interior ovals goes on and on and on. Simon attempts to do a batch of one or two hundred a day. I wish I could do them myself, but I need to stand on a small step ladder to get the pressure right, and even then, I am not as efficient with it as he is. I am preparing endless quantities of the envelopes....really sorting through my almost twenty year supply....I am really really tired of cutting off the little cellophane windows and preparing a great big envelope into what becomes a small piece only useful for about two ovals.....still, we are aiming for 3400 pieces for these two shows, so the cutting and sorting and cutting must go on. 14 October Tuesday Lashing rain. Ceaseless. The Eircom man came down and fixed the phone line which had been knocked down by the tractor when Michael brought us manure. The phone man did not seem to care about the rain. He climbed the banking, went up and over the Galty Tower and into the fields and then went up a ladder. He never wore a rainjacket, nor a hat. He just pushed throught the branches and bushes and his sweater got stuck here and there but he didn't care and he didn't bother with the rain. Em and I took off to walk in what I thought was a lull, but it did not last, and we were soaked after our 5 km. The clock on the mantel piece is still ticking. It started last week by itself and we have been winding it up regularly ever since. It is not A Grandfather Clock, but it was my grandfather's clock. The tick is very companionable. Last time it started to function, it lasted for about two weeks and then quit. It has been about 7 days now. 13 October Monday Suddenly everyone seems to be painting their places. The hairdresser's premises in the village is now a bright bright white. It is startling in its whiteness. Kenneth's house is being painted yellow. A soft yellow with a lot of white in it, but bright. The little house belonging to the Late Late Shop O'Keefes has also been painted white, but this is a quiet white. And almost immediately, they have new tenants installed. 10 October Friday I went to visit Tom Browne in the residential home. My timing was poor as I interrupted his favorite television program. He didn't turn it off, but he lowered the volume and let his eyes flick over it every once and a while as we chatted. This show is about forensic science and it shows police from various departments in the USA. They solve every single crime that comes along, and the solution is always in the attention to tiny, tiny details. Tom Browne watches this program often. He watches the re-runs of it too, which is why he was not bothered about being interrupted today. Among other thing, we talked about the surprise of Bill Cooney's death. Apparently, Tom Browne was not surprised. He said he had known, for as many years as he'd known Bill Cooney, that Bill Cooney would end his life by his own hand. He was most interested to tell me that he had spent a long time figuring out how Bill could have hung himself in that new, single story bungalow. Bill Cooney was a tall man, so a door would not have worked. Tom Browne thought and thought and he finally figured out that Bill Cooney would have opened the little trap door into the attic space and looped a rope over a beam and down into the house. Tom Browne was pleased with himself. He had never visited the scene of the death, but he managed to solve the question he had about the suicide while sitting in his wheelchair in Clonmel, in between episodes of Forensic Invesigation. 9 October Thursday Walking around with Em today in a fine drizzle and the promise of more. I bumped into Seamus and Teresa who I haven't seen for ages. Seamus has a huge scar over his eye where he had a slip in the mud and a fall against the bad gate. I am not sure if it was a piece of the gate or a thorn that ripped through his eyelid and up into his forehead. Teresa found him lying on the ground after hearing him call out her name weakly. It was sort of a bleat. His head was covered in blood. She called some neighbours to help. (It was the same neighbours to whom the murderer ran after his horrible attacks.) They got him to the hospital where the doctor told him that he was within a breadcrumb of losing his eye. 8 October Wednesday An absolutely beautiful autumn morning, with blue skies and bright sun after a cold and dewy start. We ate lunch at the small table outside the kitchen door. It was so hot that I was happy and comfortable in a sleeveless shirt, and I even needed sunglasses. Every bit of sun like this feels like a bit of the summer we didn't have. Unfortunately, it did not last for the entire lunch. Just as we started our coffee, the sky clouded over and the rain poured down. It was grand while it lasted. The rest of the afternoon followed that pattern, bouncing from sun to rain to rainbows and more sun. 6 October Monday The best thing about Clonmel in the autumn is the smell of apples which fills the whole town. The big cider producers Bulmers, or Magners (they go by both names: one for the North and for Britain, and the other for here) have huge production facilities on the outskirts of town but for some reason there are still these long narrow places, with high sides, where apples get dumped and maybe weighed right in the middle of town. The access to these dumping places is down a narrow alley so it can't be easy for a big truck or a trailer load of apples to be delivered there, much less to be collected and taken away again. My theory is that Bulmers keeps this In Town Delivery Place for the apples just to remind everyone that this is cider country. It is a wonderful smell, but such a pity that the cider they make is so homogenized and un-appley. By the time they are done with it it could be made of anything. The very good part is the smell of the apples on delivery. 2 October Thursday Working away on putting the covers onto FORTY FUNGI. It is rare for us to do a second edition of something but now here we are doing it for two books at the same time. The other one is Colin's BLACK BOB, which will have a pale green cover this time instead of the pale blue of the first edition. It is a beautiful colour. FORTY FUNGI is part of the new series of books with wiggly drawn (by me) flaps. The first edition was in a case binding. This one is smaller in dimension but feels fatter and very satisfying for the hand. The cover putting on is going well. Just perfect work for a (another) grey day. 30 September Tuesday There is a Baby Gloomy Donkey now. I don't know where the other three adults have gone, but the Baby and Mother stand around together looking as gloomy as ever. How can a baby look so miserable? 26 September Friday I think the National Ploughing Championships are finally over. They were held in Cuffesgrange this year and the traffic was extraordinary. The road from Clonmel to Kilkenny was a huge mess all week. That is about 50 kilometers of backed up traffic. People were caught in five hour delays. All movement around Clonmel was a mess, so Kilkenny must have been even worse. I have never been to the Ploughing Championships but they are obviously very popular. Loads of people drive over from Kerry, and Cork and other parts west, and north. There are exhibitions of livestock and machinery, as well as about 300 kinds of competitions. I gather they do plowing with horses, and without horses, and with tractors, and all different age groups compete for titles. The television and radio were full of reports and the people I talked to who actually went said the biggest issue this year was the dust. The ground was so dry that everyone was choking with the dust. After this summer of nearly endless rain, it's incredible that dust even exists here, much less that it is a topic of both conversation and discomfort. 23 September Tuesday We just learned that Bill Cooney is dead. He hung himself in his house on Thursday and he was found on Friday. The removal took place on Sunday and he was buried on Monday. It all seems very sad, both the suddenness of it all, and the taking of his own life. He always seemed such a cheerful man. He drank way too much. Perhaps that got him depressed. He was from up the Nire. I think maybe there was a wife, and some sons too, but he had been living on his own in the village for a few years now. He came up to get a door from us one day. It was a door that we got when the butcher shop was being re-done. They were throwing out the door and we thought it might fit our shed, but it didn't. When Bill Cooney mentioned that he needed a door for his garden shed, we offered him this door and he happily took it away. While he was here, he looked carefully at everything we were growing. He loved gardening. After that visit, he would often leave old books about gardening in the bar for me to borrow. When I was finished with them, I would give them back to Rose and eventually he would collect them and then leave me another. He gave me one to keep. It is called HARDY FRUIT GROWING, and it belonged to his mother. It was often hard to understand him, because of the drink and because of his lack of teeth. I liked the fact that we communicated with these books about growing things. Bill Cooney loved to dance. He would jump in his car with a friend and head off to a dance in Durrow which is probably and hour and half drive from here. He should never have driven that far. He should never have driven anywhere, as I think he was never not drinking, and he never drank just a little. He liked to dance so much that if there was music, sometimes he danced around the bar with a sweeping broom. Bill Cooney was tall and thin, and very graceful. In the shock of hearing of his death, we were stunned to find out that he was only 65. I just assumed he must be in his late seventies. He wrote a note before he hung himself. It ended with the words "And God bless you all". The priest read the note out loud at the funeral and ended his talk by saying,"And God bless you too, Bill Cooney." 20 September Saturday There are loads of blackberries this year. I am told that might mean that it is going to be a very cold and long winter. I am picking as many as I can. Some go into the freezer and some go into apple and blackberry pies and some we just eat by the bowl fulls. I try to pick some every day, and I am finding several places which replenish themselves rapidly and regularly. So many of the great bunches that I see are just too high for me. I am too short to reach them. The nettles and the thorns make the reaching and stretching very tricky. It is amazing that after such a wet and gray and cold summer, we can have such plenty. The plums and the apples really suffered. My washing on the line often suffers too as all of the birds join us in eating the blackberries. 12 September Friday Another bit of snack reduction for Em has been the cutting up of the Pig's Ear. She likes a bit of chewing at lunch time, but her earpieces have been getting smaller. For a while I used the garden shears to cut them into two pieces. Now I am trying to cut them into three or even four pieces. It is not easy and sometimes I can't cut them at all. They are horrible tough things. Whenever we are in Cork, Em knows exactly where we are when we turn onto a street with a pet shop. There are three pet shops which she knows and which we cannot pass without her dragging us in. She knows where the Pig's Ears are stored in each place. She likes to sit in front of the cages with gerbils and hamsters and birds and to watch for a while. I always feel this is a fair trade for her having to spend the day on a lead and in the car. 11 September Thursday Em has been told to lose 3 kilos. Actually, we have been told that Em needs to lose 3 kilos. Her ideal weight would be 17 kilos. It is not easy to imagine her that much thinner. The vet seemed to think that the reduction of snacks would be enough to force the weight loss. Dinner could stay the same. Snacks are the issue. Snacks are the problem. There are no longer two morning biscuits. There is one morning biscuit broken into two pieces. There are no longer two evening biscuits. The evening biscuit is broken into two pieces. The dog can count but so far she doesn't seem to notice the smaller quantity. Luckily she is already out of the habit of going to the bar. Many years ago, Rose used to slide a digestive biscuit under the little door in the bar. Em loved this and considered it complete magic. She would lie down close to the crack under the door and watch for hours just waiting for another biscuit to whiz out. Sometimes two or three would appear in one evening. And Bunny used to reach into his bag to bring out something leftover from his lunch, usually a cookie or a KitKat, and he would feed it to her very slowly, crooning softly to her all the while. We put a stop to all of those sweet treats a long time ago, well before Bunny died. Em still keeps an eye on that crack under the door even though nothing has come out of there for many years now. If anyone in the vicinity opens a bag of crisps, she is beside them immediately and she rests her head gently on their thigh to encourage them to feed her. Yes, it is good that she rarely goes to the bar these days. Besides her other exercise I am trying to take her out onto the platform for some regular chasing and fetching. I am not a very strong thrower so I find throwing downhill makes the ball or toy go further. She then has to run both downhill to fetch it and uphill to bring it back for more. The current throwing favorite is a bright pink hedgehog with its face chewed off. It is kind of clunky and not as easy to throw as a ball. Twelve or fifteen good long downhill fetches and she is ready for a rest. So am I. It gets boring. For some reason, I insist on shouting On your mark, get set, GO! every time I throw. 24 August Sunday Em & I thrashed our way up the boreen to Johnny Mackin's to check on the apples in the orchard. I had to walk most of the way with my hands straight up in the air just to get through the nettles and the blackberries. Everything is so overgrown. I wore full waterproofs as protection against stings and thorns as much as against the rain. Foolishly, I forgot to wear my waterproof trousers outside of my rubber boots. By wearing the trousers tucked into the boots, all the water off the wet vegetation rushed right down and into my boots. My socks were soaked before I was halfway there. The nettles in the orchard were over my head and the few apples on the trees were not ripe yet. No sun. There will be a good crop of plums in a few days, if I can get to them before the birds do. I continued on to the churchyard to make a photograph of the little carved head. It represents either an abbott or a bishop. I love his very small carved ears. Several years ago, we had a plaster cast made of it. We have had lots of interesting conversations about it recently with various visitors. I have been encouraged to be in touch with the people at the County Museum and with those doing an archeological survey of the area. Part of me feels that this little head is a secret just to be enjoyed by those of us who know it is there. I don't want it to be removed and put in a museum. I don't want it to be stolen either, nor do I want it to crash to the ground. Dick, who is from the Conservation Department of Clare County Council, told us it was probably 12-14th century, and that the mortar holding it in place was very poor. I think that has been what finally pushed me to make some phone calls on the head's behalf. 23 August Saturday The newspaper and radio are proclaiming that this is the wettest summer in Ireland since records began being kept about such things. On one day, Dublin boasted more rain falling in one hour than usually falls in the entire month of August. I am not sure if we are supposed to feel cheered about all this. A record is a record after all. I am wearing wool socks as I write. This will go down in my personal history as the summer that never arrived. There are lots of promises, predictions, and hopes for September's weather. It is being called Indian Summer. In New England, Indian Summer comes later, in October, after the first chill of autumn has set in. Then you are given back a bit of summer. I don't think you can have an Indian Summer if you never had a summer at all. 19 August Thursday As I finally insert the finished SHORT-CUTS concertinas into their little archival cellophane envelopes, I wonder yet again why we seem to keep making things which we feel need to be put into these envelopes. Environmentally, it is wasteful and probably unnecessary. Of course, it is all unnecessary. If we made a version to float away on the internet that would be that. We can't do that. We need to make things that we can touch and that can be touched by others as they read and look at them. Perhaps the plastic envelopes have to do with my life in this dripping valley. At 2.45, the sun came out. At 3 o'clock, the sun felt hot. I left the lower barn and lay down on the bench just outside the door. The bench was as dry as if it had not been raining off and on all day. At 3.20, the clouds covered the sun and I went back inside to work. At 3.45, the rain was so loud on the roof of the barn that I had to turn the radio up louder. I am really sick of this. 18 August Thursday Dead mouse in the wine cupboard. A good chunk of hair and flesh was stuck to the bottle I pulled out. It is not a fresh corpse. There is no smell at all. Still, I wonder what sort of job I can promise in exchange for Simon cleaning it up. 15 August Friday Rose's was so empty yesterday that she went off to take her dog for a walk and left us there in the bar. A man came in with a sticker that said CANCELLED in red letters. He put it diagonally over the poster for the Vintage Rally. No need to explain further. Soggy field. 13 August Wednesday Ever since Sally was here, I have been looking for ants. I can't remember how the subject came up. We spoke about ants as an integral and normal part of summer. It was then that I realized that I have never seen an ant at Ballybeg. I am not sure if this is true for all of Ireland, or maybe just here? I don't really remember many ants in England either. Do I remember any ants in England? Not just many but any? Ants are not really something that I think about much, except when they are being a bother. That image of a long line of ants trailing into a kitchen or out of a pile of sand exists as a cartoon image for me, even though I know it used to be real. I remember the ants in NH coming in and taking over the food in the dog's dinner bowl. Ants are no longer part of my life. No flying ants. No black ants. No soldier ants. No red burning biting ants. No ants. 12 August Tuesday Still folding the SHORT-CUTS, although my sections are all finished and I am waiting for Simon to do the last two folds before we flatten them under weights and put them into their little envelopes. He is terrible about finishing things like this. I insist that we finish an entire edition of something in one period of time. I hate to come back six months or a year later and to try to get back to that exact fold for that exact paper, or to hunt out that same thread. It is like having a stutter to just keep starting again. For me, it is a waste of brain power. I guess more people do this than not these days. If you make a small number of things and you print them off your computer, and especially if you don't number them, you can come back and print and fold and sew another ten, twenty, or fifty at any moment for the next ten years. This is the ideal of Print on Demand, especially on a small home-made scale. If I think about it for a while, it is the ideal solution for us. Since we are not printing on the computer, that part is not an option. We could pile our printed things up and fold and sew slowly over time, but new projects are always coming along. Many years ago, we pulled out a very long well wrapped parcel of Lassus' Les Pins. It was at least twelve years since the first lot had been produced and no one had ever finished the production. I spent one day trying to learn and perfect the complex folded concertina, and then I gave up. We threw the parcel, carefully re-wrapped, away. As upsetting as I found the waste, it was less upsetting than finishing someone else's unfinished work from all those years before. I will push Simon to finish this small concertina soon. (As I write this, there is hail beating on the roof.) 11 August Monday The weather is still abysmal. If you leave a car for even a few minutes it is important to wind up the windows. The downpours start and stop so quickly and with so little warning. The forecast for the week is rain. Cloud and rain. Sun and rain. Cloud and cloud. Tonight there is a 24 hour deluge promised. Can't wait. 10 August Sunday A day of Stonethrower Rally entrapment. We could hear the Rally cars going round and round. They use some kind of special fuel that makes their exhaust pop like fireworks. We walked across Joe's field for as far as we could go and when we got to a road where they were zooming past we turned and continued a meandering kind of perimeter walk. Overall it wasn't too noisy in our valley. We are very protected down here, but next year I may make a point of being somewhere else for the day. 9 August Saturday Em and I went round for a walk and forgot about the Stonethrower men and their day of Scrutiny. I should go back and read what I wrote about them last August, but I am so annoyed with their return that I don't want to remember how exciting I found it all last year. There are all sorts of red and white plastic tapes and arrows, first yellow arrows, and then red ones, to anticipate a corner. Some corners get a big white sign with big black letters saying BALE. This is to remind whoever is on bale duty to leave one, two or four big bales of hay (wrapped in black plastic) there in case someone misses the corner and crashes. I gather this happens a lot. A lot of fences and walls get smashed into. The cars seem to lose control sometimes even when they are going straight. When I went down to the shop in the village just before 7 this evening, I was amazed at how many cars where there. Everyone was at Mass. The church must have been packed. Since lots of people are to be trapped at home from 8 am tomorrow, there is no possibility of anyone getting to Mass. I assume the new priest must have been doing the service so that would be a big draw too. 8 August Friday There is a new priest in the village. He was in the bar tonight, talking to everyone and admiring the picture of Paddy on the wall. Brendan did a very fine imitation of Paddy singing "Do What You Do Do Well" for him. Rose got out a photo album and started to show all sorts of pictures to illustrate the local history. I would not have known he was a priest. He was wearing a green and white striped shirt and jeans and drinking pints of lager. I thought he was someone's relative who was in a great mood as he was visiting from Dublin or somewhere. 7 August Thursday Simon went down to the pub tonight. He had a chat about wind turbines with the brother of the murdered girl. We never remember this brother's name. We all remember Eddie's name. It was Eddie who was stabbed nine times, and who no one thought would live. Now Eddie is back and alive and everyone treats him with great respect. Everyone asks Eddie how he is doing, and everyone tries not to stare at the huge wound around his neck. Anyway, Simon had a chat with one of Eddie's brothers and came back with news of the Stonethrower's Rally. It is back again this Sunday. How did I get the idea that it only happened in this area once every ten years? For some reason the men who went around to inform people about it missed us. Our boreen looks so rough and uninhabited, they must have thought no one was down here. We are invisible, especially to people with new cars. 6 August Wednesday I drove to Kilkenny in the rain and got there just in time to catch the train to Dublin. The whole station was full of people waiting to go. No one wanted to wait outside in the rain. When the train pulled in the cars were lettered A, B, E, D, E. My ticket said C, so I decided the first E was probably doubling as a C. I got in and asked a woman if this was C. She said it didn't matter, and that I should just sit down. I looked for my seat which was number C32. There was an elderly man sitting in my seat so I moved along to another seat. Another woman told me that the seat numbers don't matter, and that we can just sit anywhere. The conductor came to punch our tickets. I asked him if it was okay for me to take a later train. I was booked for the 15.05 return. He said fine. I said, It's okay then? He said if you have a ticket you can get on any train. It doesn't matter. The whole train smelled like bacon. Everyone was talking at top speed and top volume. It was impossible to read or to sleep. Nothing matters. 2 August Saturday The white flowers of the McGrath's field of potatoes are beautiful. It is an enormous field (maybe two acres, maybe five, maybe ten?) and the blossoms are so plentiful and luscious that it looks like a flower garden, rather than a cash crop. 1 August Friday I was warned that it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I placed a huge pot of sweet peas over near the fence and I put some fine strings up to help them to start to climb and tumble over the fence. (Actually it was linen bookbinding thread which was all I could find in a hurry because my garden twine had disapppeared) It all looked lovely for about a week. Joe's cows spent a few days in that field and ate everything. I now have some very short plants left in the pot. I don't know if they will ever recover. The cows seem to have eaten the linen thread too. 31 July Thursday It is a big effort not to mention the weather. It is imperative to get my mind onto something else. I spent some time in the barn making the first folds of SHORT-CUTS. It has been a long time coming into being. It was my mother who first asked me about TWITTEN and about SNICKET. She remembered those two words, from Hastings, and from Yorkshire, and she wondered if there were other words like that, meaning the same thing and equally local. I only knew a few, mostly from Derbyshire (like JENNEL and JITTY and GINNEL). I started to ask friends around Britain. They all seemed to know at least a few words. Many of the words overlapped and were used in different, and quite widely separated places. I spent a lot of time trying to make an orderly explanation of where which words appeared. It got really confusing, so eventually a list of the words felt sufficient: A collection of local terms for the short-cuts and ways through towns. In America, I think they would all be called alleys, but these ways are different and were never wide enough for cars. They are very much for people on foot and for a quiet and more direct way to move through a place. Simon came along and helped me to finally resolve the list and what we have made is now a little concertina of the wonderful words. I have no doubt there are more, but this is as many as I collected over this few years. I simply had to stop somewhere. 30 July Wednesday Two nights (and a lot of daylight hours) of solid lashing rain. The ground is sodden and the puddles are enormous. Breda and I managed a rapid walk around without even needing our rainjackets this morning. We met Pa and Peggy at the entrance to one of their fields. Immediately the conversation went to a discussion of the rain and to the huge number of SHALLYKABUKIES seen. They all exclaimed and commented as to how they were seeing vast numbers of Shallykabukies and in places where they had never before seen a Shallykabuky. I had no idea what they were speaking about. I had to interrupt to ask. Shallykabukies are the little snails with yellowy striped shells, which I had noticed were quite plentiful after rain, but I never knew they had a special name. It must be a word from the Irish, so I will have to find out. No doubt my phonetic spelling leaves a bit to be desired. Even misspelled, it is a grand word. 29 July Tuesday We have had a small brown wren inside for most of the day. We chased her around for a trying to catch her gently to put her back outside. Wherever she was, she would swoop and rush and suddenly be on the other side of the room. We closed doors to keep her contained but she was able to whiz throught the smallest cracks. Each time we thought she was gone, she would reappear rushing out of a cupboard, or down from a high shelf. We ran around for quite a while and finally we gave up. Every window and door was open and ready for her departure, but she didn't want to go. Simon named her Nuala Quirke, which is his most recent favorite Irish name. When we mention Nuala Quirke, Em rushes out the door barking with excitement. 24 July Thursday We were down in the pub at the end of the afternoon. The whole family of the murdered girl was there. We had heard that the trial had ended that day and that The Murderer had been sentenced to life for the murder of the girl and to 15 additional years for the stabbing of her brother. The trial had only begun a few days before and The Murderer had begun by pleading Not Guilty. The police had 100 witnesses lined up for various degrees of observations, witnessing and charactor assessments. One friend told us that she was number 79, and didn't know when or if she might be called to go down to Cork. The very next day, the murderer changed his plea to Guilty for the murder. The next day after that, today, he pleaded Guilty to the stabbing assault and the whole case ended immediately with his sentencing. The entire family was in the court, but then there they all were in the bar waiting for the 6 o'clock news as if it would be news to them. There was a lot of rushing in and out of the toilets and from the outside smoking areas, and finally everyone was gathered along the bar (several people deep). The news of the trail and the sentencing came on. The whole bar was completely silent. There was no cheering nor any cursing. I was worried that the whole lot would go wild. I was wishing that we were not there. Instead, the whole family just moved outside as a group, and they all lit cigarettes. The father joined them a few minutes later. He had missed the whole thing as he was in the toilets. 21 July Monday We just learned that this part of Tipperary is called Iffa and Offa West on some old maps. Great words. They sound completely made up. We must find out more. 7 July Monday It is four weeks of rain, grey skies and generally unsettled weather. I am in a foul mood. It is hard to keep thinking that this is allright. There are droughts and heatwaves in other places. I am wearing wool socks and sweaters. There are wet dishcloths and wet walking gear hanging everywhere. Nothing is drying. I refuse to turn on the heat, but the endless damp is making me crazy. What are we doing here? Last year was like this and we thought it was a freak. To have it again is just too much. This will be the second year in a row that summer clothes are not an option. Most of the vegetables in the garden have rotted, but ironically I have my best crop of salads leaves ever. That should cheer me up, but I feel rather determined not to cheer up. I went down to the shop for the post and for a few errands. I complained to, and with, everyone I saw down there. The postmistress outdid me. I asked her if she was cycling down in these deluges (yes), and I also asked how her driving lessons were going. I asked if she had managed to BEAT THE UNACCOMPANIED DRIVER DEADLINE. (This is how the papers were headlining it.) This was the wrong question to ask. She exploded, and went off into a rant about the injustice of it all, and how in the world was she to learn to drive if she couldn't drive on the roads by herself, etc etc etc. I interrupted her to say that that is normal, and that in most countries, it is illegal for people to drive alone without a full license, and in many countries being accompanied by a licensed driver is not even enough, but you have to have a fully trained driving instructor with you. She didn't listen to any of that and continued raging. For a short time, I forgot my own wretchedness. Then I went outside and it was pissing down and I wondered yet again what in the world I am doing here. 4 July Friday The good news is that Em has lost more weight. Not quite another kilo, but she has dropped from 21.20 to 20.50. When we arrived at the vets' she raced to stand on the scales. We used to have to drag her there. Not so good news is the Ear Mites. She has been shaking her head in a quick manner which causes a flapping and snapping of her ears. The snapping noise was so loud that it would wake us up in the night. The vet said she has an infestation of mites and the right ear is badly infected. We are doing daily clean outs and we will go back next week. The really scarey thing is the lump on her leg. The vet is worried about it so I am even more worried. When we return for the Mite inspection, the vet will check the lump again and then she may have to do a biopsy. 2 July Wednesday The rain is just LASHING down. Just now the sky has gone dark and the wind is wild, but sometimes the sun keeps shining as the rain comes down. The fennel has been beaten to death. We have a few hours here and there without rain, but then it comes again. There were twelve straight hours of rain on Sunday night. Everything is looking greener than ever. There is a completely unreal glow on this world. As I dash up and down to my room, I try to keep remembering to empty the water from the top of the postbox. We have a large plastic box with a snap-on lid for the post. There is a big rock inside it to keep it from blowing around and another rock on the top to keep the lid from being lifted off. After a good rain, the raised sides of the lid turn it into a big flat water dish for Em. 29 June Sunday We spent the afternoon in the printing shed. Simon is working on a small print of Jonathan's cigar cutter. When we visited Corn Close, he saw it sitting on the desk. He made a little rubbing of it with a soft pencil and then put it back where Jonathan had left it. Now two printing blocks have been made. I was drafted for the first printing which Simon did in light blue, and then we lightly coated the area with silver thermography powder. My job was to hold the printed and powdered paper close to a very bright halogen light which I had turned away from my face. It was still very bright and very hot. I have special goggles of dark glass over clear glass. The dark part can be flipped up. To see if the powder had beaded up yet, I moved each page into the bright sunlight. Doing one page at a time, it was slow work but it was very satisfying. The brown cover folder has a bit of thermography on it too, but that went a lot faster. The printing shed is tiny. It is perfect for one person and maybe for another to move pages or to do what I was doing. When Emily insists on lying in the middle of the space it becomes an impossibly small place. 28 June Saturday There was a squeaking noise near the tool shed. I walked over and looked around but I could not see anything. A few hours later I heard it again and looked more carefully. Feathers were sticking out a crack of the old corrugated metal front. The feathers were moving around to accompany the squeaking. It didn't sound like any bird noise but the feathers were definitely bird feathers. I fetched Simon who took a crowbar to the edge of the cladding. The trapped bird flew out and away. It was a young Bluetit. We now have a curl in the front of the shed. It will take some hammer whacks to get the metal to lie flat again. 23 June Monday There is a woman trapped in her car which is underneath a tractor or some kind of very big farm machine. The postman just came and told me that. They were going in opposite directions. The accident is down by Liam Boyle's house on the Knocklofty road. That's all he knew. We can barely think of anything else. 22 June Sunday Torrential rains started on Friday night and continued all night and all day on Saturday and all Saturday night. If we had been somewhere else we would have been in trouble but somehow the water all finds a place to go. The light today is weak, not bright, almost as if it is a bit watery still. SOME ALTERNATIVES TO FLOCK is finished and wrapped and boxed. We spent a few hours sorting through boxes to find out which books were out of print, or almost out of print. I am painting my birthdates, again and again. 21 June Saturday I found out why the young calves are drinking from these various feeding machines, and why they are separated from their mothers. I thought the separation was to make them strong and brave, and independant. The real reason is that both of these Joes are running dairy farms. The last thing they want is for a mother cow's milk production to go down the throat of a baby calf. Instead, the calves are fed on some kind of formula to fatten them up and to get them growing good strong teeth, so that they can start eating grass. (Do cows have teetch when they are born?) If the formula is potentially more fattening than regular milk, I really must stop Em from drinking it. She doesn't need any more fat. Now that her hair is shorn, it is very difficult to believe that she lost a kilo. I must be more rigorous with her diet. 18 June Wednesday Tom Smoke is dead. He was trapped in a burning apartment. He was from the Nire and he had a house and some land out there. He sold off some land and went to live in town for a bit of excitement. At first it was some woman that he followed there, but then I think he stayed for the company and for the variety of town. He lost his license at one point, and spent some weeks in Limerick Jail. He came out raving about how great the food was and that it was served right to you three times a day. Tom Smoke called every woman Mary. It was alright if your name really was Mary, but if not, you had no choice. One whose name really is Mary is known as Mary the Halfway, because she runs the bar called The Halfway House. It is sort of equidistant between Clonmel and Dungarvan. Tom Smoke went in there one day all bloody and Mary the Halfway asked him what had happened. He said he had fallen down. She said "Ah well, Our Lord had three falls before he died. There's no shame in it." Tom Smoke answered, "Yeah but Our Lord didn't fall off a Honda 50." Another time he ran into some Garda in Limerick who stopped him because they recognized him. They asked his name and where he lived. When he told them, they asked why he was 45 miles from home. He said he was meeting a girl. The Garda said, "What? All the way over here? 45 miles from home? Aren't there any girls where you live?" Tom Smoke said "If you lived where I do you'd be over here too." Tom Smoke's name came from cadging cigarettes years ago. He did not want to buy a whole pack because he didn't want to smoke them in the morning. He would get a smoke off someone in the bar and then buy them a drink in payment. After the funeral, there was a whole evening down at The Hidden Inn with people telling one Tom Smoke story after another. He had great long sideburns which flared out at the bottom, and long thin hair. He had a look like no one else in this decade, and a way of living in this time as if it was another time too. 17 June Tuesday There are a lot of new young calves around. I must ask why they are taken from their mothers so soon. One Joe has a red tank which can be pulled behind his truck or the tractor. It has bright pink rubber teats all around it, at just the right height for the baby calves to suck. The other Joe has a blue plastic container which hangs on the side of a gate. This too is at the right height for the calves. He has a smaller number of calves and they push to drink from the single row of teats. In their excitement, there is usually a lot of milk spilled on the ground. Em sneaks her head under the gate to steal the spilled milk. When she does this, the young ones back up and stare at her. I don't know if the staring is with disbelief or just with interest. 15 June Sunday The first haying of the season is finished. It has been several days, and late into the bright nights, with the sound of the big machines circling and circling through all of the fields around us. As soon as one farmer's fields were done, another's fields would be started. The various machines, tractors and picker-upper things and baling machines follow each other around fast and as if they are choreographed. When it all stops, in every direction, there is a grand silence over everything. And for now everywhere looks manicured. Some of the fields are chewed down to lawn-like evenness by the cows and others by the haying. Both walking through and viewing from afar, we wonder where the rough edges have gone. It is the disheveled quality that we miss. 12 June Thursday As suddenly as it was everywhere, the cow parsley is now gone. The blossoms are gone, just leaving their skeletal structure. Now the hedgerows are fulls of wild honeysuckle. Some kinds are pink and yellow and some are white and yellow. It is all so heavily perfumed that while walking the very narrow and overgrown boreen, I feel dizzy with the smell. The elderflowers have just blossomed too. Their creamy white flowers are so big and so bright, it is as though the landscape is covered with polka dots. I am all ready to make my yearly supply of Elderflower Cordial. I have my bottles and my lemons and my labels (the same label I have been using for years, but this year Simon scanned the drawing and printed it with a green tone. It is lovely.). The recipe is out on the table. I am waiting for a bit of bright sun. I am told that if the flowers are picked on an overcast day, the cordial will taste of cat pee. I am willing to wait for the sun to reappear. 11 June Wednesday Em has been in a nervous state for the past two days. Joe's cows are in the field adjoining our land. Whenever they are there, she becomes very protective of her world. She dashes across to the fence and rushes at the nearest cow or group of cows. After they scatter, she lies down in the grass on their side of the fence. Before her haircut she was very visible in the high grass as her hair floated around her like a fluffy bunch of blossom. With her newly shorn self, she disappears a bit. That is partly because the grass is so long, but partly because all of the big white fluffy bits are cut off, and from a distance she reads as more black. Her whole point seems to be to lie very very flat and still, presumbably so that the cows won't know she is there or at least they will forget, and then they will try to come closer and then she can leap up and scare them away. All of this has to be done while she is still rushing back and forth to keep track of us as we go between the barns and the house. It is hard work for her to keep track of everything and everyone. Last night she collapsed into her bed at 8.00, while we could still hear the cows munching loudly outside. The bad aspect of this cow duty is that sometimes she lets the cows come right over to her, and then they lick her. We have never been able to understand why she lets this happen when most of the time she is so agressive towards them. The smell of cow saliva is not very nice but she wears the odour with great pride. 10 June Tuesday I forgot to mention the other thing I saw in Cahir yesterday. THE WAREHOUSE OF WONDERFUL ART has re-opened. It is only a summer thing, probably because the windows are missing throughout the building. I think it was once a grain store. It sits on the opposite end of the bridge from the Cahir Castle. At Christmas, there are usually Christmas trees sold from there. Each window has a plank of wood covering about a third of its opening. There is no glass. For the summer, a painting is displayed on each plank, in each window, four stories high. I think that is about 16 windows (or maybe its 20?). That's at least 16 paintings one can view from the road while driving past, or from the pavement across the road if one is walking. 9 June Monday I went to the Super-Valu in Cahir today. It was very busy so I had to go to the far end of the car park. I had forgotton about the plaster Madonna who stands at the corner of the car park, to the left of the bottle banks. She is just off the tarmac, raised up on a pedestal, where the hedges meet. Maybe I had forgotton about her because the hedges had grown over her for a while. Someone has just done a very careful job of trimming the hedges up to and around her. She has her own little green aura. 7 June Saturday We are scoring, folding, glueing and pressing and packing SOME ALTERNATIVES TO FLOCK, John Bevis' new book of poetry. It is a nice job to return to as an escape from the garden or from other things. The finishing work does seem to be going on for a long time. Perhaps because we are only doing an hour here and there? It is lovely to work with the doors open, the birds so noisy and busy, and the dog snoring. 4 June Wednesday Em had her yearly haircut today. As always she was excited to get to the vets and to find the cat in his bed under the shelf. The whole place is full of smells and excitement. She rushes to be everywhere at once. We cut through the back rooms to Debbie's Grooming Shed, and all her enthusiasm disappeared. She tried to take a quick right for an escape. She hates the shower and the shampoo and she hates sitting there getting clipped, but once she is captured, she accepts defeat and sits quietly. She now looks ridiculous. She has gone from being a huge fluffy sheep dog, to being some sort of sleek terrier kind of dog with huge pointed ears and a rat's tail. The beautiful plume is gone. Last year I thought she looked like a fat seal. This year she is a less fat seal. 3 June Tuesday We have been back for a week, but I just have not been able to write yet. Going away makes for such a pile up of THINGS TO DO. There are the things which were left and now need to be dealt with. There are the lists made en route. There are thank you notes to write and messages to return. There is the garden. Best not talk about that. The garden seems to be a mess. I gather there was a cold east wind and a fair bit of rain while we were gone. A rabbit, or the slugs, decimated quite a lot of the small things which I planted out in a rush before we left. Maybe they were still too small? It was so cold that the grass did not grow. We had wonderful weather for our walk in Yorkshire, and for the extended trip to revisit Corn Close in Dentdale . We were in a tiny band of good weather, while most of Britain was in torrents of rain. We ended our first days' walking, which took us over Sutton Bank and onward, with a terrific evening of dinner and drinks at Shandy Hall. We explored the gardens before dinner and the house and its collection after dinner. Since Laurence Sterne was born in Clonmel, the walk became a pilgrimage (of sorts) for Simon and I. Before we left, we tried to find something to take from Clonmel to Patrick at the museum. Sadly, the best thing we could find was a stick of Clonmel rock with an image of the West Gate (out of Irishtown) on its label. The gate has a poorly carved likeness of Sterne on it. This is not visible on the rock's label, but we know it is there. Now that I am back, I have given myself the job of finding out as much as I can about Sterne's presence in Clonmel. I will make a list of everything I can find out. Before we left I went to the library to get a copy of TRISTAM SHANDY. There is only one copy of it in the library, and it is not for circulation. Reference only. 13 May Tuesday When we take our stuff to Legaun for recycling, we are required to have a label on each bag. The bags are clear plastic and contain clean and dry plastic and paper. For two years we have taken the bags of paper and plastic, along with other stuff for recycling, and we have taken our pale blue self-adhesive labels every time. We have never once been asked to put labels on the bags. The labels are wrinkly now. They have been through the laundry a few times. We are always ready to use them. I think they will wear out before we are ever required to use them. 12 May Monday The cow parsley is out. The grassy sides of the roads are getting that frothy look that only cow parsley can give them. As more and more blossoms appear, it becomes truly luxurious. The boreen is so narow that the drive down to the house becomes a natural car wash on a damp day, or a dewy morning. As I walk, I like to pick a large piece of cow parsley and wave it about in time with my stride. This morning I was making large horizontal figure eights as I walked at a fast pace down the hill. While I walked and lashed my cow parsley through the air, I sang a whishing kind of chant. Maybe I shouldn't call it singing. It is FWEE HAH, FWEE HAH, FWEE FWEE FWEE HAH. I seem to be able to chant this forever, and I can speed it up or slow it down. It is the same tuneless chant that appears in my mouth every year when the cow parsley appears. I was a bit surprised to find myself being watched over the hedge by a local farmer this morning. I did not say hello for fear of having to explain myself. I just waved my cow parsley at him and kept walking & chanting & lashing.... 10 May Saturday There is a new tenant in Mary Corbett's cottage. (The Murder House. The House That Nobody Will Ever Live In Again. The House That They Will Have To Tear Down.) This new tenant is outside puttering about all the time. He seems to be a real do it yourself kind of find it and fix it man. His car has a droopy bumper, so he poked two holes in it and laced some string through the holes. The strings are attached to something under the bonnet of his car. When the bonnet is closed the strings are tightened and the bumper no longer drags on the ground. I am interested each time I pass to see what he is doing or what he has done. Em is interested because he has a puppy. 8 May Thursday We were having some trouble with the broadband again, so after trying this and that, Simon called the company in Clonmel. It seems the whole complany has been sold and the new owners and their office are now based in Waterford. While trying to find out the name for the new company, Simon was told that: "It was bought by the guy who owned it." 7 May Wednesday Sign in the cafe in Cahir where there is a juicer and a price list for smoothies and juices but the counter is pushed up against the wall and the fruits and vegetables on display are either fake or disturbingly old: ORANGE JUICE freshly squeezed orange juice APPLE JUICE freshly squeezed apple juice CARROT JUICE freshly squeezed pineapple juice 5 May Monday The little hut is still in the high field. It is still a surprise every time I see it. A lot of things are a surprise in that field as it's ground level is about 2.5 metres above ours. it is not uncommon to be sitting down in the house and to feel like you are being watched. A cow or calf looking over the fence can look right into the window, and they often do. I asked Joe about the little hut. It is there to provide shade and shelter for some of his sick calves. They are in that field as a form of quarantine as they have some kind of lung infection. The ones who have recovered are in an adjoining field. They leap and play and have shiney coats. The sick group look pretty miserable and they lie down a lot. 30 April Wednesday I spoke to Kenneth while walking with Em. We chatted about this and that. I said I had not seen the Gloomy Donkeys for a while and asked where they were. As they move from field to field, every once and a while they end up back in their owners own fields. He told me that these are not just any old Gloomy Donkeys, but that they are very special French Donkeys which their owner breeds to sell. He says each donkey sells for 2000 euro. He told me that the man also has a Llama. I feel depressed by both of these pieces of news. 29 April Tuesday A booklet came in the post today. It is titled PREPARING FOR MAJOR EMERGENCIES An Introduction, and it comes from the Office of Emergency Planning. It covers Animal Diseases, Fire, Flooding, Nuclear Incidents, Pandemic Influenza, Hazardous Chemical Spills, Explosions and Suspicious Packages, as well as Accidents at Sea. There are tips for planning ahead, first aid, and useful telephone numbers. The fat shiney booklet is printed in both Irish and English. If I were doing an update on GIFTS FROM THE GOVERNMENT, this would have to be included. I guess I will put it into the cupboard with the post-nuclear fall-out Potassium Iodate tablets, and hope that we never need any of it. 28 April Monday Em has lost a kilo. I am very pleased with this as I have been working hard to feed her less. Everyday I grate a fresh carrot to go with her dinner. She will not eat a carrot whole, but loves it when it is grated. Sometimes I do an apple too. The vet said the raw vegetables and fruit are good fibre for her and that she can have as much as she wants. The amount she gets is limited to my boredom factor. Some of these big fat carrots take a lot of grating and my arm gets tired. A few times I have stopped paying attention and sliced a good whack of skin off my knuckles. I rarely do the grating without thinking of my mother. She hates grating and she hates graters. For many years she has kept an old and very dull grater in the back of a low cupboard. The grater is stored in a clear plastic bag with a twisty tie holding it shut. Since it is so difficult to get out, she never gets it out. Since it is so old and dull, it is very very hard work to grate anything. She is terrified that she will grate her fingers and knuckles while using it. It is much more likely that she will hurt herself on an old dull grater than on a new and sharp one. She will not believe this and continues to not grate anything. All of the knives in her kitchen are quite dull too. 27 April Sunday Joe has put a little metal hut in the upper field. It is open on one side and I think it holds some form of feed for the young cows in the field. It was in another field further up the boreen, and now he has moved it down here. I had just become accustomed to seeing it there as I walked or drove along. For several weeks, it was a surprise each time I saw it. Now it is a surprise again as I can see it from our table inside the house. It is a little bit reminiscent of Ulrich Ruckreim's shed in Clonegal as it is made of grey corrugated metal and a rust coloured metal structure. Of course, his building was really taking after this kind of farm building, but it is now working in the opposite way for me. 25 April Friday The moon must be full-ish as it seems very bright when I walk through the meadow at night with Em. Each night, while she barks and chases, I have taken to peeling the shiny brown bark off the the birch trees down at the bottom. The freshly exposed areas of white bark really glow in the soft darkness. And the apple trees are all beginning to bud and blossom. Of the newly planted trees, Bloody Butcher has the healthiest looking and the most blossom. 24 April Thursday Two skinny teenaged boys came into the bar. They asked Rose to change their two euro coin into two one euro coins. They asked if she would open the pool room for them. She went to fetch the key and while they waited, they read the results of the LOTTO from Fourmilewater. No one had won the jackpot, but there were five people who had won thirty euro each. The last two names had Scotland written beside them, instead of Newcastle, Goatenbridge, Ballymac, or somewhere else local. The more pimply of the two lads shrieked "SCOTLAND???!" The man nearest to them at the bar turned his head slightly and said, "Yes, Scotland. They came over to play the LOTTO." 21 April Monday The primroses are blooming all down the boreen. As we walked down in the morning, we noted how many there are and how lovely they are this year. We comment on how many there are and how lovely they are every year. 19 April Saturday The starlings are back. They are building their nests in the book barn. Every year, they make a mess carrying their sticks and bits of grass in and under the roof. Some years we have put bits of chicken wire into the gaps to try to stop them, but it never works. It is nice to listen to the babies making noise up in the rafters as we sit and sew our books. It has become one of the sounds of spring. 13 April Sunday A dead cow in Joe's farm yard. It has that legs up in the air but at an impossible angle look. The look of a cow that was dragged into that spot by man or machine. No cow dies with their legs like that. Em and I both examined it, she at much closer range than I. I hope it is gone tomorrow. 12 April Saturday Em seems particularly skittish around the cows in Joe's fields. As we go up the track which cuts through she makes a huge circuit around to the left to avoid them. They have a lot of new young blood in the herd and they all rush over to the fence to see her. I think it is the black and white colouration which excites them. Today she got all the way up next to Healy's stone wall. She couldn't go over it and some of the cows had run up the track to get closer to her. She was trapped and I had some very frisky cows to convince to go back down to join the others. As soon as there was a gap, she raced out of her wall space and ran up the track. Even with the mad jostling of these teenaged cows, it all seems so calm here after the streets of London. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember that these other places exist, even when I am so recently returned from exactly there. 10 April Thursday I was driving up from Cork on Tuesday. It was the return trip from the airport, after the London installation of CERTAIN TREES at the V & A. Simon had alerted me to the fact that the Volvo was about to reach 300,000 miles, but I couldn't get as enthused about it as he seemed to be. As I drove and the digit nine kept appearing in more and more places on the odometer, I did find myself getting excited for the car. I was approaching Fermoy, when Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance came on the radio. I turned it up loud. The music reached it's crescendo just as the 299,999 rolled over to 300,00. I doubt anyone will believe that it happened exactly like that, but it did. It was a marvelous moment. All I could do was toot the horn a few times and keep driving. It is a pity that Simon had to miss it. 25 March Tuesday The wind is still really cold and cutting. It is impossible to be outside without a hat and gloves. Even though it looks like spring with the light and the long days and the growth and buds and flowers every where, it feels colder than it did in January. On one hand I feel like I should be working outside getting the garden ready, but in reality, we are back to the hunched shoulders running between buildings and getting trapped inside by lashings of hail and sleet. Most of the country is still on extended Easter Holidays, so there is a deep quiet over everything. The mouse is still dead in the airing cupboard. It still stinks. 23 March Easter Sunday Complete with Miracle! Simon came rushing round the corner with the news that the clematis has buds. I didn't kill it! This is good news. I think it will still be a pretty scrawny display this year, but at least I can walk around that side of the house again. 22 March Saturday There is a dead mouse in the airing cupboard. I can't see it but I can smell it. I am avoiding the search as I don't really want to find the rotting carcass. I am hoping the heat will make it dry out faster, and the rotting smell will go away sooner. As I came out of my studio this afternoon, there was a small dead bird on the step. It was one of those little naked bird corpses. Too young to even have any feathers or fuzz. I haven't seen a nest just above the door, but there must be one.. I had to move that body right away as I couldn't bear the idea of coming quickly out the door and stepping right on it. 21 March Good Friday Every bar in the country is closed today. This and Christmas are the only two days of the year when, by law, no alcohol may be be sold or consumed. Some people drink a lot on the Thursday night to compensate for a day they will miss. Many stock up to be able to have a drink at home. There are still a lot of people around here who never ever drink in their own home so the pub is a necessary outlet. Rose is glad to have a day off and usually sleeps late. Most restaurants close. Actually just about everything closes, banks, post offices, schools, and just about every business that feels like it. It is the beginning of a four day weekend. 20 March Thursday The Vernal Equinox I think the moon is full tonight. It looks like the moon is full tonight. Em went to take a drink from the little low water butt from which she likes to drink, and she jumped away in surprise because the reflection was so bright. 19 March Wednesday Back from New Hampshire, New Haven and New York and there is probably too much to say about any of it so I shall say nothing. Well, almost nothing: the eleven foot high pile of plowed up snow in my parents yard was just too big not to mention. We rode on the bus back from Shannon and the Irish landscape was so very green that it came as a bit of a surprise in the early morning light. The concrete houses are always a shock after New England's wooden houses, and the ever increasing number of trampolines with net cages around them (so that the children can't jump off and break their limbs) really disturbed me from the height of the bus. 3 March Monday Big fat snowflakes flying around in different directions and resting for a short time on the grass in between the daffodils. The hills across the valley have turned all white several times but then it all disappears again. Basically, I would call this a sunny day, but the snow confuses things.... 29 February Friday Leap Year Day I am avoiding walking around the side of the house where the clematis vine is. A few weeks ago I gave it a severe pruning. I was very positive about it when I did it, remembering some article that said it was okay to cut to knee height, if the plant was really woody and out of control. Later I felt that maybe I waited too long between reading the article and performing my massacre. I am now taking the long route around the house in the opposite direction each time I go to the compost heap. I am giving the plant time to sprout something green and hopeful before I look again. 27 February Wednesday A beautiful, mild day here. I kept thinking I should go outside to do some work, but instead I kept finding myself up and down to the barn and that was really pleasant. Not hunching the shoulders and rushing to get back indoors again is a newly discoverd pleasure after the long winter days. 26 February Tuesday The issue of drivers with only a Provisional License seems to be out of the news for a minute. The government passed a decree saying that the old system of people driving nearly forever with their Provisional License was finally to end. 30 June is the end of any leniency, but the change has been in process for several months now. Outrage has evaporated. For many years, it has been possible to get a Provisional License and then to just drive. Legally, the idea was that one could drive with a licensed driver in the car for two years. After that one would go for a Driving Test. On failing the Driving Test (which almost everyone did: it is almost unheard of to pass it the first time), one simply drove away. Alone. The next step was to apply for a second Provisional License. This allowed the driver to drive alone for two years, without a licensed driver in the car, and to get covered by an insurance company. The insurance company was not bothered if not a single lesson had ever been taken. After another failing of the test, one could get a third Provisional License. In theory, after failing the test for a third time, one was not supposed to get another Provisional License. For women, it was easy to then change their name to their married name (if they were married) and to have another 6 years of Provisional Driving without passing a test. At last count, there were approximately 420,000 people driving around with only a Provisional License. If that is the statistic, I have no doubt that there are a lot more, maybe even double that. The new law says that once one gets a 2nd Provisonal License, one must take and PASS the test within 8 months. A Provisional License holder can ONLY drive with a licensed driver in the car. I wonder if any of this is really being done, or if it is just on paper. It looks like a fine effort to clear the road of unofficial drivers. A lot of older people just gave up their cars rather than to have to take a test which they feel sure they will fail. I am also curious to find out if the insurance companies are still granting full coverage to Provisional Drivers who drive alone, especially since that was never legal in the first place..... 24 February Sunday Another hunt came through today. How I hate them. Some of the dogs were running through the yard and Em barked like mad at them but they just ignored her as they were so set on their course. She was distressed to find herself so completely ignored. The dogs and the people all have such arrogance. It ruined a great afternoon. Well, it didn't ruin it completely. They did go away and eventually we forgot they had been here. The winter sun going down was beautiful and pink. 23 February Saturday Some swans flew low and loudly past in a v-formation. I assumed they were geese but Simon insisted they were swans. We reckon they were of to join the crowd of swans in Ardfinnan. They made an amazing sound, not as much like honking as geese, but very loud and echoing through the valley well before and after they were here. Liam Boyle came down with two other men in a car. They were counting badgers. Or accounting for badgers? Liam lost a few cows to TB so he is worried about the possible rise in badger life. This year, we have seen less badger activity than ever. I haven't even seen a dead one. Liam Boyle is the man from whom we got the slates for one side of our barn's roof. He let us take them off a falling down building on his land. He would not accept money, so we made him a cake. Whenever he comes down, he nods at the roof, and says "Roofs holding up okay". 22 February Friday Before I came here, I had never heard the name Pa except for someone who was a father. Here is is a normal name. Mostly it is short for Pascal, but also for Patrick. 2 February Saturday Simon came back from the bar in confusion. The discussion there this evening was that yesterday 1 February had been the official beginning of spring. He said, but this is still winter, isn't it? And they all said no, the first of February and the snowdrops mean it is spring. Spring is February, March and April. Summer is May, June, and July. (We don't know where this leaves August.) Now the complaints are beginning about how it is very cold for spring.... 1 February Friday The evening walk has become another ritual for Em. Usually between 8 and 9 o'clock, we go out for the Last Walk. It is not really a proper walk. I just walk through the meadow, down one path and circling back up the other. She goes racing off in several directions, barking like mad. The darker it is, the more excited she gets. Actually she gets excited before we leave the house. At this time of year, I put on my boots, and a coat and scarf and hat. As soon as the boots go on, she rushes to finish whatever dry bits are left from her dinner. I think she scatters some onto the floor earlier just so that she can have this last minute frenzy. It is imperative that she eat them all before we go out. By the time I pick up the torch, she is hysterical. I give it the first few turns to wind up the battery, and the barking starts. The rest is a wild rush into the night. Tonight was a little different as there was some snow left from the mornings fall. It was wedged in the long grass, not a proper covering, just clumpy snow. For my New Hampshire feet, it is nearly snow. For my New Hampshire ears, it is snow. It's in the tufts of this Tipperary grass, and I am wearing rubber Wellington boots. They are good for rain and mud, but hopeles for snow and ice. I walk down the steep bit of the field with a lot of careful tiny steps. I have slipped and fallen on a surprise bit of mud here more than once. This little bit of snow is hard, and icey. I am glad that my feet know exactly how to move through it. I feel very happy and somehow nostalgic about this small presence of snow. I wish there was a bit more. I stand for a while at the bottom of the meadow with my torch turned off. Em has gone off up the boreen. I hear her barking, and I can tell she is at least halfway up. The sky is clear and full of stars. I am alone. I am quite happy to move my feet back and forth, just crunching the snow and looking at the stars. I wish I knew more than three constellations. 31 January Thursday We are interested in the change of shoes. This used to a country of dusty shoes. Now, of course, more people are wearing trainers. And everyone has more than one pair of shoes. Houses are surrounded by gravel, or cement, or tarmacadam. Most people never get anywhere near to soil or mud. There is no dust to gather on your shoes unless you are working as a plasterer or doing something with cement. No more lace-up leather shoes with a healthy coating of dust. 27 January Sunday Not only did the local priest get moved over to Ballyduff, but now there is no Mass on a Sunday morning in the village. People are very distressed. They can either go to Mass on Saturday night, or they can go over to Mass on Sunday morning in the next village, which is called Fourmilewater. It is only possible to go there if you have a car, or if someone gives you a ride. For us, the issue of Sunday morning and Mass is only about getting the newspapers. If we wait too long to go down there, the whole shop is full of people and conversation and it can take ages to get out of there, and the cars are everywhere, and there is a lot of mayhem. We usually try to go early, before the crowd, or at least when they are all inside the church. If we wait too long, until they have all come out of church and gone home again, all of the newspapers will be gone. Timing is still important, as there is no shop in Fourmilewater. 23 January Wednesday We went to the Indian restaurant in Clonmel last night. It is upsatirs, off the street level, and it is now called ZAM-ZAM. Before Christmas, it was called THE RED ONION. Two years before that it was something offering "Mediterranean" food. Before that it was JAVID'S, and many many years ago it was MARIE'S, serving sort of Irish heavy home food. Ever since it has been JAVID'S, it has had the same tables, chairs, placemats, dishes, and glasses, no matter whose restaurant it was. Javid himself ran it at first, and then he rented it out to the Mediteranean types, and then to THE RED ONION. Emir was the young man running that. He was Pakistani, and very politically aware and smart, and he had a great wine list. The food was good, and we always had good conversations with him because it was never very busy. Emir and his partners opened a second resaurant in Kildare, and then decided that Kildare was enough, or better, so now Javid is back running his own restaurant. The food is not quite as good, but the wine list is the same. Emir took the pictures down from the walls when he left, but otherwise it is just about the same, and the discussions are still very interesting. 14 January Monday The gloomy donkeys are back. There are four of them and they seem to move from field to field in the neighbourhood and then they disappear for a while. They always look miserable and they make a mournful baying sound. I always understood that one donkey alone was a bad idea as it would be lonely, but that in pairs they were happy. These four never look happy. They never romp nor move quickly or lightly. They seem to show no interest in dogs or people who stop and look or speak to them. Horses rush over to a fence to see what might happen and cows can get excited and rush around. These four are gloomy. They were in the meadow beside the murder cottage at the time of the murder. I would like to say that that's what made them so gloomy but I would be lying. They were already like that. 13 January Sunday I finished my small book RECENTLY READ, and since it is in the press overnight I cannot look at it and think about what it is and if I like it and if it is right. I can of course think about it, but I would rather be able to see it. It is not much more than a copy of a list of books which I have read. It is a list of books as I read them, but only those read in bed, and only those I remembered to write down. This list is in an old notebook which my grandmother gave me. The paper in the notebook is very dry and crumbly. I think I chose this notebook because I am not sure that it matters if I keep a list of what I am reading, but for as long as the paper lasts, I will have this record. That might be long enough. 12 January Saturday Since I wrote about the rain, it has not stopped and the Suir, the Nore and the Blackwater have all flooded. Places where there were fields are now lakes. Roads are also part of these lakes. Cars try to drive through the lakes and they die in the middle of the lakes. It is all a mess. In the moments when the rain lets up, everything is glowingly green. That's when it is easy to forget how awful it is underfoot. I was supposed to go to Fermoy on Friday, but the bridge was closed, and most other routes into the town were impassable. If all of this rain were snow we would be in very very deep snow right now. The Irish have a lot of different words for rain, but around here the only word for this kind of rain is Desperate. 9 January Wednesday Fantastic, lashing, unending and pouring rain and wild wild winds. None of it has stopped since last evening. Large portions of the country are without electricity. We have water gushing down the boreen. The water is the width of the boreen and it moves as if it is a river. I doubt the sage plant which is in its direct path can survive this much water. A bit in the newspaper about Father Condon, the local priest, leaving to take up his new post as Parish Priest in Ballyduff Upper in Waterford. There was a going-away party for him where the people of Newcastle "presented him with a wad of notes on behalf of the Parishoners...." 8 January Tuesday Em and I walked up the boreen again this morning because I had to look for my grey hat. When we walked up there yesterday through the mud of the old Mass path, I must have dropped the hat out of my pocket. I realized that it was gone when we reached the road at the top, but I wanted to keep going and not go back the way we'd come. We were only half way up there today when I saw my hat dangling from a pricker bush. The thorns had pulled it out of my pocket. It was wet but mud-free. There are a lot of primroses in bloom up there....way too early. I finished the walk thinking of Jackson Mac Low's piece IS THAT WOOL HAT MY HAT? This wool hat is, yes, my wool hat and I am happy to have it back. 6 January Sunday Just heard that the village of Ballyman call their hurling team the Tallyban. THE BALLYMAN TALLYBAN. And I thought the quick and crazy names always came out of Dublin! They have a way up there of giving everything a nickname. There was a recent announcement that the Natural History Museum was to be closed for four years for repairs. The man on the radio gave it's local name as THE DEAD ZOO. There's a sentimental statue of a nymph in a fountain which is called THE FLOOSIE IN THE JACUZZI, and the digital clock which was placed in the river to count down seconds to the millenium was quickly dubbed TIME IN THE SLIME. I wish I could remember more right now, but I must make a fire and get some heat into this room. 4 January Friday A fantastic walk in the mountains with Greg and Breda yesterday. it was bitterly, bitterly cold with a wicked east wind but the walk wove in and out of sheltered and not sheltered places, and we were moving fast all the time. We came through a seam in the Knockmealdowns and dropped down to Baylough, ending up in Killballyboy Woods. We just made it back to the car before the darkness fell. Today, we are hobbling about with shockingly stiff muscles. The climbing was tough but not that tough. I think the stiffness must be more the result of so much exertion in such cold wind. 1 JANUARY 2008 TUESDAY The first day of a new year! I have been thinking about the stone walls of Waterford all day. I don't know if they are particular to all of Waterford, but they are certainly visible in the area around the Nire Valley. The dry stone walls there all seem to be made with flattish stones which are lined vertically, rather than horizontally. We saw just one as we were driving up from the sea on Sunday. I want to go over to the Nire and look at more now. I must find out if it is a characteristic of the kind of stone available there, or if it was a method arrived at for some other reason. I had not seen one for a long time, and I forgot how very beautiful they are. The bloody Hunt came through this afternoon. Without any warning as usual. It is like an invasion having the horses racing up and down the boreen and through the fields and the dogs running everywhere but rarely in the same direction and the fool with the horn blowing it and orders being shouted to the dogs who are not listening. Most times the dogs are well behind the horses anyway. I take some pleasure in knowing that they will never catch our very smart foxes, but I always get into a complete rage and I shout at the people on horses. I only shout if we have not been warned that they are coming. I really hate the whole thing, and I can't get a thing done while they are racing up and down and trying to cordon off Scully's wood so the fox can't escape. I don't want to be part of their audience. People position themselves along roads and on hills thoughout the countryside to watch the rushing and the chaos. They sit on top of cars and on fences to follow the action as closely as they can. I don't want to be part of the crowd cheering them on, especially as there is no crowd down here. I become the ONLY ONE watching them. (Simon is good at ignoring the whole thing) but I cannot NOT watch when I am surrounded. 31 December Monday Yesterday was Simon's birthday, so we drove down to Dungarvan to take a walk by the sea. We didn't get much of a walk as Emily becomes a maniac when she gets to the sea. We threw the green rubber hedgehog into the waves again and again. She kept leaping and diving and swimming after it, and then barking and barking for more. Eventually she was dizzy from it all and so tired she could hardly run. We had a big audience because most of the other dogs on the beach didn't want to get wet, so they barked madly to cheer her on. It wasn't easy to get her back into the car. Simon had a few pints in a favourite pub, and then we went for a truly wonderful lunch at the Tannery. I dropped him off at the bar in the village, and took the exhausted Em home for her supper. She could barely finish her food before limping off to bed. By the time I got down to collect Simon from the bar, he had found Michael who was just down from a days walking in the Knockmealdowns. And Michael's birthday was to be today, so a few toasts were required. I felt much the way I used to when we would take Simon's father out for lunch in Derbyshire, and I would drive the two of them from pub to pub. Simon would have a pint. His father would have a half. I would have coffee or a mineral water. Then they would remember another pub that he had not been to for a few years.... 29 December Saturday We drove out to do some errands today and admired several huge Christmas trees installed at road intersections and in little lay-bys by the FAS crews. These trees have been decorated with silver foil covered plastic drinks bottles. Most of the bottles are the 1.5 or the 2 litre sort. They blow around like mad in this wind. A fair number of old CDs add to the sparkley effect. The most decorated house in the area is in Ardfinnan. It has millions of lights, all white, which outline the shape of the house and the bushes and the trees and then make a multitude of other shapes of stars and things. It is a shock to come down the hill from Cahir and to catch sight of this mayhem when usually one only sees the river, and then the mountains off in the distance. At night, one only sees darkness. The Christmas lights get more elaborate every year. This year the house was featured on the television. The man who lives in this well-lit house is blind. 28 December Friday Outside the shop, an older woman stopped to ask me about Emily, and then continued on, by herself, about dogs in general. I gather her ramble came from the fact that she still isn't used to the idea that people are giving people names to dogs and she felt more comfortable with a time when all dogs were called Rover, and Whitey, or Blackie, Sandy, Partner or Pal. Dogs were spoken of by two names: their own and the name of their owner. If there were three dogs named Whitey in one area, they'd be known as Whitey Ryan, Whitey O'Dwyer, and Whitey Sweeney....just so you would know which Whitey was being mentioned. I added surnames for our local dogs, just to see how they'd sound. We have Ben O'Keefe, Max Scully, Sam Costigan, Clint Browne, Milo Condon, Susie Hally, Ginger McGrath, Coco Shine, and of course, the late great Sidney O'Byrne-Casey. 17 December Monday Still no body out of the river. I am not sure whether or not the Hay Bale Method was put into use. 12 December Wednesday It looks like we have completed the ephemera sets which we started in 2004(!!!) It has been a huge job, not least of all because we started it and then let everything pile up and get more and more confusing. It has taken over the whole barn for many days now as we were determined not to put any of it away until we did it properly and finished it. I am not even sure why I am talking about it as I am so sick of it all that I don't want to think about it......and now the lists must be made and typed up in the computer. A really mild day. It felt more like early spring than December. Simon helped me to get the last of the daffodils into the ground. He had to use the big metal pole to ram holes into the rocky soil. It is just impossible to dig a hole. They have still not found the body in the river. 11 December Tuesday Sign seen on the road to Youghal: RISK OF FALLEN OR FALLING ROCKS 10 December Monday The last few days have been wild and windy with buckets of rain. The inside of the car flooded just because the rain was driven at it in such an unlikely direction. The river is flooded and fields on both sides are under water, and these windy days are on top of a week of much rain. The ground cannot absorb any more. A man fell into the river in Cahir on Saturday night and has not been found yet. There are rescue people stationed on all the bridges with binoculars, looking and looking up and down the river trying to spot the body. Last night we were told that the only way to locate the body at this stage, is to put a bale of hay out into the river with a lit candle stuck into the top of it. The bale will float and float until it is exactly over the body and then it will stop and hover until the body is recovered. This is such a mad idea on so many levels that we can't even BEGIN to think about it. There seems to be a consensus of opinion that this is indeed a tried and true method.... 3 December Monday So we went down to see Tom Browne while he was visiting Veronica in her new council house. It was a wild blustery, lashing rainy afternoon. Veronica had phoned to ask if Simon would take Tom down to the pub in his wheelchair. She was afraid that she wouldn't be able to push him back up the hill by herself. We drove down there not really convinced that it was the right day for a roll through the village in a wheelchair. By the time we arrived, Veronica had herself decided that the pub wasn't a good idea in this weather, so she made us coffee and I brought up the subject of Poetic License in order to explain a bit about the book before I showed it to Tom. He said he had once bet on a horse named Poetic License. The odds were high (30 to 1), and he won, so he said that since then he has had a lot of time for Poetic License. We got past that and talked a bit about the embellishment of stories to make a story better, or more exciting, or more real to one's listeners. Then I showed him my book: SMALL HOUSES The Buildings of Tom Browne. He was thrilled to see his version of our house on the cover, and he was pleased to see the pictures of the other houses. I had imagined myself quietly reading the whole book aloud to him, showing him the photographs along the way, and maybe discussing things a bit as we went. Instead, Veronica grabbed the book and showed him some pictures and cooed and made very excited exclamations about it all, and then tucked the book into his blue plastic bag so that it would be ready to go when he returned to the Cottage Hospital by ambulance. Within seconds of the book going into the bag, she had his tea on the table (spare ribs and cabbage), and he was being encouraged to eat quickly, so that she could clean him up, so that he would be ready when they came to fetch him at 5, because if they waited any longer the crowds would be arriving for Mass in Irishtown and then the ambulance couldn't get close enough, and he'd either have to wait in the ambulance until Mass was over or get soaked on the way in as he did last time. And they had even forgotton to give him a hat. Needless to say, we were exhausted by it all, and found our way into the pub immediately upon leaving. 1 December Saturday SMALL HOUSES arrived yesterday! It seems to have taken forever for it to get here from Hong Kong. It travelled by ship (the Mol Promise) to Rotterdam, and then was loaded onto another ship (the Dana Hollandia) which took it to Dublin. Then there was a road journey to Kilkenny. Once it got to Kilkenny, everything stopped. It only takes us 50 minutes to drive there, but it took 6 days for the books to get from there to here. I am delighted to see it and to touch it and to be able to read it again. Now I must take it and show it to Tom Browne. 27 November Tuesday Opening up three boxes of the Butter Book, which just arrived from Stuart the binder, really livened up a grey and dreary afternoon. The whole table down in the barn glowed with the bright yellow book cloth. We spent a few hours sticking in the frontispiece and numbering and packing them up again, but eventually the cold drove us out. The colour of warmth was not sufficient in itself to keep us warm. 24 November Saturday We finished stacking the firewood. We had to shuffle some of the older stuff into more accessible places so that we can use it this year. And the new loads were too much for the lean-to, so we had to build a second lean-to up against the regular lean-to. It is all done now, and there is that good (slightly smug) feeling that comes with a good supply of wood, a feeling of being prepared, and sort of wealthy. Simon just turned on the sauna so we can soon go out & sweat our muscles back to normal. Last week, we had to walk out to the sauna in lashing rain and a wild wind, carrying both lanterns and umbrellas. The cold shower was unnecessary as it was easy to just step outside into the rain to cool off. We always have to leave Em inside the house as she brings rubber toys to the door while we are inside and we worry about being trapped inside by a rubber hotdog or her small welly boot. 23 November Friday I am interested in the naming of bread here. White bread is always spoken of as A Pan of Bread. Or if it is sliced, it is A Sliced Pan of Bread. It might be shortened to just A Pan, or even Half a Pan. Sometimes it is A Sliced Pan. It is not as if one is buying this bread tipped right out of a pan. It might be a loaf (Pan) sitting on the bakery shelf, or it might be A Sliced Pan wrapped in waxed paper. Brown soda bread is called Brown Bread and the mixture is just shaped and put onto a baking tray before cooking. So I guess because it is not made in a pan, and the white yeast bread is, the word Pan is what defines the difference. 20 November Tuesday This has been the second morning in a row that we have seen a heron out in the field. It seems to just be walking around, not looking at the ground nor up in the air. I am not sure if this is normal heron behaviour. It is interesting to watch it at such close proximity and for such a long time (15-20 minutes). I picked what MUST be the last of the sweet peas this afternoon. It seems amazing that there can be any left at all as we have had several hard frosts. These last few are a beautiful deep purple, but they have absolutely no smell. That must be the result of the cold. And we fetched one good load of firewood from Oliver Hackett today. He is recovering from broken ribs and a punctured lung, so he stayed quietly inside while we loaded up our trailer. We will go back for another load tomorrow. 17 November Saturday Simon startled me this morning by announcing that we need to get a gun. It took me a few minutes before I could even ask why. He is convinced that with the world's economies falling apart and the world itself ready to follow, we will need to start shooting rabbits so that we can eat them. I should have known his rationale for owning a gun would be about food. As much as I would like to get rid of the rabbits, I would rather we work a little harder on the vegetable garden. 16 November Friday The little house has been cleared out, both inside and out. The cellophane flower wrappers are gone, as is the motorcycle, the washing on the line, the teddy bears, the blue towel. We understand it is up for rent. 14 November Wednesday The (accused) murderer was up in court yesterday and remanded in custody, but also charged with several counts of driving without insurance and without road tax, so he is in jail for 5 months for that. I guess that is a way for them to keep him inside. He has had 36 various charges against him in recent years. 12 November Monday The car has been removed from the little house. The motorcycle is still there but seems to be in pieces. I talked to a neighbour and heard a lot of quite horrific details....most of which I wish I had not heard. Apparently 40,000 euro was found in the house, which does support the drug dealing theories. The Garda Drug Squad was down from Dublin during the three days while the road was closed off. 11 November Sunday We went down to the village for John O'Donnell's removal at 7 o'clock. It was very cold and dark but the street outside his house was full of people standing quietly and talking. He had been in the house all night and various people had taken turns sitting with him. In the afternoon , people came to view the body and to pay their respects. As new people arrived in the evening, they went up the drive to the house. When they came down again, they joined the waiting crowd. After about an hour, the coffin was bought down the hill by six men. They stopped in front of John's shop and business for three minutes. There was not a sound to be heard for those three minutes. Then the men continued towards the church. When they got to the bridge they stopped again and there was a change of some of the men carrying the coffin. I think someone was too short and it was making the walking difficult. Everyone walked slowly and quietly into the church. We each had a hot whiskey in the pub before we returned home. 9 November Friday The murder cottage looks very bleak. There are cellophane cones still tied to the hedge outside. The messages on cards are still visible, but the flowers, which were inside the cellophane, have died. The teddy bears are still lined up in one of the windows. Just seeing them reminds one of how very young the dead girl was. The car and motorcycle are still in the yard. Everything seems to be in a sort of limbo since we left. 8 November Thursday We are back from Holland. It feels like it has been a very long trip. We made our exhibition at Boekie Woekie and had a very nice celebration there, and then continued to Eindhoven to install CERTAIN TREES in the library of the Van Abbe Museum. The installation was harder and longer than we anticipated but it all looks very fine. The hard work was worthwhile. The library is such beautiful space. It is all so generously conducive to looking at books. Can a space be sympathetic? It is already difficult to remember the busy streets and the rushing crowds of Amsterdam's Central Station. We are surrounded by the green green fields of Tipperary again and everything is very quiet. Everything smells terrible though. Joe just finished spreading slurry on the fields. It burns the back of the throat. And Emily returned from the farm in Mullinahone, smelling of old and horrible cat shit, and some new. It was awful to have her in the house last night. Today we had to give her a bath which set her barking in mad hysterical circles. 25 October Thursday A very hard frost on the ground and the roofs last night. The morning was really cold. Last night, when Em and I went down through the meadow for her evening outing, we didn't even need the torch because the almost full moon was so bright. This cold reminds me that we need to get a few loads of firewood in. Oliver Hackett who sells us our wood has fallen off a ladder and is in hospital. It sounds quite serious. Everything seems serious of late. 24 October Wednesday Spent several hours organizing and numbering the prints A FEW CUPS and putting them into their beautiful boxes. We used the glorious sunny afternoon as an excuse to go take a walk in the Knockmealdowns. It was so peaceful and quiet up in the mountains. Hard to think of the violence from up there. The brother is out of Intensive Care and has been told about his sister. He remembers nothing, which is perhaps best. 21 October Sunday A beautiful sunny blue sky day. The girl was buried yesterday. Her brother is still in Intensive Care. More and more details. The story is more horrific the more we know. The village is in shock, as the two victims grew up there. The family is all there. This kind of thing is unimaginable for such a small and close community. The Garda finished their work and opened the road on Friday night. It is difficult to pass the house. 20 October Friday More news of the murder. Everyone speaks in hushed voices about nothing else. The young girl (20) was killed by her boyfriend (30), who then stabbed her brother(23) and ran to the neighbors to wash his hands. No one really knows exactly what happened. This is roughly how it is reported. There is a lot of speculation and a lot of theory. The brother is in Intensive Care in Cork. 17 October Wednesday Back from a week in London and the Small Publishers Fair and loads of visits and conversations and art. The weather was wonderful but the tension of the city seemed very high, as though people were mostly ready to explode for any old reason. As we drove back from Shannon we heard news on the radio of a murder in Grange and as we got closer we realized it had happened in the little house just to the right outside our boreen. It was at Mary Corbett's old house. Once we got near, we were stopped by the Garda who had closed off the road for forensic testing. People in white suits and special booties were all around and we had to turn around and take a longer route home. It is difficult to believe this. Already London is miles and miles away... 7 October Sunday This is the third morning of complete fog. The world beyond our fence does not exist. There is no view. There is an eerie quality to the light. A deep silence goes with it. Even the dogs up the hill sound like they are somewhere else. 3 October Wednesday I am still picking blackberries. They seem to be going on and on forever this year. There is a lot of variation from bush to bush. Someone told me there can be thirteen varieties growing all in near proximity to one another. Or was it thirty? Once they are all mixed up in my bag or my bowl, they are just blackberries. Around here, people seem very suspect of blackberries. They are all convinced that the berries are full of maggots and that the maggots will make them sick. It is nearly impossible to convince anyone otherwise, and as a result I never see anyone picking them. One bit of advice I was given is to soak the berries in hot water with plenty of salt in it before eating them. No wonder no one eats blackberries, and no wonder no one likes them. 1 October Monday Em + I went up the boreen to pick some apples from Johnnie Mackin's orchard. The trees are heavy with fruit and the orchard is really overgrown. Every tree has two different kinds of apples growing on it as Johnnie used to do a lot of grafting. There were so many nettles around the trees that I was stung nearly to death right through my trousers and my long sleeved shirt. I just went up there to fetch the apples as a break from sewing up the Envelope Interior Little Critics, but after picking the apples and getting stung, my hands were tingling too much to return to the sewing. 28 September Friday We are just back from a week in Berlin. The great contrast was in starting the morning by moving through the busy city en route to the airport, and ending up by sitting down in Nugent's bar in the evening. We really went down to the village just to pick up a few things like milk but decided to pop into the bar since we were there. The big excitement was that someone had finally won the local lottery. The jackpot had been going up week after week, and when we left, more and more people were buying tickets and so the amount got bigger and bigger. Johnny Griffin won the jackpot of 8400 euro. Johnny Griffin is a local farmer and he is already famous for his luck. Two years ago he was trapped up in his haybarn, under some hay or with his leg stuck or something. He spent a few days up in the hay unable to get out and with no one around to notice his absence. Finally, somebody stopped by the farm to see him. Johnny's dog pestered the visitor by running back and forth and back and forth between the barn and the visitor, until Johnny was discovered and rescued. And now he has won the big jackpot! No one in the bar was interested in where we had been. 11 September Tuesday I can't believe how long its been since I have written here. Ever since the sun came out, the days have been different. Yesterday there was a big party for Paddy in the pub. Well, it was not actually for Paddy as he died last summer, but it was a party in his spirit, and there were raffles and prizes to raise money for a headstone for his grave, or for a plaque to celebrate his music....or both. As soon as the party idea was mooted, the hunt was on for the bikinis. Seven years ago for Paddy's 70th birthday, Simon + I got into the idea of decorations in a big way and spent an entire day making dozens of Yellow Polka-Dot Bikinis out of paper, and paint and ribbons. The party back then was a surprise for Paddy, so we had to scoot into the bar in the afternoon and hang what looked like washing lines and the many many bikini bottoms and tops with clothes pegs all around the place. It was amazing to see the bar so festive + bright and the favourite song was sung again and again that night. I always thought the bikinis just got ripped down afterwards. I did spot a few at Christmas that year, tucked into various wreathes and decorations. So we were surprised to hear last week that Rose had rescued several lines of them. She spent a week trying to find them in her house. Yesterday we were there again, at 5 o'clock, draping the last two lines of bikinis, and carefully pushing the cups back into bra-like shape after being mooshed in a bag for so long. Simon made a large photo blow-up of Paddy singing with his hand cupped and his nails tapping on the table as he always did. The party went on and on, with singing and laughter until 2 am when Rose threw everyone out. About 20 people were still outside singing at 4 am. 21 August Tuesday Three boxes of the Butter Book arrived at the shop and Simon raced down to collect them. We have to get our deliveries down there as the various courier services can never find our boreen, or if they do they get angry because it is so narrow and so overgrown. The bigger problem is that their mobile phones have little or no reception around here, so they can never even phone to ask how to find us. The McCarras are happy to receive things for us at the shop, as well as for other people from up the mountain. We rolled the boxes down to the barn in the wheelbarrow. I try to keep one of the three wheelbarrows empty and tipped upright so that it will be dry and clean for transporting things like books, but there are never enough wheelbarrows and they always seem to be full, and of late, full of something wet...The book looks wonderful! It is called A LITTLE BIT OF BUTTER, and it is yellow, very yellow, with green blocking on the cover. We have produced it for Peter Foynes at the Cork Butter Museum. The prints from the old butter wrappers look grand. The whole thing looks grand. We can't wait for Peter to see it....but a little bit of handwork and tipping in before it is ready...... 20 August Monday On with the sewing of GIFTS FROM THE GOVERNMENT. I was in the book barn, with the door open and Em lying just inside, when the fox went racing past...just inches from the door! I was running before I was even certain what I'd seen. Em was way ahead of me barking like mad down throught the meadow. I just managed to see the fox disappear into the trees. I have no idea why we ran, or why I ran. Em was never going to catch a fox and I have no desire or interest to catch one, nor for her to catch one. We usually only see the fox going through the field, never so close to us or the buildings. And we always speak of The Fox. And The Fox is always HE. This spring we saw a baby (cub?) in the boreen. It was as startled as we were, with a very large head on its very small body. Its presence suggests a fox father and a fox mother, and now a fox family. I would guess that it was the baby, now an adolescent, who ran by the barn and got us all excited. 15 August Wednesday Rain Sun Rain Sun Rain Rain Rain.... Will this never stop? A lot of folding and sewing work in the barn. I finished sewing Harry Gilonis's PEURON/PEARS, and Simon printed the cover for it in a very fugitive pink, almost like an embossing more than a colour, but a colour still... The cover for GIFTS FROM THE GOVERNMENT was printed too. Several pages for that folded, but a lot of hand work to be done yet....labels to be stuck in, rubber stamping, tipping in....an extremely labour intensive job this one. It keeps us out of the rain. 12 August Sunday The Stonethrowers Rally We got up, had a quick breakfast, rang the shop to ask them to hold the Sunday papers for us and we struggled up the very overgrown boreen to be ready for the beginning of the rally. We were a bit early as the first cars were not being started until 9.47. There was a big group of people gathered up at the Shines, friends and family who had arrived at 8.30 prepared to be trapped for the day. We all drank strong tea and talked about the Rally. Most people were eating from a tray of very white triangular sandwiches. I was still trying to find out why it was called the Stonethrowers Rally. I thought it was to do with an old game which I believe entailed throwing stones down a road. I think it is still played in Kerry. This was not why this is called the Stonethrowers Rally. Instead, I was told that the first time there was a motor rally through the narrow roads of Tipperary, the locals came out and threw stones at the cars because they didn't know what was happening. The symbol of the rally is a man with a blackened eye. Once the cars started coming, we stood well back from the road, as apparently they miss and often screech over the lawns, and into embankments. The cars came fast, one after another, as they were released from the starting point every thirty seconds. There was a loud and terrible popping noise from their exhaust. Simon and I left after a bit and walked over some fields to get to a different vantage point. And later, after coffee at home, we walked to another very dangerous turn to watch the third rounds. By this point I was quite sure that I hated it all, and Em and I were both frightened by the noise and the terrifying corner. If a driver had lost control there, we would have been killed. I decided to leave, but Simon, who had wanted nothing to do with it at the beginning, had become a huge fan and didn't want to leave. The squealing and whining of the many motors was a 360 degree sound in our little valley. There was a shocking and a beautiful silence which descended when they finally stopped. 11 August Saturday On the way to Clonmel this morning, we saw dozens of cars coming towards us, each with two men inside, and a black and white number on the windscreen. We puzzled about it a bit, and then forgot it until we were driving down the narrow lanes on the way home. We stopped and spoke to some neighbours outside one house. They were talking to a man named Shane who is a Marshall for the Stonethrower's Rally. He explained to us that the big rally was on for Sunday, organized by the Tipperary Motor Club and apparently taking place here every ten years. Our roads were to be closed and completely inaccessible from 8.30 am until 3.30 in the afternoon. Shane called down to our house later in the afternoon with a full colour catalogue listing all 200 + drivers, and their navigators, and their kind of car. He also gave us a list of instructions and phone numbers for emergency evacuation during the race. The drivers we saw this morning were doing SCRUTINY: driving the roads with attention to learn the curves and the dangers. I guess the navigator makes notes to remind the driver along the way tomorrow. We are getting sucked into the event even though we have less than no interest in car racing. I love the word Scrutiny. I love that they are out "doing Scrutiny." I have used the word Scrutiny more today than I have ever used it in my life. 9 August Thursday A sign noted: PLEASE DO NOT WALK ON FRESH CONCRETE 5 August Sunday We had ten solid hours of heavy heavy rain last night. It never let up for a moment. The morning has been soft and drizzly. Walking down the boreen with Em, we were shocked to find blackberries ready to pick and ready to eat. It doesn't seem possible that there has been enough sun for them to have had time to ripen. And they are several weeks early, maybe even a month early.....The ditches (hedges) are full of wild honeysuckle with the blackberries tucked in between. The smell of it all is amazingly sweet. And still the deep mud squelches underfoot.... 23 July Monday Another call from the Stationmaster at Waterford Station. We have not spoken for some weeks now. He said, "Hello Erica, I understand you've been ringing me again." I said " Oh really? Did I? and what did I say?". We both laughed and he expressed his regret that it had not been him who answered the phone this time. Some months ago, a woman called to complain about the road being closed at the level crossing for an excessively long time, just in the morning while she needed to drive to work. Of course, that was exactly when the train needed to go by too. The Stationmaster assured her that the road was not closed for a minute longer than was necessary. The second time, she left her name and number. When he rang back, he got me. He knew immediately that he had a different woman on the line, as my voice was a dead giveaway. I was obviously not the woman with the strong Tipperary accent. I didn't even know what level crossing was being discussed. The same woman phones and complains on a regular basis (he marvels that she doesn't try to find an alternative route for driving to work) and she always claims to be me. So he always rings to tell me when I have called... 20 July Friday More gloom and rain and gray and heavy skies. I keep trying to not have the weather be my main topic but it is increasingly difficult to ignore. Anything in the garden that has not been eaten by slugs is being eaten by the rabbits. I am sure I have said this before....but it is unbelievable that this many weeks can pass in summer with so little growth. One single mangetout has ripened, while the other plants just rotted from the base up. Marianne goes out at night with a sort of miner's torch strapped onto her head to kill slugs. She is very energetic and ruthless about it and feels sure that her massacres scare away lots of others. I just can't bring myself to do it. Maybe I am just too distracted by the fact that rabbits are very fond of coriander. 18 July Wednesday During the months of June and July 2002, a packet containing six Potassium Iodate tablets BP 85 was delivered to households throughout the country as part of the National Emergency Plan for Nuclear Accidents. Our tablets expired in 2005. There has never been any further mention of these tablets, nor of a potential disaster. I couldn't remember when they had first been sent out and started to phone some of the numbers on the package. No one could remember, but to a person everyone assured me that the pills were still okay until 2009. I very much doubt that these pills would save anyones life, but I appreciated all of the eager reassurances I received. It took two days to get the information that they had indeed been sent in 2002. I don't really like the kind of research that I have gotton myself into for this new book, but somehow I am stuck with my own need to see it through. 16 July Monday We keep hearing things on the radio and reading in the English papers about the way the English are dealing with their new smoking ban. I don't remember hearing so much about the Scottish situation in dealing with it. We have so thoroughly accepted and grown accustomed to it here in Ireland, it is just normal. I can't even remember how many years it has been since it began. The really big discussions all took place before the ban went into effect. Once it was law, everyone found a way to deal with it and the non-smokers kind of forgot that it was an issue, except when someone came down from the mountains or something and really hadn't had to acknowledge it yet. One Michael came into the pub shortly after the ban was on, and slapped his pack of cigarettes onto the counter. Rose took them away and said he could have them when he left. He cursed roundly, and then went out to his car to get a cigar, which he had "In Storage". Rose bolted the door after him. After smoking the cigar halfway, he wailed and shouted that he was perished out there, and that she had to let him in as it was no way to treat a 75 year old respected customer. Later that night, another Michael came in, had 2 pints, and then went outside and smoked 10 cigarettes in a row. 15 July Sunday Stefan Kurten and Jutta Haeckel just left....heading off to Kerry for fishing and walking and resting. It was good to have them and good to have a chance to catch up with Stefan. We figured it had been 5 years since he last visited. He and Werner stopped coming to Tipperary because they couldn't catch any fish here. They could practice their fly casting out in the field, and they could go out early in the morning, and they could talk to any number of people about the best places and the best bait, and flies and whatever fishermen talk about, but the Suir and the Nore were just fished out. I understand it is much better now, but he was taking no chances and had no intention of getting out his gear until they got to Kerry. We were up in Dublin on Thursday for the opening of his show of paintings at the RHA. The exhibition had originated at the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld. I gather it was larger in that venue but still, it was a fine number of paintings, and grand to see them all together. Being here gave him an interim chance to come down from all the work and stress of getting the show up, and by the time he left he was very energized in anticipation of the fish waiting to be caught. 10 July Tuesday We just realized that we still haven't finished the folding, numbering and packing up of FRENCH PASTRY. They have been on the big table covered with loose sheets of paper, and since we couldn't actually see them we just kept working around them. Everything has to be covered with paper as birds fly in and it often takes them quite a while to get out again. I hate to have them shitting on the finished (or unfinished) books but I love to have the air in the building. Simon gave it a few hours work, but I just couldn't stop with my pattern painting. I am trying to do some versions of the collaged envelope interior pieces, at a smaller scale and with paint. Each time I decide it is just a wretched waste of time, I get completely excited by another kind of stripe making and then I can't stop. I have four different ones going at the same time, as I have to move between them to wait for the paint to dry. Today I have been wearing an old sweater that my mother knit for me, and the very raggedy sleeves kept dragging across and messing up my wet paint. Finally I changed the sweater, but I couldn't decide if I was more annoyed at the raggedy sleeve, or at the fact that I am wearing a sweater, over two shirts, in July. 6 July Friday Liam Harper telephoned. Liam Harper is the meter reader for the ESB. He telephones every once and a while, probably four times a year, to ask for a reading off our electricity meter. I have to fetch a chair to climb up and read the numbers and sometimes I have to get a torch too. He always jokes with me and tells me to be careful not to fall off the chair. It is always the same joke. I am sure he has never come here in person, even at the beginning. I have no idea what he looks like but I imagine a very large man sitting in his armchair in front of the TV with a cigarette and a big mug of tea, and a jumble of papers. On the telephone, Liam Harper sounds like a very big and very jolly man. He is probably slim and sitting at an organized desk, not smoking. 5 July Wednesday I was trapped in the barn by a huge downpour, so I managed to finish the round cornering on my wind screen bookmarks. I made these for Sarah Bodman's ongoing Book Mark Project out of UWE (University of the West of England). I believe this is her fourth series. She has a number of artists make an edition of 100 bookmarks for her and then these are distributed in various venues (mostly bookstores and libraries, I think). I ended up making a lot more than 100 because i had such a problem getting my rain right. My final edition, which I sent to her, has quite round drops of rain...it could even be snow or hail. The ones I have left are much more irregular....no doubt this is Irish rain at its most desperate. Simon and I decided to print them all with the windscreen wipers because I was unsure which I thought were best and really I loved them all. With this many proofs, I have bookmarks to last me forever.... The rounded corners on two sides really turn the bookmark into the windscreen. I am happy to sit one beside me as I read and then to look up and see it raining on my little windscreen and outside the house windows too. Rain is definitely becoming too large a thing in my life. Here is a picture of one of the markers: 3 July Tuesday We still haven't had a complete day without rain. We still haven't identified the blue flower on the grass roof. We still haven't completed FRENCH PASTRY. But we have completed our bathroom. We now have a sink for the first time in nine years. We have become so accustomed to using the bathtub for brushing our teeth that it is a shock not to. John Carney, our plumber friend from Clonmel, and Simon designed a towel rail which is also a radiator. John built it out of welded copper pipes, and hooked it up to the radiator entrance and exit pipes. It looks like a huge and rather wide ladder. We love it. In the winter, we will have warm places to hang the towels, but for now, it is just good to have places to hang towels. A little more painting, and carpentery, and we can stop this bathroom work.... 2 July Monday Simon sort of bullied me into starting this journal, and I resisted like mad, and then decided it was a good idea and that it would be easy to write a little bit each day, no matter how brief or inconsequential. Already a week has passed since my last entry, so I am not doing too well. And the rain is still driving us all mad. We have had wild and blustery mostly dry days for the last two days, but rain is still the main topic of conversation and rain still rules all of our activities. If I am down in the book barn doing something quick, and torrential rains start, I look around for something else to do until the rain stops. Sometimes an hour or so passes and lots of jobs get done before escape is possible. All of this makes for a kind of erratic approach to any activity, as constant interruption causes a constant need for re-directed energy. If we didn't have our work spread out between four buildings it might be easier. Also, if our work wasn't always and mostly about paper, it might be easier too. Wet paper is a pest. Clothes and skin and hair dry eventually but wet paper is a pest.... June 26th 2007 We are still glueing and folding the small publication of FRENCH PASTRY by Cralan Kelder. It seems like it is taking forever to finish it, but that's probably something we can blame, like everything else, on the weather. Today is overcast and dull, but at least it is dry...There have been ten (or more?) days of torrential rain. The ground is soaked. The snails have eaten just about everything except the things that have rotted from never having a chance to dry out. And every time I look out a window I see rabbits hopping about dreamily. Someone told me that they don't eat the vegetables and flowers, as they are quite happy with grass. I want to believe this. As for grass, the grass roof on the book shed is looking fantastic after all this rain.....it was so dry before that we feared it would never recover. There are loads of a beautiful blue flower up there. It's not one I have seen before, or at least I don't recognize it from down here. We can't decide what it is and I think we will need to set up a ladder to go up and get a closer look. Motor Car Owners Tom Browne told me about the dances held in the village halls when he was young. he said the girls were always on the look-out for the men with wrinkles in the back of their jackets. The wrinkles meant that a man had arrived by motor car. Those who had traveled on foot or by bicycle were considered second best. words and images ©Erica Van Horn 2007 - 2010