leave a light on

Tue

9°C | 6°C

Top Irish person Mary Robinson lit a candle in the kitchen window of Aras an Uachtarain, (left of the top 3 windows inside the columns) the presidential residence in Phoenix park, to make a link with all those who had to emigrate from Ireland. It has remained lighting and has become a symbol for the 80 million Irish descendents across the globe.

Terry Wogan (famous old ex-pat Irish radio presenter!) was doing his new programme last night on BBC1 'Terry Wogans Ireland' and he visited the light. The only moment of pathos in the 'I'm such a jolly Irishman' commentary.

He visited Powerscourt on last week's show and saw the sunken road to the house for the servants to use so that they would not spoil Lord Powerscourt's view when they came to work. This kind of damaging social divide does not exist in Ireland nowadays.

Reading about 'One Hyde Park' in the Sunday papers, the new block of luxury flats just across the road from Harrods, London (one sold recently for ₤135,000,000) that houses a few sheiks, the 'tunnel' included in the design for servants to get to the flats so they won't accidently cross paths with the owners seems to me to be something like that shocking, shameful sunken road of days gone passed.

Chewing gum for the brain. eggs

des and tescos

Fri

3°C | -2°C

Finding it hard to find a positive angle on the day apart from the sunny sky so will introduce you to an Irish (Irish American) gem. Des Bishop. My favourite Irish comedian. His brave new show 'my dad was nearly james bond' got 5 stars in reviews. Check out the excellent documentary shown last night about the show on the rte player .

We are lucky to have him- so there is something Irish to be grateful about.

I was invited to a focus group last night as market research for the new Tescos in Oranmore- 50 euros cash- not to be sniffed at. Eight women dissected the new shop and decided it should be rebuilt from scratch. It is strangely constructed on a flood plain, so the new underground car park has already flooded and the lights flicker- beware if you have epilepsy because there is no overground parking. What should be a beautiful location with 3 sides looking out onto Galway bay has managed to become piles of waste earth and hoardings. There is no shop front so it is sort like shopping in a cave.

Everyone was, however, delighted to get Tescos in Oranmore as it is nearly impossible to drive into Galway with the traffic congestion and to get to Tescos involves braving 'the magic roundabout' a demented junction with traffic lights and infinite options to crash in to everyone.

My personal experience of Tescos Oranmore was driving in the exit road (apparently it has a 'no entry' sign on it but also a big arrow saying 'Tescos') I then drove up on the little bit of pavement dividing the traffic going into the underground car park and had to painfully scrape the bottom of the car backwards to get off. Unfortunately I also bought a gone off chicken that was in date and confused me into binning all the other food in the fridge before I discovered the smelly culprit. Poor Tescos Oranmore- the only way is up.

But we all agreed the staff were very friendly and by all accounts very happy with their employer. 

And make no mistake everyone appreciates the jobs.

coole park and cows

 Wed

6°C | 0°C

To get the blood pumping around my veins I went for a run in Coole park this morning.



Coole Park was once the home of Lady Augusta Gregory, dramatist, folklorist and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre with Edward Martyn of Tullira Castle and Nobel prize-winning poet William Butler Yeats. Coole Park, in the early 20th century, was the centre of the Irish Literary Revival. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge and Sean O' Casey all came to experience its magic. They and many others carved their initials on the Autograph Tree, an old beech still standing today

I started running last November with the Carron ladies 'meet and train' group. We meet every Thursday (well maybe not every Thursday...) at 8pm and after a few stretches we run in our different groups (I did progress to the 4 minute run -2 minute walk group but am back to the 2 minute group since Christmas) under the lights, around the GAA pitch. It is more entertaining than it sounds with about 30 women and the communal energy carries you along. You feel great on Friday mornings.

Breaking news- a cow escaped from the mart in Ennis yesterday morning, it rampaged around the town stampeding the Gardai and injuring a few people. A woman is quoted as saying 'I thought it was a bull I never realised cows could be so dangerous' 

therese and susannagh

My great grandfather Edward Hearne left Carlow for the UK as a young teenager. Son of a butcher he enlisted in the British army veterinary corps. In his pocket he kept a prayer card. St Therese of Liseux. He quickly found himself in the trenches of WW1 and told my grandmother (who was called Therese) that when he prayed to the card it used to curl up and give him comfort. He died at a young age from the after effects of gas in the trenches leaving my granny and her sister orphans. They were placed in the care of some kind (good press at last!) Catholic nuns, whom they loved. When she left them at 18 they gave her a survival list for the outside world. One of the bits of advice was 'don't accept flowers from strangers.' As she was a classic Irish beauty with black hair and blue eyes who became a model in London probably not as useless as it sounds. She kept the prayer card and I have ended up with it as my second name is also Therese. She is a lovely saint who promised to send down showers of roses from heaven. My granny had a beautiful rose garden.

I have asked for help from her a couple of times. Once, as I sorted out my paperwork, she was in the pile and I asked her to help me find a job. With typing as all I had to offer it wasn't such an easy request. Amongst the pile I was sorting a postcard from a stone masons yard fell out. I wrote to the factory asking for a job in the office on the dubious grounds of 'loving stone'. I worked there for 3 years and met my husband there.
Another difficult time when I found myself struggling with lonliness and my daughter had gone to France on an exchange for a term I picked up the prayer card (the relics of Therese were actually travelling around Ireland at the time) and asked if she could help me find a single girl who would come and stay in my daughters room for a few weeks to keep me company.
The next day the foreman stumbled up the stairs in the factory with 'do you have a spare room, there is this girl who needs somewhere to stay tonight...'
She had come from Czech to work on a local farm and the mad old farmer had fallen in love with her. So that is how I met her, ten years ago. She stayed with me for months, witnessed the birth of my dog, helped me training some horses, took us skiing in the Czech mountains...and this morning I  left her at Shannon at 5am with her daughter. She is extracating herself from an unhealthy relationship and although I know we will not lose touch, she won't be coming back. I will miss her.

Showcase Ireland is on. This is the crafts trade fair where most of the international orders are made for the year. It attracts over 5000 visitors from 16 countries.There is a wide selection of top designers in gifts, crafts, fashion, accessories and interiors. My school friend Susannagh Grogan was awarded the Creative Island Award and was highly commended in the accessories section for her printed, limited editions, 100% silk scarves.

 

Election 25th February

amazon eve

Mon

6°C | 4°C

Brian Cowen has stepped down as leader of Fianna Fail. So he is now leader of the country but not of the party that is governing the country. Confused? Isn't everyone.. but the general feeling is more relief than anxiety, at last there is some sign of change in the frustrating stagnation that has lasted so long. There have been 4685 articles about the situation last week across 72 countries, all negative.
For a depiction of the arrogance and greed of people in positions of power that have got the country into this mess see- savage eye consultants- funny but unfortunately so true.

Today fm was trying to find some good news item to start the programme today and all it could find was that Amazon Eve, the tallest supermodel in the world, 8 ft in heels, is coming to Ireland on holiday!
She loves the Irish accent...so that has made half the population happy.

building boats

Fri

5°C | -1°C

During 2004/05, 12 Heron dinghys were built in garages throughout the village

and 6 more were purchased  by families in the area leading to

quite a healthy fleet within the first year. This also lead to a few members

swelling up with an allergic reaction to the resin used to form the shell.

See Kinvara Bay Sailing Club and below a photo of one of the herons.

Last winter my husband renovated a traditional irish rowing boat called a curach.

See below Lorace before/after.



This is our local chemist taking advantage of the dry weather yesterday to work on his 6 berth sailing boat The Red Gauntlet.

The Red Gauntlet was built in the 1930s and came with a small rowing boat used to row to shore when the sailing boat was anchored. The rowing boat has just been discovered in a shed in Brittany. The french man who owns it traced the original boat builders and found the previous owner of the sailing boat and the two will be reunited some time this year.



stone cracked

Thu

-1°C

The Burren, County Clare, is 10 square miles of limestone pavement,
bounded on one side by the Atlantic. See below the ballyvaughan walking club

In Spring the Burren is home to rare orchids and alpine flowers,

like the Fly Orchid and Spring Gentian.

 

Also feral goats,

swans, including, this winter, a pair of black swans on the flaggy shore,

  

And the rare Burren green moth- amongst others.

Yesterday I climbed up Abbey Hill, past St Patrick's holy well, to the summit of Slieve Carron

 - this was the view from the top looking out to Aughnish and Galway Bay.

I love the Burren

daithi O'Se and meteorites

Wed

5°C | 0°C

The vote of confidence in our leader was passed :(

So here is a photo of Daithi O'Se- Irelands most eligible bachelor to cheer you up.

Daithi started off as a bit of eye candy reading the weather on TG4 Irelands Irish language television. Last year he was promoted to being the host of the the Rose of Tralee roseoftralee.ie. He is now on TV every day doing anything at all for about 5 hours a day. With his exceptional Irish language and flirting qualifications about 2 million women in Ireland are in love with him. (total population  4,450,446).

But what do they say about all the good men? Well he's not married... (he is meant to have a girlfriend) and he has an extensive collection of cowboy boots in his closet..... Now that would be a national crisis.

Great gift grub sketch on Daithi this morning check out the podcast todayfm 

Back on the ranch...

Here is a photo taken at 8am this morning out of my kitchen window. What looks like 4 aeroplanes crashing was actually part of a meteorite shower. Beautiful.

loving iphones

  (-this is hail showers by the way not nice little drops of rain)
9°C | 8°C

Todays hot topic- Looks like Biffo (Big Ignorant F...er from Offaly) is gone.
The golfing controversy is not going away, we will probably have a new Taoiseach soon.

And on a lighter note- I got an iphone 3 for Christmas. With the excuse that the speaker was good and my old mobile gave me terrible earaches. I understand the hype now. So, from my research, amongst my friends who have iphones, the most popular apps in this neck of the woods are:

• free torch,
• ikea catalogue,
• ixpenseit,
• period tracker,
• my fitness pal,
• scrabble,
• imapmyrun,
• viber and
• find my iphone.

The free torch has already come in handy putting the Christmas decorations back in the attic.
The ikea catalogue is heavenly but dangerous.
Ixpensit is excellent, I put in all my spending and can see each week how much I spent on groceries petrol etc from each shop- information really is power- and its scary.
Period tracker has taken me out of a 25 year denial of whats going on- you can add symptoms and moods and my husband is keeping an eye on it... If your partner has an iphone you can sync into the programme and it sends messages to him to tell him when to be kind!
My fitness pal is amazing; you put in what you ate and how much excercise you did, it tots up the calories and tells you how many you have left for the day. A real wake up call. In New York they now post the calories against the prices in restaurants- a good idea, there is a big problem here with denial about eating and obesity. A great programme on at the moment is Operation Transformation It is following 5 people in different situations trying to lose weight. The website is excellent giving recipe of the day and fitness video etc. And there is also a psychologist involved helping people address the underlying issues. Poor things had to carry sand bags through a freezing wet tank track this week.
Scrabble and Imapmyrun I don't have, but the reviews are good.
Viber is like skype so you can make free calls to anyone with an iphone who is in a wireless network area.
I tested findmyiphone yesterday and it worked great. It pinpointed my hairdressers phone to a spot on a map, you can also remotely wipe the data from your phone, play a sound even if its on silent and send a message. Download it quick.

Update on Floyd, the pony. I took him on the road again yesterday with another quiet horse and he behaved very well, he didn't mind the traffic and didn't seem to want to buck or run away or anything. I had a new bit on him to stop him putting his tongue over it, but he was still sticking out his tongue and shaking his head from side to side. When we got back the horse dentist was there treating another horse. (Remember the song from Father Ted? 

'My lovely horse, running through the field
Where are you going, with your fetlocks blowing in the wind?
I want to shower you with sugar lumps, and ride you over fences
Polish your hooves every single day, and bring you to the horse dentist'!)

She looked at him and found wolf teeth- tiny little, useless, spikey teeth in front of the top molars that are common in young horses, they can hit off the bit causing a sharp pain, so she agreed to remove them. He was sedated and she ended up taking 6 teeth out- shocking- one baby molar, three baby incisors and two tiny wolf teeth. It seems that he was not shedding his baby teeth naturally very well and so she took them out to make him more comfortable. See below, poor pony.

weather

9°C | 8°C

I decided I will put the weather here on each post to try and give you a feel for the day. I would like an automatic gadget but can't seem to work that out so for the moment I will paste it on. Anyhow the gadget was wrong as it showed the sun peeking out from behind a cloud. It is pure grey out there. A down wet day.

I also decided that if I am going to bring you a topical bite I will keep it positive, so if there is any bad news it will have to be from a comedy angle. No sad news stories here only good news.

So follow the link below to hear one angle on the Brian Cowen (Taoiseach- architect of the 'bank guarantee' concept) Sean Fitzpatrick (former chairman of Anglo Irish bank ) controversy.
gift grub seanie and cowen golf
The 'come dine with me' one is worth a listen too!



Before Christmas I decided to volunteer for something seeing as there was no point looking for a paid job so I got onto the Galway volunteer centre and 'Irish Therapy Dogs' (see website if you are interested irishtherapydogs ) were looking for a coordinater in Galway. I am going to fill in the Garda vetting application form today which is required. Therapy dogs are used in full time residential care homes to improve the emotional health of residents and help combat lonliness and depression among other things. Here is the biggest therapy dog on the website! If I get the job I will be coordinating the teams with the care centres and looking after the admin and the uniforms.



I managed to ride the pony today for the first time without someone leading him. I brought him up to my brother in laws farm and went on the road with his wife and two friends. We met two dogs, some cars and a few cows but he was good and all went well. He was putting his tongue over the bit so I will try another bridle on him and hopefully ride out with them again tomorrow.

I need to get my 6yr old to gym now and then do dinner so I am not going to beat myself up about posts being too short or not perfect I will try and just keep posting them...

this is Ireland

The idea of this blog is to give the homesick a little piece of real Ireland to keep their spirits up
- The young emigrants heading off to Australia, New Zealand, Dubai etc away from their families and friends to find work and the Irish who live away and may never return considering the mess we are in.

Keeping the vision of the peregrine falcon gliding over the Burren hills of County Clare in mind, I hope to be able to communicate the feeling of Ireland from the personal microcosm of my life to the broad macrocosm of Ireland and maybe the world. 
I also hope this post will be my most unprofessional and as I learn about this process my skills as a blogger will improve exponentially. And I hope that my grammer and spelling are ok, but most of all I want to keep it current, authentic and entertaining.

.

Our local artist           /musician 

Jim McKee (find him on facebook) sings a song called Cuban room. It is a song about the human ability to create something out of nothing. He locked himself away for a while in a small studio shed and came out with a series of fantastic paintings that were snapped up in his first exhibition. Inspired by this concept I am trying to create something in my small office on the coast of the West of Ireland and to connect to the rest of the world through the web as a hopefully mutually beneficial process. -Any comments or opinions appreciated.

Being tied to a small farm and the family can be frustrating and although it is mostly positive it sometimes occurs to me that I could be sitting on a beach in the Bahamas, attending a premier in Hollywood in a nice frock with new boobs, skiing in the Alps and doing other stuff that people get up to and that sounds interesting. But I am here, with no means to get to the Bahamas and it is not very glamorous. BUT this is Ireland and I do love her.

So I can imagine if you are out foreign you will be missing her.

For your first taste of home I am posting a  youtube clip.

'Horse Outside' has kept everyone happy for the last month or so (you have probably already seen it). It  really was worth bankrupting the country to produce something so perfect!  Not since Father Ted have we had real, authentic, up to the minute humour. I have tested this on someone from the UK and he had no idea what it is about, so I know if you havn't seen it you will only appreciate it if you are Irish. And be warned- it has offended some grannies so if you have a sensitive nature skip the video (I am a granny but it didnt offend me.)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8

On a personal note here is a photo of my horse outside 'Floyd'. I asked him to pose but he kept blinking.

 

He is just 4, half Conemmara. I have been training him since October and rode him today for the first time. Patrick, who lives in the previously mentioned Father Ted's house, came over to sort out some cattle cards and led him around for me. I am delighted he behaved, i will keep you posted on progress.

So today has been A GOOD DAY. I was having a severe overdose of children yesterday.

My teenage son missed the school bus this morning, he is very (Harry Enfield's) Kevin in the morning, moving at -1mile per hour, but I made him stand at the gate with his thumb out until I came back from dropping the girls in to school and he managed to get a lift -halleluiah. My 4yr old daughter pulled the centre out of a pink felt tip during the night and rubbed it lengthways all over her body and face to fake an illness and try and stay at home. She said red twigs had attacked her. But after a exfoliating scrub in the bath with a bushy kind of sponge, that you are meant to use before applying fake tan, she was only a bit pink around the moustache area and the palms of her hands, so her plan failed and I got the house to myself for the first time since the start of the holidays. NICE.

And I started this blog which is an attempt to stop procrastinating about doing something creative. I will try and keep it going and send it off into the ether with light and love hoping it may lead me places. BLESS.