snakes

I am back from France, a slightly different colour and with what feels like two fat ducks strapped around my waist. We ate a lot.. After the second week I forgot what I was meant to be worried about, so the holiday obviously worked. Both of the girls are swimming without arm bands which is brilliant (all those swimming lessons paid off at last) We stayed an extra week because the first week it rained, which is very unusual for the midi-Pyrenees in July. When I got home the thing that hit me was the lovely fresh summer air with no humidity and the absence of scary creatures such as hornets and snakes.

There was one objection to our planning application for the nature centre when we returned; it is from the neighbour who makes it her business to object to everything and everyone, so that is no surprise. She even wrote to the council and threatened court when we put a sign up at the gate at Christmas saying ‘organic turkeys for sale’

The main points of her six page rant were;

• the extra traffic would be a hazard
• the noise would be a nuisance
• the waste water treatment would effect the environment

We are in the process of getting letters of support from the other six houses in the townland and have been assured by Galway County Council that all of these issues have been dealt with appropriately in our application. But an objection like this, (costing her €20), means that even if the council grants permission she has a right to appeal to the planning board (An Bord Pleanala) which could take over a year and their decision, made by an engineer in Dublin, could go either way. They have a bad relationship with Galway County Council and a history of ruling against their decisions.

It seems to make no sense for an enterprise that would generate jobs with so little impact on the area (the building is already there) to be refused in the current economic climate, but who can tell? If it goes to appeal we will start a petition as the village as the area is desperate for facilities and we already have the backing of the Galway Enterprise Board and all the local hospitality businesses.

The other news is the young pony, Floyd, who competed in two shows while we were away and won first and second prize, has now been sold. He will be going to an excellent yard in Austria in September, which is good news but I will be sorry to see him go.

So back to reality and a reduction in calories.

market

Kinvara was traditionally a market town. On the borders of Clare and Galway and accessible from the sea it was a natural meeting point. Cattle and sheep were traded and vegetables and eggs brought from local farms to sell. Turf was brought in by sail boat from Connemara in the famous Galway hookers and much Guinness was drunk in the ten pubs. 

The market now opens on Fridays between 10 and 2 behind Johnston’s hall on the main street. A covered area for coffee and teas, live traditional music and a walled garden contribute to the family atmosphere. There was great excitement last week as amongst the hens for sale were ‘giant bunny babies.’ The babies were the size of a fully grown rabbit! Although under great pressure we managed to leave without a giant bunny baby but with a pot of Catriona’s delicious tabouleh, some of Annie’s freshly pulled carrots and some excellent value fresh hake and sea bass fillets. You can also buy delicious lobster and Dublin bay prawns, a great selection of breads and baked goods, and every sort of fresh fruit and vegetables.

This week a new sweet shop opened in the village. It sells old fashioned sweets like lemon bon bons and home made chocolates. The traditional shop front is painted a pretty duck egg green and inside the owner has built a lovely wooden display dresser and hung old fashioned wall paper. It is an asset to the village and its reputation is spreading like wildfire through the playgrounds and summer camps, drawing much needed footfall to the village. Geraldine Blackwell, another local organic farmer, moved from there to a larger premises with her shop, ‘Ger’s Place’ The shop front design of buttons might give away what she sells and she also runs the popular and expanding ‘stitch and bitch’ knitting mornings. Another new venture this year is ‘DIY pursuits’ which is doing a good trade selling and renting bicycles. Cycling has become another recession hobby with a recent 60 and 120 k organised cycle drawing over 1000 participants up the Corker hill and around the Burren. Other shops on the main street have had a fresh coat of paint and this seems to be generating a slight spread of optimism.

I wont be posting for the next two weeks as we are going on holiday. We will know on our return if planning permission for the nature centre has been granted.

level headed

 

This week I have been designing a house for a friend who needs to convert an outline planning permission into full consent before it runs out. It may never be built. It is a simple, traditional design, with nice proportions and plenty of insulation- nothing flashy.

It brought me back to a few years ago when I was spewing out 3 or 4 houses a week. The fact that I had started a part time engineering degree was enough to instantly qualify me as an architect. I designed hundreds of houses, probably half of them on Nama’s books now.

Anyone who could get their head around Autocad was employed drawing up house plans. It was Celtic tiger fever. You had to learn on the job- draw up plans, take levels, survey sites, do trial hole tests and design waste water systems. I could often be seen wandering around fields with a level (those intermediate levels still confuse me), a shovel and a bucket of water, searching for a trial hole, or trying to find a JCB driver to dig it, in the pouring rain, on a random hillside, so I could look into it. And don’t bother asking the boss for advice; he was far too busy running around in circles trying to keep up with the deluge of work.

The desperation on Friday to get the applications submitted before the newspaper notices were out of date was head bursting. Each one was at least 4 inches high with six copies of all forms, reports, plans, elevations, cross sections, site layouts, waste water treatment system reports etc etc. My boss would tear off after lunch to Galway with a towering pile of paper to join the fight at the County Council office planning desk to get them in before 4 pm.

The houses got more and more elaborate. It started with en-suite bathrooms for every bedroom, then walk in wardrobes, then laundry shoots, then bar areas, games rooms, swimming pools, loggias (never quite worked out what they were) The most lavish house I designed was a home for one of the big building contractors. It included all of the above, the master bedroom was 1000sq feet (the size of a cottage) and the en-suite bathroom included ‘his and hers’ wash basins and to top it all a pair of ‘his and hers’ toilets side by side….

I then upgraded to a structural engineer’s office and was immediately employed in specifying reinforced concrete for foundations and columns. There are countless different shapes of bent steel that are of varying lengths according to the design of the building. These have to be picked and placed on the drawing with the help of one of the dullest, but most useful computer programmes called CADS RC. The steel specifying job was a race to get the lorries to site and keep ahead of the builders. One Christmas Eve I was doing overtime specifying steel for a new retail development. Every now and then I would feel a wave of panic as I ordered yet another lorry load of cut and bent steel, absolutely useless if any was the wrong size, and costing thousands. Every time I emailed a drawing to the suppliers I felt like sprinkling the computer with holy water.

That was how crazy it was. And then the deluge stopped

holidays

There is a saying "ni neart go cur le ch́eile" which translates roughly as "no strength without unity" and would have been used for energetic activities, for instance, gathering together to save hay. It is much more than many ‘hands make light work’. On Sunday we did the Galway women’s mini marathon; 10k along beautiful Galway bay and up Threadneedle mountain (road) and around in a loop. There were about 1000 starters and we were all warmed up by a zumba dancer. The positive energy is still vibrating.
Those energetic community activities have been lost to machines. The photo above was taken in 1956 by Robert Cresswell, an anthropologist from the Sorbonne in Paris, who lived in Kinvara for a year documenting the community. His work was published in a respected book about rural Ireland. The photos paint quite an austere picture of life but also show that sense of unity. They include interiors of the cottage on this farm. You can view them at www.kinvara.com/cresswell/gallery
I was shown this week how to access Griffiths valuation (1847-1854) a full scale valuation of Ireland comparing the value of an acre of land in County Meath at one pound to the rest of the country. From the maps you can read the information that leads you to the correct record. It showed that on this farm there were 7 in the family in a 3 bedroom cottage, with an office, a coach house, stable, pig shed and a hen house. I have been told that there used to be a horse drawn taxi service here so maybe that explains the office. See the records at http://www.askaboutireland.ie/

I also felt "ni neart go cur le ch́eile" on the swimming bus at the weekend. 40 children singing Jedward’s ‘Lipstick’ at 9am on a Saturday morning is certainly powerful! They were thrilled to see John Fox heading out of town on his 540 mile mule ride from Malin head (Donegal) to Mizin head (Cork) to raise funds for the Barretstown centre. The Kinvara swimming club was formed in 1969 after nine local school children lost their lives at New Quay in a boat accident. After winning a Camogie match a fisherman was giving the children spins on his new oyster boat at Linnanes bar to celebrate. Too many children got on the last trip across the choppy inlet and when they all ran to one side to look at something the boat capsized. The scars are still there and the Kinvara swimming club has been taking the children to the local pool for lessons ever since. A documentary was made about it www.rte.ie/tv/disasters/s2ep4

School holidays start today, the sun is out and it is raining, there must be a rainbow somewhere.

fathers

Sunday was Fathers' day and my 5 year old came up with the idea of going to visit her grandfather in the graveyard. He died of a heart attack when my husband was three, leaving a young wife with 5 children. The girls scampered around happily looking at all the gravestones and making me read out names. One old stone had a long list.

‘There’s a lot of them in there, they must be piled up on top of each other’

There was a tiny ancient metal cross,

‘Look over here, a fairy grave’.

On one of them was a carving of Jesus.

‘Jesus’ grave… I have found Jesus’ grave…’ my youngest shouted delightedly. (that would boost tourism in the area and probably save Galway airport…)

The little girl that died in January and broke everyone’s heart is buried in the corner. On her grave were flowers, cards, windmills and little toys left by her school friends. My throat ached trying to hold down the sadness as I thought of her family. But the children danced around it saying how pretty it was,

‘Definitely the prettiest in the graveyard.’

When it was time to leave my husband was calling them. There were a few other respectful mourners going about their business. My youngest daughter shouted in temper and stamped her foot.

‘I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF A PRA…YER’

Children can’t tip toe around these subjects.

They are completely overtired with the holidays approaching. My 5yr old has turned into a stamping, shouting tornado and the 6 yr old into one long whine. They collapse in tears at the slightest provocation. The school tour is on tomorrow and they are so overexcited it’s not funny. They are going on a bus to Coole Park to have a teddy bears picnic. They have already practised the picnic on the floor multiple times and the 6 yr old asked me if it was normal to see teddy bears ‘every where’

I felt that mothers’ guilty yearning of wanting to pack a small rucksack and take a one way flight to Thailand. Then I remembered how much I miss the childhood selves of my oldest two, never again to demand constant drinks of water or trip me up around the kitchen. That age old mother’s conundrum. It was cured with a trip to the cinema on Saturday to see Senna with a big pot of Ben and Jerrys.

I was speaking to my own father. He wanted help using his new Kindle. He had managed to download something inappropriate and was in a panic to get it off his list. A bit like the time they wanted to go to ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ended up sitting through half of ‘The Ring’! 

After a lot of ‘right arrow, press the dot, press home, down arrow, up arrow, press home again' etc. we managed to delete it. This was no a small achievement over the phone as these machines are never obvious, especially if you are 78 and have had to embrace this whole new language in the last few years.

My husband’s father and uncle were the first people in the village to hook up a TV. They used to face it out the window of the shop and everyone would gather on the pavement to watch it. He would have coped well in the technological age, if only they had perfected the pacemaker a couple of years earlier.

nature

The four year old pony, Floyd, ended up going to his first show on Sunday. He was third, in the pouring rain, which I was happy about as he was only ridden for the first time in January. Here he is relaxing the day after!

I lodged the planning application for the nature centre. As I am an engineer I was able to draw up the plans myself and do all the surveying etc. which means we only have to pay the application fee and because it is a conversion that is minimal. The barn would contain a farm café and an introduction to the flora and fauna to be found on the mile long nature walk around the farm. This has views of the Burren mountains and includes limestone pavement, rare and alpine flowers, native species of trees, farm animals, poultry and an unusual tidal freshwater lake or ‘turlough’ that attracts a variety of birds and even the odd otter. It is a bite sized piece of the Burren and hopefully you would leave armed with all the information to explore the other ten square miles and full up with a delicious lunch of local produce including our own Aberdeen Angus burgers or home grown soups and salads.

We plan to develop the nature walk to include play equipment such as zip wires and climbing frames to encourage children to complete the walk and pick up a bit of knowledge as they go. We have also included an indoor play area for rainy days. It rained all Sunday and when I tried to google ‘things to do with children indoors in Galway’ the only results were the Aquarium in Galway city (been there), the museum (shut on Sundays) and the swimming pools (they were swimming on Saturday). There is a huge need for indoor facilities for locals and tourists.

We applied for a nature centre in the Celtic tiger years. Our plans were way more ambitious with a state of the art new eco building and holiday apartments. Although Galway County Council approved the application and we had huge support from all the locals and the Galway Enterprise Board were (and still are) backing the project, one objection pushed the application to An Bord Pleanala (the planning appeals board) who notoriously do not agree with Galway County Council and it was refused. It is amazing how one €20 euro objection can disappoint so many. We are hoping that in these tough times if the same person objects (they have 5 weeks to do this) the appeals board would see it would be crazy to stop a new facility that will create jobs. We have been careful to address all the issues raised by them in the previous application but ‘what will be will be’. If it doesn’t go through we will be have to consider looking again at the opportunities in London or further afield.

old friend

I have become used to not having any money in the bank but the credit in my ‘wellness’ account is very healthy. I was let go from my Celtic tiger engineering job a year ago, luckily my husband was able to secure a mechanics job when his business folded. It was hard to adjust but we are lucky to be able to hang on here on our small farm and just about cover the bills.

I have two young children and since then have been able to invest lots of time in them. I have taken up a part time volunteer’s job that has been very rewarding. I started running which has been fabulous and have met so many new people as everyone is running; no one can afford a gym subscription now. I am doing a government funded accounting course which is wrecking my head, but also sorting out that area that I was never confident about. I have had time to devote to my writing, which fulfils some deep creative need and I am nearly ready to lodge a planning application to convert the farm shed into a café for a nature walk. Everyone is coming down to earth and realising that a healthy bank account doesn’t necessarily mean they are wealthy.

I trained a four year old pony over the winter and he is going to Galway County Show in two weeks time. As he has to be fat and shining and also ridden by a child I took him for a long ride yesterday morning to settle him down. It was his first time on the road, as he has only just been shod, and although I left very early to avoid traffic and it was a bank holiday, we still managed to meet a vast array of vehicles including a JCB and two gigantic silage tractors and trailers. He was excellent with the traffic although strangely afraid of a cow standing suspiciously on the horizon. We had a huge argument about not turning back and going home, which I won, luckily.

Part of the route took us down a long straight road called the New Line. It cuts through a huge expanse of Burren limestone pavement and is unsullied by poles or wires. It’s like the moon. It was one of the original sites considered for Shannon Airport. Bloody Cranesbill is flowering at the moment, splashing shocking pink here and there and orangey-yellow hills of Birdsfoot trefoil are dotted around amongst the scattering of Michaelmas daisies. A lone hare lolloped down the road ahead of us. It was drizzling with that warm, early morning, Evian spray of summer rain. We surfed along on endorphins feeling serene. It was like that delicious plane between wake and sleep when your brain has not shut off but it has stopped accepting any signals of physical or mental stresses.

Recovering from yet another wedding I was watching a bit of Oprah and Portia de Rossi was promoting her book. She introduced her mare and proclaimed ‘she saved my life.’ To many that may sound sensational, but I understood.

When I was a young girl in the pit of depression, with a tiny baby, living in a small cottage with no running water or electricity and locked in the mental prison of a controlling relationship I pinned the last thread of my will to exist, and my last few pennies, on a small, untrained 5 yr old chestnut gelding. He was a problem, a runaway.

He taught me that there was only one option- forward, and any obstacle could be overcome if you focus on the far side. He pulled me out of the pit, and took me to many exciting places. He is 28 now and although I was offered 50,000 punts for him after he won his first event he is still out the field eating grass. So I understand.