spring

When the sun shines in Ireland everyone agrees it is the best place in the world. All worries are shelved as lawn mowers are started up and people wander around in summer clothes in case they don’t get a chance to wear them again.

This time last year I would be have been driving to some part of the country, trying to reach 4 or 5 appointments in the day to do presentations to engineers for a web service. This could mean that I got up at 4 or 5am to drive from Galway to Donegal or Cork perhaps. I would then spend the night there and do more presentations the next day before heading home late evening. The other three days would be spent desperately trying to catch up on the computer, setting up meetings for the following week and trying to keep children quiet when the phone rang. I covered the whole country so I would pick a county each week, the upside being I did get to see a wealth of scenery on the way. It was a good job, with a car and a phone etc. and I was based from home, connected by a portal straight into the office in County Armagh, 123 miles away. I should have done a survey on hotels. There were a huge number of beautiful hotels built in the last few years, in fabulous locations, fitted out to the highest quality, most with leisure centres and spas. So that is one good thing that the Celtic tiger left us. And now the competition is so tight you can easily find the cheapest deals in Europe

When the sun shone, as it only does for a few random weeks a year I was almost certainly in the car or stuck to the computer. I am so grateful not to be working for the last week. It has been glorious, sunny, hot, calm, Spring weather.

Oh the perfect pleasure of mowing grass.

I bought a bargain lot of wild roses and planted a hedge, cleared the branches out of the little walled garden next to the house and mowed it for the first time in years, weeded the flower beds, planted strawberries and dreamt up a vision for paths and seats and water features and cottage garden planting…..

Yes, in the poor man’s garden grow

Far more than herbs and flowers-

Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,

And joy for weary hours.

Mary Howitt

There are three large hares on the farm this year, they lollop around like small ponies and there is a pheasant that shouts a lot. He managed to avoid the open season and took refuge in the bushes near the cows’ feeder over the winter, cleaning up the oats when they had finished. The small birds are out in force, rioting in the morning and tearing around looking for nests. One pair of thrushes has taken up residence in the vent to the extractor from the cooker, so we won’t be extracting for a while! The colony of crows are deep into the construction phase of their big nests on the tall ash trees, squabbling deafeningly over the best sticks and pieces of moss and sheep’s wool to line them. The daffodils have peeked too early apparently and will be over by Easter.

The trees are budding and you can feel the grass growing.

yellow

 

The volunteer job that I applied for last December has started. It took this long to set up because of references and Garda vetting procedures. It is ‘Coordinator of the Galway region for Irish Therapy Dogs’. I will be dealing with administration, setting up programmes with care centres and assessing the local teams. On Saturday Brenda and Brian from Dublin showed me the ropes in the Galway Hospice and we assessed four new teams. The emblem for the Galway Hospice is a sunflower and the atmosphere was light and bright. It is run by efficient volunteers who do the cooking and driving etc. and the good will was palpable.

I met Laura with her therapy dog Freda, a rescued Chihuahua, who are already active in the hospice and do weekly visits. When she got Freda from the sanctuary the tiny dog just ran around in little circles as she had lived in a cage on a puppy farm. She was lucky to find Laura! In her yellow I.T.D uniform with bright blond hair, big almond eyes and the largest perma-smile I have ever seen she looked like the sunflower fairy. 

The dogs and the owners are carefully assessed. The owners need to have a strong commitment to weekly visits and a kind, understanding, loving nature. The dogs need to be calm, obedient, well groomed, comfortable around strangers and in strange surroundings, not smell and have their nails clipped. Also the insurance insists they must not have any blood lines from dogs listed as restricted breeds.

The visits become very important for long term residential patients or people that cannot leave the centres but the real therapy takes place with the severe cases; patients with stroke, dementia, mental health problems or social interactive problems like autism. The aim is to make a connection to people locked into loneliness and work to improve their emotional health.

There are many success stories:

One man had been visiting his wife for eighteen months after she had had a stroke, she hadn’t spoken since but then one day she said ‘that is a lovely dog’.

Another long term resident with intellectual disabilities who no one had ever heard speak started beckoning to his lap after weeks of having the therapy dog put on his knees, saying ‘DOG, DOG’

A huge wolfhound called Setanta has had great success in a special needs school. One of the most popular activities is lying down and reading to him.

Brenda the founder of I.T.D. says ‘what ever the mental capacity of the person there is always a window to make a connection.’ You place the person’s hand on the dog and let them stroke it if they are happy to do this. She said ‘you know when a connection is made if you look above their eyes and see a light turn on, then maybe a glimmer of a smile.’

www.irishtherapydogs.ie

my little pony

I am in the arena, going round in circles, trying to hypnotise the young Connemara pony that I have trained over the winter. I glance up the fields to see a lone yellow cow lie down in the corner and give birth to the first calf of the year. The sky is a metallic grey, the grass that shade of neon green that is only found in the West of Ireland. The black calf gets up after a minute or two, all good so far, then the yellow cow sits down. She is still sitting three hours later. The calf won’t totter around for ever if it doesn’t get a drink. I am wary of approaching her since I was chased last year by an angry cow in a pair of flip flops (I was wearing the flip flops) and fell over before I got to the gate. Luckily she must have thought that she had won and retreated. There is always a spot on the news at the end of every year with farm fatalities. A cross cow is no joke.

I rang my expert farm advisor Bob who has been putting out the bales for us since our tractor packed up. Always keen on a farming challenge he arrived up instantly with his son David to assess the yellow cow situation and offer reams of advice. Maybe she is having twins, or having trouble with the after birth, or maybe she is lazy. We walked her down to the crush and he rooted around inside her and decided there wasn’t another calf; she was probably fine. The little black heifer did what all good calves should do and butted around enthusiastically under the cow looking for something that instinct had implanted. She soon found four, full fat, hot, frothy options.

‘Now she’s sucking diesel’

The cow munched her nuts, the calf sucked the precious colostrum that has to be ingested within a couple of hours of birth, the sun broke through the grey and baked our backs and all was well. A bright rainbow decorated the broody, blue hills.

There is a feeling that although the country is broke we have regained our integrity. It is an expectant feeling, it could nearly be hope, that we are on the road to recovery.

I brought down eight bags of horse manure to the school and we are going to plant spuds tomorrow as a step towards healthy school dinners and gender empowerment… a traditional task the week of Paddy’s day!

I have registered for a FAS accounting course in the dual prong strategy of; if we get a nature centre up and running on the farm I need to know, and if we don’t, someone else might need to know and employ me. And I have started drawing the plans for the renovation of the cow shed into a café.

We will be in the parade on Thursday in the village throwing out sweets from the little red Austin Healy that my husband has renovated- open top- so let’s hope its not raining.

Winter is never really over until after Paddy’s day.

irish mammy

All praise the Irish Mammy.

It is International Women’s day today and only 23 female TDs were elected to the new Dail. I know how hard it is to engage a male audience with women’s issues; the subject evokes images of messy things in the childbirth area that quickly make them click on another link. And no one should dare criticise the Irish Mammy; after all everyone has one, and most are above reproach, the very foundation stones of the State. This is why the subject of gender equality in Ireland has remained ‘the elephant in the room’ and this huge resource of talented women is either burnt out or wasted. The Irish Mammy is capable, resourceful, prudent, kind and works every hour God gave.

But she is she is ONE ANGRY MOTHER.

My best friend, lets call her Bridget, is a typical case and would win Mammy of the year. She has four children, does all the housemaid bits, works three nights as a nurse, and Saturday as a hairdresser. I like her husband, everyone does, he has a job, is a GAA supporter in his spare time, mows the lawn, but is incapable of lifting a finger in the house or with the children. She calls him ‘traditional’, I would call him something else, and it begins with C.

Bridget jumped in her car last year with:

‘f*** you all’

 and drove to Salthill Strand to contemplate the benefits of oblivion. Luckily for everyone she just smoked a few fags and came home.

I do not buy in to the victim role of the woman, or the utter contempt for men shown by the packs of wives when they get together over a bottle of wine. But there is a cultural problem and we need to break the cycle of guilt, blame and victimisation or we will just breed a new generation of Mammy’s boys.

The World Bank calls investing in women ‘smart economics’. Having this amazing resource tethered to the kitchen sink when we are in this crisis makes no sense.

I have a simple plan to get those women generating enterprise and taking steps towards the Dail.

The School Dinner Revolution.

·        Design a healthy menu

·        Involve the kids in growing their own food

·        Employ people to cook school dinners

·        Build individual kitchens or group small schools together

·        Provide free after school child care to the end of the working day if both partners work or if you are a single parent.

The benefits of this scheme would be

• All Irish Mammys instantly unshackled from the kitchen sink and free to contribute to society and raise self esteem for themselves and their children.
• Employment is created within the food supply chain and in the local community
• You have fed the most vulnerable disadvantaged children.

It makes NO sense to have brilliant women like Bridget stuck in their kitchen cooking for 6 people every day when one person could cook for 100 and get paid for it.

If we are getting 20,000 jobs a year let 10,000 of them be for women. Why doesn’t Enda Kenny start up a few pilot school dinner schemes in villages around the country?

The Irish Mammy can clean up this mess.

tempted

Blessed with Shannon only 40 minutes away on the new motorway, and bargain flights to Heathrow with AerLingus, we went to London for the weekend of the midterm break to visit relatives. It was a breath of fresh air to be in a thriving city that recession barely seems to dent. I went for my run along the River Thames, with all the other fitness freaks, we went to the zoo and the playgrounds and my sister took me to Madame Butterfly which was wonderful. As I was waiting for her outside the Albert Hall in the warm Spring evening air, surveying the style, I found myself looking up jobs on my mobile. The opportunities are very tempting to abandon ship. With my skill set the wage brackets for the type of job I would probably get were £50k-£90k, I wouldn’t get a part time job in a supermarket here.  

Back at the farmhouse and not much has changed yet. Politics is still turbulent with no coalition deal finalised.

The holy Irish trinity of Fianna Fáil, the Catholic Church and the GAA has now crumbled, only the GAA retaining the loyal support of all its followers. It is definitely a new page in history with no room for arrogance or greed; no Charlie Haughey speeches of ‘we must all tighten our belts’ as he bought a few private jets and islands for himself, or Bishop Casey lecturing on ‘family values’ as he planned secret holidays with his girlfriend and child. We as a family and a country are going to need a few miracles. But there is always the tried and tested ‘luck of the Irish’.

Fine Gael has promised to create 20,000 jobs every year for the next four years. Investment will be in infrastructure, including tourism and green energy. I may get a job in renewable energy, and we have a beautiful small farm that is wasted with 10 cows and a couple of ponies wandering around enjoying the scenery, that could be developed for tourism.

In the good old Celtic tiger days we got a 40% grant for a new barn. Consequently it is quite a large swanky cow shed with a high spec roof and clear span steels. The cows only use a small part of it and the rest was the site of my husbands business. We are considering converting it into a base for a nature centre. An indoor play area could fit into the barn, for rainy days, and a farm café. Then we could develop a nature walk and cottage garden, rare breed hens, home grown veg, fresh baked scones, you get the idea.

Half of the farm is a natural habitat: Burren limestone pavement, complete with rare alpine flowers and orchids and moonscape slabs of warm grey rocks. The other half is pasture and there is an unusual tidal fresh water lake called a ‘turlough’ that is linked by an underground river to the sea half a mile away. When the tide is in the river backs up and we have a lake and when it is out we have an empty bowl.

If it succeeded we could possibly sustain our life here and the kids could stay floating in their happy bubble. It would be a real asset to the community and overseas visitors could taste the feeling of the magical countryside rather than just soaking up the atmosphere of the inside of a pub. It seems the right thing to do, promote a green Ireland, market our assets and invest in the community. But if we embark on such a huge project and it doesn’t work out…..it would be a lot simpler and safer to send off that CV to London and bring the cows to the mart.

We are not leaving yet, so we will do up a planning application and sprinkle it with holy water!

crushing

Seanie Fitzpatrick’s (former chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, compulsive risk taker and, some say, chief architect of our economic collapse) BMW which was repossessed by the state and sold on Ebay is being symbolically crushed this Friday, Election Day.

Proceeds will go to the Samaritans.

Last June I got that call.

‘Meet me in the ClareGalway hotel for a coffee’

It was my cheery boss.

When I arrived he was sitting in the lobby nervously tapping on his Blackberry, hair gelled, trendy designer shirt casually unbuttoned, expensive distressed jeans, pointy brown shoes (the ‘I am really your friend’ style of management).

He took in a big breath:

‘Mary we are going to have to let you go…’

He then looked at me sideways for a few seconds to see if I was going to cry.

I didn’t, he let out a sigh of relief and gave me a big hug.

Another one bites the dust.

My initial reaction was guilty glee at the prospect of the summer ahead not glued to my laptop and mobile phone; the scary bank balance didn’t really feature at that stage.

My husband’s business, which relied on the construction industry, also folded. He got a job in his original capacity, mechanic. He now leaves home at 7, drives for an hour, lies on a cold concrete shed floor under a JCB or other large machine for 8 hours and gets home at half 6 with hands stained permanently black from oil and a sore back.

He is happy to have the work, and so am I.

I am grateful for a lot of things, we are all healthy, the children are living in a happy bubble and we are not going to emigrate.

I have done all the free things advised to keep the unemployed happy:

• I have taken up running.
• I have volunteered for a part time unpaid job.
• I have applied for a government funded evening course.
• I have had taken up a (free) hobby.
• I have kept in touch with friends.

And whatever criticisms people have about facebook it is a form of social contact that does not require you to buy a cup of coffee.

Most of the time my spirits are high but the general countrywide malaise does encroach on me. At 7 in the morning, when I have to press the repeat button and do all the things that I failed to complete yesterday, my legs get really heavy and lazy and start arguing with my head:

‘Stay in bed…why bother getting up...you have no target to meet…you will only have to do this again tomorrow’

While my head is saying:

‘Come on, a new day, make the lunches, tidy the kitchen, go for a run’.

The head wins but the legs are putting up a better fight every day.

My situation is mild compared to many but it gives me an insight into that crushing feeling of hopelessness.

It is clear that the Samaritans need all the donations they can get.

We are all hoping Enda Kenny is going to pull a fat rabbit out of his hat next week.

Lipstick

Valentines night and after a couple of glasses of red wine I managed to focus my eyes for the romantic ‘5 way leaders’ debate’ on TV.

The first audience question was unsurprisingly about emigration and jobs. It set the tone to deadly serious as the respectable, grey haired gentlemen could not get out the words as he fought back the tears explaining where his three children had emigrated to. No more Saturday morning fry ups.

Enda Kenny participated and because Fine Gael are so strong he wasn’t under any pressure to ‘win’, just to avoid a big slip up. His confidence must have been boosted exponentially earlier in the day when Micheál Martin, leader of Fianna Fáil made one of those ‘please say it was only a dream’ statements on a par with the Obama Special Olympics baseball embarrassment.

He impersonated a Chinese person at a technology conference yesterday stating the Chinese opinion of Irish IT skills was:

‘You Irish vely good at software.’

Having conducted himself with impressive decorum considering the anger and hatred directed at himself and his party he managed to commit political suicide and offend 1.3 billion people in 2 seconds.

Enda Kenny must have shouted BINGO!

The party spin doctors had obviously been on the same website, ascribing to the well known psychological ‘red tie trick’-red tie matches red mouth and improves receptivity to advertising…

The green party candidate was the odd one out with a blue tie, which apparently prompts creativity (and maybe reminds us of wind and wave energy?) although we could be reading too much into the tie situation as John Gormley said that he just borrowed it off someone in the office at the last moment…..

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore held his own but unfortunately squabbled with Enda Kenny which made the option of a coalition look decidedly unattractive.

Gerry Adams at one point bit the head off Micheál Martin with his shiny, white gnashers ‘DON’T INTERUPT ME, I DIDN’T INTERUPT YOU’ Micheál  looked suitably terrified but impertinently answered back ‘yes you did’.

On a lighter note our entry for The Eurovision pong (popular song) contest, which has been very good to Ireland, spawning Riverdance and being a great showcase for the country and its talent, was chosen on Friday. ‘Lipstick’ was the winner, with our very own, terminally optimistic, hugely successful, and much adored JEDWARD.

It is an apt title as lipstick has been used historically to boost morale in times of conflict.

With rationing in WW2, when women were encouraged to make summer frocks out of three tea towels, lipstick was worn as an act of patriotism.

Put on the war paint, to win would mean a lot.

My mobile hairdresser (previously high-flying recruitment manager) pointed out that to up our odds from 16-1 we should have embraced modern Ireland and sent some sort of Polish or Ukrainian Jedward as that is where all the votes come from. But we will have to rely on the love of all 7 year old girls who have access to mobile phones.

By the way it was announced on the news yesterday that Enda Kenny was going to try and touch the US Federal Reserve for 50 billion. I cannot find anything, anywhere to confirm this story but hey… just thought I would warn you!