Zumba and Seaweed to beat off the rain



A pint of the green stuff



The rain has settled in and the view ahead is disturbingly dark grey and wet. Depression was beating at the door, with no sign of work and the prospect of being stuck inside for the next six months...

So attack being the best form of defence I am trying a two pronged approach- exercise and healthy eating. I have joined Zumba, a craze that seems to have overtaken the whole of Galway (see flash Zumba mob video below in the city recently.)  There are three jam packed classes a week scheduled in the village alone. The nice part is that you pay for eight sessions but you can take them as you wish and Arisa, the beautiful, sunny, blond, tanned, Polish Zumba teacher (so skilled at twirling the tassles on her back pockets) punches a hole in your card when you attend so you don’t have the pressure of committing to one time slot each week.

When I walked into my first Zumba class in Johnston’s hall it was apparent that I was the last person in Kinvara to take it up. All ages were flamencoing, bellydancing, salsaing and cha cha cha-ing. Even senior members of staff from the school had all the moves off for Tina Turners ‘Rolling down the River’. Combining mambo dancing with aerobics is guaranteed to leave you sweating and put a smile on your face. And your muscles won’t let you forget that you did it the next day. One lady had a calorie monitor on and we burned 620 calories last night!

Inspired by Prannie Rhattigan’s cook book ‘The Seaweed Kitchen’ and the benefits of eating seaweed- full of vitamins and minerals (and also free..), we went down at low tide to the Flaggy shore searching for ‘Alaria’ the ingredient in her super green smoothie (see the photo above) that I wanted to try and make. Alaria contains vitamin C and K, all the B vitamins, calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, zinc, copper, potassium and iodine. It is meant to grow on stony ledges just past the tide level on wave beaten shores. I peered over the edge of lots of rocky ledges and got soaked by beating waves but didn’t see a frond of Alaria even in the washed up piles on the beach. We did find Duileasc, Egg wrack, Saw wrack and Sugar kelp. Duileasc is also commonly eaten and potently nutritious.

So I made a power packed quinoa salad with roasted carrots and beetroot, sprouting broccoli and feta cheese, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice and topped with shreds of Duileasc. It was delicious, the seaweed tasted nutty with a nice tender, rubbery texture.

So far the two pronged approach is working and I am really excited about zumba-ing through the recession and cooking more seaweed recipes!

the guard



The G Hotel, Galway

We are probably among the last people in Ireland to see the film The Guard. We had a delicious M50 hamburger in Eddie Rockets beforehand (topped with melted Swiss cheese NYC cart onions, grilled mushrooms and ER secret sauce) not knowing the diner features in the blackmail scene from the movie and the cinema is next door to the G Hotel, where Gerry Boyle spent his ‘day off’.

The G Hotel has won over even the grumpiest begrudgers with its pink walls, silver chairs, sumptuous carpets and velvet furnishings. It was decorated by the celebrity hat designer, Philip Tracy, originally from the tiny village of Ahascragh. It is inspiring to know that it is only one small step from Ahascragh to world hat domination.

We are grateful to have The G as a vibrant remnant of the Celtic Tiger (the bonsai tree outside the front door is reputedly insured for €30k.)

The movie is a good introduction to Irish dead pan humour (see video below for the main character’s take on this). Trying to ‘knock a rise’ out of people, just to raise a smile is a national pass time. Or interspersing the truth with swathes of lies, just to brighten up the day, and to stop people taking themselves too seriously, can be confusing for the uninitiated. Brendan Gleeson is an expert. It also illustrates brilliantly the boredom and monotony of being loyally stuck in a small corner, of a small country but craving the bright lights and mental stimulation of the metropolis.

Somehow the brazen jokes manage to take the power out of the racism and show that sometimes precious PC behaviour can be more divisive than cohesive. The stereotypical bigotry, bad language, corrupt gardai and weak drug running gangster plot are lifted to box office triumph by the skilfully written script full of snappy one liners, that mature nicely on reflection, and the brilliant casting of the magnetic characters. It is a movie that is destined to wear out many DVDS and sit on the shelf with Man about dog, Into the West and box sets of Father Ted.

Back to reality- the Kinvara Minors hurling team lost their semi final. It was a hot, messy, overcast game with very little good play that deteriorated from an even match at half time to an all out thrashing. But the good news is…

The Cardiac First Responders Group saved their first patient yesterday. There was a collapse in the hotel and CPR was started, someone raced down to the school for the defibrillator and shocks were delivered. When the ambulance arrived the casualty was breathing. So our neighbour’s death, that inspired my sister in law to start the group, has saved a life. (She is a bangarda and everyone from the station loved the movie by the way..)

Enter the stillness

The meditation hall  at the Sunyata retreat, Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare

I spent the weekend at the Sunyata retreat centre in County Clare, looking for a bit of silence. It was a weekend course  called ‘Enter the great stillness:the mystical side of Qigong.’

Friday morning was difficult.The cows had to be put in the pen for the second half of the TB test, which entails looking at the injection site to see if it it is inflamed. Having all been stabbed in the neck on Tuesday they decided it was a really bad idea to go back in the pen. They ignored the bucket and raced up and down the fields refusing to go in the gate. Eventually my husband got into the car and tried to turn a VW golf into a cattle dog. It resulted in a broken headlight and a cow with a nasty cut on her back leg. So we gave up and hours later got them in using patience, stealth and lots of confusingly placed buckets of feed.

Then I started on the computer. I had agreed to turn the Kinvara Cardiac Response Guidelines, that we are drawing up, into a nice little A5 document. After downloading a huge and complicated free publishing software package and eventually understanding how to work it, I was about to complete the last page of the booklet and a message popped up ‘if you need another page please send $90’ at which point the children were home, exhausted, starving and clingy after the first two days of school.

So I got out the credit card, googled ‘meditation retreat’ rang Marion (originally from Texas) at the Sunyata centre and she said their was a place left on the course. I had never heard of Qigong, all I saw in the title was ‘stillness’ and thought it sounded perfect. It was. My husband had got through to the next stage of interview with Boston Scientific, an engineering aptitude test, which he did on Friday. As soon as he got home I was winging my way down to County Clare.

Qigong is the ancient practice of gathering the healing energy of the universe through gentle, graceful, mystical movements. For two days I did 8 hours of Qi Gong with about two hours of meditation in between. I did movements such as 'arrive at oneness' and 'bridge over heaven's river.' The hall was beautiful, looking out over a vast expanse of green countryside and trees, with little birds chattering. The retreat is in the middle of nowhere and the only visitor we had was a lone white puck goat that wandered into the courtyard. A short stroll away through a bit of forest brings you to a waterfall where dark peaty water pours in rivelets, over two boulders, into a pool and rolls over a log to splash into the stream below.

I returned on Sunday buzzing like a buddah, my head clear, full of energy, with my feet firmly planted on the ground.

Our teacher Max Weier, learnt his skills from Master Lee (see video below for a short introduction to sitting qi gong) who was a famous kung fu expert, even winning a Chinese oscar.
He gave up kung fu to become a Qigong master.

Hiking in the Burren hills but Summer is nearly over, back to reality and a lost job.



Pirate enjoying Abbey Hill on the Burren with Galway Bay behind



My sister in law’s mother died suddenly on Thursday. She was elderly, but just not the person you would expect to vanish so unexpectedly. Peggy was part of the furniture. I thought the best compliment you could wish for came from her daughter. She said that whatever happened there was always someone there to say ‘it’s ok’. She has her own lovely family, but that was different and age 41 that unconditional security was gone and she knew what it felt like to be an orphan.

I was walking up Abbey hill in the Burren. The late summer flowers are carpeting the little pastures that separate the limestone flags. Ox eye daisies, eyebright, devils bit scabious, self heal; white, blue and purples predominating at this time of year. Just to get an hour up there in the late summer air, looking out over Galway bay, past Galway City, as far as the 12 bens of Connemara and the Aran Islands is powerful medicine, and washed away the anxiety of my husband losing his job last week. But as the old saying goes ‘you can’t eat scenery.’

Thoughts of moving or commuting to London are encroaching again. It’s not a great time of year to be looking for a job, with winter drawing in and the kids going back to school, with all the extra costs that entails. The holidays are really over. When school starts on Thursday we will have to sit down, assess the situation and make some decisions. I am trying not to panic.

The cows are having their yearly test for TB today and the calves are fat and shiny and ready for the mart at the end of the month. Also the farm area aid payments come in October but with just 50 acres and only 9 calves that will only keep us afloat for a few weeks. The only company that seems to be recruiting in Galway is Boston Scientific, who make medical devices, and are one of the companies that benefit from Ireland’s low corporation tax of 12 ½ %.They have always been a great employer in this locality, but I imagine the stack of CVs is hitting the ceiling at this stage. Hopefully my husband’s is on top.

With Peggy in the ground it made me very grateful that I managed to spend so much time with my parents and my children over the Summer. When you are working full time you do not have the luxury of complaining about how many meals you have to cook for your relations, or that the kids are driving you insane (and they are at this stage) as you bump into them every time you turn around…that time is precious.

birds

Talking about holidaying in Ireland…

I have been host to part of my family who have been visiting us for the last week. We have really enjoyed ourselves. The first day I took them up through the Burren and we had lunch of salad and local cheeses at the Burren Perfumery. It is a little gem of a spot with a new tea room, a wonderful herb garden and a free audio visual about the Burren.(www.burrenperfumery.com) I was bought a gift of Cedar and Lemongrass bath salts and Camomile, Sage and Shea butter hand cream. You can view soaps and creams being made on the premises.

We also went for walks on the flaggy shore, picking our way across the limestone flags as the Atlantic crashed beside us and ending up swimming at the little beach by Mount Vernon, the seaside house that belonged to the famous Lady Gregory. We took the bikes to Coole Park, spent time wandering around the village at the market, visited the Aillwee caves and had a great night out and some delicious turbot at the new Gallery Café in Gort.

The Bird of Prey centre at the Aillwee caves impressed everybody. (See the lovely Barn Owl above.) The Harris hawks displayed some amazing acrobatics catching food thrown in the air and the falcon showed phenomenal speed in dives from over 100 ft towards the lure. There is a great selection of owls and raptors that are in top condition, with beautiful aviaries and a fabulous location for flying.

The highlight of the week had to be the Kinvara minors hurling match against Portumna. Somehow this was another quarter final match and not the semi final but obviously slightly more important as we were charged 5 euro at the gate, even if you were a player... that’s the GAA for you! Portumna are tipped as the best team in the group and at half time when they were a few points ahead we were already accepting defeat. But even though our hurlers are a year younger and a bit smaller they managed to catch a wave and ride it right up to land.

It was a fast, skilful, controlled, desperate match. And just to impress the relations (as they leaned on the fence in the sun, confused with the score, shocked at the speed and ferocity of the hurling and startled by the expletives being fired over their heads by the supporters) my son scored a goal a couple of seconds before the whistle blew to put Kinvara in the lead by 1 point.

5-10 to 2-18, phew..now on to the semi?

cappal

It was the Cruinniú na mBád festival this weekend (‘the gathering of the boats’).

The traditional sailing boats ‘hookers’, some of them 180 years old and crewed by the same families for five generations, symbolically brought the turf from Connemara to Kinvara on Saturday, as they used to do for centuries, until the 1950s when the Bedford truck took over and they ceased to trade.

The breeze was stiff on Sunday, for an exciting race out past Island Eddie into the choppy waters of Galway bay to turn around the buoy beyond Trácht beach. In the heat of the race these large sailing boats were tilting so far into the wind they were virtually taking on water, completely exposing their colourful keels on the far side. Only three years ago The Morning Star sank as one small error of judgment, a rope tightened or loosened at the wrong moment, tipped her too far over. All the crew were fished out to the safety boat and she was hauled up from the bottom a few days later. The Cappal (the boat nearest the castle in the photo) was the eventual winner yesterday after a hair raising battle.

There was a full program of music at the festival with a stage on the quay featuring Jim McKee on Saturday, The Rascals and Sean Slattery on Sunday and plenty of traditional music. The grass along the water’s edge was bustling with stalls selling crafts and food; the guy doing the wood turning display in the main marquee was very popular every time there was a shower. There were also art and photography exhibitions, a fancy dress competition and a model railway of the newly re-opened Gort-Adrahan railway line. Other events were the climin (seaweed raft) race, the crazy raft display and an attempt to break the world record knitathon in aid of Somalia.

On Saturday the Kinvara Minor hurling team, (my son in forward), played Kiltormer in the quarter finals. They won 7, 11 to 1, 13. It felt so right to see him in the purple and gold again and I was drowned in happiness (and rain) when he scored a goal and a point, especially having just recovered from a badly broken right wrist. The team, who have played together since age five, have always shown promise with excellent hurlers, but have a history of getting to the finals and then losing. This year, although they are young for their group, they are looking hot. It was heart warming to bathe in their joy on the way home and a good night to celebrate in Kinvara with 23 bands listed throughout the pubs over the weekend. So on to the semi final..

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.