Post Christmas Colours not all Blue

There are few things as colourful, post Christmas, than the local cemetery. That's where Herself and I ended up this afternoon to lay some Carnations in the vicinity of the Mammy's memorial and also to drop a few sneaky sweeties (no doubt she has a packet down the side of her celestial armchair).

There are rows of bright ribbons, green garlanded wreaths, bows, Santa Clauses, windmills, wind chimes, toys and flowers all over Newlands cemetery today as visitors remember their loved ones this Christmas season.

My mother's cremated remains are in a compartment in an eight-foot high wall part way into the cemetery. The lettering has weathered and I spoke with my father this evening about having it renewed, maybe with gold paint. I'll phone the cemetery people next week to ask how it can be arranged.

It brought a lump to the throat, visiting her again. I miss her, especially at this time of the year, which she enjoyed.

We then went on the hunt for some tiles for the new porch. I fancy something rust coloured or reddish, but the prevailing fashion appears to be for non-threatening biscuit. I can see the point.

We came across some dark brown tiles which might have done the trick. But the assistant (I wouldn't call him a "Salesman") pointed under the display to perhaps twenty individual tiles lying on a wooden pallet:

"Those are all there are of that pattern."

"And you have no more in stock?"

"No."

To be fair, he did show us some other tiles on display, none of which were to our tastes. As we left and went back to the car I said to Herself:

"A real Salesman would have persuaded me to buy the display and recycle the tiles on it..."

I suppose there wouldn't have been enough to finish the job anyway. I must look up some other tile outlets this evening before our next sortie into the retail world tomorrow.

Funnily enough, B&Q had no black masonry paint in stock. There were lots of bizarre colours: the types that youngsters in first-time mortgage apartments might paint their walls. There were a couple in their 20s going about the paint aisles arguing over whether or not they were going to repaint at all this season. He was saying that he'd pay for it himself. She was not impressed with the offer, so I guess whatever it was that needed painting she had chosen the original colour.

We looked at CCTV options. There are ones which look like ordinary spyholes in the front door but which are really cameras. Ditto ones which look like ornamental outdoor lamps. The spyhole options start from around €20, which seems cheap and possibly unreliable. But in true B&Q style, it seems that the cheap bit is followed by the also cheap bit cable, connected with the slightly-more-expensive black box bit, connected with the slightly more expensive other black box, and so on and so on until the debit card is slightly melted.

Off to Woodies tomorrow to buy black masonry paint. And an extendable pole to hang Christmas lights which I am going to adapt to window cleaning.

What is "Cheer Up Card" etiquette?

Herself and I were wandering around a local shopping centre a few days ago and in one of the greeting card and general souvenir sections I spied, in passing, a "Cheer Up" card.

I was so surprised (and was on my way out of the shop in the next moment to viewing it), that I didn't actually get too close a look at the card. I think it mentioned that the recipient's Guardian Angel was going to arrange for nice things to happen in the next little while. It didn't explain how the person sending the card knew this. Nor did it seem to reveal exactly what the etiquette for sending a "Cheer Up" card was.

Would you send a "Cheer Up... they can do great things with plastic surgery these days" message?

Or "Cheer Up... you still have a second one" card?

Or maybe "Cheer Up... the insurance will probably cover it"?

The mind boggles.

Holiday how are ya?

I'm coughing up sawdust tonight following a marathon session of cabinet building, drilling, jig-sawing and the divil knows what in the name of getting the never-ending kitchen project finally finished.

Tomorrow, I plan on some waste pipe installation to go with our new sink-and-a-half set-up, then demolition of the last hanging on part of the original sink and pipework.

My drill is starting to show signs of wear and tear to match my unhappy lungs.

It is looking promising though.

Trippin' to Malahide

So we ended up in Herself's aul' haunt, Malahide. Every time I go there, the tide is in. But I'm reliably informed there's a beach under the waves not far from the Sea Scout's HQ. Of course, the dunes start further along the coast and eventually become Portmarnock, but that's probably another story and one that would likely go way over the head of this out of towner.

The village is decorated with just-at-end-of-season hanging baskets of flowers which make a pleasant scene. The traffic is bloody well unbelievable, though. I had planned on taking pics of a few shop fronts for posterity but no matter what direction I pointed myself a convertible with build-in blonde or an SUV with God-knows what in it hove into shot.

Malahide Hardware had the fittings for our curtain rails we'd been searching for off and on for the past year. So I bought some to make more work for myself and will probably be found with drill in hand again this weekend straightening the rails out before Herself decides in another day or two that the whole lot need to go in the recycling bin.

Duffy's is the spot for lunch in Malahide. Very friendly staff and boiling hot food make for a perfect combination. I had the Lazagne special -- lazagne with a side order of boiled vegetables that must have been put in the pot so fresh they didn't realise they'd been pulled out of the gound yet. Herself went for roast beef that almost melted off the fork into the mouth. Herself's brother poked his head around the corner just as we were ordering, which was a pleasant surprise. We stuffed ourselves and waddled off down the side streets keeping a wary eye on the traffic warden and the reminder on the parking permit of when we should leave to avoid a ticket.

Drogheda

"Are we there yet?"

"Don't start."

Good journey out to Drogheda on the M50 and then the M1.

"What?"

"Oliver Plunkett's head. Where is it?"

"There's no head here!"

It was in the 25-foot tall reliquary, near where the lady local was lighting a candle for her presumed good intention. One severed head, some rib-bones and a hip later, we found ourselves among the ladies of the town in the Copper Kettle coffee shop, enjoying a cappucino.

Splash!

The waitress, almost dislocating her neck to see what's going on among the passersby on the street below tipped over a milk jug onto the floor.

"It's hot in here," Herself said.

Drogheda is a nice-looking town with several spots of historical interest. It's hilly, so walking shoes are a good idea. I had mine, anyway. There are lots of people bustling about and plenty of shopping. Off Laurence Street is a new mall which is still awaiting tenants, but there are plenty of single shops and boutiques along the streets. One gets the impression that there is a lot going on in the town that our fleeting visit couldn't cover.

Lunch was served in the Westcourt Hotel. Always a good idea to go where the locals are eating, and this was very busy. "Family friendly" is the term I'd use. Ear-plugs an option if you are not too family friendly yourself. Food quite good, but suffered a little from the perennial problem that carvery's have, i.e, the food goes cold quickly.

We took a quick jaunt over to Newgrange, remembering along the way that the only access is through the visitor centre at Bru na Boinne. So we took a few quick snaps over the hedge and headed for home.

Bank Holiday Monday

"Arrgh! I've lost the television channel!" Herself shouts from the other room.
I have pulled up the chair to the computer table and am about to surf my handful of regularly-frequented sites on the Interweb.
"What?" I say, turning down Europe, playing "The Final Countdown", in glorious 80s rock-god stylee on the PC's disk drive.
"Hurry up! I've lost the channel and yer woman is about to take away Jason's baby on Corrie!"
"What does it say on screen?"
"AV something!"
"Press the button below the green button."
"That's on the other remote! I'm using the video remote!"
Herself prefers the volume controls on the video remote. Grand until you press the wrong button. I give up on heading for Venus and go in and grab a couple of remote controls to find UTV.
I've just spent my Bank Holiday Monday with my head in a larder cabinet. I started it on Easter Saturday, which God proceeded to punish me for by making absolutely everything that could go wrong... well.... go wrong. Dowels miraculously became unattached. Cabinet sides flopped apart and fixings pulled themselves and large sections of chipboard asunder. I cursed like Job in the worst of his scabbiness. Finally, I gave up in the hope of having a better head for the work another day. It didn't happen that way. Instead, though I fixed the problems that arose on Friday, the new iron mongery of the gizzard of the larder itself -- imported especially from England and delivered at 9.00 am on Saturday morning by two burly, good humoured bald men, one of whom declared that I was not the WillieW he had one time worked with -- proved a hazard to my mental health. If a bracket could go on upside down, I put it on upside down. If a runner could be inside out, it was inside out. And if a screw could avoid the head of a screwdriver and fall into the guts of the galvanised machine works it did. But I persevered. The work should take two hours, not two days, but it's done. Tomorrow I shall add doors (also ordered from England), go on the bus for door handles, then leave the kitchen project for a while until our money reserves are built up a bit to buy more parts.
I have to say it's starting to look like a modern kitchen now, and not just a haphazard DIY project.
Interestingly, the CD is now playing "Bed of Nails" by Alice Cooper. I ain't that far gone just yet, thanks.

Glendalough

It's always embarrassing to get lost in your own country. I remember a few years back going on a drive around the eastern end of Tibradden and being astonished how the familiar winding roadway turned suddenly into a new, well-appointed piece of tarmacadam sprinkled with roundabouts and how at one I directed Herself to take a right turn and ended up someone's driveway.

I have an excuse in Wicklow, though, as despite being only a few miles down the road the county is one in which I have been driven more times than I have been called upon to navigate. Nevertheless, our trip to Glendalough ended up being a magical mystery tour of the first order, mostly due to my own unpreparedness. A map would have been handy. A good map. Instead, I had three A4 sheets hastily printed from a "navigation" site on the Internet. They might have been of use if the were a better scale. Also, I had only recently changed the print cartridges and hadn't gone through the necessary nozzle cleaning steps, so at least one vital, but short roadway had not printed properly. This would have a definite effect on the car mileage by the time we were finished.

"Mind the sheep," I said.
We were in County Wicklow rush-hour traffic, which is to say there were two cars in front of us at a distance of about fifty yards and nothing behind us for ten miles.
"I see the sheep."
We imitated the car in front, slowed down and went around the sheep whose head was busy in the ditch cropping grass from between huge plants of heather.

The roadway wound around the bogs and dipped, rollercoaster-like, into sudden minor valleys. We crossed a bridge barely wide enough for the car.

After a few miles I said: "There's a beer bottle."

"You're not at work now. Stop looking for litter."

"Now," I said, looking at the faulty map. "I think we take a left at this junction..."
We dipped down into the side of the valley of Glencree. On the map, Glencree Reconcilliation Centre should be on our left. Naturally, it was now on our right. It was about five miles before we found a spot wide enough to turn around. Not to worry.

We sped back to Sally Gap and regarded the crossroads.

"Maybe we should follow those cars," Herself said.

"That sign says 'Laragh'. I'm pretty sure that is on the road to Glendalough," I countered.

We took the higher road.

We entered a landscape of huge granite boulders. The mountains were as bleak and bare as when the ice retreated a hundred-thousand years ago. Amazing, but completely alien and unfamilar.

"You know, I've never been down this road before in my life?"

"No?"

"And I'm pretty sure that green valley just disappearing eastwards is the one we should be in."

"What does that sign up ahead say?"

"Glenmacnass."

"Where's that?"

"Haven't a clue."

"Shall we turn around?"

"It's about ten miles back to Sally Gap, I reckon."
So we turned around. I found out later that we might have been three miles from Glendalough coming from the west if only I'd had the nerve to keep going.

When we finally came to Glendalough in the early afternoon we'd been driving for four hours. This is much longer than necessary to get there. But it was worth the prolonged search for a car-parking spot among the other tourists. Apart from the monastic ruins, the forest and lake still have a primeval feel to them. The area seems only barely tamed, wildness and wilderness only just below the surface of the 21st Century. I've been to the lower lake now two or three times. On my next visit, I hope to visit the upper lake, about a mile to the north-west.

After some lunch we turned for home. Herself was anxious on the mountain road (the road we should have come by in the first place) with its sheer drops, and the car hugged the white line all the way down. At Sally Gap we took a confident right turn into fog.

"There's the beer bottle again."

"I was just thinking that."

Civilisation at last.

I've bought maps. Lots of maps. The car is full of them.

And the livin' is easy

I've finally made it to my annual leave, which starts tomorrow for two weeks. No more... well, no more doing so many undesirable things that I just don't want to recall any of them to mind, really.

I've been in holiday mode for about a week in my mind, so the transition won't be as abrupt as, say two years ago, when Herself and I sat looking at each other for about one week of our two weeks holiday wondering what you do on leave. Nor like last year, when, improving as we were, the crossover from work mode to holiday took three of four days. This year I'm ready to rock.

Don't know what's wrong with the head, though. Depression being a fine companion these past decades, one usually is aware of what's bringing one's mood down. At worst, it tends to affect in a way I can cope with by using a step-by-step solution. Some days that can be as bad as "Okay. You've reached the bathroom. Now turn on the tap. You've washed the face. Now apply the shaving foam...." and so on. This time, I have the same feeling one gets with writers block. A kind of frustration. An inability to do anything constructive.

I suspect it is the unrelenting good weather, which we Irish are unaccustomed to dealing with! Balmy nights of broken sleep due to heat and poor air circulation have continued for several weeks now. This past week, things have cooled down and some semblance of normality is returning to sleep patterns.

I note too that Herself and I were both like the people in those old Golden Pages television adverts, where disaster was averted at the last minute by the services available in the phone book, and whose sighed hugely with relief when the problem was averted. High pressure work being removed (even with my mental preparedness this year) has resulted in the two of us doing passable impersonations of rag dolls these past couple of days. Tomorrow, when Monday rolls around and neither of us walk into a busy office, will hopefully see us getting into true holiday mode. I'll keep you posted.

Winning the Howth Head Rally

"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Nothing ventured..." was the reply.
I looked, dubiously, at the temperature gauge on the dash.
"Well, if you think it will make it..."

We were in Herself's bockity Nissan Micra Collette, an impulse-buy, "this-one-will-do" kind of thing which transaction must have gladdened the second-hand dealer's heart. Its engine wasn't properly attached, for one thing and it had a distressing tendency to emit loud "Boing!" noises when power was applied.

"Howth is a long way from home to break down," I tried.

She steered up the hill and started working the gears.

"Do you smell something?" I asked, sniffing the air.
"Hmmm?"
"Something burning?"
"It's your imagination. You worry too much."

Horns started to sound behind us. I looked around.

"Was it foggy when we started out?"

Plumes of white smoke obscured the rear view.

"I think we're on fire!"
"Nonsense! She's just burning a bit of oil."

A muffled crash and tinkling of broken glass sounded from back down the hill where an unsuspecting fellow motorist has lost his way in the smokescreen and careered off the road and into Dublin Bay. Screeching brakes sounded briefly and were cut off abruptly as we rounded another bend.

"We can probably be arrested for this, you know?"
"She'll make it."

And she did, crawling at 15 m.p.h. up the roadway to Howth Head on a hot summer day, we felt the car almost physically flop when it reached the car-park overlooking the view of the sea.

"At least it's downhill from here."

We walked across the Headland, listening to the silence of victory.

Sea

First published on the Internet 1999

White peaks glaring under blue skies, sugar frosted by the Summer sun, a pert breeze plucked the topmost sand-dunes, whipping and whirling about tufts of squat salt grass. In paths worn by bare feet descending, billows and hollows zig-zagged excitedly, joined the muddled multitude of the beach.

On their way tracks skipped across stones, steadied by a boulder at the head of the strand, tip-toed by a belt of blackened weeds drying in the heat, slipped through a pool, and darting to the edge of the water paused where glitterdusted beach-head softened of a sudden to shrilling, shrishing surf.

The morning, glorious, filled with the sounds of sky and sand and sea. Gulls wheeled and dived, following the fishing boats, squabbling, calling, crying, brilliant white blurs dipping, diving into water snapping at scraps, rising again to hover on wings, a lazy, elongated M-shape casting about, sharp eyes alert, alive, alight.

A low wind whistle-wrapped the headland, sliding sideways, meeting its fellow by the dunes, plunging down to water's edge where motes collided, dropped, mingled with the lapping waves casting, cast again, some making landfall, others sailing quietly out to sea in mud-brown clouds. The water, green-blue electric, lace-trim brimming, elegantly bowed, spread arms in a broad sweep, lapped, slapped, wink-twinkled, retired, and bowed again.

Caché of brine and salt-sea rising, heat released as sea-breeze silenced gathered in shimmering, shore-side sheets, air dancing, grass-skirts waving, spirals scribing, climbing, shifting sands, baked land... grand.

Sea

Published on the Internet in 1999
If I remember rightly, Mrs. Margaret Holdsworth, of England, asked me to write something about the sea to remind her of her own childhood's happy memories. I was at a loss for a long while, as we visited the seaside infrequently, (and, it seemed to me, for far too short a stay each time). I hope this small piece does her request justice. Better late than never...!

White peaks glaring under blue skies, sugar frosted by the Summer sun, a pert breeze plucked the topmost sand-dunes, whipping and whirling about tufts of squat salt grass. In paths worn by bare feet descending, billows and hollows zig-zagged excitedly, joined the muddled multitude of the beach.

On their way tracks skipped across stones, steadied by a boulder at the head of the strand, tip-toed by a belt of blackened weeds drying in the heat, slipped through a pool, and darting to the edge of the water paused where glitterdusted beach-head softened of a sudden to shrilling, shrishing surf.

The morning, glorious, filled with the sounds of sky and sand and sea. Gulls wheeled and dived, following the fishing boats, squabbling, calling, crying, brilliant white blurs dipping, diving into water snapping at scraps, rising again to hover on wings, a lazy, elongated M-shape casting about, sharp eyes alert, alive, alight.

A low wind whistle-wrapped the headland, sliding sideways, meeting its fellow by the dunes, plunging down to water's edge where motes collided, dropped, mingled with the lapping waves casting, cast again, some making landfall, others sailing quietly out to sea in mud-brown clouds. The water, green-blue electric, lace-trim brimming, elegantly bowed, spread arms in a broad sweep, lapped, slapped, wink-twinkled, retired, and bowed again.

Caché of brine and salt-sea rising, heat released as sea-breeze silenced gathered in shimmering, shore-side sheets, air dancing, grass-skirts waving, spirals scribing, climbing, shifting sands, baked land... grand.