And Begin

The sun is shining.
The dog is sleeping.
The washing is billowing on the line.
The house is a little bit cleaner.
The coffee is steaming.
Time for the little red sewing machine to come out of her box.
We are going to watch The Great British Sewing Bee, I wish Patrick would have my 'jamas on!

Let the Right One In.

Did you know that there are around 2.4 billion internet users world wide. That Facebook has around 1.2 billion members? That there are approximately 31 million bloggers in the United States alone?

Chen Hongzhu

What do you use the internet and social media for?
Blogging?
Connecting?
Searching?
Wishing?
Revolution?

Why is it that a very private insular person wishes to document their life and interests in public? (that is me by the way, no sub-text here)  I would consider myself a people person albeit one with issues of trust. What a public place to be, the vast, mostly unregulated internet, celebrated and demonised in equal measure. A virtual tsunami of information, photographs, voices and opinions, generated without stymie day after day after day. There are apparently a billion new pages placed up on the web every day. That is a hell of a lot of communication.

My blog is a relatively new one, it feels so to me anyway. I really enjoy looking at the audience stats, especially the singular ones that pop up every now and again from places like India, Panama, Chile, Finland and Brunei. It was disconcerting however to discover that for a time, unknown URL's where appearing in the traffic sources as when clicked would access a pornographic site. A quick google search put my mind at rest though identifying them as referrer spam, not pleasant but easy to ignore, do not click on the sources.

The blogs I like to read are lovely thoughtful little insights into the personality and life of the blogger, mostly craft blogs, they are sweet and generous with their experiences and expertise. Occasionally, however someone will throw in a nasty or barbed comment into the usually cordial and sociable comments thread. This is one of the downsides of blogging, of social media and of real life, the quick snap judgment of another, ready to shoot down any perceived failing or vulnerability. So, the sharing of oneself is by definition the sharing of ones vulnerability, it is the seeking of trust and of validation but is it also an exercise in ego and narcissism?

The invitation to converse is one of the most enjoyable and necessary gestures of the human condition but it is difficult especially if like me you are a people person but one with issues around trust and openness. Satisfaction in the power of self-expression, the ability to construct and articulate one's own narrative, to shape, to frame, to include and indeed exclude. To build a creative space, wherein it is possible to crave out the interior voice, is possible and satisfactory but is it worth it? Are those bitter barbed little comments just the whine of a disgruntled unhappy individual or are they something more insidious, the rumble warning of the possibility of great harm?

New research published this week by Dublin City University has reiterated the worrying rise in so-called cyber-bullying, apparently 39% of girls and 30% of boys surveyed have witnessed someone being bullied in this manner and interestingly it is mostly girls who are victims/perpetrators of this abuse which often begins between friends. I remember how bitchy and horrible some of my class mates were at secondary school and I am really grateful that these powerful tools of communication were not available to some of those children at the time.

When my children were babies I often used a well-known parenting website and I was continually incredulous at the amount of women who would queue up to viciously lambast some unfortunate who would post a thread looking for opinions about their own personal life-choices, say some relationship advice or indulge in a whine about either leaving their kids to go out to work/being stuck with the kids all day. What is it about sitting anonymously behind a monitor that gives someone who is probably completely polite and measured in reality the power to write with such crass stark carelessness to a stranger? Yes, of-course there were plenty of lovely contributors who would offer to share their time and expertise with grace and generosity but it was those unsavoury encounters that lingered like a bad taste.

Facebook is a another interesting phenomenon, isn't it? Is it so ubiquitous that it is impossible to leave? Are you a person who has hundreds of friends on the site? I do like using Facebook, sometimes I probably hang around there too much. I do have connections there that are not real friends as such but those with whom it would be impolite not to be Facebook friends, thankfully these guys are grand and it is no great hassle seeing their occasional moans, whines and self-aggrandisement and they are a distinct minority in my community there. I hope I conduct myself there with the same care as I would do in reality.

However, I am beginning to wonder if the whole Facebook/social media experience which includes blogging is really some great inflated destination for the impulses of the Freudian ego, where it is socially acceptable to 'share' so much more of oneself, unguarded and undiluted. All those narcissistic selfies, improbably cute animal shares and instagram boyfriend/girlfriend shots, are they feeble attempts to reconcile the desire impulse of the id with a self- (re) constructed reality?  Buddha said that 'we are  all that our minds create' and sometimes I wish had the self-control to turn off, to detach from this constant hum of information, of activity and of possibility. Then I consider the possibilities, the potential and such modern phenomena like the role of social media in the Arab Spring and must ultimately conclude that the accelerating momentum of benefits infinitely transcend the dangers inherent within.

Waiting for the Man

Today is yet another stormy grey, wind-whipped day, high on my perch over the swollen Boyne I am nice and cosy, steaming mug of coffee, crackling fire and snoring damp dog at my feet. I am supposed to be considering the extent and success or otherwise of the American vision of a liberal world order but thanks to a quick browse around social media I am thinking about Valentine's day and how Mr S and I will celebrate our up and coming fifteenth year together. Thanks to a severe lack of cash due to some exciting future home improvements we will be most probably be spending Valentine's night curled up on the sofa with a bottle of Chilean red and House of Cards on Netflix.

O, I love this show, have you been watching it? Kevin Spacy is so good, the perfect characterisation of restrained ruthless evil. I can't wait, hopefully this season will be as delicious as the first. There has been such a empty space where The Bridge used to be. I miss Saga. We don't really watch much tv though Mr S and I but he has been obsessing lately about trying to install the best system for the least amount of cash and accessing these brilliant series through Netflix has been a considerable help in cutting down our previously horrendous cable bill. I love it when the guys from Sky/UPC/Eircom etc. door-step me now and I gleefully explain that they cannot possibly compete with Mr S's set up and it is all perfectly legal!

So Friday night, I have Mr S, Kevin Spacy, and our local fish-monger has scallops in at the moment but I have to admit our sitting room is greatly lacking in atmosphere. We really only use this room at night when the kids have gone to bed, mostly we all hang out in the bigger cosier dining room which has retained its fireplace. The fireplace in the sitting room was ripped out sometime probably in the 80's and replaced with one of those electrical fires, you now the ones with the fake coal. So of an evening we sit in there, with our boring radiator while the lovely fire smoulders away to ashes in the other room.

This summer the whole place is going to be rewired and plastered. Yay, safe electrics and extra sockets for lamps smooth walls and  goodbye to tatty old wallpaper and so we thought, while we are at it - why not replace the fire in the front room, genius! I found the most gorgeous dinky little one from a company in England and now of-course I want it installed yesterday. The problem is I have no patience, I am still waiting on our usual Handy-man to come back with a quote for installation. He was here at the weekend and promised to come back when he had costed the job, (leaving us with the warning that though he may not know the exact cost till he drills into the chimney breast ) and 'course hasn't been heard off since.

We are on different space and time continuums, Handy-man and me. You see, when I finally get around to call him, myself and Mr S have been stewing over our home improvements plans for an age, searching the wide universe that is the internet for the perfect addition, saving up our shiny pennies in the piggy bank, thinking of doing the job ourselves, ruefully admitting that we shouldn't so in our heads it is now urgent. Obsessed, I have the odd palpitation of worry that someone else will buy my fireplace. We look at our empty hearth with longing for the primordial glow! Look, don't you think the saddest thing about our sitting room hearth is that whoever ripped out the fireplace left the poor wee ruby tiles?

Incidentally but not wholly unrelated, Mr S thinks that our inherited wallpaper looks like breasts. Do you agree or do you think that gives us an insight into the mind of the modern male?

 

For any of you that are also thinking about real fires and home improvements, the wonderful Lazy Daisy Jones has a brilliant post on her own fireplace restoration this week. She can be found here:

http://lazydaisyjones.blogspot.ie/

Bye for now! xxx
Edit: My description of today's weather was somewhat lacking - there are hurricane force winds tearing over Ireland at the moment. Stay safe everyone. xxx

Port Oriel waits for spring.

Most mornings when I am taking the dog for her daft gallop around the fields, I happen to meet a couple of fellow dog walkers who love to keep me updated with the weather forecast. It doesn't matter that I have a smart phone with the latest satellite photos, local up-dates from Met Eireann and forecasts from most international destinations. No, what is important is the exchange of information, the human interaction and the universality of the connection, we care about the conditions that we may potentially have to brave with our faithful hounds come what may.

These guys, well lets just say they are men of the more mature vintage and have a strict timetable, if I am slightly later or more rarely earlier with my walk they are always in exactly the corresponding bit of their route, so the paper shop, the school or the traffic lights etc.. The bit of the connection I enjoy the most is when they are gleefully eager to share the most pessimistic, horrendous report possible. So yesterday, my optimistic opener that was 'Lovely mild morning!' was skilfully rebuffed with a 'Ho but tomorrow is gale force winds and torrential rain!' Great! He was correct.

It has been very grey and wet for days and days here, not freezing but that damp cold wetness that seeps into your very matter and saps the energy to do little but eat hot comforting food, read in a steaming bath and craft/snooze by the fire. It is strange to think that it is almost February and in Ireland that means it is the first day of spring. February 1st is celebrated as St Brigit's day, the first day of Imbolc or quarter day of the Irish pagan year. Some of the legends about her, claim that she was born in Dundalk, Co Louth so making her a local legend.

The Christian version has her as a contemporary of St Patrick and a devoted Christian nun, doing the usual priggish deeds like looking after her father, feeding the animals, founding monasteries, giving away her mother's butter to the poor and protecting her virginity. However, there are also many older and for me alluring, legends locating her within ancient Irish mythology as from the supernatural Tuatha Dé Danann. She is the goddess of fire, a conduit of the power of femininity, of birth and all the pastoral rites of spring.

The last big family walk we had was two weeks ago and oh it felt like spring then. We started at the harbour at Port Oriel and walked over the cliff to the beautiful sandy beach at Clogherhead. The air was so clear, the Mourne and Cooley mountains rose majestic across the bay and the sky was many many shades of blue. I wanted to lie down on the fragrant grass and watch the clouds but there were too many cow pats! The children had not wanted to come out but with a little gentle persuasion they hopped in the car and it was so good to see them running free over the headland and slipping and sliding down the muddy paths. Come and have a walk with us...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The highlight for them was watching the grey seal fish for it's dinner in the little harbour. Great memories. I am so glad I picked up the camera to record such a lovely day to sustain the heart through the next week which is supposed to be rotten. My sympathy goes out to all those people who have been flooded out for weeks on the Somerset levels. Perhaps the changing of the seasons as we move closer to the light will bring some relief. What green shoots are you looking forward too? Horticultural ones or creative ones perhaps?

A happy St Brigit's day to you all, Virgin and God/dess alike!

Baking disasters of the restless mind.

It is nearly time for TMA03, this is my third tutor-marked assignment for my Open University course. Of-course it is around this time, when I should be planning and constructing my essay; I am predictably obsessed with some unrelated activity. This week it has been baking and marmalade making, spring bulbs and where to plant them and why do people put coats on dogs. Today, has been a beautiful sunny morning, mild for this time of year so why the coats people? Don't dogs have coats already supplied? I have just seen a springer spaniel with a nicer coat than most of the humans I have seen today.

Anyways, yesterday, I have made coffee cake, honey and pumpkin seed flapjacks and no-knead bread and every flippin one a disaster. The cake tastes like sponge, dishwashing sponge. The flapjacks refused to stick together in spite of copious quantities of honey, golden syrup and molasses and are more suitable for a granola style breakfast than lunchbox snacks. The bread is inedible due to the baking paper welding itself to the base of the loaf. Mr S says that the cake could be saved with the timely addition of ice-cream, chocolate sauce or icing. But then doesn't everything taste nicer with those? Mr S would eat anything, anything! E likes the flapjack granola covered with yogurt and O was content to lick the bowl.

I am now terrified of ruining the Seville oranges. They have been sitting around patiently beautiful waiting for a week now. For most of that week I have been desperately pounding the streets looking for jam sugar. I finally found some this morning, embarrassingly announcing my success to the bemused looking man stacking the shelves, 'Yay, Jam sugar!' only to remember when I got home that oranges and lemon are full of their own pectin and to cringe at my triumphal exaltation. Shame.

However, to cheer myself up I had to pop into the charity (thrift) shop and rescue the delightful little planter I have been obsessed with since before Christmas. Look, SylvaC!

We don't have  front gardens on our road, most of the houses are pre-1930 and some people have nice thoughtful displays of decorative objects or flowers in their windows so this is where some tulips will be and I think it will look very sweet and granny-chic.

This was my third trip to the shop to look at it which is not normal behaviour for me, normally I just breathlessly scoop up the goodies and bring them home. This piece however was an eye-watering 20euro and it's January so I am supposed to be watching the budget very very carefully. Still I also bagged a scrabble set for crafting purposes for a tiny amount of money. It is so nice, the previous owners had left a scrap of paper in with their scores, Padraig was playing Mam! Mr S thinks we should play scrabble but I have an idea for a lovely present for two special little people I know.

Still choosing some tulip bulbs will have to wait till later. I'm thinking some pale pink and darkest crimson or maybe black and apricot? What do you think? I would love to spend the rest of the afternoon browsing through seed and plant websites but I have got to get a move on with this essay.

The more I read about the complex power struggles of the international system and the extent of the dominance of Western 'thinking' the more incredulous and furious I become. My blood pressure is particularly raised when I am reading about the 'help' given to developing states by the EMF (sic) and the World Bank. I did not expect to be shouting at my text books. As part of my feedback on the last assignment, my tutor commended me on my 'neutral' academic writing. Really, I don't want to be writing neutral words, I want to be critical, acerbic and partisan...Oh it is so hard to study when the sun is shining and there is marmalade to make! xxx
EDIT: Of-course I mean the IMF as in International Monetary Fund not the dance band from the 1990's. Unbelievable.

I Like Chatting

This image is taken from my daughters well-loved copy of 'Things I like' written and illustrated by the peerless Shirley Hughes. When we moved into our house, E was nearly two and O was a growing bump. After the excitement and stress of the house purchase and moving to a completely new locality, E, Bump and myself found ourselves somewhat deflated. E was teething and hated the new house, it was quite gloomy as it had not been occupied for many months and had last been re-decorated since the 1980's.

For me pregnancy is a time of great joy but also of extreme fatigue and sickness, morning, noon and night. E would wake up crying and point to the front door and sob, "Out! Out! until we went for a walk so she could go lorry spotting. Unfortunately for out of doors activities, this was also the wettest summer ever, it literally rained for forty days so needless to say we joined the library very quickly, E could have a break from her lorry fixation and tired me could have a sit down and blithely ignore all the pressing jobs waiting back home.

'Things I like', was borrowed so frequently that I searched for her own copy for her birthday and we used to sit and read it over and over. I loved the depiction of the relationship between Katie and her little brother Olly and was so excited that E was soon to experience that for herself. I think E loved the pictures as they are truly envisioned from a child's-eye view of the world and all the lovely things that they notice, experience and explore.

At times though the first  illustration used to make me feel a little melancholy and I wondered how long it would take until I knew some people to chat to, friends to hang out with and a sense of living within a community instead of at the peripheral of one. Well, we have now been here in Oriel for an unbelievable five years, heading towards our sixth summer. Our house has become a home and while far from finished now has much more of our identity and love installed in it, E and O have managed to survive their early years in my care and yesterday I spent the whole day enjoyably chatting.

While walking the dog, I caught up with the local news, from the morning regulars, sad and happy news and a rather surprising piece of salacious gossip! Next, it was off for coffee and croissants and to talk about the ups and downs of running a small business with the lovely N and parenting and crochet advice with the marvellous F and finishing off with ethics and social policy over lunch with the busy whirlwind that is the inspiring S. I also like having a number of 'familiar strangers' to share 'Good morning.'s and 'How are you?'s with, never stopping to chat just a friendly acknowledgement of a shared space and routine.

It is hard enough being a migrant around these Atlantic Isles as I have done, the experience of traveling and integrating into a completely different culture must take great reserves of stamina. On talk radio the other day, they were discussing the heightened risk of schizophrenia prevalent in migrant communities and that this increased risk is apparent whatever the home nation or the host/destination country and I think this is indicative of the stress of leaving one familiar identity and community and the reconstruction of  an alternative sense of place.

I fear though that some people are just born with itchy feet, Mr S hails from a family that has travelled and settled all over the world and back again. I couldn't wait to leave home as soon as I could, the world was too vast, full of opportunities and experiences to stay in one place. When the children came home from school, E was full of chat about the Kildare born, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton and as we read about his incredible story of survival on the Endurance expedition, her eyes were shining at the thought of this amazing journey. I on the other hand was thinking as we sat around my cosy table, that for the moment and it is going to be a very long moment, there is really no place like home.

Replete

 

 

I love these in-between days slotted in between Christmas and the New Year, they are a lovely time to chill and think about how lucky we are. Time to hide inside, to lounge around in pyjama's, eat leftovers, read our Christmas books and then if the sun comes out head off on a long long walk through crisp aromatic pine forests.

 

We have been replete, abounding, and brimming with not only food, drink and presents but surrounded by our family and friends. It was so nice to visit all the relatives especially those that we only see maybe once or twice a year but it is so relaxing to come back home too. I was amazed at how good it was to see our wee doggy again. She was so excited to be home and has been so spoilt, E took this of her taking advantage of a lapse in law enforcement.

The weekend before Christmas we caught up with my relatives and then it was off to Mr S's clan to eat, drink and be merry. Thanks to Mr and Mrs P for their wonderful hospitality and scrumptious cooking.The children had been fizzing with excitement for weeks so they could not wait to pack their bags and jump on a plane to Grandma's where they made themselves at home immediately.
Santa managed to navigate the absence of chimneys and high winds to deliver two wonderfully lumpy stockings and a wondrous pile of presents under the tree. We were awoken at 4.15am Christmas morning by lots of squeaks and giggles until they ran into our room armed with Christmas torches to jump on the bed and blind us like two mini-dervishes.

As, I type here in my messy but homely house as the fairy lights flicker and the glitter still sparkles in dusty corners and the dying desiccated holly tumbles from the picture frames I was remembering all the plans that I made before Christmas and what a lot I didn't get around to doing. Did it matter, no indeed! Christmas was still Christmas, despite the fact that I did not:

• Bake gingerbread men or orange and cardamom shortbread
• or order a New Years Eve duck from the butcher
• make paper chains
• or a ivy and holly wreath with gold stars
• or twig star and Christmas tree decorations for the garden
• read 'A Christmas Carol'/Little Dorrit/Bleak House
• or 'The Dark is Rising.'
• buy more candles
• or the dog a Christmas present!
• paint the stairs
• or varnish the back door...

I did get around to doing a bit of crochet though and now have six granny squares mastered by a combination of youtube and this nice blog, Little Tin Bird. I wonder how long it takes to finish a double blanket? I am using yarn from Bergere de France collected from that weekly magazine Knit and Stitch. To be honest I got very bored with that magazine and it seemed prohibitively expensive for a couple of patterns and a little yarn. The main project was a knitted throw but I much prefer turning that stash into a granny blanket. To crochet with acrylic is fine but some of the yarns have extra wool content and they are beautiful to hold and work, so pure natural wool must be gorgeous.

Mr S bought me the cutest little red sewing machine for Christmas which due to the crochet addiction I haven't taken out of its box yet so I have two lovely projects to take me into the New Year. I never make New Year resolutions as for me they are synonymous with failure but crafty projects usually get finished eventually!

What are your New Year plans, dreams and projects? Happy New Year and I hope 2014 will be one of Joy! xxx
EDIT:(The lovely gingerbread shop was in the window of 'Cinnamon Square' in Rickmansworth, Herts, UK. This is a gorgeous bakery and cookery school, we had a selection of the most scrumptious cupcakes and pink sparkly strawberry macaroons.)