By
noeleenm on June 15th, 2007
The Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults training course is over, the General Elections are over, the appointment of a new Government is over – even the good weather is over, at least temporarily.
It’s a soft grey day today, and it feels like the beginning of a weekend in November, rather than the middle of June.
Since my last April post right up to General Election day in Ireland (which also happened to be the final night of our CELTA course), I was so busy that stories of a changing Ireland just got squeezed out of my schedule. Then, in the immediate aftermath of the Elections/course, I went on an ‘after-school’ binge of being out of doors in the sunshine and air I’d missed so much in the previous weeks.
I’ve climbed Bray Head in the evening, absorbing air, beauty, and bird-song in a heart-gladdening mixture, and gardened at the weekends, with dollops of talk and laughter and catching-up with house-family and family of origin and friends in between. That the end of all this busy-ness coincided with the return to our house of a beloved ’son’ – Jan from the Czech Republic – added to the contentment.
Our ‘family’ seems to be going through one of those patches where it gathers other people up as well – Alba’s parents from Spain, briefly, and her Irish boyfriend, more long-term; Kasia’s friends from Poland, also briefly; now Jan’s girlfriend, Letti, who has come to stay in Ireland (not in our house, but hopefully nearby) for a few months; while Gint, our longest resident, has been increasingly busy in his new career laying timber floors.
For me these past few weeks have been a quiet ‘honeymoon’ period in a very busy life, but already things are moving again. I was lucky enough to do well in the CELTA course, and luckier again to be offered two nights a week teaching English in International House, where I did the course. It started last Monday, and it’s nervewracking, stimulating, and fun!
With the election of a new Government, and the appointment of new Ministers, it’s time again to pick up the battle to keep our floodplain free of high density building. With the Green Party going into coalition with Fianna Fail, and a Green Minister for the Environment, we need to make the most of these few weeks before the Government goes into its summer recess.
…Especially as the otherwise excellent flood defence proposals being put forward seem to suggest that, with these in place, there is no need for the floodplain to be preserved… With the news of drought and flood from Australia over this past week, and the extreme flooding much nearer to home in Donegal in the past few days, it’s hard to believe that anyone can seriously moot this argument any longer – but they do.
So, on with the warpaint again and out with the English language text books, but in between there will be some time for working in the garden, walking in the hills, and coming home to Gint, Kasia, Alba, and Jan in this changing Ireland of ours…
Posted in Czech Republic, Flooding, Friends, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, McManus Family, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on April 13th, 2007
On Wednesday, 4th April, An Bord Pleanala – Ireland’s Planning Board – decided unanimously to refuse permission to Pizarro Developments to build on the floodplain downriver from our community. Their decision was posted on the Board’s website at http://www.pleanala.ie/DCT/217/S217906.DOC on Tuesday last.
Pizarro had submitted four applications for the same site, two for an area of the site that extends into our neighbouring ‘county’ of Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown, and two to Bray Town Council. One of the latter was for high density construction on the floodplain, rezoned by our Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, and Labour councillors as Town Centre.
An Bord Pleanala took the view that all four applications should be considered together, as they are inseparable in reality. The reasons given for the unanimous decision were that:- 1) the flood defence works promised ‘in lieu’ of the floodplain, which both Bray Town Council and the developers maintained would render the floodplain unnecessary as a safety measure, have not yet been passed (nor even seen) by An Bord Pleanala, nor has an EIS been carried out on them; 2) no road layout has been worked out for the area, nor has a town traffic management plan been put in place, despite the fact that the proposed development included over 3,000 car parking spaces; and 3) “adequate provision has not been made for active open space” and therefore the development “would seriously injure the amenities of the area and of future residents and would be contrary to the proper planning and sustainable development of the area”.
For our community, who have fought this lunacy for two years now, it is a huge victory of David over Goliath. We know almost certainly there will be further battles to be won before we are truly safe from the greed for development of this land at all costs, but – perhaps – at long last sanity will prevail and the buildings will be moved back to high ground, with the park and playing pitch, and the extra space required by An Bord Pleanala, preserved alongside our river. If not, we will fight on…
As John, one of our core group, remarked: “The thing about fighting Goliath is that he’s so big a target he’s almost impossible to miss!” John is a wheelchair user and was a potent presence at the Oral Hearing into Pizarro’s plans – and our Council’s acquiescence.
Most of what needs to happen now depends on our politicians finally admitting that they got it seriously wrong, and that they need now to compensate for that fact. We need our local councillors to return the land to its original safe zoning, and to finally put in place a proper Emergency Plan in case of flooding. And we need our national politicians to commit to paying for these flood defence works so that the integrity of the floodplain is not compromised.
Next month a General Election will be held in Ireland. It’s a time when politicians tend to listen to David…
Posted in Flooding, Ireland | 5 Comments »
By
noeleenm on March 30th, 2007
The days are falling in so fast around me this month, albeit longer, brighter days since the hour changed, that I hardly know where to begin…
Most of my waking hours are taken up with the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course, with occasional prolonged bursts of anxiety and activity about the flood campaign, which is recorded on http://www.braywatch.com/. Even more occasional bursts of activity – I’ve no anxiety to spare regarding this – centre on the more mundane business of living, such as shopping, cooking (as in throwing together sandwiches, much of the time), getting Fred through his NCT, organising house and garden maintenance, paying bills, and working to pay those bills. And sometimes I even get to talk with my family and friends by phone or text, and sometimes, blessedly, I get to sit down with the people with whom I share my home…
It tends to happen quite late at night, when I don’t have to rush anywhere else, and I’m too tired to even go to bed, or on Sundays when I’ve the whole day off both work and course. So, sporadically, I’ve gotten to know the new members of our house family.
Kasia is very slim, with a narrow bone structure, and the complexion of an Irish cailin, which is particularly noticable as she colours her hair red. A guest who came to reception in the hotel where she works the other day announced happily: ‘Well, you’re Irish anyway!’, and was quite surprised when Kasia explained placidly that in fact she’s Polish. She comes from a traditional Catholic Polish background, and talks with quiet pride of the influence the late Pope John Paul II had on the emergence of freedom in their mutually beloved country.
Not so surprisingly then, she went to Mass the first Sunday she spent in our house, but got confused, as she recounted later, when the lay Ministers of the Eucharist were invited up to the altar just after the Consecration, the most sacred part of the Mass. It was the family Mass, where the small children listen to the Bible readings in the side chapel in simple story form, while the adults listen to the traditional words of Epistles and Gospel. The children are then invited out onto the altar, with their ‘minders’, for the Offertory and Consecration, and the Ministers for the Eucharist join them in time to recite the Our Father altogether.
From Kasia’s point of view, what she saw was children going out onto the altar, and, later, the adults joining them. She was up there, too, when she realised that a lot of adults still seemed to be sitting in the congregation… Murmuring apologies, she sidled down off the altar and back to her seat, with a face to match her Irish hair.
She told me all of this, as I cried with laughter, when she asked if I thought it would be okay if she went to one of the other Christian churches the following Sunday? I thought at first that she was too embarrassed to go back to the Catholic church, but she explained that it was simply that in her town they only have Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches and she was fascinated by the churches, mainly of the Protestant faith, that she has seen in Bray. I assured her they would make her very welcome, and tried to give her a potted version of the differences in ritual between the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Catholic churches (with Quakers, who don’t have a public place of worship in Bray) thrown in for good measure.
No mishaps occurred on her next visit to church, but she seemed to miss the familiarity of our form of worship, so I think it’s possible that she’ll return to Mass – with a strong grip on her seat.
Kasia has a quiet, dead-pan sense of humour that is very funny, but Alba - the other new member of our house family – comes into the house like a gale of fresh air, hugging and kissing and regaling us all with her tales of the day, good and bad.
From Valencia, Alba has the dark skin and hair, and the tempestuous temperament, we associate with southern Spain. Everyone who crosses her is the villian in the melodrama of her life (as is everyone who makes war or causes the innocent or powerless to suffer, which I like very much about her), and everyone who treats her with the enthusiasm she showers out on the world is just short of being her very best friend. She even out-dramatises Gint, who watches her with laughter, and happily alternates between playing her leading man and the moustachioed villian of the piece!
In the past week though, Alba has put a cunning plot in place in our house. She announced on several occasions that she has put on too much weight since she has come to Ireland because of the amount of bread we eat here, particularly. As Alba is tall, this weight is negligible, if it exists at all, but her beating of her bare, navel-pierced midriff as she announced it had Gint’s eyes out on stalks. So she has gone on a strict diet, and has joined a gym, where her personal trainer is dark, good-looking and worth perspiring over anyway, she informs us.
But – because Alba has a thing about wasting food in a world where many people starve – she insists on bringing home bread and cake that would otherwise go in the bin of the shop where she works. And, as she’s on a diet, we all eat it.
Now, I can hardly get off the chair after a meal, especially since I’m not getting time to walk these days. Gint at least is exercising, and nothing seems to make Kasia fat.
I was amused to notice, too, that Alba has stuck her diet sheet to the fridge using fridge magnets already there. One, broken, announces the House Rules and originally said:-
‘If it’s dirty, clean it,
If it’s dropped, pick it up,
If it’s broken, fix it,
If it’s hungry, feed it,
If it’s sad, love it.’
Having come into close contact with the kitchen floor tiles at some stage, this magnet broke across the middle, and Alba separated the two pieces to catch each corner of her diet sheet. It’s broken right across the middle of the second last line.
Somehow I have to find a way of resisting Alba’s combination of idealism and single-mindedness regarding diets. If I didn’t have a strong feeling that he’d remind me of one of my grand-nephews, I’d even think of having a look at her personal trainer…
Posted in Flooding, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain | 1 Comment »
By
noeleenm on March 14th, 2007
Teaching English to adults has one great advantage – no discipline problems! It’s a pity one can’t say the same thing about local council meetings…
I missed last night’s presentation of the flood defence works proposed to save our Dargle riverside communities from further danger to lives and homes, because I had to attend class. Instead, members of our floodplain campaign group, SWAP, along with neighbours from the other side of the river – Seapoint Court – and our local Dargle Residents’ Association, all listened as the Dargle Flood Study Group explained its proposals to Bray Town Council. Apparently, the councillors listened courteously, just as they did over a year ago when a deputation from our community explained our fears about the proposed development with which these flood defence proposals are inextricably, and disgracefully, linked.
And, according to two observers from two very different camps, they ended the Council meeting in the same chaos as they did on that occasion, and with the same total lack of respect for each other – and for our town – that they showed then.
Scoring politicial points off each other seems to be more important than serving the people who elected them. We had asked that no vote should be taken on these proposals until our communities had a chance to study them also. It doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request as we are the people who have suffered two and three floods in our lifetimes because of the lack of these defences – and we will be the people who may lose our lives, as well as our possessions, if these proposals don’t work, and the high rise buildings they are designed to allow dam the flood waters’ escape from our homes.
But, even as the Labour leader in Bray Town Council, Dr. John McManus, rushed to support the measures, the Town Manager told him he didn’t need the councillors’ support – these measures are going ahead anyway! On the other hand, if the councillor wanted to endorse them…
For the second time in this campaign, Cllr. McManus swallowed the insult without a blink and his Party swung in behind the Town Manager. This is flood defence at any price – provided the cost is only to our community…
Cllr. Behan of Fianna Fail, who is a candidate in the next General Election, took umbrage with the Town Manager (although not enough to take away his support for zoning the floodplain for high density building in the first place), Cllr. John Brady of Sinn Fein (also a candidate in the next General Election) asked that no approval be given for the proposals until our community has a chance to study them and was told he was out of order by Cllr. Pat Vance of Fianna Fail…
As responsible local representation, it’s pathetic, but as a means of bumbling through proposals that nobody – except the OPW – seem very keen on allowing us to look at too closely, it’s very effective.
We quietly arranged a meeting with the OPW representatives for Wednesday, 28th March, to which all our community will be invited. The proposals for flood defence works will be explained to us there, and we will be allowed to ask questions – which we’re not allowed to do in the Council chambers, even if we could be heard over the shouting. We’re also anxious to have an independent expert look at the proposals for us, but that depends on funding because we are conscious that even tacit approval of these proposals by our community may be seen by Ireland’s Planning Board, who are studying our appeal to stop building on the floodplain, as agreement that we believe this will keep us safe.
Meanwhile, if I could enforce an imaginative way of imposing discipline on the councillors who create havoc in our Council Chambers when they are supposed to be guarding our interests, I’d move every one of their houses down into our neighbourhood, pray for heavy rain – and watch them settle down to treating this like adults.
Posted in Flooding, Ireland | 3 Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 13th, 2007
Yesterday was Gint’s birthday. He celebrated it by buying tools for his new enterprise, arranging to have business cards printed, and, in the evening, attending the second in a series of classes run by Wicklow Enterprise Centre on ‘Starting your own Business’. The course was especially designed for non-nationals who want to work for themselves in Ireland.
When he came home from the course, we celebrated it in a more traditional way by sharing a bottle of wine, and he told me some of the stories of the people who are doing the course with him. One student from India is proposing to start his own software company. A Polish lady wants to start up a trucking company, with her husband doing the driving while she looks after the admin side of the business. An African gentleman (Somalia?) is a qualified mechanic and wants to work at his trade here, but may have problems getting a visa. Someone else wants to hand-make leather shoes.
And Gint has temporarily postponed his original business idea of importing very solid, and very handsome, timber garden furniture into Ireland from his native Latvia, because of the heavy freight costs involved and the shortness of Irish summers, in favour of setting up on his own laying timber floors. He loves timber, and is at his happiest working with it. At the beginning, he will probably get more jobs laying light laminate flooring, but hopes to progress to his idea of Nirvana – laying solid wooden floors, particularly parquet flooring.
It was great to hear stories of people with enterprise and enthusiasm, willing to work hard to make a life for themselves. Many Irish people went away in years past and built up lives on dreams and hard work: now it’s our turn to provide the fertile field for entrepreneurship, it seems.
I wonder sometimes is it easier somehow for people from any country to build up a business away from home and its distractions of what all the friends are doing (often down at the pub) and the limitations sometimes imposed by being boxed into what people expect of you. Abroad you are no longer defined by your background, except that part of it that is truly you, and loneliness provides at least plenty of time to work, which in turn can provide the opportunity to integrate.
It’s a time of new beginnings in our house. Gint is looking for another home because he now has a van (replacing ‘Baby’ in his working life, if not in his heart), and parking has become increasingly difficult in our area. Wojtek has moved to his new house, with room to spread his DJ equipment – and to build on an increasing commitment to his girlfriend. Maria, at this time, should be wandering around the West of Ireland: we’re waiting to hear from her.
Soon, when I know the results of my application to do a Celta course (a Cambridge certified course in teaching English as a foreign language) over the coming months in Dublin, I will be advertising rooms in my house again, but this time just till the autumn. Then I hope to go abroad – depending on my results from the course, if I’m accepted, and on the decision from An Bord Pleanala (the Irish Planning Board) on our community’s campaign to stop high density building on the floodplain downriver from our homes. I will not walk away from that until it’s resolved.
Hopefully, though, I’ll become a traveller again for the winter, living among strangers in a strange land as the young people who have lived in my house have done over the past few years.
Birthday dreams – they’re a funny business!
Posted in Flooding, Germany, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on October 2nd, 2006
This weekend was the last of Wojtek’s holidays. For the past two weeks he has been attending his DJ and Music Production course each day – and coming home more and more exhilarated by it!
Tonight, though, he goes back to work, and working through the night while studying during the day – no matter how much you love what you’re studying – is very hard indeed.
To his great delight, he has found a soul mate in Maria, from Germany. Maria also loves the type of music Wojtek enjoys. My description of it – ‘rap’, ‘hip hop’, etc. – as ‘monotone’ didn’t go down very well with either of them. And, when I asked to have the characteristics of ‘hip hop’ for instance explained to me, Wojtek told me that it’s something you can’t explain, you have to feel… Hmmm.
Today I went looking for a word I have lost, which I came across in one of Robert Crais’ books, describing a white man who talks like a black man. I feel it describes Wojtek when he talks about his kind of music.
I didn’t find the word, but I came across instead a review of a book called ‘He Talk Like a White Boy’ by Joseph C. Phillips, giving the other side of the coin.
Phillips’ description, quoted in the review, of how he tried to get to know rap made me laugh out loud – “As an illustration of my lack of commitment, I soon decided that playing an album all the way through didn’t necessarily mean I had to be in the same room while it played.” – and print a copy of it off to bring home to Wojtek!
Even though, like Phillips, hip-hop and rap do nothing for me, I still enjoy immensely Wojtek’s love of the music, and his excitement at creating and changing it. Whatever ‘different beat’ gives that kind of buzz to someone, I’m all for it…
Maria’s eyes were not so bright all weekend, though, because the damp Irish weather we’re experiencing, in between warm bursts of sunshine, has caused her to come down with a head cold.
It was Maria’s first complete weekend with us, and she alternated between trying to cure her headcold with Lemsips and warmth and rest, ensuring she has everything in place for her first day of work today, talking to her family and friends on the phone, and taking photographs of her housemates and surroundings so that said family and friends would have some idea of the kind of place and people among whom she is now living.
She was delighted, and justly so, to have landed a job, as well as a home, so quickly after her arrival in Ireland.
Her new job is as a fund-raiser for a professional company who raise money for charities by appealing to people in the street. She will start off today in training and then will work on Dublin’s streets, but later will have the opportunity to travel to different parts of Ireland with the fundraising team.
My first concern was that she wouldn’t be working just on commission, but she assured me she will get a basic pay. I explained I was worried because I don’t give to professional fundraisers, and I know I’m not alone in that, feeling that I want my charitable donation to go direct and entire to the charity in question. So I’ll give directly to a charitable organisations I support, and I’ll give to volunteer collectors whom I wholeheartedly admire, but not to someone who makes a living out of it.
Knowing one of them now makes me feel uncomfortable about that, especially as I’m aware that charities need all the money they can get, and they probably have to resort to using professionals to keep up their work.
Maria said that they were told the money they collect goes direct to the charity: their job, in fact, is to try to get people to sign a pledge to send a fixed amount of money on a regular basis to one of the charities they represent – very well-known charities, incidentally.
The fund-raising company’s fee, they said, is paid from last year’s budget in each case. That, for me, immediately raised the question of why had they money left from last year’s budget if they’re in dire need of funds? Surely, it’s because they deliberately keep some money over for this, so what’s the difference if it’s from last year’s collected-on-the-streets donations or this year’s?
But for once I kept my mouth shut on the subject, feeling that Maria, brand new in Ireland, brand new in our house, brand new at this job, and with a head cold, has enough to contend with without engaging her in an ethical discussion about her job.
It has been great to see how well she has settled into the house, now even able to follow Gint’s rapid-fire conversation, sometimes with strange grammatical twists and often with the most outrageous statements delivered completely dead-pan. Newcomers to the house tend to end up peering rather worriedly at him, but Maria is now laughing along with the rest of us at his antics.
Gint didn’t have a lot of weekend to share because he was working on Saturday, as well, and yesterday he mixed and laid cement to give an even base to the entrance to our back porch.
He will be chief ‘flood officer’ while I’m away, with full instructions on what to do if he gets a phone call saying the river is breaking its banks. We had been warned though by the company who sold me the floodguard gates for front and back that the surface must be completely even to get a correct seal. Thus, Gint’s work at the back gate yesterday, with much: “Ouch, I’m getting too old for this”, as he crouched to spread and smooth and level the cement.
This morning there’s a footprint in it, and Im quite sure we’ll all be asked to produce our shoes to be measured against it…
Despite Gint’s working hours, all of us except Magda – who was the only one of us working right through the weekend – had a glass of wine together on Friday night, and on Saturday night Gint and Wojtek went to a disco together, Maria opting out because of her head cold.
They had also talked about going to Glendalough on Sunday, feeling that Wojtek will never, ever have another weekend off again, but the combination of the weather and the disco conspired against them.
Today, like the seven dwarfs in the Sleeping Beauty, we each shouldered our picks, or our laptops, or our rucksacks, and headed off one by one singing…
Have you ever heard “Hi he, hi ho’ sung in rap?
Posted in Books/films/theatre, Flooding, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Poland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on September 15th, 2006
Autumn sunshine has come back to Ireland over the past few days, with high light blue skies streaked with gaudy pink in the evening, and pleasant winds stirring the trees. It’s a relief after the pouring rain we experienced on Monday, followed by days of heavy drizzle.
The suddenness of Monday’s lasting downpour is a sober reminder of how weather, and consequently the river systems dependent on them, can change within hours. The lack of preparation of our local Council, in our neighbourhood particularly, for such an eventuality is very frightening.
From over 600 homes in our flood prone community, over 100 are either one-storey houses or ground floor apartments. A very high percentage of these would be home to elderly or disabled people. In many two storey houses, other elderly people live who can no longer climb the stairs because of age or infirmity.
Despite the fact that our area has suffered four major floods in the past century, and that all the experts agree we are now due another one, flood protection works promised by the State twenty years ago have never been put in place, the river (Dargle) itself is in a disgraceful state of neglect, and no Emergency Flood Plan exists.
Bearing in mind that the first of three major flood warnings – for 10th September, 9th October, and 6th November – related to last weekend, the Council’s refusal to agree even a basic warning system for our community, the absence of a priority evacuation list, and their failure to provide sandbags in our area is truly frightening.
We had asked that the river be monitored over the high flood risk period, and that residents would be told in advance that, if the river became dangerous, cars with loud hailers would tour the streets, warning people to get themselves and their property to safety, if possible. Elderly and disabled people, particularly in one storey houses, should be told to wrap themselves against the weather on hearing the warning, and to wait inside their front door for rescue.
That simple system would mean that residents could feel safe (floods always seem to happen here during the night) as long as no loud hailers were heard, and that elderly and disabled people had time to get ready and get to the door before rescuers came.
Instead the Council refused to leaflet the river flood basin area with any kind of information, except for two estates nearest the sea. They insisted that the warning system used, if needed, would be knocking door to door…
Two weeks ago I called to the ground floor home of one of our flood campaign members, who uses a wheelchair. I knocked, waited what I considered was enough time for him to answer the door, decided he wasn’t at home, and was out on the road and climbing into my car when he came flying out the door in his wheelchair.
“Will you wait”, he yelled in exasperation. “You need to give me time to get off the settee and into the wheelchair.”
…And that was in the middle of the day and he was already fully dressed. Can you imagine how long it would take an elderly or disabled person at night to hear and interpret knocking and shouting at the door, to get out of bed and to the door to try and respond – and then multiply that time by over 100 to judge how long it would take to warn the most vulnerable of our community?
It’s little wonder that the same Council is supporting an application by developers to build on the flood plain downriver from our homes, in exchange for providing flood protection works. It’s the same kind of logic.
As ‘developer led planning’ becomes more prevalent, more and more community action groups are springing up all over the country. Communities are simply no longer willing to let bad planning through without a fight.
In nearby Greystones, a village when I was growing up and now a fair-sized town because of its proximity to Dublin, a strong community group was formed in response to plans to build a huge development right at the harbour.
A public/private partnership is proposed there through which Greystones Harbour will be rebuilt – and the Council in return will issue a compulsory purchase order on the beach and foreshore.
Greystones Protection Group fought the application, which went to an Oral Hearing before An Bord Pleanala over five months ago. No decision has yet been issued by the Board.
One of their people – Evelyn Cawley, who studied planning as a direct result of this campaign – has been advising our group, SWAP, on preparing for our Oral Hearing where we will argue our case against building on the flood plain.
Her advice has included joining the Greater Dublin Bay Alliance (Greater Dublin, for planning purposes, is considered to stretch from Fingal in Co. Dublin down to Wicklow) which was formed in an attempt to prevent the kind of piecemeal planning that seems to be happening along the coast, as well as inland.
Strength lies in unity. And if the present Fianna Fail/PD Government – or even the main ‘opposition’ parties of Fine Gael and Labour – don’t soon realise the strength of real opposition building up against the kind of planning decisions being made by their councillors at local level, and ignored by their TDs at national level, both the Green Party and Sinn Fein will gain a lot of seats in next year’s General Election.
Posted in Flooding, Ireland | No Comments »