By
noeleenm on May 31st, 2006
Today the sun is shining on Ireland’s east coast, in a glorious blaze that’s lighting up everyone’s life – and it’s Janeth’s last day in Ireland, so I hope it’s doing the same in West Cork.
Tonight I’ll ring her, to wish her ‘God Speed’ for her journey tomorrow, and to hear how her last few days in Ireland have been spent. I’ll also recommend that she try to see ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ to bring back memories of Ireland, West Cork, and the history she was exposed to on our visit to Kilmainham Gaol.
Family and friends that met Janeth here were charmed by her quiet dignity, her ’sending up’ of her own attempts at English, her deep love of her country and people, and her total openness to connecting with people of other cultures, of any age.
Last night I rang the other ‘foreigner’ that we all still miss here – Elke from Italy – and both Gint and I had a long chat with her.
I was wise enough, and selfish enough, to ring her first from my own room, without telling Gint, so I could have an uninterrupted conversation with her. It reminded me of Elke telling us how her own parents fought over the phone when she rang home from here, each insisting that the other had spent too much time on the phone!
So I had filled her in on some of Gint’s film story as well, before she spoke to him, which was just as well as – when he had finally worked out who was talking to him when I passed over the phone without explanation – he launched into an: “Elke? Elke, who? Are you a groupie that I met in Canada on my last location?” routine.
As he’s been bemoaning her loss since she left, I found this doubly amusing…
He finally conceded to vaguely remembering her, though, and they went on to chat and laugh like the old friends they became here in just seven months, with just a slight downturn in gaiety when Elke obviously commiserated with him on the loss of ‘Baby’.
Michele was invoked in their conversation, as he had been in mine when I tried to describe how out of character a friend of mine had behaved: “It would be like Michele filling his fridge with fast food, not measuring or weighing anything, and then walking into his room with very dirty boots on”, I explained. Elke got the picture straight away…
For a little while, it was as if we were all together again in the kitchen at home.
When we finally rang off, Gint and I settled down to eat together. It’s the first time in a couple of weeks that I seem to have had time to do this with Gint, without having to rush off somewhere afterwards.
The dinner kept being interrupted by Gint getting up to act out what had happened ‘on location’ with ‘The Tudor’ in Inchicore on Monday.
He had arrived in plenty of time on the set, despite my misgivings, because traffic can be so unpredictable and terrible at rush hour around Dublin.
They were given their costumes, for which they’d already been fitted the week before. Gint had chosen thigh-length boots at first, but said the leather was stiff and hard because of not being cared for, so he went for short boots after all.
He then had tights (and he blushed and laughed, while announcing this), decently covered by what sounded to me like a tabard, or else a cloak. I still haven’t managed to grasp what he’s actually calling it – only that it reminds him of something Russian. The whole thing seems to be topped off with a wide hat.
He’s eager to bring a camera and take some photographs, and I’m dying to see them to find out how his description matches the reality!
Because while Gint isn’t good at describing something like clothes, because his clothing vocabulary is quite limited in English, he’s extremely good at describing people – by miming them. He mimes their walk, their stance, their attitude, striding about the kitchen, and I haven’t the slightest doubt that, if I went on the set of ‘The Tudor’, I would recognise instantly the people he has described in this way.
He explained that, after a boring morning sitting around waiting to be called, they had quite a boring afternoon repeating over and over again the same stroll around a dark roofed tennis court, where Henry played tennis, watched by his father, his fiancee, and his woman he is in love with…
He dropped his fork for a moment and glared at me across the table: “I hate tennis”, he announced, vehemently.
The fact that they didn’t use a ball in the tennis match (it would be added later) fascinated him, though, and the rest of the world weary, practical facade disappeared as he started to describe getting to know some of the other people – almost all students – who were working as extras, too. There was one young man from Bray, whom Gint had met while trying on costumes, and he told Gint that this was his third film as an extra.
He explained to Gint that you can register with an agency who will try to get you work on films. “Could I do that, too?”, Gint asked me, anxiously, and I assured him he could.
This young man had confided to Gint that he had a secret dream of becoming a star some day, and they agreed that it had a lot to do with luck.
“But I believe that if you really, really want something”, Gint told me, “you will get it.” I concurred, knowing that I was now looking at someone whom the stage bug has bitten rather badly. And he’d be good at it.
Then he described a young Spanish girl, from the Basque region, with whom he’d spent the afternoon walking about, talking about everything under the sun, as instructed. “It’s a long time to have to talk”, he told me. “We talked about all sorts of things…”
I looked at him, again, realising that this film business might be good for Gint in more ways than one.
“She told me she had just arrived in Dublin and had written to her family and friends to say she is now in a movie!”, he told me, delighted. “We’re the only two foreigners among the extras, and I’m the only East European. I’m a little bit proud of that.”
But it was when he described the only guy among the extras who apparently has done some modelling, and really fancies himself as a star, that I really fell about laughing. He mimicked his ‘cool’ arrival among the other extras, his seat slightly apart, chewing gum, and tossing his hair occasionally, and then his attempts to move out of the extras and closer to the stars of the film, during shooting. It was hilarious!
I went to bed later in high good mood, helped also by the fact that – at our Public Meeting for the flood plain campaign the night before – the son of the owner of the biggest company within the consortium that proposes to build on the flood plain asked to meet with us.
It seems we’ve finally gotten past the parochial politics, and maybe someone at the top might yet see sense about this…
Posted in Ecuador, Friends, Ireland, Italy, Latvia | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on May 29th, 2006
An Irish film, set in West Cork, about the lead up to the Republican and Free State split and the subsequent anguish of a Civil War – the issues about which Fr. Tim was instructing me in West Cork last week - has just won the prestigious ‘Palme d’Or’ at Cannes. It was directed by an Englishman.
Ken Loach has concentrated always on socialist issues (his documentary ‘Cathy Come Home’ led directly to changes in the laws on homelessness in England), and often on examining the effects of imperialism.
‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’, taking its title from the traditional Irish ballad of the same name, tells the story of a young doctor who is radicalised into joining the fight for independence during the time of the notorious ‘Black and Tans -Â brutal and mostly untrained soliders who were sent to Ireland in 1919 by England to help quell the fight for independence here. The doctor is played by Cillian Murphy, who played the lead role in ‘Breakfast on Pluto’, and the film follows his fight, alongside his brother and their best friend, against the British, and then, even more terribly, against their own people in the Civil War.
It will premiere in Cork in the middle of June.
Fr. Tim’s stories of the IRA’s Flying Columns in Cork were not the only connection to this film for me. So too were the stories and discussions with Janeth and the Presentation Sisters at their Chapter and then Fr. Tim. Most missionaries are fighters for justice. Working among the poor, it’s hard not to be touched by their lives and the fact that much of the poverty in the world leads directly back to the greed of the rich – rich individuals and rich nations – and our preparedness to give charity always, rather than justice.
This commitment to justice was touched suddenly in Janeth last Tuesday morning when we arrived in Dublin, meaning to meander as tourists only, and found four young women sitting around a table with parasols above them and a huge banner nearby declaring ‘US Military Out of Shannon’. It was International Womens Disarmament Day.
When Janeth discovered what they were doing, and why, she immediately launched into congratulations, digging English words from deep inside her in support of these young women. So engrossed was she that she didn’t realise that someone had handed her a parasol too, and that she was sitting down at the table in very real solidarity with them, as I took a photo of the event.
Ecuador has known many huge demonstrations over the past ten years, since banks were closed down without notice, by the Government, for a week, and reopened to the announcement that the sucre was gone and the American dollar was now the official currency of Ecuador. The rich knew it was going to happen and moved their money abroad beforehand.
But the poor and the middle class weren’t told, which led to savings of a lifetime being devalued to the point of almost being wiped out. Some banks never re-opened so their customers lost their entire savings. Suicides took place, as well as huge street demonstrations, which unseated the Government. The President fled to the United States with his family, where they live far from poverty…
Other demonstrations which amazed me were hunger strikes perpetuated by pensioners in Ecuador to apply pressure to up their pitiable pensions. The hunger strikes, unlike those of our Republican prisoners in the North twenty-five years ago and the Afghanistan asylum seekers in St. Patrick’s Cathedral last week, worked.
But it was the sight of young women making a protest against war that really delighted Janeth. Women taking their place openly in the fight for justice at all levels is still something Ecuador hasn’t achieved yet. When I finally wrestled the parasol from her and persuaded her on, she walked a little taller, I felt.
The film star in our family – Gint – came in for some abuse later that same day, though, when we tried to visit Christchurch Cathedral, only to find the ‘The Tudor’, the costume drama in which Gint has landed work as an extra, was filming there for the day. He wasn’t working – today is his first day on the set, on location at Inchicore College of Further Education in historic Kilmainham.
I can’t wait to see him when I get home from our Public Meeting tonight to hear all about it…
Posted in Ecuador, Friends, Ireland, Latvia | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on May 28th, 2006
This is the reason why it took me from 19th to 28th May to upload my last post:-
Friday, 19th May: Collected Janeth from airport, drove her home via the Dublin to Enniskerry road, so that she’d get some feel for the Irish countryside, and then gave her lunch and a short ’siesta’. Picked up my sister, Mary, and we went to Glendalough, where Janeth was enchanted with the lakes, the legends of St. Kevin, the waterfall, St. Kevin’s Cell, and the quiet mysticism of this lovely valley. My sister and I were less enchanted when it started to pour rain again, and Janeth was almost drowned in Glendalough when she kept telling us she actually likes rain.
We had dinner in the Wicklow Heather in nearby Laragh, with complimentary Bailey Creams from the management to finish off. I told Janeth she would have to try Irish coffee here: she told me she’d already tried it, with Irish nuns in Ecuador. I suggested she might try Guinness: she had it with Irish priests in Rome.
When we left Mary home to Wicklow and set back out for Bray, I was glad I knew the roads so well. My ‘navigator’ was fast asleep beside me.
Saturday, 20th May: Janeth had been invited to visit the Chapter (a meeting of the Superiors of each country in which a religious order has a presence) of the Presentation Sisters, who work in Ecuador and Colombia also. I drove her there, and we arrived in time for the last part of a wonderful liturgy which celebrated the life of these nuns in the various cultures to which they belong – or to which they lend their lives.
Janeth wanted to go and say ‘thank you’ to them for their presence in her own country. She told me that most of the Presentation nuns there are near retirement age, yet they learn the language (including one who is learning Quechua, as well as Spanish) and work in the poorest of parishes.
The liturgy was very cosmos based, and included song, dance and mime, ending with two Indian sisters in their native costume dancing the procession out of the church.
I met a friend – Joan – from our days in Guides together, who is now a Presentation nun, and we caught up with our news over lunch with an Indian sister, a sister from England, another from the Phillipines (who has to be taken out of her country for some years because her name was on a death list for nursing people who were seen to be enemies of the government there), and the Irish nun, now working in Ecuador, who had invited Janeth, as well as ourselves.
After lunch, we visited the high crosses of Monasterboice and then the ruins of Mellifont’s old abbey. I really wanted to take Janeth to see Newgrange, but had a horrible feeling we’d still be in Meath when the friends I’d invited to meet her were arriving at my home.
As it was, we barely had time to prepare drinks and snacks and freshen up before the first few people arrived. We drank wine and Janeth’s English began to come slowly back to the surface…
Sunday, 21st May: We got up late, after a lovely evening the night before, to pouring rain again, and lit the fire after breakfast “for a while”. At 2pm, we’d caught up on a lot of news, but still hadn’t had lunch, hadn’t been to Mass, and were due in my niece’s house at 3pm for an ice-cream party in aid of Down’s Syndrome.
We rushed down to Ashford village, where Sally-Ann lives, went into a pub in search of lunch to be told we’d have to wait for 45 minutes, went into a second pub to be told just as we reached the carvery that the food was now finished, begged a salad and sandwich anyway, and went on to enjoy ice-cream in Sally-Ann and John’s home, while we met most of the little ones from my sister, Mary’s, family – David 13; Noel 11; Eoghan, 10; Martin; 10; Cliona 5; and Saoirse who is 5 months old.
Cliona’s father, Maurice, told Janeth and me that he had recently shown Cliona the pencil box I’d brought home to him from Ecuador all those years ago, but he thought she still didn’t understand the significance of it, so he’d put it away again for her until she’s older. Aaah…
We made it back to Bray in time for 5.30pm Mass – and Janeth understood every word of the sermon.
She needed the practice when more of my family - the ‘older’ members - arrived later that night, but again wine helped…
Monday, 22nd May:  Today we walked through Bray, down to the beach and part way out the cliff walk towards Greystones, before collecting my friend, Frances (she of the one-eyed cat). Then we set off over the Sally-Gap, with a little detour off up the Wicklow Way on foot, and then across by Blessington before returning via the Wicklow Gap to Glendalough again, to see the monastic city that had been hidden by rain last time we were here.
We shopped on the way home and cooked and eat together, and then sat over more wine with the house family this time – Gint, Dong Kwang, Woytek, and Grazina, when she came in from work. It was fun…
Tuesday, 23rd May: Today we were going to ‘do’ Dublin, and bought tickets for the Dublin Tour hop-on, hop-off bus, but only managed to see O’Connell Street, the GPO, Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty library, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, before we’d run out of time and energy. You could very happily and productively spend a day in the Chester Beatty library alone.
We hid from visitors, checked e-mails and went to bed before midnight.
Wednesday, 24th May: We intended to set off early to finish our tour of Dublin, but met neighbours and friends all the way to the train station in Bray, and arrived in Dublin around 11am. We managed to see Christchurch Cathedral (which was closed the day before as they were filming there for ‘The Tudor’, in which Gint has now landed a job as an extra!), Kilmainham Gaol which is one of the most emotional – as well as educational – tours you can experience in Dublin, and the exquisite Book of Kells in Trinity College.
On our tour, we had travelled part of the same route as yesterday on the bus. Tuesday’s tour guide was an Irishman, who painted Ireland today as Nirvana, and Wednesday’s guide was an Englishman, who omitted to mention Robert Emmet being hanged and then beheaded outside Thomas Street church following one of the greatest court room orations ever made but did mention the Royal Air Force’s connection – in detail – with St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Thursday, 25th May: Suddenly it’s Janeth’s last day in Wicklow, and we’re trying to fit everything in. ‘Everything’ is soon reduced to a visit to Avoca Handweavers for lunch, where we persuade my sister, Mary, to bring her grandson, Eoghan, to meet us after school. Eoghan is pleased with this variation from his normal healthy sandwich and fruit juice, and is seriously impressed when he finds that Janeth – whose novitiate was in Brazil – knows all the names and level of skills of the Brazilian soccer stars. I’m impressed, too, as I know she isn’t really interested in football, but you’d never guess that listening to her talking with Eoghan.
The four of us finish off our afternoon together with a visit to Powerscourt’s great waterfall.
 Friday, 26th May: We travelled to Cork by the coast, stopping wherever it took our fancy – like our detour to Avoca village – and ending up in Youghal for our dinner around 6pm. Janeth is really taken by the colourful shopfronts of Youghal’s main street, as well as its lovely clock tower and harbour. We finally reach Cork city around 9pm and phone Janeth’s friend, Fr. Tim, who worked with Janeth in Ecuador for several years and is now based in Rome, but home for a visit with his 88 year old mother. Fr. Tim was at an art exhibition with one of his sisters, and her husband, and we travel in convoy together out to the family farm in West Cork. Even by night, it is tranquil and very beautiful.
Saturday, 27th May: Fr. Tim speaks Spanish with a Serrano (from the high mountains) accent, overlaid with a strong Cork accent. Even in English I find it hard to follow him, and continuous Spanish with Janeth all week still hasn’t prepared me for this… Mercifully, he went into English when he was telling the stories of the Republican fight in and around Cork – and of the Free State side, too. His mother and father’s families were Republican and Free State respectively, so I get a pretty balanced version, as he did.
Like most Cork people, he’s a fine story teller, and a fine ballad singer, I realise when we go on Saturday to Gougane Barra, the lovely little monastic chapel on the lake in the wooded valley, so like Glendalough. He encourages his mother to sing, too, and she does, gently…
We eat out, well, and return to the house around 10pm.
Sunday, 28th May: I can’t believe I’m saying goodbye to Janeth again. Thank God, the world is each day getting smaller. I left the house of hospitality of the Leahane’s at 9.30am and by 1.30pm I am already home – and developing a streaming head cold.
The duck race (plastic ducks) held in the afternoon to raise funds for our flood campaign, and the reason for my early journey home, causes wet dirty knees in my jeans and wet, mucky shoes, as well as being good fun and rasing some funds. Strangely, it seems to do my cold good – until I go to Mass where I sneeze my way through the liturgy.
Tomorrow we have a Public Meeting re the flood campaign, and on Thursday Janeth will leave Cork for a conference in Rome, and then go back to Ecuador for one night before having to set off again for another conference in Paraquay.
But we will both, please God, carry a little of this past week’s peace and laughter and friendship into the coming ‘battles’…’
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By
noeleenm on May 28th, 2006
This post was written on 19th May, despite its post-stamp: it’s taken me till today to get a chance to upload it to the blog:-
‘I’m sitting in Dublin airport, writing this, early for once in my life because the traffic on the M50 is so heavy, and unpredictable, that I allowed two and a half hours for what should be a one hour trip: it took an hour and a half.
The weather, too, is unpredictable. On the way in, we had torrential rain, then a sky clearing to the extent that there was one (okay, only one) big blue patch in the middle of horizon to horizon clouds, back to heavy mist, and now it’s ‘blustery’, with gusts of wind – and sunshine breaking through between the showers.
Yesterday at lunch-time I found a message on my answering machine from Janeth, telling me she was leaving home for the airport: it was 6am in Ecuador and 1pm in Ireland. She stops over in Amsterdam for some five hours, and it’s this flight, due in at 10.05am but delayed till 11.30am, that I’m awaiting.
Janeth’s home now is a convent in Quito, in Ecuador’s high Sierra. When I met her first in her coastal town of Esmeraldas in the early ’70s, she was a teacher in the local mission school, the eldest of a family of six. She was skinny, intelligent, sassy, and a fierce champion of justice.
Today Janeth is the sister in charge of her order in Ecuador and Colombia, current President of the Association of Religious Orders in Latin America, and a qualified psychotherapist. She is slightly less skinny (though a long, long way from fat), still brightly intelligent, comically sassy, and a mellower champion of justice: she has learned other weapons.
Her only sister, Colombia, named for their father’s country, was next to Janeth in age, and became a teacher also. Like many families in Ireland in years gone by, these eldest children worked to educate those who came after them. Gradually the cane house, built on stilts, with no door and no windows, which I knew as their home, was replaced by a solid, comfortable house on high, dry ground.
Colombia married Melo, a volunteer like me, who had come with his friend, Gigi, from Bergamo in Italy to work with the local mission in Esmeraldas. They had followed Vittorugo, who had arrived at the same time as myself, and together we formed a friendship that has lasted over years and continents and long separations.
This will be the fourth time I have seen Janeth in thirty-two years – twice in Italy and once in Ecuador – and each time it’s been like we haven’t seen each other for a few weeks, no more.
Generally, we’ve managed to see the rest of the gang, too, slipping into reminiscences of our days in Esmeraldas, news of what’s happening there, and what’s going on in each of our lives now.
We know each others’ homes in Ecuador, and in Italy, and two of Melo and Colombia’s three children have visited me in Ireland. But, somehow, the other adults haven’t managed to come here yet, with family commitments and lack of English making the decision to come a little harder.
Today the one who lives furthest away, and is most tied down, is about to change that…
The bridge I walked across thirty-four years ago is about to become a dual carriageway at last. ‘
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By
noeleenm on May 17th, 2006
I had great intentions (the kind the road to hell is paved with) this week of writing pieces on the media’s coverage – or lack of it – of our local Council’s decision to grant permission to build on our flood plain, subject to certain conditions.
And about Dong Kwang’s description of how government departments and huge national industries – like Hyundai – have been relocated out of Seoul to other parts of the Korean countryside. As Ireland is in the throes of attempting to do that with our own Government departments at present, it seemed like a very topical subject.
And about the attitude of the same Dong Kwang and his friend to voluntary work, and of Dong Kwang and his family’s attitude to adoption…
Instead, I find myself gazing out the window in disbelief at torrential rain, and unable to think about anything other than the fact that my friend, Janeth, from Ecuador’s tropical coast, is arriving in Dublin airport on Friday morning and will spend three days in Wicklow before heading on down together to Cork to visit another friend. We have talked about this trip for over thirty years, and now it’s raining so hard that putting a plastic duck out on the street would rightly incur the wrath of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals…
Yesterday, the town of Buncrana in Co. Donegal experienced a mini-tornado: that’s the equivalent of the Sahara Desert having a ‘fine, soft day’.
Even for Ireland, for May, the weather is appalling for days on end, but, as I tell myself it can’t possibly continue to be bad, I remember that in August twenty years ago we had our last major flood…
So, instead of writing a blog, I’m writing notes – as are all the rest of the core group of our flood campaign – for the town planner who is putting together our Appeal to the Planning Board.
I’ve completed five and a half pages of single line text, arguing this case through from the beginning, when eight councillors of the twelve who make up our local authority voted to change the Open Space zoning of the flood plain to Town Centre. I’ve trawled through our original objection, and through the conditions the Council have attached to this permission.
And, through it all, the carrot at the end of the stick to get it done and out of the way was the prospect of being free to finally show Janeth my country in spring time…
In the early seventies, I worked as a volunteer in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, for just over two years. It was, and is, a land of brilliant sunshine and scorching heat, of sunrise and sunsets that happened at the same time every day, of it not mattering when you planted seeds or what time of the year animals were born. And I told Janeth one day, as we travelled together through the Ecuatorian sierra, of lambs born in springtime and bare earth coming to life again and daylight that lengthened perceptively till midsummer’s day…
And we dreamed that someday she’d come to Ireland and see that for herself.
Since then, Janeth, who became a nun and a psychotherapist (a very good nun and a very good psychotherapist), has travelled to many countries on her missions, but this is the first time she has managed to come to Ireland. And it’s raining.
I want her to see Glendalough, with its two lakes in a beautiful valley and the ruins of its sixth century monastic city. I want to take her across the Wicklow Gap, deep in the heart of my mountains, and around the highlights of Dublin, our capital city.
I want her to see my town, beside the sea, with its own little ‘mountain’, Bray Head, and its cliff walk to nearby Greystones, not long since a village. I want her to see Powerscourt Demesne and gardens, and its great waterfall.
And it’s pouring rain.
At least she will still meet my family and friends, no matter what the weather is like, and will see living miniatures of the photographs of my nieces and nephews that I showed so proudly to my Esmeraldanian friends back then. And we will share talk and laughter as we have always done.
But I so want her to see Wicklow, un-hidden by mists, in all its gentle beauty. I want her to go back to the place and the people with whom I shared two of the most formative years of my life, and be able tell them, of her own knowledge, of ‘mi tierra’.
So please, please stop raining…
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By
noeleenm on May 12th, 2006
Gint’s heart is beginning to mend, I think. Last night he started to look through the Buy and Sell magazine, finally coming to terms with the fact that he will probably have to replace Baby.
He discussed the respective merits of Volkswagen and BMW, and whether it was crazy to buy another car here when he’s returning to Latvia in July – and Dong Kwang might as well have been asking my advice on what kind of vegetables to put in his kimchi, for all I understood of it…
But I made suitably interested and encouraging noises, as an audience of one, when for the first time in weeks, Gint showed signs of moving on.
There had been one bright spot, though, in the middle of his period of mourning…
Ardmore Film Studios has been located in our town since 1958, and many, many good films were produced there. When I was growing up, anecdotes of world famous film stars and directors formed part of our conversational diet around the town.
People like Richard Burton, Katharine Hepburn, John Mills, Peter O’Toole, and Peter Ustinov were discussed in the same way as our neighbours down the road. Gradually, their names were replaced by people like Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne, Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, Richard Dreyfuss, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day Lewis, and Meryl Streep.
By then, Ardmore’s real glory days had gone, though. It was no longer our National Film Studios – but it is still leased regularly by film production companies, and high profile films are still shot in Ardmore and the surrounding Wicklow countryside.
Its Roll of Honour stretches from the 1968 ‘Lion in Winter’ with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole through ‘My Left Foot’ (Daniel Day Lewis) in 1989, ‘Braveheart’ (Mel Gibson) in 1995, right up to films like ‘King Arthur’, ‘The Commitments’, ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’, ‘Excalibur’, ‘In the Name of the Father’, and ‘Breakfast on Pluto’ in more recent times.
Now Gint proposes to become its latest ’star’…
Last Saturday, he was up bright and early to audition at Ardmore Studios for a full-time job, from late May to mid-October, as a film extra in a period costume drama set in Regency times. Apparently, he saw advertisements for the job, with auditions held in Temple Bar the week before and then two full days of auditions in Ardmore Studios last week.
There were hundreds of applicants queuing from before the Studios opened, he said, and they were each invited to fill in a form giving full details of everything from their names and ages, through their height and shoe and waist size.
Then each applicant was lined up, holding their form in front, and a photograph taken: “True speak, it was like you see in movies where the prisoner holds his number in front of him before they lock him away!”
He came home bouncing and happy, though – and laying down the law about how he would expect to be treated if he landed this job. Autographs would be signed, but we would have to go through his agent and wait our turn. He would put in a good word for the rest of the people in the house to get a job in the film world, too. He wouldn’t have to worry about Baby’s demise, because he’d be travelling in a chauffeur driven stretch limo…
You know, some men are just fickle.
Posted in House Family, Ireland, Latvia | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on May 11th, 2006
Our hopes for a return to health of ‘Baby’, Gint’s beloved old BMW are fading.Â
So are our hopes of a speedy settlement…
A stolen car crashed at high speed into Gint’s car almost two weeks ago, when it was parked outside our house in the early hours of Saturday morning. Apparently, the drivers of the car had almost crashed into a squad car some minutes earlier and were trying to escape.
They hit ‘Baby’ so hard that they pushed the heavy BMW into a jeep parked three houses down from us. Amazingly, they were able to get out of the car and run away…
When the Garda SÃochána (Irish police, literally ‘Guardians of the Peace’) arrived minutes later, they found Gint and some of our neighbours looking in horror at the tangled mess of the stolen car locked into the rear of Gint’s BMW, which was pushed up onto the pavement and into the rear bumper of our neighbour’s jeep.
I had slept through the whole thing, but, when Gint finally knocked on my bedroom door, I went out to help him to clear up the mess. We’ve continued to try to clear it up ever since.
Gint had two major worries after the crash – whether Baby could be put back on the road, and whether his insurance would cover his car being smashed as it sat peacefully outside the door.
The latter worry was resolved, we thought, when we discovered that there is a body called the Motor Insurers Bureau of Ireland, who, by agreement with the Irish government, “pay claims for accident victims of motorists who are uninsured or untraced”.Â
As part of a European organisation (the Council of Bureaux) which facilitates common insurance arrangements to permit international vehicle movement across Europe, the MIBI also acts as insurer for all foreign vehicles travelling in Ireland. This aspect of foreign nationals driving in Ireland has featured largely in the Irish media in recent months.
The extent to which these statistics have been distorted was dealt with, as part of an overall look at our attitude to foreign nationals in Ireland, in an opinion piece by Matt Cooper in the Times Online just a few days before Baby’s ‘mugging’.
This time, everyone’s sympathy was with our ‘foreign national’. Gint’s car was insured, he maintained it very well indeed, and he’s considerate about where he parks it. Yet it now looks as if it will be months before he will be re-imbursed for the loss of his car.
It’s not because the MIBI are deliberately being slow: presumably it’s the volume of work. We have sent in the form, Gint has paid to have the damage assessed and the report has gone in to the MIBI, we have asked the Garda who covered the crash (and who has been extremely sympathetic about it all) to send in his report as soon as possible, and Gint has asked his insurance company to respond quickly, confirming that he is covered by insurance.
But we are told it will probably take several months before this claim is processed – and, even then, Gint will only get the market value of his car because, he has been told by the insurance assessor, Baby is an economic write-off. In other words, it will cost more to put it back on the road than the present market value of the car.
Now, as anyone who has ever driven an old reliable car which is wiped off the road through no fault of the owner can verify, there is an enormous difference between the market value of an old car, and its real value to its owner.
Gint loved his car. He felt good in it, it drove well, it didn’t eat petrol, it was his Baby. Now some young thugs, who could very easily have killed people in the process, have ‘put Baby in the corner’.
I wouldn’t wish physical harm on them in return. Well, maybe a good kick in the pants… But I do wish that we could return to the Brehon Law in force in Ireland before the Normans enforced their legal system.
Under it, the people who stole that car, crashed it into Baby and pushed her into our neighbour’s car, would have to earn the money to pay for the damage they did: they would have to make restitution, a much more sensible and productive notion than locking people up.Â
Gint maintained his car, as he maintains his livelihood and that of his pensioner mother in Latvia, by getting up at 7am five or six mornings a week to go to work, and returning home, dusty and tired, around 7pm.
It took a lot of those hours to put Baby on the road. And it will take many more of them before he can put something like Baby back there again.
Nobody should put Baby in the corner…
Posted in House Family, Ireland, Latvia | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on May 10th, 2006
I’ve had two ‘complaints’ since I put up my last post – from people who’ve obviously never heard of using the ‘Comments’ facility.
The first was very, very politely phrased. Dong Kwang told me that he was talking to his family by phone on Sunday – including his grandparents, who were visiting – and explained about our blog. His sister promptly brought up this site, and the entire family were immediately looking at the kitchen in which we cook and talk – and drink wine…
“My sister translated about the kimchi”, Dong Kwang tried to continue, but I interrupted his story with a shriek: “Did she translate about you drinking wine?!”
“Yes”, he said, reassuringly, “but you remember I told you about her bringing home a bottle of wine from Germany…?” He grinned.
I wiped the perspiration from my forehead. “Go on then.”
“My mother asked me to explain that there are different kinds of kimchi. I told you that you put the vegetables in the salted water for 24 hours, but this depends on the… on the… density?”
I nodded.
“If you use lots of different kinds of vegetables, and the pot is very full, then you leave for 24 hours. But if you just use two heads of lettuce, then you only need to leave for around 25 minutes.”
I reassured him that his family’s honour regarding kimchi preparation would be restored, and asked: “What happened about the wine from Germany?”
“My sister says she would like to go back to Germany and try much more wine!”
Uh, oh…
And it was this subject that brought in my second ‘complaint’. My website ‘guru’, Peter McCourt of Interactive Training, e-mailed me today on another matter entirely, and added: “… and what kind of guide is it that can introduce wine without mentioning claret? I look forward to reading that this oversight has been rectified in the near future.” (I forgot to mention that he’s also a wine guru.)
As I have never tasted claret, I await his contribution – via the Comments facility, Peter!
And last night a new alcoholic beverage appeared in our kitchen – the Rabid Dog.
It was Grazina’s 24th birthday on Sunday, but I thought it was Monday and we ended up celebrating it on Tuesday night, eventually.
As Monday was Decision Day regarding the proposed high density development on our flood plain, and our local Council granted the permission subject to proposed flood protection works (which none of us have seen) being passed, then there were no causes for celebration on that day. Even though we suspected that the decision would be favourable to the developer, as the Town Manager has made it clear all along that he will facilitate this development in any way he can, it was still a blow.
It also means that we are straight into the next stage of the fight, which is an appeal to An Bord Pleanala, Ireland’s Planning Appeals Board, and the subsequent – and welcome – publicity for our fight that such a decision brings…
So, by Tuesday evening, I was glad to put crazy planning decisions to one side, and celebrate instead.
Grazina’s pronunciation of the words she knows is very good, but her vocabulary is still very limited. So she tends to have avoided to date many of our kitchen conferences. But on Sunday night, when we established that we were actually at the end of her birthday, and, not the night before, Gint and myself arranged with her to have a birthday cake and a few drinks together, as a family, on Tuesday night. I already knew Monday was going to be bad…
“Vodka”, suggested Grazina. “I have Lithuanian vodka, and I will get a cake.” We hurriedly reassured her that we would supply the cake, but, if she didn’t like wine (she doesn’t), then vodka for herself and anyone else who drinks it would be just fine…
When it came to Tuesday night, there was still no sign of Grazina – who normally comes home around 8.15pm – at 8.30pm, and we were beginning to get worried that she had, in fact, misunderstood. We were also drooling at the two bottles of wine and the cake.
At 8.45pm, we agreed that it wouldn’t be right to cut a cake that said: “Happy 24th Birthday, Grazina!”, without the eponymous Grazina, but the wine…
She arrived just as we took our first sips, and the candle-lit cake and the not-too-obviously sipped wine were greeted with cries of pleasure, and cheek kissing all round. Already the boys were happy…
Then Grazina fetched her Lithuanian vodka, along with some Lithuanian chocolate, and Wojtek, Gint, and herself set about drinking what Wojtek told me at first was called ‘Crazy Dog’. He then went on to explain that the word wasn’t really ‘crazy’, it was when a dog drools with all white stuff at the sides of his mouth, and it’s very, very bad…
“Rabies?”, I suggested in fascinated horror. “That’s it!”, he cried, enthusiastically, and continued to mix the drinks.
‘Rabid Dog’ consists of roughly one third of a shorts glass of red juice (it can be strawberries, raspberries, anything), roughly one third of vodka, and – seven drops of Tabasco sauce! Yuk…
When it was Grazina’s turn to mix the next round, she accidentally put in eight drops (and nine in one!), but no one died as a result. Neither Dong Kwang nor I were drinking Rabid Dogs – me because I don’t like vodka but love wine, and Dong Kwang because he sensibly decided to stick with his one glass of still experimental Merlot-Shiraz wine. I backed him stoutly against the others’ temptations to try a ‘Rabid Dog’, and was glad, as the evening went on, and he developed a slight tilt and a tendency to keep rubbing his right ear…
It was a good night, for all of us, interrupted by several calls on her mobile to Grazina, who eventually asked to be excused at around 10.30pm as ‘a friend’ was waiting for her.
As she whisked out of the kichen, and out of the door, in a flurry of goodbyes and thanks, I wished Dong Kwang, who had recorded the evening on camera, had taken one more photograph of the faces of the three young men, who looked sadly after her…
Gint, who had enjoyed the tabasco in the Rabid Dog, decided it was time to eat anyway, and prepared himself an omelette, which he promptly dosed in tabasco sauce.
“Yuk!”, he said.
Posted in House Family, IT friends, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Wine and Some Spirits | 1 Comment »
By
noeleenm on May 5th, 2006
Last week, Dong Kwang told us about traditional Korean ‘kimchi’ – vegetables pickled in salt for 24 hours, marinated, and then stored in large earthenware containers in the ground.
“The longer you leave it there, the better it tastes”, he explained.
“Like wine?”, I enquired, whereupon I discovered that Dong Kwang comes from a very strict Christian family, who do not drink alcohol at all. He has never tasted wine.
That changed last Monday, I later discovered, when he tried some wine with his friends. On Tuesday morning, he had great difficulty in concentrating in his English class, he said…
But that was still in the future, as Dong Kwang – who had finally managed to get to the only Korean grocery store in Dublin (there are none in Bray) – patiently chopped vegetables for his dinner.
“Are you making kimchi now?”, I enquired, wondering where he was going to dig a hole in our very small back garden. No, he reassured me, it is too difficult for him to do here. Instead, he’d bought some already prepared from the grocery store, and would add a little to his own freshly made meal.
It’s a tradition, though, that many Koreans have taken abroad with them, as I discovered when I searched for more information about ‘kimchi’ on the internet. The web site of the ‘Korean American community of the Twin Cities and upper midwest’ in the United States – http://www.koreanquarterly.org/Fall1998/food.asp – gives recipes, as well as an explanation of the origin and importance of this traditional Korean method of preserving food for the winter.
Dong Kwang had explained that the salt preserved the food, and that burying it deep in the ground kept it at an even temperature. According to the Korean Quarterly, many American Koreans solve the latter problem by keeping their ‘kimchi’ in a fridge, and: “For many Korean Americans, kimchi-making time (gim-jang-chul) is a social time, where family members get together to lighten the workload and catch up with each other.”
The article goes on to quote second generation Korean chef, Pak, whose recipes are used there: “My mom would always try to get as many of us girls as she could into the kitchen to help her out. And my dad would even help out. …I think it’s more of a family event in America than it is in Korea. Here, I’ve noticed that it’s harder for parents to keep track of children than in Korea. Parents have busy lives, and so do the kids. So, what they do is make cooking part of the communication flow for the (adult) children – they all work together and catch up with each other’s lives.”
When we settled down to our own ‘communication flow’ on Tuesday night, Gint offered Dong Kwang some wine. This was when we discovered that Dong Kwang had tried wine for the first time the day before.
“Is this wine different?”, he enquired. We established that he had drunk a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon the day before – because Wojtek then produced the rest of the bottle – and the wine Gint had bought was, by co-incidence, also Cabernet Sauvignon, also from Chile, but a different brand.
We explained about the different grapes, the different countries (and so different soil and climate conditions), and how wine is ‘matured’ – “like your kimchi”, I added.
Gint explained that cranberries are very popular in his country – Latvia – and that all sorts of dishes are made from them, as well as Cranberry wine.
“We bury the bottles of cranberry wine in the ground, too, till they mature.”
Dong Kwang was fascinated.
While the explanations about wine making and its history went on, I had time for a quick mental debate about the morality of encouraging Dong Kwang to drink wine, if it was against his family’s beliefs…
He is 23 years old, has served in his country’s army, had already tried it the day before anyway: “he’s over 18 and vaccinated”, I remembered.
“Would you like to try some?”, I repeated Gint’s invitation.
“Just a little bit”, he replied. “I would like to know the difference.”
We watched as he sipped. “It’s smoother than yesterday’s”, he announced, like a real connoisseur, and continued to sip.
“Would your parents be upset if they knew you were drinking wine?”, I asked, still vaguely troubled.
Dong Kwang considered.
“We have never taken alcohol in my home”, he finally pronounced. “But my sister went to Germany recently and she brought home a bottle of wine. I will find out what happened…”
Meanwhile: “I would like to try every kind of wine there is…”, he concluded, with somewhat alarming enthusiasm.
Uh, oh…
Posted in House Family, Korea, Latvia | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on May 4th, 2006
I was reminded of Oscar Wilde’s: “We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” the night before last when Wojciech (who prefers to be called Wojtek, pronounced Voytek in English) called me out to our tiny back garden to look at the night sky.
It wasn’t a particularly wonderful night sky, as the weather was damp and a bit overcast, but you could still see the Plough very clearly. Bundled into his jacket, Wojtek was smoking – a habit he is trying to break and which is strictly forbidden within the house – but the look of bliss on his face seemed to have more to do with his upward gaze than the nicotine sliding down his throat.
“I love looking at the stars”, he told me. “It makes me realise how small and insignificant we are…” He then went on to make a very interesting analogy by talking about the different people and different nationalities he has met since leaving Poland six months ago: “The world is so varied and there are so many different and interesting people in it.”
I looked affectionately at him and the stars, and agreed.
Earlier that evening we had been very much at cross-purposes, because I had begun to feel that not only had Dong Kwang and Wojtek moved in with us, but that all of their friends had moved in as well. Wojtek had been living in the same house as three of Dong Kwang’s South Korean friends – two girls and a boy – but hadn’t been happy there, so he moved.
Neither were the young Koreans happy there, but the landlord was more reluctant to let the three of them go, and refused to return their deposit. So it was natural, really, that they should all congregate in our house, especially on Monday and Tuesday, when Wojtek had two days off work.
But, despite the fact that our three young visitors were extremely nice young people, whom I’d liked at first meeting, I hadn’t intended to take in five people instead of two. Not only did it cause space problems, but it created a group around which Gint and Grazina seemed to be orbiting in rather uncertain isolation.
It came to a head on Tuesday night when, after the first day back at work for most of us in the house, I arrived home, tired but knowing I needed to do some DIY work in the attic, to find the kitchen full of the five friends. Wojtek was cooking a Polish meal for all of them.
Now our kitchen holds six people at table comfortably, but Gint and Grazine were also due home from work, and all of us needed to cook and eat.
I found myself returning their beaming smiles with a rather frigid greeting, especially as I had to keep passing through the kitchen to the shed (I was sanding beams in the attic) as the South Korean girls tried politely to avert their fascinated eyes from my very work-worn and paint-stained clothes.
I managed to hiss at Dong Kwang on one of my sorties that he should make sure both Gint and Grazine had space to cook when they arrived, and that: “We need to talk – later”. The same message was conveyed to Wojtek as he passed me tools up into the attic. I received rather wide-eyed nods in return from them both.
Amidst the dust and the noise of the sanding, I still had time to think and I tried to work out what was really bothering me, what was fair, and how best to try and sort it out with the two lads. In the long run, it wasn’t so difficult…
Grazine, it turned out, eats at work, and so didn’t need to cook at all. She’s very shy of our company still, I think because of her lack of English.
When Gint had showered and changed, the friends were already out of the kitchen and, when I finished the sanding and showered the all-pervading dust away, I joined him there. He produced a bottle of red wine in celebration of the fact that we have now established that there is a European insurance agreement, embodied in Ireland in the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland, that will cover most of the cost of the damage to his car.
By the time Dong Kwang and Wojtek, having said goodbye to their friends, rather tentatively asked if they should join us, I was mellowed…
Gint went to bed about an hour later, and we looked at each other, took deep breaths, and began to talk. I explained that I liked their friends, that I feel it’s good that they visit, but that they are visitors…
Grazine and Gint, on the other hand, like Dong Kwang and Wojtek, are ‘family’.
“They live here. They need to be able to come home from work and relax, including having space to cook and eat in comfort. And they need to feel that they belong.”
Most young people I find are extremely fair, if you try to be fair with them. Dong Kwang and Wojtek are no exceptions.
The night ended in story telling, with Wojtek recounting how, when he was a very small lad at kindergarten in Poland, he had feared he was going to be in big trouble one day because of not paying attention.
They were being taught how to weave little baskets, for Easter eggs, and Wojtek’s wandering mind ensured that, at the end of the class, his basket was barely started. So he put it up on a shelf bearing another child’s name, and when the teacher asked them to identify the completed baskets, he tried to claim a rather beautifully finished creation. The child who had really made it, not unnaturally, objected.
“We’ll go for a break now, and when we come back we’ll sort out who really made it”, the teacher said.
When they went out to the toilets, Wojtek made sure to get on the end of the line to go to the toilet, and remained inside till he was sure everyone had returned to the classroom. Then he sneaked out and got his coat (all of this was acted out in our kitchen by the way), donned it, and headed straight out to the streets on his 5 km walk home.
By the time he reached the corner, another teacher met him. “Where are you going?”, she asked. “Home, with my mother”, he lied, pointing vaguely behind him.
“Good. Let’s go back and meet her together”, said the wise woman, firmly taking him by the hand.
His father was summoned by telephone to the school, and took the by now very nervous Wojtek home.
“You have a choice”, his father told him. “You can miss your favourite television programme or I can spank you. It’s up to you.”
Wojtek leaned over and presented his bum.
I wonder was he trying to tell me something…?
And so we ended in the garden, looking at the stars, and, when I checked the web today to make sure I got Oscar Wilde’s quote right, I found it on a site called http://www.astronomyguru.com/quotes.htm
It’s a fascinating site, and, among the quotes on that page, was another I had never heard before, from “Edwarde Younge, noted British astronomer who lived in the 1700’s”:
“One always looks to the heavens for
solutions to one’s problems…but
many times one finds the simplest of
answers to the most sublime questions
in one’s very own backyard.”
– Night II, Line 507
Indeed…
Posted in House Family, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland | 1 Comment »