By
noeleenm on January 19th, 2007
Yesterday was a day of storms in Ireland, with sudden gusts of up to 150km an hour. The wind was freezing, too, blowing cold sleety rain into anyone brave enough, or foolish enough, or desperate enough, to be out on the streets. In France last week I was walking in the hills above Collioure in short sleeved t-shirts, suffering badly from the lack of ridge walks. In Ireland most marked trails take you up into the hills and you remain there, until you exit the mountain range: in France it seems to me every trail takes you up a steep hill, then right down into a vally, then up another steeep hill… ‘Sadistic trail design, or simply the topography of French hills?
But it was beautiful…
Local people in Collioure remarked that it was unseasonably warm, even for their climate. Squid and other sea creatures were in almost a month before their time. In traditional ski resorts all over Europe, they are worried about the lack of snow. And, in Ireland, there was heavy flooding in December, particularly in Oranmore, County Galway, where two housing estates have been built on a floodplain and where residents are presently awaiting the results of a Oral Hearing by An Bord Pleanala into an application to build yet more houses there. Meanwhile, residents who were flooded last month are being advised to take a civil action against the people who caused the flooding – the Council who zoned it for residential development, as one resident pointed out.
The weather is changing all over the world, with the change exacerbated by greedy planning.
And, within our house, the wind of change is moving, too.
Gint rather desperately, but very accurately, pointed out the other night that if you don’t take risks in life, then you can be miserable. But, if you do take risks, you can lose everything. Change is frightening.
The conversation arose because Gint wants to start his own business, importing very heavy timber garden furniture from Latvia into Ireland. He was trying to work out costs before a meeting with the manager of a large garden centre here. Starting it will mean taking some very big risks, even with the help of advice from County Wicklow Enterprise Centre here, but not taking those risks may mean regretting it for the rest of his life. We’ve all got our fingers crossed for him.
Wojtek was being encouraging, pointing out that last September lots of his friends were telling him that he was crazy to think of doing a full-time day course in music production and being a DJ, while working nights to support himself, but it ends in May: he has ‘broken the back of it’.
Maria’s plans to stay on in Ireland until about February were disrupted by a call from the school where she will do her ‘internship’ as a teacher to come back for a meeting. She decided to use the interruption in her stay to mark the end of her working in one of the local supermarkets here, and living in our house, and to come back after the meeting to travel around Ireland for the remainder of the time before she actually begins her internship.
…And I find myself looking at photographs taken by – or for – Renata, while she was here before and during Christmas. She wanted a photograph of an electric Santa, waving from the top of the local Royal Hotel, which she saw every night from the window of her attic room in our house. Pavel obliged, just before they both returned to the Czech Republic.
I look at the photo and I wonder who will be in this house next Christmas and New Year. Will I? I’m considering the possibility of going away to teach English next year throughout the winter, as part of a wider plan to eventually teach in my own house during the summer and travel throughout most of the winter. I would always find my way home to Ireland, and Bray, for Christmas but I may well rent out the main body of the house while I’m away, keeping only my ‘apartment’.
Gint’s worries resonate with me. The winds of change can make one’s hair stand on end for more reasons than one.
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By
noeleenm on January 17th, 2007
Today it’s the turn of another of my favourite singer/songwriter’s lyrics to run around in my head – Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’. My car, Caroline, is limping towards her demise, I was told last night, and has to be replaced. Her engine didn’t like the fact that there was hardly any oil in her system, it seems, but – as I explained under the accusing eyes of Gint and the two lads, both named John, who came to diagnose what was wrong with her last night – the oil light didn’t come on.
“When the oil light comes on it’s too late”, John1 explained patiently.
“Well, what’s the point in having a warning light if it only comes on when it’s too late”, I snapped.
He went on to explain that in old cars very often the oil sensor is defective (”but nobody told me that!”) and the trio leaned up against the kitchen walls, lugubriously discussing the perils of old cars and the even greater perils of buying another one. Some men seem to enjoy discussing the innards of motor cars the same way that some women enjoy reliving difficult births.
“Men!”, I muttered to Maria over the sink. She nodded sympathetically.
In fairness, despite Gint’s obvious horror at letting the oil run down (you’d think I’d murdered my grandmother the way he looked at me), and despite his obvious enjoyment at discussing with the two Johns whether I should replace Caroline with a Porsche or another kind of ‘bling, bling’ car that I can’t remember the name of but which John1 referred to scathingly as “A jumped up Fiat!”, he obviously empathised with my upset at losing my car.
Caroline has taken me all over on happy road trips, and she has acted as a pack mule on many the occasion, too. I bought her a new radio and cassette player a few months ago when she’d passed her NCT (National Car Test) so that I could sing along with people like Neil Diamond and John Denver on long trips. Â
The song reminds me of seeing Neil Diamond live in Croke Park – the big GAA stadium in Dublin – in 1996, carrying the whole stadium with him on a wave of sound. It reminds me even more, though, of a local variety show group playing in a local school hall. My niece, Susan, was in the middle of them at 18 years old, as they sang: “Hands, touching hands, reaching hands, touching you, touching me…”, and I will never forget the look of sheer happiness on her face as they made their own bit of magic. Making music – whether amateur or professional – is magic.
But I must be more fickle than Gint, about cars anyway, because today I found myself discussing with Gail the purchase of her ‘Freddie’, who she is rejecting in favour of a brand new 2007 car (to be named Seamus). I am seriously thinking of moving Freddie – a seven year old Fiat Punto – into my drive, despite the fact that Caroline, at 15, is still limping along. The two Johns succeeded in terrifying me with gloomy forecasts of being left on the side of a dark road, or a busy motorway, some day soon without any warning.
So Sweet Caroline may have come to the end of her particular road. Does anyone know a song about Freddie…?
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By
noeleenm on January 16th, 2007
Over the last week or two, I have listened to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Concert in Central Park’ a couple of times, and their ‘54th Street Bridge Song’ (’Feelin’ Groovy’) keeps playing over in my mind. I love its playful, hopscotch melody, I love Simon’s ‘Slow Down, You’re Goin’ Too Fast’ advice, and I find the close harmony singing of him and Art Garfunkel, especially their countermelody, simply fabulous. Some music is mood changing for me (and Simon and Garfunkel’s music is in this category), some I need to be in a particular mood already to really enjoy it (Bach), and some simply puts me in a bad mood, whatever I’ve been feeling at the beginning (Heavy Metal!).
On my recent holiday in France, I found myself listening to Simon and Garfunkel, as well as to John Denver, and, more obviously appropriately, to ‘Songs of the Auvergne’ sung by Frederica von Stade. I brought all three CDs because they are among my favourites, but they were also appropriate… I celebrated my 60th birthday on January 6th, and the music of Simon and Garfunkel, the music of John Denver, the music of the Seekers, the music of Joan Baez, were all part of my transition into adulthood. They sing about the things I care about – love, nature, freedom, and music itself.
There’s something momentous about turning 60, and I celebrated it with family here, then in Carcassonne in Southern France with five close friends (’Old friends, sat on their parkbench like bookends…’), and, finally, in Collioure, walking in the hills and getting my mind around the fact that I am 60 and deciding what I would like to do with the next decade of my life, if God grants me that time.
The result was some belated New Year Resolutions geared to enable some New Year Dreams. (One of my birthday cards showed two puppies fast asleep together with the message: ‘If all our dreams came true, we’d have nothing left to wish for…’) The resolutions start with ‘Slow down, you’re goin’ too fast’ because I’ve felt that this past year I have been going too fast, always hurrying, always mentally rushing, even when my body was fixed in the same position for too many hours at a time. In Collioure there was time to hike in the beautiful hills above that glorious village, and there was time to listen to music. Â
It’s a time of change. Maria is returning to Germany next week, leaving two empty rooms in the house, as Rasa left just before Christmas. I am deliberately not replacing them, because it is a time of change. I want space for a little while to empty myself and my home back to our bones, and start a new decade afresh. My overcrowded heart can remain overcrowded with its many inhabitants, but the rooms in which it and I live need to take a breathing space.
…But I’ll fill it with music…
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By
noeleenm on January 4th, 2007
Christmas was fun – but busy!
The first chance I got to write anything was a ‘thank you’ letter to a friend, which I wrote at what seemed to me like dawn, but was in reality near nine o’clock, on the day before New Year’s Eve. I was up early to say goodbye to Renata and Pavel who were returning to the Czech Republic. It’s always hard to say goodbye, but I consoled myself with the fact that, for Pavel, this is his second time to stay in my house. The world is getting smaller…
It still seemed strange, though, when the house had been so packed for so long, to sit in quietness.
We (Renata, Pavel, Maria, and myself) cooked for seven on the 23rd December, with Gint laying the table, opening bottles of wine, and muttering over the washing up afterwards. Wojtek was excused from duty as he had to go to work immediately after the meal and was allowed to sleep till then – until we discovered we were unaccountably short of dishes and he went scuttling up to his den (politely referred to as his bedroom), to emerge carrying a precarious load of dirty dishes! He has earned the nickname ‘Bear’ because of his ability to hibernate, a useful skill if you work nights and study during the day, but sometimes the area around his bed is only just short of gnawed bones and a pot of honey…
Renata and Pavel had hunted fish (thank God they don’t have Wojtek’s hoarding habits) in our local Saturday street market, but couldn’t locate carp, the traditional fish dish for much of Eastern Europe. Instead, they were advised to use salmon and brown trout. Apparently, it was delicious – once they had finally given up on the white wine sauce which was supposed to accompany it. The sauce had been chosen from one of my cookery books and the recipe in English, with its very different vocabulary, proved a little too much in the long run. But Gint ate it anyway…
The traditional accompaniment of potato salad, which Renata and Pavel had worked on all day, had ‘eating and drinking’ in it, as we say in Ireland, and more than made up for the disappointing sauce for our Czechs, Polish and Latvian fish eaters. Maria is allergic to potatoes, so she had plain basmati rice with her fish, while I turned my rice dish into a mushroom risotto. We all shared a big green salad, with a very nice vinaigrette sauce (prepared by Maria) - and we all shared white wine!
This decidedly unIrish main course was followed by a very Irish Christmas pudding, made in County Wexford, and custard. I find a lot of visitors to our country have never met custard before (it’s rather like caramel, but usually served hot), and it met with mixed reactions. Renata, for instance, is convinced that every sweet food is sweeter in Ireland, sometimes too much so, but everyone liked the pudding – except Maria, whom I had completely forgotten is allergic to nuts also. Luckily, she tasted them at her first tentative (she has learned to be tentative about food) mouthful, and stopped before any damage was done.
We exchanged our Chriskindel gifts, ranging from scratch cards (which, if you scratch off three matching numbers, wins you the amount named) through calendars and DVD racks to a beer glass that twinkles with different coloured lights everytime it is raised! Now, far be it from me to name a Chriskindel, but the person who was responsible for choosing these twinkling coloured lights on the beer glass is the same person who was shocked to discover we use coloured lights - as opposed to simply white – on our Christmas tree! And she was relieved to find that, at least, our Christmas tree lights don’t twinkle…
Poor Wojtek had to go to work then, but the rest of us finished the night lounging about the fireplace, talking, drinking wine, and building dreams in the embers. We were joined at some point by Gail, who had been Christmas shopping in Dublin till all hours!
Maria set off early the next morning for Germany and her family and friends there, but the simple meal planned for that night for the rest of us meant we could rest a little before I set off for an afternoon tea party in my nephew, Stephen’s house, with 22 of my sister’s children and their families! Mary’s husband, Noel, celebrated his 73rd birthday on Christmas Eve, while his grandson, also Noel, celebrated his 14th birthday. Stephen and Marie, his wife, have established a tradition each year of celebrating both events early enough to leave time for all the little ones to be back home safely in bed in time for Santa’s visit later that night. It’s always a warm, talkative occasion for all of us, apart from the delicious meal.
From Stephen’s, I went to the 8pm vigil Mass for Christmas Day, which was very beautiful. Tall Christmas trees (with white lights!) form a background to the altar, the choir sang sweetly, and our old traditional Crib, that I have known since I was a child, gathers crowds around after Mass. I missed Elke and Michele, though, who accompanied me last year.
At 10pm we finally sat down at home and eat a very untraditional meal – for either Ireland or Eastern Europe – of pasta in a blue cheese and brocolli and walnut sauce. But it was delicious, and we could all eat it. We followed it happily with mince pies and ice-cream, and Renata placed the Baby Jesus in the crib, before we all crept over to the fire to dream some more…
Wojtek had a wonderful Christmas Eve also, he reported later, with four Polish couples sharing a traditional meal – and gifts – far from home. He was better off far from home the next morning, as many (between 20 and 30) of my extended family call then for our traditional Christmas drinks and exchange of gifts, causing quite a din when we’re all together.
A quick escape down then to my sister’s house in Wicklow town for an Irish Christmas dinner, with vegetarian fillets substituting for meat on my plate, Brussels sprouts and carrots and potatoes and delicious sauces, followed by homemade Christmas pudding with cream and brandy sauce. We opened our gifts, poking happily into each others presents as well as our own, before setting off for my niece, Sally-Ann’s, house in Ashford, and yet another Christmas tea, with Christmas cake and every other sweet thing featuring on the table.
Around the table, and in the living room, young Martin and his little foster sister, Saoirse, featured. Martin is ten now, while Saoirse celebrated her first birthday earlier in December, and they are crazy about each other – with good reason. Saoirse played to the gallery all night, and we were happy to be her audience, while Martin offered learned discourses on the space ship he was building, in between giving and returning hugs and kisses to his little sister.
I stayed overnight in Mary and Noel’s house, returning to our own house to spend time with the resurrected Gint (Renata and Pavel had gone to Belfast and were staying over there) before going to Bernadette’s (another of my sister, Mary’s, daughters) for yet another ginormous family reunion. On Stephen’s night, all 22 of that family have a very festive Christmas tea in Bernadette’s and the Chriskindels brings big gifts for the little ones. Mary does Mother Clause and it’s a great night for the small children – and for the adults.
The rest of Christmas passed in a blur of eating and drinking and talking and lounging about – with friends, with family, and with my diminishing house family.
Gint set off for Italy, to visit Michele, on the 28th, Wojtek made occasional guest appearances in the house in between parties, and Renata and Pavel and myself kept up our tradition of eating anything but traditional Irish food by visiting an Italian restaurant – Il Palazzo – in Bray for their last night here, on the 29th.
On the 30th, I went to lunch in another of my nieces’ homes – this time the daughter of my other sister, Sally, who died fifteen years ago, and whom I still miss. Luckily, many of her qualities, and mannerisms, are still to be found in her two daughters – Edel, in whose home we were eating, and Trish, who came to lunch also with her two children, Shauna and Darragh. Edel’s little girl, Hannah, was six on New Year’s Day, so we were starting her celebrations as well as catching up on each other’s news.
I thought on New Year’s Eve I was going to spend the evening alone as one of the very bad storms we’d experienced over the Christmas built up throughout the day. Normally, my generation of our family come to our house on that night to share a meal and talk of family news and memories right through midnight. This year my brother, Pat, and his wife, Judy, weren’t coming because Pat still doesn’t feel up to going out late since he had a mild stroke last Christmas. My sister, Mary, and Noel, came from Wicklow though, picking up our sister-in-law, Angela, on the way. Our other sister-in-law, Marie, came on foot as she lives nearby, and Mary and Noel left her home afterwards. As both Mary and Marie had the remains of bad colds, the laughter that seemed to go on all night caused bouts of coughing that made the house sound like a hospital ward!Â
Pat phoned his good wishes through though during the evening, as did many of the family, with members of my ‘house family’ texting in their good wishes, like Grant from South Africa and Daniel from Spain, who is now living in London. Earlier in the Christmas I’d had e-mails and texts from other young people who have lived here. Nayra, who transformed a photo of me on the back of her Dad’s motorbike last year in their home in Fuerteventura by adding a Santa hat to each of us (I’ll post the photo next time I get to write a post, but more of that anon…), Lucia whose poetry has won prizes and who is now about to publish her first book of poetry, Roberto who became a Dad to Itxasa last September, and Jan, who has just discovered he is about to become a father also…
The coming of babies is appropriate, and joyful, news for Christmas – but the quietness of Bethleham was something I just didn’t get time to experience this year. That’s why tomorrow morning I’m setting off for France for an initially companionable and probably hilarious weekend with five friends as we celebrate my 60th birthday in Carcassonne, but followed by a further week in the little Mediterannean village of Collioure by myself, where I’ll explore, rest, listen to music, be quiet, and build up my energy again for another year.
When I get back I intend to post photos of our Christmas in Ireland, and of France. Meanwhile, I wish for all of us – all of the people who have lived in this house and all of their families, including new babies, as well as all of the people who read about this house – a blessed and peaceful New Year.
Posted in Canary Islands, Czech Republic, Germany, House Family, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, McManus Family, Poland, South Africa, Spain | No Comments »