A salon affair

Today we had the first Gortavrulla Literary Salon. This was not simply an excuse for a good lunch and a bottle of Sancerre. There was serious literary talk (honestly) and not very much scandal at all.

There is an honourable history for the literary salon. The concept first appeared in 15th century Venice when an elite group of women began gathering informally to discuss art, literature, politics and science. A century later and it had become very fashionable in France, where the gatherings were so informal they would frequently be held in the bedroom. The hostess would recline in her bed while her friends gathered around.

A chaise longue would be the perfect thing here. One each, preferable, for recovering from the lunch while continuing the erudite conversation.

This was only the beginning of a cultural weekend. Joe and I are going to London tomorrow til Monday - my treat for his birthday. A play at the Almeida Theatre - we're going to see Becky Shaw, a play by Gina Gionfriddo that is, so it says, a biting American comedy. It got four stars off the Guardian so we hope it will be good. There are other plans afoot including a couple of restaurants which I can't write about yet because they are a surprise for Joe and there is still time for him to read this blog before we go. Also an exhibition of modern British sculpture at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly.

I'd better go to bed. We have an early(ish) flight and a long day ahead.

Pony invasion

We've had ponies in the field opposite the house for the last week. We arrived back from a trip in the van to ice and snow (an hour to get the van up the hill of the last hundred metres or so) and saw hoofprints and neat piles of horse droppings up the track. I thought it was someone out for a hack but no. The next morning the dogs went roaring out barking. When the small one does this I don't always take notice unless it's the bark that says there really really is someone there. When it's this type of bark and the big one joins in I go and see.  Three ponies were looking startled, stopped in their tracks, surprised at the reception. 'Where did you come from?' they seemed to say, then turned and trotted away across the flat bridge.

I thought that would be the last of them, that they were escaped from somewhere, but they were back. The dogs got used to them and they became proficient at breaking into our neighbour's field across from the house. Making themselves at home. Relaxing in the sunshine.

None of this is particularly remarkable - stray cattle are a fairly regular occurrence, though we haven't had ponies before. But it's made me think. Our neighbour came up and chased the ponies away. They came back, got into his field again, ate the grass he would be wanting for his cattle. He chased them away and closed the gate across the track outside our house. They came back, flicked their heads at any notion of ownership, broke through his electric fence (not turned on) and sunbathed on the precious bit of new grass.

So why did we do nothing? I only feel part guilty, and I shouldn't feel guilty at all. This is the neighbour who fell out with Joe - and therefore me - over the cutting of an ash tree, and who objected when we had someone he didn't like renting out our converted barn. The gate he closed was the one he put there in the hope of inconveniencing us. So to see those ponies eating his grass, to see him chasing them away again and again. Well I won't say it gave me pleasure, but...

Out of the Christmas Fug

Well of course the parents got here for the Christmas, though it was touch and go til the last minute - Shannon Airport had run out of de-icer according to Michael O'Leary on the radio - unusually not in rant mode - so we were in bits thinking that meant planes wouldn't fly into the airport. Then there was fog when we got there. But in I went to wait among three flights' worth of happy relatives and friends it said on the board that the Liverpool one was landed. What relief.

Now we're about to go off in the van for a few days. Possibly foolish given the weather forecast. But we have to go and check the boat and it seems the best way to do it. Or at least I thought that was the case until five minutes ago when Joe said, having just heard the weather forecast for the north, 'I was thinking we might go and visit Rob the Bones'. Rob is an old friend from years back who now lives in Cork. The bones bit is not as macabre as it sounds. He was (and is) a wizard playing bones of the percussive kind. Reset the mind time.

Along with me will come my new smart phone. I haven't been so frustrated by a device since the early days of computers when an axe was the instrument you were looking for. It isn't an iPhone (so intuitive! so exactly like my Mac!) but an LG with Android fittings. This is much better for my use (pre-paid), so much cheaper and uses Open Source software which is A Good Thing. But I couldn't get it to produce words properly. Or change between numbers and letters. Or delete photos. Or or or.....

However, I am beginning to enjoy it. The other day we went to Coole Park to see if the wild swans were still there. A beautiful flight of them rose from the lake and disappeared. And didn't come back. I managed to take a photo, but not of the swans. I think I took three videos of water not moving. Then my battery was flat.

Have to go and pack the van. Wonder where we're going. How exciting (I do like sudden changes of plan, I do I do).

The Tree

Our garden is surrounded by forestry and we're forever getting fir trees of various types seeding themselves. Very handy at Christmas. Here's Joe bringing this year's tree to the Barn. It was a funny shape. A two-thirds tree, perfect for pushing into a corner. 

We started trying to heat the Barn on Tuesday. The walls are two foot thick, so once it's warm it stays warm, but my parents arrive tomorrow and it still feels chilly in there. The stove is burning coal, the central heating is running, the electric radiators are on. A Major Battle! A Race Against Time! Will it pass the Mother Test?

It's so cold that the river that passes through the garden is iced over. The water is still running underneath, leaving a strange elevated shelf of ice in places.

The waterfalls are gorgeous - exotic grottos that look like they belong underground. Joe took this photo of just below the flat bridge. There's a huge plate of thick ice there.

And Lough Graney has frozen over. We've never seen that before. It happened in January while we were away, but the previous icing over happened many decades before. No doubt there'll be some eejit trying to drive a tractor across it. 

The snow is so powdery. It's strange having no slush. Clear blue skies make it feel Nordic, or perhaps Alpine. Power cuts and water problems, however, are very much of this place. There was a major problem with the pressure tank - Joe had to diffuse it the other morning. Frozen pipes led to an increase in pressure. The dial was on dangerous red. He had to put on his flak jacket and make sure he snipped the right wire to save us being blown into the heavens.

No cold water again this morning, but the intrepid husband knew what he had to do - remove a yokey-me-jig and get a replacement diaphragm. Or something. I left him at it while I walked the dogs (we were in a rush to get to Galway to pick up the turkey). When I got back he was staggering out of the boiler shed clutching a halogen heater. Both he and the heater were wet. I didn't ask. Me and the dogs went quietly inside.


The tree is up and dressed. It looks very festive. The photos of it, however, are crap, so I'm putting the moody (aka not-enough-light-because-Joe-was-playing-with-camera-settings) shot up here.

Why I didn't write the Christmas cards

I'm in bed waiting for the snow. The bed thing isn't to hide from the weather but because I have a bad back and can't sit down for a long time. Joe gets this sort of thing a lot but I rarely get anything that makes me have to lie down. I didn't even do anything. Just sat up in the bed at my friend Jean's house in Dublin on Monday morning.

We'd gone up to Dublin for a reason. Every year there's a Christmas concert in St Bartholomew's Church, Clyde Road. It's one of the most beautiful churches I've ever been in. This is my second visit. Jean's father Bobby has been singing in the choir there since about the eighteenth century, and we went one Sunday morning a couple of years ago for the service. The vicar at the time gave a sermon people really did listen to and enjoy. He was a bit camp and used to cycle round Ballsbridge on an old sit up and beg wearing his cassock and hat. It's very high Church of Ireland with incense and ornate robes and sing-song responses.

Alan Stanford was doing the readings - he's best known for his work at the Gate Theatre, Dublin over the last twenty or so years. This was his 21st Christmas concert at St Bart's. He was very good, as was the choir. There were boys, girls and men in the choir. No women. Not sure if this is just because they only started taking girls in the choir a few years ago and none of them are old enough yet to be classed as women, or whether they get chucked out as soon as they start wearing bra and make up.

The back was ok on Sunday which was just as well as sitting in a church pew is a challenge at the best of times. It was Monday morning when I realised after making the tea that I could no longer bend down. We had to drive to Galway to have my thumb looked at which made it all worse. A visit to Mona my wonderful physio on Tuesday morning showed up raging inflammation. I'd had a bit of a virus over the last few days and it seems that had got into the joint. I didn't know that could happen. Nasty little virus. They go for the most vulnerable spots, it seems. The joints where you already have a weakness. Like the government going for the people who are already struggling to keep their heads above water.

The thumb was injured a while ago in a lavatory door accident - pulling a jammed door from the outside to release the poor woman trapped inside. My GP thought it was a soft tissue injury that would heal itself, even if it would take a while.

'No need for a splint,' he said.

This is how the stricken digit looked when I came out of the hospital. It seems the tendon that connects muscle to the last bone in the thumb has become detached. The splint has to stay on for six weeks. It's called a Zimmer splint and it looks, as someone pointed out, as though I have one of those fat toe nail files strapped to my finger.

The good thing about the back and thumb business is that Joe wrote nearly all the Christmas cards. Thank you Joe! 

In case anyone goes yuk at the thought of detached tendons, as one of my flute students did, here's some cute pictures of Aoife taken by Jean in Dublin. They'll take your mind off it.
 
 Aoife likes to get herself wrapped in a blanket but forgot she had this one over her when there was a sudden smell of Bonios.

The Thaw - Day Eleven

Finally green is reappearing all around us. But our bit of road out is still completely treacherous. It must be the last road in the county to thaw. At the moment (one o'clock) there is a layer of ice with water on top. It's about as slippy as it gets. So thoughts of bringing the car back to the house are scuppered.

Joe's just been out to Ryan's Bridge and scattered sand around the car, started it up, and taken it up the hill to the main road. Everything's clear out there.

We have plans for crampons and tyre socks. Tyre socks is a concept I'd never come across until I heard the AA on the radio talking about them. And a friend down the hill who walked up for a visit had them. They allow you to drive on snow and ice and are easy to put on and take off. The friend also had metal strips used in the building trade screwed to her boots. They were turned up at the edges to give grip. Not as easy to put on and off as crampons, but they certainly did the trick.

We won't be caught out next time. Really really.

I suppose we'll get all stocked up with stuff and there'll never be a freeze like this again. Or at least not until a month after we've thrown them all out.

The Freeze - Day Nine

When I got a text yesterday from Scarriff Community College saying the school would be closed today I was surprised. The local primary school has been closed since last week, but the secondary school stayed open. The Scarriff roads were gritted and free from snow last week but now there's freezing fog down there in the valley and the roads are lethal. I suspect they've had less students each day as the conditions settled into solid ice.

At least I don't have to make a decision about whether to try to get into the school for the lunchtime trad music group I've been involved in. I really had thought I'd be going to that today. That conditions would be better.
 
The ice is getting thicker on the flat bridge. We've put down a trail of ash from the range and the sitting room stove which helps with the walking, but there's no way we'd get a vehicle across it. And even though we left the car at Ryan's Bridge a five-minute walk away, I don't think we'd get that out today either. I'm supposed to be teaching tomorrow. We'll see what happens.

It's raw today with a north wind. Outside is very quiet. No distant sounds at all. Standing in the garden it felt as though the world had closed in to our little valley. Our muscles have become used to walking in ice and snow so we stride up the hill to the top where everything is cold and still. It's slower coming down. Going out towards the main road is getting awkward. The strip of snow up the middle, the safe place for walking, is narrowing from the few vehicles that have passed up and down.

As always I wonder how the birds can survive such harsh conditions, especially the tiny ones. I'm putting out food two or three times a day. I counted 26 chaffinches this morning. The blackbirds and fieldfares are still busy at the apples - 27 fieldfares the other day and 16 blackbirds. I've been hacking

Bird bath ice shapes

ice-bound apples out of piles tipped off the lawn in autumn and scattering them under the apple tree where there's less snow and ice to provide food for a few days more.

Under the hanging bird bath is evidence of the continuing freeze - ice shapes from previous days' upending of the water container. I haven't seen any birds using it yet. It's fairly new and they're suspicious. Or perhaps they're getting their drinking water elsewhere. Not from the garden pond though. That's solid with ice.

The skies look as though we may get more snow. There was a sprinkling this morning. There's a thaw promised for Thursday but it's beginning to feel as though this is the world now. We're into a steady rhythm of getting in fuel, trying to keep pathways safe to walk on, feeding the birds. We have become insular. A strange inertia has settled on the house which has become a place of hibernation. I've stopped being anxious about things. It feels like it will be more and more difficult to go out into the world again.