A Day on the Prime Meridian

Greenwich. The name already stops me dead, after filling me with lo-o-nging for years. I just wanted to be there, stand on that zero point, where all space is measured from, in a way.

I first read 'Longitude', by Dava Sobel, a few years ago, but saw the Jeremy Irons TV show about it even longer ago. And living in Australia, a country which is founded in part on a reliable clock, just gives the place a very personal resonance for me. One of the earliest clocks was given to Captain Cook, on his trip to watch the Transit of Venus in ?1770 - he was considered a good seaman, someone you could trust with a clock, someone you could trust to take readings of longitude with it.

So, onto the train to Greenwich on a pale, bare Sunday morning. The Bean reading the Tube stops, the Pumpkin climbing the seats, me just humming at the prospect of making this pilgrimage on my personal map of the world.

Across the grounds of the Maritime College, into the Maritime Museum. Wowowowowow. Passing through the Titanic, opening cupboards on the marine uniforms, the Pumpkin wondering where the person talking about their uniform got to before he could open the door to see them. Nelson's coat, complete with hole from the day he died. Maritime histories of slave movements, waves of migrations in red arrows around the globe. My journey is part of one of those red arrows too. Shiny propellors, ship decks, a lovely cafe ( I could paint my walls that colour, stand a palm like this in my house!) and a playground - what more could we want. A toilet, poor Pumpkin has the trots, the same intense kind which Bean had over Christmas in Stuttgart, cramping. I get snapped with a statue of Captain Cook, only right. We toil on up the hill, to the Observatory. I feel I've reached a summit. More toilet stops.

And then, weaving with my boys and the queues, past the telescopes, the rooms inside, to the octagonal observing room, the living quarters and the clocks themselves. It IS a pilgrimage: I pay silent respects, and could cry for how moved I am to be with them: H1, H2, H3. The Bean is fascinated by a great interactive display, the Pumpkin heavy in my arms. I sit in the semi-gloom, the Pumpkin sleeps, the Bean opens and shuts doors, I reflect on this journey to this point in time. It is something I wanted, not about them, but made the more precious to be doing it with my two treasures, made so far away, over on 171 or so, not 0 as here. I feel triumphant as we ask another tourist to snap us right on the line, our feet on the Sydney point. We made it! Maybe the ancient mariners felt like this when they thought they'd fall off, get lost, run aground - and then didn't.

A loud, freezing, BRILLIANT high point racing on the ferry back to Tower Bridge. The boys screaming at the loud rushing water, me snapping, laughing, roaring at what IS possible for a mother to do with her young boys, at where it's possible to BE. Away upriver, along the old wharves, past the docks, past the new Canary Wharf stockbroker sheds, along the way they came back in after sailing bout the world, there's the Tower Bridge, the Gherkin, the Tower of London.

Did I tell you boys, I nearly fell out of a window there, before I was even two? The circle turns. The day ends with more Tube travel, a show - Marianne Dreams, more Tube travel, dinner with friends, a hooge day, but wonderful life.

Making a Winter Fair

The school has changed its format for the midwinter, Christmas, event. This year, it's to be a market like a European Christmas market, with entertainment, food, things and the traditional room for the kids to sell off their own old toys before Christmas. It'll be held in the school, on a Sunday and the hope is that more fathers and parents who might not often be at the school - will drop by.

In a burst of nostalgic rightness, I volunteered German christmas baking, and telephoned Omi for her recipes. Baking delicious aromatic spices when it's dark and cold outside, perfect! Not what I'd ever do in Australia, part of this whole year's thang. A delightful book arrived full of Swabian gutzl-recipes and history, with Omi's handwritten recipes (and margin notes re the costing of same!), some of aunt M's own recipes with her very pragmatic, hilarious notes. Treasure. So I set off and baked a practise batch of something. One day, The Pumpkin and his small friend O made a round of 'staghorn buttons', with currants for button-holes, the dough rolled in cinnamon. Great. And icing the cutouts was most of the fun.

Then, in an interminable meeting one evening, it became apparent that there were just too many biscuit bakers already underway. So, in an easy sideways leap, I went savoury. As is my want. I decided to do three relishes, which could conceivably be part of an Australian christmas dinner, and might be interesting here too: caramelised onions, a pineapple chutney from Queensland and watercress pesto. Relish Australia is born.

The boys cried on the sofa - as I sliced enormous Spanish brown onions on 3 evenings, and spent hours caramelising them with sugar and vinegar in Stephanie Alexander's recipe. Somewhere, there is a photo of my mascara running black down my face, and a big wide, winter-white skinned smile!Our little room ponged of onion for days! LMM chopped cashews and watercress all over the kitchen, green specks, and I whizzed them with garlic, olive oil, parmesan and lemon. A search of ABC North Queensland's site gave me a recipe which worked well with tinned pineapple from South America.

With an enormous vase of eucalyptus leaves on my table on the day, I was one of the few savoury types (!) in a room with divine cakes, pastries and miles of gorgeous biscuits. Crepes from Madame I. The day was a flurry of people, conversations, children, the crowd all really into this event. The Pumpkin had a sleep with his narni, under the table; the Bean scooped a pair of moon boots. And Relish Australia sold out by 1pm.

Update: There have beeen frequent winter walks along the Dinosaur Park, aka Lee Fields, with the Bean on the moon boots, the Pumpkin oh his pedal-less bike, me with i-pod, walking briskly! We are approached about the moon shoes every time, they're an absolute cracker.

I believe in this life, everything is possible..

...sang the entire contents of the Cork Opera House, along with Amp Fiddler, during Cork Jazz Festival.

We had visitors in town, Stockbrokerman and his new gal from London, keen to show off eachother and their entirely free, financial wellbeing. We took them to all sorts of gigs, not jazz, but part of the Festival nonetheless. What a venue Cypress Avenue is - Vivienne Long, you rock!

Then to Amp Fiddler, in the Opera House. A Detroit man from the funk'n line, got us on our feet, singin and dancin. The singing is no surprise in Ireland, the dancing is: it's a reserved place, really that way.

And then to the finale: EVERYONE sang that line, over and over, until we all could think nothing else, believe nothing else. A crowd, on key, anthemic. Transformational.

So ends a month of visitors into our wee shoebox every weekend. Great times. Mon-Wed: I rearrange, tidy, wash. Thursday: shop. Friday collect next visitor from airport, away we go again! To walk Cork, see the shop streets (disappointing to most our visitors, thrillingly fresh to most Corkonians, who remember the bad old days, 10 years ago.)

Suddenly this Country Speaks to Me

After 5 weeks away in Europe-proper, the dread grey is hard to take. But visitors are coming, Leathermanman has some days off - so I'll take off out Kerry way for 3 days, 2 nights away.

I was so in need of fresh air, wind, space from endless boy-drudgery, out to endless open spaces where I can feel some magic. And we found them. Wild country, orange and dark grey. Muckross House. Steel grey stone hunting lodge, by the side of the lake, light piercing the skies and clouds, as if the angels were just sitting up above. A scene almost monochrome, the green lawn barely green, the water slatey grey.

Inside Muckross House, it's a timepiece, a journey into Victorian England. With Nora, one of the best tour guides you could ask for. We were led behind the scenes, as if the families had just left, as she told us the history of the house, the people, the romance, the hopes bound up in it all. Almost as if someone might turn up, if we hesitated too long on one of the staircases.

Imagine getting a gift like that as a wedding present! And, before that, the hopes tied up in renovations and extensions and endless gardening expansions - in view of a visit from Queen Victoria. So she came, she stayed, walked up to the waterfall, slept in her camp bed on the ground floor in a room with a custom-built fire escape (she was terrified of fire), no doubt dined on the finest - potatoes and roast and who knows what other heavy Victorian fare in the heavy Victorian dining room. And then she left, no doubt with good intentions. But Albert had the temerity to die soon after her return, and in her grief, the thoughts of knighting her good host at Muckross just fell away. I really felt the colonial past of this house - the expat nature of those living here.

And, by holding the land as one large holding in private hands for hundreds of years, the land could become Ireland's first national park, when the republic was formed and the English landlords were sent packing. If it had gone into Irish hands, it may have been broken up into countless tiny holdings, and not preserved the richness of the forest around these parts. The house stood shut up and empty for years - imagine! - and has since been painstakingly restored. Some photos from the British Museum were used to make new curtains and wallpapers, fitting Victorian times. Did they call it Victorian times while she was queen?

I LOVED walking through the arboretum, alone, in damp, green air, collecting chestnuts for small children, but not hauling one by the hand. (I know, still thinking about them, even when away from them ... but it makes all the difference sometimes!)

A wonderful place to bring visitors from Berlin, all citied-out as they can get. Autumn trees, ancient yew, rain falling by the lake, gold and red and orange leaves. We walk in it anyway as the pram has a cover, and we're rigged up.

The Look of the Irish 2

What's with the fake tans, heavy fake tans? Someone said tanarexia to me, I knew just what it was immediately now!

The cheap tracksuits, the tonnes of makeup, the dreadful shoes, the completely too-cold clothes, the stretched-flat and tortured hair. They end up looking all a bit the same. There's a strange aesthetic among the girls, from about 15-25 here - looks cheap and slutty to me, not even stylish-slut. And yet, there's so much of it out there, they must love it. Is it just Cork?

In a rare escape to a pub in the evening, we walk home, in our jeans, boots, yes lipstick and perfume, coats and scarves. And encounter girls in way too short skirts, way too high heels, no sleeves, falling in and out of the pubs off Oliver Plunkett on the way home.

We didn't even do that when we were in our 20s: me in Sydney, she in Munich. We're cousins, so maybe there's something of a family value set after all. We were just glad of our good sense. And we were chatted up in Crane Lane, by a French man then, who thought VERY highly of her marvellous profile! Off to Paris modelling for her, he said.

The View From My Window 2

Sitting at the computer, the desk is behind a wall of glass the length of the room. So it's a perfect light room for an Australian family, top floor - which is great for us. I'm sure our noise travels to the floor below...

I look out and see an ancient stone wall, with some of the window arches bricked back in, weeds growing in the cracks, old corrugated iron on the roof. The owner of this building tells us that they excavated lots of bodies when he built this building about 20 years ago, exhumed them and took them away. We're just outside the city wall, so there are many burial grounds nearby.

I see a courtyard of white houses with grey slate roofs, and into lots of windows - probably 8 different places over there that we can see. LMM points out how many bathrooms we can see into, I notice the women cooking at the other windows, at the same time each evening as I am. There are satellite dishes, pot plants, lampshades, clothes airers. Sometimes clothes on a line, wet for a week.

We're all in our own versions of Rear Window, a hidden courtyard life, separate from the much more cheerless streets around us. It's neighbourly, we're part of a place with other people's lives nearby. It's never isolated. But no-one waves or speaks across it - that would be intruding.

UPDATE: In early June, the entire wall is green and pink, in wonderful flower. The sky has often been blue.

Dirty Veg from Caroline

We're back from a big trip, so it's time to settle now into another kind of life here: school, making lunches, dropping and collecting both boys (I'm off the 24/7 shift, hooray, that WAS a hard 2 months), getting to a workout often if poss, and shopping local.

Caroline's pesticide-etc-free vegetable stand at the Coal Quay every Saturday is pure pleasure. A request for a handful of spinach gets me a boy's backpack FULL, and then throw in some carrots, beetroot, cucumbers, salad leaves: with the dirt still on. She is definitely the gardener, with the dirt deep in her hands: I admire them and her, it must be a hard life, growing here in Ireland with this weather that won't really play nicely.

So I get home, wash dirt off and plan what to make with all this indigenous stuff - soup's good, parsnip goes with most everything as it turns out. Multi-veg mash is another Magic food: boys eat parsnip, celeriac, zuchini, carrot and potato, and I'm happy. Magic. Not all at once, but they all go in. Under sausages, it makes a regular appearance as dinner. Spanakopita. I love it. They all taste so damn alive, different from one another, like a true vegetable should! Makes me think of my father standing in the garden in Canberra, dirt on his hands, colanders full of the latest abundance. He grew, and still grows, most everything.

A thread right through from my Saturday mornings here in Cork, to my father's sensational plots in Canberra, with echoes too, of all the grandfathers that had their gardens in Bohemia long ago.

And now for some Motivation

Have decided to join the gym, around the corner, for the discount rate of E300 for a year. I tried for a 6 month commitment, but the deal isn't offered for that. So we'll just see.

It's been a process of elimination: can't attend a course with regular hours, as Leathermanman's shifts change, and then every month or so, we'll want to go away for a week. Needs to be vigourous, to give me a place to vent frustration, sweat, go hard, move fast. Oh and if I could lose the weight I gained in my stressful job earlier this year, that'd be great too. Can't attend classes, should be cheap because of all our other expenses. So. Here tis.

Very exciting to start, feels like I'll be able to take this seriously here, while I'm not working or studying or what. My own little thing to commit to. Better than just being there for everyone all the time. Much.

Paris meets Paris

Years of lead-up, this! Paris the bear gets to Paris today.

Driving up from overnight in Orleans, droping off the car at Orly airport, then train and Metro to our hotel. Me now with my boys, in Paris again! Wow. Lunch for E10 at a corner bistrot, fab fab, we're here. This, I can do.

And hitting the high notes immediately, we set off for the Eiffel Tower. Long wait in the queue. This will be the one time we do this. I never did when I lived here at 16, or in later visits - always too touristy. But now. The boys are hopping, I'm getting cold, the queue is full of tourists on shorter holidays, we get to feel that we really do live in Europe now. What a stream of life we're in.

Up in the lift, to the very top. EArrgh. Vertigo. I'm almost sick with the height of it, the headtrip of it moving up here, the wind, oh I know it's a safe structure, and it's been here, but suddenly I've got all teh bad thoughts rushing in. The Bean beside himself with excitement, the Pumpkin falls asleep on Leathermanman's shoulder and misses a real lot of it all. We go to the top, gaze into the museum boxes, stare out over this amazing city, roar into the wind. I'm back, I'm back.

On the way down, the Bean and LMM run the stairs (like LMM did when he was a kid here), the Pumpkin and I catch the lift down. Incredible experience, a real highlight. And then we search for toilets, go to a playground. Of course.

And into the 6e, past my old school, photos there!, amazing to BE HERE, shop for postcards. A shred of home it is. Dinner near St Michel in a Greek restaurant, staring at a statue of a nude white bum, over the shoulders of my two boys. LONG walk home, all the way past Notre Dame, the Seine, Place de Vosges, rolling, savouring every step. Just got here, wish I could stay.

(Paris the Bear is Paris because Painterwoman bought the bear for the Bean on the day he was born. Then 2 weeks later, she flew to Paris, to paint. That bear has been wanting to get here for 7 years!)

A driveway 5km long

We arrive in Osses in golden late light, driving from the small town with fountain/church/convenience shop with roasting chickens on a spit and local chestnut cake up to the house. It's a winding green road, across a narrow bridge overlooking perfect-green-river, past farmhouses, one lane of road often coated in dirt off tractor wheels, reversing a bit to let the tractor by, hairpin bends in green gloaming forest, up into open fields and across an endless view straight to the Pyrenees, and into the gate to the house.

Which looks exactly like the pictures online. Difference being, the walls are paper-thin, and there's only one bathroom. Cousin B chooses the bedrooms for her family again, it works better for all that way, and we begin to fill the house with our week's intentions. The view across the terrace is one of those I drink in, store in my fibres, because I'll b eneedign to draw on it again for years, later.

The next day, all we manage for the days is to pack some food, swimsuits, books, and drive to the bridge over the river and swim, eat, laze in the sun. The photos are completely idyllic. This is the holiday we wanted. Perfect after the move from Spain-week to France-week, via the Guggenheim in Bilbao, yesterday. Perfect.

Update: this is one of the most memorable days for the 8 of us. For different reasons: Cousin B was in such agony with her knee, she almost couldn't read her book, much less enjoy our larks in the water. Me because we all stopped, really played where we were, invented stories and cities for the children in the middle of the riverbank, swam them in the strong, cold, current, ate a delicious picnic, which we had really sorted by then - cutting up and making for the children, wine for us in tumblers! A day when we all just were. Together.

A Day Alone

I'm on a bus all day today, from 10am to 4pm, across the top of Spain. I've got water, food, a book, maybe half a dozen words in Spanish.

Then I'll catch a train over the border, get to Biarritz airport, collect my husband off the plane, after he's finished a run of night shifts, and drive: in a hire car, on the wrong side of the road, in the dark, all the way back to Celorio, near Llanes, and our holiday will really start!

The boys meanwhile, are at our house, overlooking the Atlantic, a Spanish holiday house. The house has a lovely garden, parking, two bedrooms upstairs, two down, a kitchen fitted out with all sorts of stuff including an electric spaghetti fork, a fireplace, and the view over the sea! Lovely, very glad to have it. The boys will have a whole day with my cousin and her family, a beach day. I was going to take Alex on the bus because, at 7, he's a big step up for her, with her 2 kiddos, who are a) more peaceful and b) younger, almost 3 and 5. But they talked it over, and I'm off alone. What a treat, even though I fret.

I think of Race Around the World, and this is not it. But I'd love that degree of adventure, race, with one other person. And settle on the bus. So I look out at the summer orchards of fruit trees, sparkling coastline with hills rising straight off the coast, one timber Spanish house after another, one town after another. And read.

The Secret River by Kate Grenville. I brought it, to read about the Hawkesbury River - where I celebrated my 40th, spent a week on the same river. A book with a new perspective on Aboriginal history in Australia, but a writer who knows her words! I could see the gum trees there, as I looked over the gum trees by the side of the road in Spain - they're more spindly, smaller here. I could see the river, feel the anguish of early Australia, the endless journeys. Feel the heat, the sense of others gone before, feel a deep understanding of this book and its country. Not a strange book to me at all. Which it might be to others in Europe reading it.

And I was glad to be here, right side up, this side, not that remote, harsh, mysterious far side of our globe. Odd. I thought I'd get homesick reading the book. Instead, I grew calmer, didn't fret so much about this big day on the bus, needing to find a connecting bus in Bilbao and then the train at Irun to France. This, I can do.

Australia can wait. Germany now.

A day of packing, nerves and anxiety, followed by an almost sleepless night. Does every mother fret like this on the eve of a big trip with her children, without her husband? I know I do. An epic trip, the travel within the travel of this trip - my children meet my grandmother. A life- achievement by the end of the day.

Pre-dawn moulding of small boys limbs into their clothes (selected to match eachother and me, plus travel well), taxi to Cork airport, and away to London Stansted.

My first time in a cheap airport: how long will it take to get through one set of customs and on to the next plane? Will my odd paperwork be a problem, as I'm not registered in Ireland, and I should be, according to the police and Immigration there? What could go wrong? How can I keep myself and these two small boys moving through the day? Can I make the switch to German again, now with them holding me in English as well?

Then Munich. I get a strange feeling as if this is the real start of my trip - as on so many trips my whole life long, I've come into Munich. This is familiar, my family, my roots. And the immigration guy asks me at the end, all friendly - why are you travelling with these boys who do not have your name? Could he please see the authorisation that I may do so? Digging out my marriage certificate to prove they are my lawful children, this is just German properness...there are rules, you must know that we know them, and we must be seen to be doing it all the right way...Goddamm. I had packed all the papers, so I expected it really, didn't I?

And now it's all new, talking to my boys, listening to all the Germans on the S-Bahn - on the way back from summer holidays in Sweden, China, the world. I'm eyes and ears, and memory lane, can barely speak for the flashbacks of other times I've made this trip, other times I've stepped off at Gauting, other times my grandmother is standing there as if she did this every other week!

And it's summer at last - we wear t-shirts, without singlets under or jumpers over, the whole day long. Lovely family days, remembering things past, family traits. Also crafting new days - now that I'm moving about with children of my own. An age watching the Bean swing on the rings in my uncle's garden, fabulous, what muscles, what meaning in a simple sunny afternoon!

The Bean gets to spend E35 on Schleich toys, agonising, enjoying the selecting for an HOUR, yes!, in the toy shop on the Stachus. The Pumpkin invents an elaborate game with my aunt, involving pegging all the clothes pegs on one of her potplants - and then pegging Christmas decorations, leaves, Easter eggs to the tree!

The View From My Window 1

I love it here. Out of every window, there's a different spire to be seen - the Red Abbey, St Finbarrs and St Nicholas. The density of housing, of history just outside, the quiet of this place is just exactly what we came for.

Someone must have been watching on our whole journey into this flat in Cove Street, one street down from the river Lee, right in the middle of Cork! Just enough room for all of us, and the minimal stuff we brought. It's odd to move in and not own the linen, kitchen stuff, furniture - yet call it ours now. In all our moves, it's never been as easy as this.

St Nicholas is my favourite, out the kitchen window, only about 50m away. There's a floral reclining armchair ( I know I know, but here's to the beauty of a fully-furnished flat) positioned with a small table just so, so that when I sink back with a book, I can see straight up to Nicholas. He's there as I work in the kitchen too, we're forming a solid, quiet relationship. The pic shows kitchen tap, window and Nicholas; this is taken from said chair.

Barbara Kingsolver's book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is absolutely wonderful: phwoar can she write, I love the format, with contributions from her husband and daughter too. Makes me laugh out loud, weep tears of recognition and read to anyone at any occasion! How does spaghetti grow! Strange to be reading a book about feeding a family from your own garden, now that I've just left mine, but inspirational. This food-theme is going to be big this year - local, fresh, high quality. And I've every intention of starting it all up again once we go back: the compost will be great, hope the avocado tree makes it!

And out the door, we've found the chemist, the corner shop with newspapers, phone top-up machine and friendly faces, the local pub, the internet shop we can use to print letters, as there's no printer here with us.

UPDATE: By February, the Bean is allowed to go down and buy milk by himself, returning with a HUGE smile, the correct change and maybe a packet of Actimel yoghurt drinks! "I worked out that I had enough if I only got the 4-pack!"

A walk to Stanage Edge

What makes a day stand out? It's seeing something you thought you'd never see. It's finding a liberation in an hour, from days and days of being in the harness of humdrum 'ordinary' life..

Meeting Ivan. This uncle, zany, I'd heard about him for years. Finally, the day is on us, I'm dreading it and putting on a brave face - and curious too. There is a beautiful pink rose bush in the front garden, the house high on a hill in Sheffield. Inside, it's a-clutter with one man's stuff, not aired, cleaned or moved enough in a long time. A shelf for the tins for a rainy day - what's the other shelf of tins for? The walls covered in photos, prints of familiar places, like Hungary and Australia.

He's like those uncles of my mothers, that I used to have to visit when we stayed with Omi - a particular Continental sense of humour, wordplay that all know is clever, even though we don't always laugh out loud. Sentimental, referential to other times. So we get on GREAT, I play the mother role with absolute conviction, can just be as I am. Leathermanman says, wash everything, don't touch anything! But we get tea and fruit out, look through photos and his old cameras. The Bean is a PERFECT namesake, shows great interest in the old cameras, wants to know about this strange man, as much as the uncle wants to know about him. The Pumpkin gets hungry, we open one of the Rainy Days tins and eat soup, heated, direct from the tin. I can't write about the bathroom, but I'm touched and entertained, all at once. And I imagine laughing with my mother-in-law about it in future.

A walk to Stanage Edge in the Peak District. Like other walks with my elderly relatives in Germany, all set off, groups form for 'walk and talk'. The Pumpkin and the uncle have exactly the same pace, The Bean and I run, run in the wind over the stones on the edge of the Edge. Liberation. Leathermanman imagines himself bouldering, we are all liberated in this Australia-like expanse, our gazes stretching to a horizon, the view filled with grasses and heather, fields, stone walls, not buildings, not crowding close around us. In the photo you can't see, but LMM and his uncle have EXACTLY the same shape head!

Then we take Ivan back to Eyam Youth Hostel. He took the first photos of it, when they first started promoting themselves long ago - and is DELIGHTED to be out for a night. We fold children into their bunks and drink a bottle of wine outside in endless late summer light. There's much hilarity and tales of lives lived before we all met up today. Lovely.

A well boring day

What a magical combination of engineering and other-worldly skills, with generations passing it on! Saw this sign on a wall, on the way home Cork from a day further out west. Left the boys in the car to snap this one!

A day when Leathermanman worked all day, so I packed the Bean and the Pumpkin and a picnic into the car, in search of Drombeg Stone Circle, Creagh Gardens and a day out. The Drombeg stones are well, small, but the knowledge that centuries ago, some mysterious folk watched the mid-summer sun rise up through a chink on the horizon and cast its rays across the altar stone and through the centre of the 2 lead stones, well, that's not so bad. Boys imagined cooking here, and enjoyed running about in the big space. Creagh Gardens are closed, but we enjoyed our picnic in a lovely garden nearby all the same.

The Look of the Irish 1

What's with the boys haircuts here - shorn short on pale heads, with maybe a bit longer on the top. Or razor cuts in swirls in the sides, dyed on top. And soccer sports gear, white shoes, sloppy training pants, sport tops. And all acrylic and hanging around in groups by the corner shop, by the river, wherever.

Even my two smallies have commented on it. I feel uncomfortable walking by them, but mostly am amazed that this counts as fashion here...errgly.

It just looks a bit destitute....

Mash, Baked and Chips are NOT 3 food groups

The Irish are famous for their potatoes, god they are. Sadly though, they're obsessed with them, and we're not really liking them...where are the delicious potatoes I remember from Europe?

At one meal you can be offered mash, chips and get a baked potato. Do they realise? How do these ancient habits get so stuck? How could they not grow more things during the Famine, if the potatos kept failing? They want to be seen as so modern, but if you're eating that much very plain potato, can you really move forward?

We talked about this today as we drove back from the Donkey Sanctuary at Lisarow, and then stopped for tea and scones in a ?cafe/restaurant that's been going since the 17th century. And they're still cooking the same food there too! Bacon in great slices, cabbage in watery sauce, the roast is out, but I can give you mashed turnip and bacon.. All this at 4 in the afternoon. We laughed at what people were eating in the middle of the afternoon. Update: we later learnt that in farming country, this is often the time for the one big meal.

All we wanted was a good coffee and a nice cake maybe. Queen cakes are cute - a little cup cake, with a bit of jam on top. Good for the boys.

Ah the Donkey Sanctuary - a refuge for all those old donkeys who were decommissioned by the tractor after the war. The owner grew up nearby, went off to England for a while, then came back and happened upon old, mistreated donkeys in the Irish fields. During the Boer War, the English had paid 5 pounds and a donkey for an Irish horse, who were strong and well-bred. The farmers re-worked their farm gear, ploughs and traces and the like, for the smaller donkeys and put them to work, with great success in small fields.

After the tractor, they got put out into fields and often abandoned, until they were rescued and brought here, where they are nurtured back to health, and, the friendly ones, put up for adoption. Beautiful Jerusalem cross donkeys, grey ones, white ones. Did you know that a male donkey mating with a female horse makes one kind of animal, a female donkey with a horse - the result is called something else?

Nadine and I both had tears in our eyes at the trees planted, the benches set in memorial, for people who'd loved donkeys, kept donkeys, were being remembered here by their families. Yes, it's fundraising too, but great initiative and care too. What a funny country.

And in the landscape as you drive, there's another ruined castle, grey stones standing overmossed, reaching out above the growth and decline of centuries...and another....its golden age really was very long ago.