Sporadia

Winter has arrived here on the Edge.

I just took this photo of outside with most of the street snow gone (plows are quick on the job here, as is the super of the building with his mini snowplow and shovels and brooms)

In honour of winter, last night I fetched down my mother's old recipe for steak and kidney pie and made two. I was drooling. I only make them once or twice a year as they're a bit picky and energy consuming to put together. Bonus: being low in iron, I get a bit of a boost from such ingestion.

This evil man is dead, I won't even put his name or picture here. Millions and millions of deaths on his hands. If there is a hell, I hope he fries forever in agony. Nobel Peace Prize, my arse. How corrupt our world is in honouring such a monster.

An art piece brought back from Ireland by my daughter for me. It shows the famous "milk bottle" beacon which dominated my summers in the West Cork island where we spent years and years. I love it.

And this is an actual photo of the "milk bottle".

Corvid-19 (Day 3 of self-isolation)

Way back in the summer of 1956 my parents took the remarkable step of isolating all 5 (we were eventually 6) of their children on an island off the coast of West Cork.

For the entire summer.

There was an epidemic of polio in 1956 and they took the preventive strategy of isolating their children from it. Self isolating in other words before it was too late.

This island was primitive, no running water, no toilets, no electricity. And we had to share a very small cabin with another family with 5 children who had taken the same precautions.

But we managed. We roamed the island, played cricket (a lot) and obscure ball games that still come back to me, read every book and piece of paper we found and wondered why our parents were reacting so strongly to something quite vague and invisible. We were 4 to a bed - tops and tails, youngest sleeping with the parents.and meals were in shifts for 14 people, young kids first then the older children and adults. Simple food from local farmers, milk picked up at milking time along with the eggs. We played indoor games when it rained and were marched off to the cliffs to cool off if we got petulant and truculent.

"You're not the only one feeling like this, we all have to get along or none of us do."

Close quarters alright.

And only in hindsight do I thank my parents, for when we finally got back to the city we saw how other children had been affected with this disease. We saw leg braces while many were in iron lungs in the hospitals, permanently crippled.

Mum and dad struck a brave, preemptive strike for the safety of their children, at who knows what cost - 4 parents, 10 children in a tiny, isolated cottage, dear gawd - but we were so very, very fortunate in their concern and love.

And a part of my heart has always remained there. We were right on this beach, the scene of daily cricket (called rounders) and all the swimming we could handle. You can actually see the rusty red roof of the cabin (long in disuse now) just up from the strand.

Bless Da Webz and All Who Sail on her.

Thank you Irish Examiner for this photo of a cillini

I was commenting on a friend's FB page, you know how that is. The chat was about all those nameless unbaptized babies buried in remote, separate burial plots all over Ireland. Tossed out like so much rubbish. There are thousands and thousands of such little babies. Read all about it here.

Can you imagine the grief of the parents? The RC church again and its superstitions and exclusions. When anyone says "Oh, it was the times" I always respond with "where was human compassion and charity - or are they just recent evolutionary traits in the human race?"

So well. I mentioned a cillini - a burial plot (if you could call it that) on an island off West Cork, where the unbaptized babies were. A large walled area without a stone or a cross or a sign. Rumour had it there were hundreds of such babies, stillborn, preemies etc. interred there. And some said those born severely handicapped were quietly done away with too. A haunted place for us children who explored it time and time again. These wee innocents were consigned to Limbo for all eternity, punished forever for something they had nothing to do with. Never to be seen by their parents even in the next world, whether heaven or hell. The cruelty of it all still has the power to take my breath away.

One of her other friends, not a friend of mine, came on board in the comments and asked me how he, a life long aficionado and visitor to Baltimore and Sherkin, had never known about this paricular cillini so I drew him a little map showing (roughly) where it was.

Then we got into this lively private conversation about Sherkin and our memories and the old people there and a small boat I would surreptitiously "borrow" and he in his turn did the same thing and the cranky lightkeeper who would chase us away from the lighthouse as he liked to go skinny dipping in Horseshoe Bay, and did I know about the island in WW2. It turns out he's over 80 and still climbing mountains. His age explains how our memories alight around the same people and places (and oh, what characters!) but he was that much older than me that our paths didn't intersect back then.

This webz business, great, yah?

And educational, if you have the fortitude and interest to click on all the links above.

The Blues for the Greens - Part 4

Taken from the window of our birthday restaurant in Baltimore overlooking the harbour and our waiting ferry.

I won't go on and on about this trip. I won't. I want to. But I won't.

The other segments would take a wee book unto themselves. But the précis (does anyone still use that word) is as follows:

Sister and I went to the Cork Museum (twice, but that's another story) and caught a remarkable archival documentary recommended by my brother-in-law.

We also set to singing some old duets of ours in the pub on Sherkin Island which was mein-hosted by the most unpleasant publican we have ever chanced to meet. He was so appallingly rude and ungracious that we were all helpless with laughter several times, quite disbelieving that anyone so incensed by his job would continue in it. We kept looking around for a candid camera or a Monty Python crew to jump out and say "gotcha!". But alas, no such luck.

Our dinner in Baltimore at Jacobs was wonderful and we had arranged for a special ferry to take us back to Sherkin later on.

So you can guess what we did on this ferry. Yeah, we sang some more of our trusty old songs from our childhood days on the island. We didn't want this magical boat ride in the starlight to be over. And we all were a little teary-eyed as we pulled into the pier on Sherkin.

But Sister-Daughter had a surprise for The Twins. Overlooking the harbour, she handed Brother and me some lanterns and asked us to write our wishes on them.

Then we lit the candles inside them and sent them aloft. As we watched in awe, it seemed like they floated forever up to the stars.

The Blues for the Greens - Part 3

An unusual shot of Silver Strand

So there we were on Sherkin Island on Friday night. We were staying at the hotel for the weekend. The pile of us. The whole big gang of us. It was like summer camp without counsellors. Breakfast had that air of an unceasing cast of characters brought forward for entertainment and stimulation. I was up early so as not to miss any of it.

Every day was cloudless. Every day we hit Silver Strand and banjed off. As only the Irish can when we get a spot of rain-free, cloudless days. There is a frantic air to the sandcastling, the swim-togging, the picnicking. We grab it while we can as we shrug off the mould and rust.

So there we were at dinner on the Friday night. And an old friend who lives on the island and his wife were invited to join us. To catch up. This old friend I've known since I was a single-digit-aged child. We go back a long way. I got to know and like his wife in later years when I rented a house on the island in the summer with Daughter and Grandgirl.

So the moment of comeuppance: they arrive and get settled. There's a big crowd of us around the table and Sinead (pseudonym), the wife looks across the table and greets me in delight and then says, looking at my sister (who is fourteen years younger than me):

"Oh, WWW, I'm so happy you brought your daughter with you!".

Karma, she be savage.

You can imagine how this took off for the rest of the weekend. Sinead was mortified in spite of my reassurance of absolutely no offence.

We couldn't stop laughing as I explained to the family I had a big, long-held secret to tell them. My sister called me "mammy" for the rest of the stay, requesting permission for various activities like swimming and eating and referred to her brothers as her new uncles, including my "twin."

Helpless laughter resonates a long time.

I think it's the most powerful healer of all.

The Blues for the Greens - Part 1.

This old ruin of a house on Sherkin Island hasn't changed much since I was a girl.

Bear with me. I'm trying to get over a serious case of the blues since I got back from Ireland. It's almost a relief to call it blues. I can now distinguish this from depression. There were many times when I couldn't. So the blues it is and it lingers, I am melancholy for my tribe, my people.

Why the blues, you ask?

Well, it was the trip of a lifetime to the home of my birth, Ireland. Cork. I'm back nearly 5 days and it's taken me this long to write about it, apart from the Hydrange post.

Don't you just love it when families can slay their individual dragons and angst and disputes and rivalries, and just be together in harmony, laughter, joy and love. And that's what's happened in my family of origin - complete with cousins and visits to our matriarch in her "rest home". She's now 95 and not quite with us but delighted with us, ordering tea like a grand dame and telling us of an aging male pursuer - "once you're gone I'm going to take the time to wring his neck!"

Her strong spirit lives on and heartens my sister and me as we hug and kiss her in farewell.

We quote her to each other as we leave and howl with laughter as we rehearse the phrase, with her intonation, for when our own time comes. Yes, one gets to that stage of not fearing the outer realms of old age. I know it's left me. It can't be that bad when one can repeatedly order tea with one bright scarlet-tipped finger raised imperiously now can it?

Here's a story from long, long ago

This is a view from where we always stayed on the island with Cape Clear in the distance.

My eye was caught by one of those pop-up ads today. Something about writing and storytelling and I hit the link which I rarely do and further down I caught a promo for the Story Telling Festival in Cape Clear in September 2013 and I thought, wouldn't that be something, wouldn't I love to tell a few stories there.

When I was growing up and all grown up and even eldered, Sherkin Island in West Cork is where my family congregates. Yeah, even this past year.

Southerly from Sherkin Island lurks Cape Clear while southerly of that again there's the Fastnet Rock Lighthouse which was the last sight of land the doomed passengers of the Titanic (and many other shipwrecks) observed.

But I digress, as I always do.

And I thought to websearch a wedding (with no luck, unfortunately) that my father and I attended back in the day. Way back in the day. I can't remember how old I was, I would venture maybe 12. My mother was up to her elbows in toddlers and babies and very much not in the mood for such things, particularly when the baby-sitter (me) could be snarly and unwilling. So I would often partner my father to different events. I should write about them some time. They were very interesting.

Anyway, once more I digress. This wedding took place on Cape Clear. My father had secured an invitation as (I think) a government representative. We had to take the ferry from Sherkin to Baltimore and then from Baltimore to Cape Clear. Much time was spent on the sea especially when my father wouldn't let me sit down anywhere as my dress was a pale pastel and the seats were filthy on the boats. I was up to 90 with excitement. My first fairly adult party.

It was a magnificent day. One of those brilliant West Cork days with Carbery's Hundred Isles laid out like jewels all around us, shimmering in the heat.

Dad had a habit of telling me now and again: “You should remember this – you'll never see anything like it again!” He was always right. (When I was three he held me up in his arms in front of the second floor window of a walk up flat in the small town where we lived and pointed downwards to the darkening footpath where a man with a long stick with a flame on top was passing: “Remember this, it's the last night that the lamplighter is coming around to light the gas lamps, tomorrow the electric street lights will come on!”)

As we got off the ferry on Cape Clear, he used that well-worn phrase on me.

I asked him why.

“Well,” he said, “The bridegroom is 85 and the bride is 83.”*

I started to laugh.

“And,” he said, “They've been engaged for over sixty years!”

And what a party it was!! It all took place in the Irish language, of course and I was proud I could keep up. The caint, the ceol and the craic (chat, music and good times) lasted late into the night. And the couple was so happy, their faces lit up with delight and they danced and danced. At that unferried hour, we were lucky enough to hitch a ride on a boat going directly to Sherkin, even though the course was pretty erratic due to the merriment of the tillerman, but the water was smooth as a baby's bum.

And, odd this, anything Dad told me to remember, I did. I am so very glad he made something special out of such extraordinary memories.

*PS At the time I understood that life got in the way of their marriage, care of elderly parents and younger siblings, dispute over inheritances, etc., being the various impediments to their betrothal.