Family fun at Barryscourt

The boys didn't really want to go. Teenagers don't like doing things with parents. But they loved it. Barryscourt Castle 2009 was a hit for them

Dogs at Barryscourt

We met a number of dogs on our travels in Barryscourt on Sunday. It was the place to go for dogs. Plenty of attention was lavished on them and they all looked to be having a fun time

Medieval Festival at Barryscourt Castle

Had a fabulous day in Barryscourt, the weather held and the boys had fun












Had a fabulous day in Barryscourt, the weather held and the boys had fun

The Turf Bank

As I bent down once again creating the stook at the edge of the bank I cursed my absent husband. It was the one place, and the one job that I missed him most, turf. Three hours so far today I had been stooping and placing sods of turf in the intricate design known as a stook, many hours this year I had spent turning and footing the damned stuff. It was his smell that surrounded me, his voice in my ear. Not sweet nothings, it is an extensive rulebook, little stories ran through my mind like the day he came back from the bog berating poor Jerry Pa, "Girl, a fierce day at the bog, the wind would cut ye in two. Saw young Jerry Pa, what a scoundrel, his daddy would roll over in his grave to see him trat the sods like that. His turf'll be so wet and heavy he'll never raise smoke from his fireplace this winter. Took it straight off the ground and threw it into an abstract kind of a stook. Tis no way to treat turf. Treat it right and it'll warm the coldest of hearts come winter."
I remember when I first asked in all innocence what a foot was. He laughed heartily "Maybe the villagers are right about ye, a flighty young one from the city, knowing nothing about turf. Lil you'll be at the bog one day, and I'll tell ye, all in good time.
I was from Cork city, a civilised place with gas to heat us in the winter and a coal fire on special occasions. I married Dan when I was twenty two, fresh out of college and full of life, Dan was a fully paid up member of the bachelor club until I arrived this year according to the old men gossiping after Mass, he was forty four.
We had first met when I was sixteen and running away from home because my brother, the sneaky little pup had stolen my diary and read it to the gang of kids we hung out with. Full of teenager-angst he told them all I had a crush on Timmy, the unofficial leader of our pack. My diary no more said those words than if the Pope had a baby, himself. So I was on the train to Mallow, with a bag of clothes, a tenner and a packet of biscuits. Dan, was just the man sitting opposite, nose in a book, he didn't blip on my radar, owld one. The train had been getting up speed over the viaduct when it made a sudden stop. Dan fell forward over the table and we banged heads.
There apologies and smiles, I noticed he had wrinkly lines around deep blue eyes. The guard didn't come down to tell us why we'd stopped and we started to chat pondering on the situation ideas from cow on the track to alien attack, we had great fun laughing at the more preposterous stories. He had a flask of tea and offered me some so I got out my food store and we had a mini picnic. He was great fun for such an old man.

Fish

My creative streak is interrupted because we have new baby fish. It is such a nursery now, four kittens, five chicks and now six baby fish. I hope that doesn't make me next with seven babies. We find it really hard to name fish individually so we did a search for famous sixes. The Birmingham Six, enabled us to tell the boys a portion of recent political history. Enid Blyton must've had a six, but we couldn't work out what they were - secret seven, famous five adventurous four, six geese a laying from the Christmas song. We started to get stuck then, and were thinking it was going to be impossible. Then Sean remembered Enid's six were Six Cousins - this didn't work as they are sibs not cousins. So to the shortlist, the Ninos Heroes, a mexican war something, six day war and six feet under.
The winner and new name of our babies is Six feet under.

Commitment

When I was 6 my parents committed me to the prison of Dromdrevc, for which they were paid enough to live comfortably. Before I left I thought I was doing a brave thing for the good of my family, in hindsight I see that I was brainwashed during the years of six to eight to accept my imprisonment passively and it worked. On my eighth birthday instead of going to loca lesson with my siblings I was dressed in a outside suit that had been prepared for me over many months, my hair was pulled up and pushed through hoops in a formal design and I was given a pair of foot sleeves, my very first pair. I thought I was important. The outside suit was a little tight around the ankle and wrist as I had grown in the last month. Finally the natural brown of my skin was powdered white and my lips were coloured blue to match my eyes and hair. I was ready, I proudly clambered into the suction pod, waving to my parents and mind-speaking goodbye. Dad was clipped in his reply, I thought it was because he was going to miss me but now I think he just wanted to walk away and get on with his life without me in it for eight years.
Everything in Domdrevc looked so shiny and new it took me weeks to realise I was imprisoned. The shocks I received for unauthorised mind-speak, we, all the prisoners, were taught to mouth speak and that was the only authorised language. It was much later I discovered the Charters could only speak through their mouths and wanted to control us so we couldn't rebel.
When I was fourteen a Charter minor-sib decided I was to be his lifefem, I was given no options, no choices. Jaydabin who I had an attachment with through the underground was disgusted assuming I had somehow encouraged the alliance. Having lived on earth for forty years I have been through this again and again and now I have words for it, jealousy, anger and envy. Back then I had no idea and took to my room except for work and food. The commitment came to nothing and I lost contact with Jaydabin during the Wars of Concavity.
I smile now that we, the underground were ultimately responsible for the losing of the war, the only thing that went wrong, for me was the suction pod that didn't take me home but to earth and in a bizarre and weird twist, recreated me as a human baby. Then a catalogue of mishaps and intervention I was placed in a dead baby's crib in a hospital in Northern England. My brain was functioning as a partially grown Zylesian so I knew there were people on the earth from Zylmor, how else could I have been placed. They had a commitment to ensure new arrivees were settled into a placement family.

An evening by the Lee

Last evening I decided to ignore the rain and go for a cycle. I went down to town via the Mardyke, FitzGerald's Park and the lovely Millenium Park. The river was swollen and was up to the bank in places. I traversed around town for a while, looking in shop windows and watching tourists with nothing to do in the rain. The weather was so bad some of the homeless people had already bedded down for the night in shop doorways.
Cycling up the Western Road I realised I wanted to cycle some more so went out to the Lee Fields pausing to take pictures of my favourite spot, the old water works and was happy to see others enjoying the burgeoning river and ignoring the rain.
Photos below show what I saw at this point.