Smokies

This week, with Dad having to be there for the Saturday as well as the Friday, to play host to the Poetic Plumber and his JCB, we have even less time than usual to blog, so some of these stories are going to be pared down to the minimum, but I will stick in plenty of photographs to make sure you are kept up to date with most of the goings on.

Like many other areas of these islands, the citizens of a specific area get tarred with the same brush of stereotypes, sometimes light heartedly and sometimes a bit maliciously. Liverpool folk become 'Scousers' after the working class food of the same name, Yorkshire folk become tykes, Lincolnshire people are either 'yellow bellies' or 'moonrakers' according to taste, the Irish are Paddies, the Welsh, Taffs and so on. Then you find that within these areas subgroups are named by other groups, so Dublinners are 'Dubs' and to a Dub, country folk are 'culchies'.

It seems that Roscommon folk are widely known as "Smokies". No relation to the Arbroath smoked herring of the same name; this comes from the perception that Roscommon people all smell of bonfire (or camp-fire) smoke because they are all of a Traveller persuasion.

Meanwhile, Tigin Beag may not actually be the original cottage. Aged neighbour, tractor driver "John-Deere Bob" (there! another new member of the cast!) drops by again to see how we are doing. He says the Tigin would have been an outhouse, with the chimney and fireplace being where they would boil up the mash for the pigs.The original cottage, he says, was single storey and roughly in the same position but extending further out west towards our gate and thatched roofed. Our Project Manager, Sparks has always said the walls here are of very varied ages, as if the house has been knocked about a few times in its life.

Smokie Deefer