Mazy Lou and Airy Fox

Happy chickens out in the sunshine.

In celebration of the lifting of the avian flu restrictions, I bring you a post full of pictures of happy out-door birds, scratching in the dirt, pecking at the grass and feeling the warmth of the sun on their backs. This is as it should be and in my humble opinion the Ministry's avian flu restrictions had absolutely zip, zero to do with the welfare of 'our' free range birds and was all about protecting the livelihoods of the commercial, factory-farming, (not very) free range boys.

Suzy's Six gather round the sheep feed trough.

In our own flock an interesting dynamic has developed. Friends of the Blog will know that we have been nurturing 6 youngsters since Storm Doris (24th Feb), given to us by our friends Sue and Rob. Back then we chose the 6 from one of her big rearing cages, trying to pick out the ones which looked like hens, though sexing birds before 21 weeks age is notoriously tricky. We had great hopes that all 6 might be female and that the new group, called "Suzy's Six", would neatly restock our depleted (by the fox) flock. Also that the two which are good Cuckoo Marans colouring would fill the gap left by the deaths of Bubble and Squawk.

Cuckoo Marans, but are they female?

Well, no such luck, it seems and our success with sexing birds has taken a thorough knock - we think that almost certainly five, and possibly all 6 are roosters. As they come of age, various of them have crowed, squared up to one another with capes flared, grown upright, iridescent greenish tails and started strutting around like lads. More recently they have taken to trying to jump Galdalf's ladies, sometimes more than one at once. Enough, we say! Time for a rooster cull. Good for the freezer but not a lot of fun.

Herme, our 'sex change' hen/rooster. 

One rooster my be given a stay of execution. Our friends Con and Niamh from archery are in need of a rooster and rather fancy one of our "grey" ones (the Cuckoo Marans. The other "grey" is the chicken we hope is a hen - 'she' has quite yellow legs which can be a sign that the bird is starting to build up yolk proteins in her body prior to laying eggs. Ah well. It will all come out in the wash, I guess.

Our five ducks.

Our existing hens, who now number only 7 fit and well, will certainly be relieved. 7 on 7 is not a good ratio. Hens like their 'manly' attention diluted down to about 1 on 7. We are also pleased that the restrictions have been lifted because that means the local poultry sale is also now back in action and we might be able to go and buy some genuine hens. We hope there are either Buff Orpington or Cuckoo Marans available.

Left to tight, LIz, Mazy and Airy

You may recall from my previous post that we were 'between visitors' awaiting the arrival on the Friday of our most excellent chums from the UK, long term Friends of the Blog, Mazy-Lou and Airy-Fox. Originally Internet friends, these ladies have been part of our story for almost as long as this blog has been running. They currently live in Dorset and this would only be their 2nd visit each.

Rhubarb Pavlova

It was, as expected, a lovely visit and we thoroughly enjoyed the company and 'doing' the hospitality. Liz created marvellous food with, on the second night, the help of Mazy who is also a brilliant cook.  First was a superbly tender roast pork - it was actually "steamed" over a shallow bath of beer under a little tin-foil "hood" to keep the flavour in.

Gifts from Dorset - local cheese and a jar of, new one
on me, "bacon jam". A delicious relish. 

The joint-effort second night was a chicken-based curry with a rather good dahl (lentil) and sag (spinach) veg course plus a cooling bowl of mixed yogurt, cucumber, mint and coriander-seed. The chicken was boneless, skinless, cubed up breast which had been marinaded 24 hours in spiced up yogurt. The whole was served with poppadoms and flat breads. It was all really good. Huge thanks to both chefs.

Naturally a little drink was consumed (only a little. We are very sensible these days) and the chat flowed the way it does in such lovely companionship. One little aspect which amused us was that Airy voiced that she would rather like a dog, specifically a Beagle. Mazy is currently holding hard to the 'No Dog' line but her guard may be beginning to crack. At one stage she asked 'how many' dogs should one have if dogs were, after all, to be part of the picture? We have 3, of course.

We DEFINITELY don't want dogs.

Of course, our dogs were happy to get their wooden spoons out and stir this brew on Airy's behalf, climbing onto her lap and schmoozing Mazy up shamelessly. Time will tell on that one. It may take a while. The girls departed Thursday morning headed for Dublin Airport, where they needed to drop off the hire car by 1 pm. The remainder of their tour they will do sans car. Good luck you two and safe home. It was lovely having you.

That was it for visits in this burst. We now have a bit of a break till mid May when we get three more 'sets' of guests.

Between Visits

Apple blossom

Snow and hail showers come driving in today on a bitter northerly breeze to remind us that it's not quite summer just yet despite all the blossom and the blue-sky days. We are in "between visits" mode (If the gap between reigns is an interregnum, might this be an "inter-hospes"?) these couple of days having delivered Mum in Law home on Friday and expecting our UK guests (Mazy-Lou and Airy Fox) this afternoon. It is a chance to change all the beds and get a bit of laundry through and to spruce up the house a bit.

Not an easy picture but can you see the 'smoke' of pollen
top left which billows away from these black spruce (Picea
mariana) male flowers at this time of year. 

Meanwhile what counts for 'normal' life round here, goes on. The need to renew car insurance comes round again and this year the process in Ireland is mired in scandal and near-riot outrage as (all) the insurance companies hike rates by amounts that make the national news, fill the radio airwaves on chat shows and cause questions to be asked in "The House".

Car insurance renewal. 

Rates for most people have gone up way above inflation, in some cases by as much as 50% or even more than doubling. Friends with small cars and (touch wood) long clean licences and no-claims history are finding that their renewals cost €1200, up from an already hefty €450 last year. Well-meaning Brits are yelling "shop around!" The hikes are blamed by the industry on a surge in claims including mischievous calls for compensation for 'whip-lash' but we have heard that it is more likely that the industry is in the poo having invested heavily in a planned change to compulsory medical insurance. When that government initiative foundered, the insurance firms lost their shirts and are now having to "gouge" their existing captive market to recover.

Our Brian John Spencer "originals" now
nicely framed and on the landing wall.

What ever the story they have, between them (The industry, Government and news media) neatly accomplished an unprecedented and amazing feat. They have messed with my head so much with all the horror stories and anxiety, that I was actually relieved and delighted when I opened my own envelope and found that my increase was "only" 14% or €66. Yes. I actually did a goal-scorer, closed fist 'Yessssss!' I made a little comment to this effect to the FBD lady when I phoned to renew; I got the distinct impression she had had such 'feedback' before!

Wild Burrow gin available at Lidl eventually.

Also in the 'battling with suppliers' department this week a mildly more amusing and way less fraught scrap around gin. Now I'm not a great gin person but it is currently Liz's nip of choice so we always try to have in the house a bottle of the "house stuff" with fancier brands for special occasions. Lately that means Lidl supermarket's generic "Castlegy gin" for hum-drum and trips further afield for quality.

Sweet woodruff doing well here in a tractor-tyre.

A couple of weeks back Lidl were all over Facebook and Twitter promoting the fact that they we re-launching an older 'quality' brand (used to be "Rabbit Island") as "Wild Burrow". Great, we thought. I will pick some of that up at the next shop. However, while plenty of city folk came on social media having tried it and enjoyed it, our local branches never seemed to get any. We suspected that the much-publicised launch had only gone to the busier branches and that out here in the sticks, we had been left out.

Cherry blossom

Well, guys, if you are going to publicise it out here, then you have to be prepared for some Facebook and Twitter grumbling and bad publicity if you fail to deliver. I pinged off a series of 'tweets' and FB posts tagging @LidlIreland but to no avail until, we were amused to see, our new chum Senator Frank Feighan re-tweeted my comment. Did I now have official Senate backing for my campaign??? OK, I doubt it but hey, as if by magic, Wild Burrow gin suddenly arrived in our local Lidl. I thanked FF of course, but he just joked that he doubted if his R/T did any good but he was happy to support gin drinkers anywhere. Good Man Frankie!

Will our birds be allowed out any time soon after the
Avian Flu shenanigans? In the UK they already have the
all clear. 

And while we are tilting at windmills, we wonder whether the Ministry here in charge of agriculture will declare an 'all clear' on the Avian Flu thing any time soon. We note that in the UK, the Min of Ag have declared theirs. The feeling here is that the Irish are just waiting till their next review date, which would be 30th April.

Meanwhile a couple of bits of catch up. First up, the olde hen 'Enda' named in the last post did not pop her clogs that day and is still with us. She is quiet and sorry looking but she is alive and currently 'rooming' with poor aul' Doris, the hen mentioned in an even earlier post ( http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2017/03/the-quality-of-mercy.html ), the pair living in a redundant rabbit run with a cosy dark bedroom section.

Shopping for building materials again. Plaster (skim), skim-bead
and scrim tape. 

Last but not least, the play. Our Final Night (Saturday just gone) went brilliantly - maybe the best of the lot. The cast and crew played a blinder and were rowdily supported by a loud and enthusiastic audience. It was hugely well received over all and anyone involved is now riding a wave of kudos around the village. My part was small (moving furniture and opening/closing curtains) but even I got button holed in the pharmacy yesterday.... "It's your wife that did the play, isn't it? It was just BRILLIANT!" Indeed it was and all involved are very proud of what 'we' did.

Down-Sized Daggin'

After the relatively heavy duty, 'industrial' task of shearing and dagging the sheep, the 'medical team' here takes a marked, factor-of-ten (at least) move down the sizes to deal with a rabbit problem. Our fairly geriatric, ex-Silverwood, rabbit, Ginny, who has always been 100% healthy and fastidiously clean, came out of the wet, cold May with an odd fringe of fluff around her 'seat' and what looked like a dark shadow under her back end as she hopped away from you. It turned out that she was badly dagged up having, we guess, caught a dose of diarrhoea and not been able to keep herself clean.

Strawberry bed looking good and will soon be in need of
protection from the birds - wild and domestic.

She was a candidate for the Medical Wing, but so fine is her fur, so tiny were the actual lumps of 'dag' and so delicate the skin of a rabbit, that this was not a job for clippers or even big scissors. This was a two person job, one holding Ginny to keep her calm (me in this case), the other (Liz) using little 'nibbling' actions with the nail-scissors to cut away the wads of soiled fur. Ginny was as good as gold. If we were given to anthropomorphism we might even suggest that she volunteered for this help, coming to find us and then letting Liz just gather her up without any chase or a fight.

Well, we managed to cut away all the big stuff and decided to leave the last few flecks and her scut a few days while she got over the indignity, planning to give her a rear-end bath, shampoo and conditioner in a few days. We inspected the patient again today and she had done such a good job of cleaning up the rest, we let her off the bath, and just trimmed away that last scut fur. She is as good as new. Having her out of the apiary run gave us an opportunity to swap rabbits around. She is a small rabbit and now on her own, she had not really been keeping on top of the grass growth where as the 'giants', Goldie and Nugget have theirs grazed down "to the clay" almost.

Spuds (British Queen, new) doing well in the tunnel

So we rounded up those two and moved them to the apiary today. They can nibble off all the grass and creeping buttercup, and I will pull the last few stinging nettles. It is important in an apiary not to suddenly change the environment (for example by brush-cutting long stuff) as the bees can get their visual maps of the way home confused and can get lost. There is also an issue with vibration of, for example, chugging lawn mowers, which can cause a gazillion bees to come out of the hive to fend off the 'attack'. Rabbits are the perfect solution -they only change the grass height slowly and they are not a bother at all to bees.

New hive boxes, painted with linseed oil.

That swarm-lure box, meanwhile, still has bees visiting so, this long after the first visit, they can no longer be a swarm scouting for a new place to live. They must, by now, be a swarm which has moved in (Yay! free bonus bees!) all be it, we think from the small numbers, a secondary or 'cast' swarm, rather then a big, 10,000 bee 'prime' swarm. Next job then was to buy boxes for a 2nd hive and to think about getting the new colony down from the tree where I have optimistically lashed the lure box. Regular readers will know that the rule for moving bees is "fewer than 3 feet or more than 3 miles". Bees find their way home using a remembered mental map and if you move the hive more than 3 feet, they cannot adjust this. They just mill about at the old location till they run out of energy and then die. It is OK to move them 2 feet a day, they can cope with that. So to get them down from being tied to a tree ten feet up, I will have to lower them down against the ladder at 2 feet a day, till they are ground level, and then I can open the box and see if we have a colony worth giving a nice new home (hive) to.

A young Scots Pine from the 2014
'Million Trees' batch.

These boxes came from local Alladin's Cave emporium, where the guy has more out-buildings and sheds behind his main shop than anyone really needs - one for fishing tackle and (I saw) crossbows and archery gear, one for the salting operation of pork, one for the bee keeping equipment and so on. While I was ferreting around in there, I also rather nicely got the car washed - there was a gang of jet-wash people cleaning cars in support of the Castlerea Agricultural Show at a fiver a go. It's cleaner now than it has been since we came over here - I never wash our cars. It is a job, surely, for the Sunday Morning, English, striped lawns, semi-detached suburban Mr Jones crowd. One of my 'company' cars used to be so 'agricultural' inside that when a colleague borrowed it (they were owned by the employer so you had to allow them to be used as pool cars while you were on site) to nip out somewhere with another lad, he joked when he got back that he had had to tell the lad off for treading mud all over the carpark from my car. Yeah, yeah, Shane, very funny!

Starting to dig a new flower bed along the front of the house
from what was once lawn. 

Readers may recall that Liz and her gang of internet chat forum chums hold regular weekend meetings in 'real life' to socialise. They are scattered all over the globe, and the person who volunteers to host the weekend invites the friends to their town or city to get a flavour of local food, drink, culture and social life. They either troop round as a gang to chosen restaurants for joint meals or they are welcome to go off exploring (or jogging, walking etc) using the host's place (or recommended hotels and pubs) as a base. Late last year, you may recall. Liz nipped over to the UK to be part of one in Bridport, hosted by our friend 'Airy Fox'.

Vicarious Madrid via i-Phone, laptop, wine, dog and
warm fire. 

This weekend, some of these friends are in Madrid, where a British friend happens to be working and Liz was so recently back from Greece that she opted out, wanting to spend some time here. But these are, after all initially INTERNET friends and you cannot escape them that easily, so Liz has managed to spend the weekend enjoying Madrid vicariously and hearing all about it, regularly supplied with pictures of food, drink, Madrid's terracotta roof-scapes and fancy architecture. She is tongue-in-cheek pretending to be envious,so we sent 'them' this picture of Liz curled up next to an Irish turf fire out of last night's chilly northerly breeze.

Salt Cured and Air Dried

You will recall that we have been trying our hands at salt-cured and air-dried Tamworth pork meat, aiming for a 'pancetta' or 'prosciutto' type product which we could slice as thinly as possible and eat with, for example, melon as a starter or have in sandwiches or as a cold meat 'antipasti' style. For our pilot try we simply borrowed a couple of the 4 inch thick leg cuts and made a curing mixture to a recipe from a Newspaper website (Dan Leopard in the Telegraph, I seem to recall).,

New Year's Eve starter. Our own cure meat
with some (shop) melon.

The meat got salted for 4 weeks (a week per inch of thickness) and seemed to be firm and 'sweet' enough to us, so it then got 4 weeks hanging in a muslin bag in the spare room. With the radiator turned off and the loft hatch open, that's our coolest and driest room. We just had to spirit it all away and warm the room up for Airy Fox's visit in the middle, praying that it would not all go mouldy in the Tígín (which is much damper) in the mean time. It was potentially going to hang and dry for several months but the instructions say that you are aiming for 'firm' rather than rock hard.

The makings of another superb cake.

We gave it a feel on New Year's Eve and declared it firm enough, did the taste-test, quickly acquired a melon (putting the old, rusty 'Man from Del Monte' skills back to use!)  and put it on the menu as a starter before our Hogmanay-ish meal of home made haggis, our neeps, tatties and a rather fancy clementine and almond, choc-covered cake for pud. The pork was of good texture and taste, though maybe a wee bit salty, so that the "with melon" worked well. The sweet, juiciness of the melon met the salt and seemed to come to a happy compromise.

Polly (l) and Lily (r) on the front lawn.

Meanwhile, in the sheep department, four days on we are delighted with the new girls. They are already very tame and friendly; we are used to Kenny's much less frequently handled 'babies' who have taken at least 2 weeks before they will approach you and another 2 weeks before they would be 'baa'-ing for their supper and running up to you and your feed bucket. One of the last lot never did get as far as allowing me to stroke his head.

These ladies are 3 (Lily) and 5 (Polly) years old and have for all that time been almost pets round at Mayo-Liz's holding, so are well used to human contact, food coming from buckets and the idea of following people between fields and into pastures new. On the first day of being here, I went for a wander round the East Field to check the fences and the sheep came straight over to me and then followed me round as if I was taking the dogs for a walk - almost walking to heel. On my night 'patrols' with the dogs (on leads, obviously), when we wander past their gate, I hear the low 'almost grunt' of a tentative 'Baa'; one of the girls is trying it on to see if food might be available at 10 pm (!)

Fine looking, sturdy ewes. Lily (l) and Polly (r).

Today, then, I felt brave enough to 'shepherd' them from East Field to the front lawn, fenced off in 2014 to be a sheep field and save me the mowing. We do this by blocking the 'bad' exits a bit half-heartedly with terrace chairs, wheelie bins and a roll of sheep wire tied to a down pipe with a turn of baler twine - any self respecting sheep trying to do a runner would have no problems bursting out, but we trust these girls to stay calm, stay focused on me and go the right way from field to field, and so far they have.

That cake. The 'icing' is melted chocolate, butter and honey.
A bit of clementine 'zest' gets sprinkled on. This is Ottolenghi's
recipe, says Liz. 

After a few times we don't even bother with the blockages and the sheep dither about a bit and look longingly at the yard or the front drive, but at the rattle of a feed bucket and a whistle they turn back to the shepherd and follow diligently. The front drive, I should add hastily, does not imply the lane and freedom of the village - the gate at the end is always closed! As hastily, I need to re-assure you that these bucket feeds are of 'tit-bit' size. We must not over feed these lasses, we don't want any over-size lambs or fatty ..um.... 'exits' for them to pass through. Time enough for lashing them the extra rations when the ewes are feeding milk to any successful babies or those babies are weaning and growing. The professionals feed them up just pre-tupping so that they go to the tup in good and rising condition (this is called 'flushing') but then only feed to ensure healthy placenta and then lamb development and ewe health.

I guess that's it for the 'Season'. Tomorrow the decorations all come down, the fancy booze gets stacked away and the house returns briefly to 'dull' normality. Of course we quickly get acclimatized to this and start to feel the excitement of the coming Spring. 'Dull' does not last very long. I am already looking at how much weeding and cultivation I need to do, buying seeds and plants and getting the garden going again.

A Visit From Airy Fox

These slid down very nicely in Connemara
Picture by Airy.

Off to the Airy-port this morning to drop back off our house guest of the last few days, our good friend whom I will call, for the purposes of this blog, The Airy Fox, or 'Airy' for short. This visit was one of a string of drops for Airy who had come to us from one set of friends and was heading home to some family for the big day, then off to visit our other chum, Mazy in Kent and on and on. We had the pleasure of her company  from Saturday lunchtime round to today lunchtime and we thoroughly enjoy the chance to do 'host'; especially Liz loves the chance to do 'hospitality', bedroom, facilities, food, drinks.

Towser relaxes at 'tay'. Picture by Airy.

We both love the chance to show a newcomer this place, the livestock and garden and the local environs; we have the lovely scenic area of Connemara on our doorstep and two nice towns and lots of pubs in easy range. Obviously, if you are coming to 'the Wesht' in December then you should expect a bit of rain and the forecast promised that Saturday would be dry but that the rest of the stay would feature that local speciality 'soft days'. Roscommon does a type of rain which we never really saw in Kent, a heavy drizzle which falls on windless days. It is not "lashing down" or raining in any way which you'd call 'heavy rain' drumming on the roof or bouncing off the road, but it is quietly, insidiously, quickly and thoroughly wetting. Nothing we could do, of course, but get on with things where the soft day did not matter.

Another 'Airy' pic - fooling around at the 'Quiet Man' statue
in Cong village in Connemara. 

We try to be very relaxing hosts. We are happiest if the guest feels completely at home and not obliged to "do stuff" all the time. If they want to relax, do nothing, and read books then that is fine by us. 'Port in a Storm' is the effect we are aiming for, so no insistence on entertainment, busy-busy, worrying that people might be bored and certainly no forcing anyone to play Charades or what ever. Horrors! So, by mutual consent we settled on a little nip out to see a Craft fair / Farmer's Market on the Saturday afternoon, a trundle round Connemara on Sunday and a visit to Strokestown Park house and National Famine Museum on the Monday.

Airy's 'clever' camera can do these sepia
'monochrome' effects. This one she called
"Cosy Evening'

The Craft Fair went down OK and we found a nice pint of Guinness at Val's Bar just across the road. We came home to get fires going at both ends of the house so that we were all cosy for a lovely meal, drinks and chatting. Good food was a definite part of this visit; on Saturday we'd had home made soup and bread for lunch and supper was a lovely chicken curry, chickpea and pepper dip, carrot salad and a dessert of clafoutis. The Connemara mission suffered a bit from the all-day rain; with the low cloud shrouding the tops of the impressive mountains, so that full scale scenic photography was out. However, Airy loved the bits she could see - glimpses of hill side, impressive roadside outcrops, heather, swollen torrential streams and waterfalls and we were all amazed by the light.

Sticky toffee (date) pudding. The pudding rose so well that
there was no room in the dish for the sticky sauce, so Liz
served it separately. 

The cloud layer must have been a thin one and transparent enough that an intense light powered the oranges, russets and 'straw' colours of the Autumn vegetation to such a degree that you could believe that they were lit from beneath like an old fashioned colour-slide (transparency). It accentuated, too, the blackness of the lough water which was getting quite a 'chop' from the wind and had 'white horses' on its waves. You wouldn't have been able to do any of this justice with the camera, but we all agreed that we need to bring another chum of ours (Helbel) out there, who does weaving with a very sophisticated loom, and would definitely enjoy the combination of vibrant russet and orange, grey and darker colours.

Chilling with (l to r) Towser, Deefer and Poppy

The Strokestown Hall and Famine Museum were a real find - we'd not been before and we did not know what to expect from this famine-era "big house" not lived in since the 1980's and now owned by a transport company (the lorries are parked out of sight!) and also given to events like the current "Victorian Christmas Experience" (yoiks!). We did not time our visit very well as we arrived at the Museum with only 40 minutes to spare before the afternoon's guided tour of the house (after which we'd need to dash home before dark - this was Winter Solstice, the shortest day, dark by 16:30).

Langoustines or "Dublin Bay Prawns" if you prefer.

We had to whizz through the Museum a bit and didn't do it justice. It was fascinating if a bit 'awkward' learning more about the Famine while running into our own extravaganza of food and drink, Christmas! I am also a bit wary of reporting on anything to do with the Museum and the Famine, being a Brit, and a newcomer to these shores myself, but I will try to give you a flavour. The family who owned the house during the Famine were not the best landlords and were much hated in the village; one of them actually got himself assassinated, they used to sound a coach-horn as they were loading into their coach and horses, and the villagers had to run for cover back into their houses because the Pakenham/Mahons did not want to see the 'peasants' as they drove out of their gate in all their finery.

A fried breakfast for the final morning
of the visit.

The local Catholic leaders managed to build 2 new church buildings during the worst years and had 3-day parties to celebrate them being completed and opened, while thousands died in the streets and village of hunger. The Family kept copious records and accounts of estate transactions at the time, rents collected and defaulted, evictions, wages paid to Estate workers (including many Irish, obviously) and the winners and losers, and this excellent archive of documents has survived through to today, hence the siting of the National Famine Museum in that estate. Historians in the present day do a lot of hours researching this treasure and what they publish can make uncomfortable reading - the accepted truths, the good guys and bad guys do not always turn out to be those expected. We will definitely be returning to the museum when we have more time.

Exhibit A.

The "Victorian Christmas Experience" was all gone away and packed up (mercifully) when we arrived (it must have been a Saturday or morning-only thing). Santa's "car" (an ancient Talbot) was parked in the rain, his sleigh was vacant and a few sorry beads of fake (soluble) snow were being washed into the drains by the drizzle. We had an excellent guided tour of the house to ourselves by 'John' who had an easy, amusing manner and a fund of well practised knowledge. The house is full of the original furniture, toys and equipment, threadbare carpets and time-worn wall coverings which was used by the last resident, Olive (88) as she slowly went broke, selling off the original (priceless) paintings and replacing them with fakes and copies which try (and fail) to cover the darker patches where the original frames had protected the walls from sunlight. The feature which caught our attentions most was undoubtedly the huge 'galleried' kitchen

(http://www.strokestownpark.ie/house)

with its bread ovens, spit roasters and smokers. Apparently the 'toffs' did not want to actually speak to the servants, so they'd come to the gallery and lower menus and recipes down on a string to the staff working below, or simply bring the guests to come and watch the work like some kind of spectator-sport! This (kitchen) had been boxed in (luckily without being ripped out!) by the end so that the old lady had only one servant and a tiny kitchen built within the old galleried room. It is worth a look and we will be back to that one too. Mazy will love it,

Well, all good things must come to an end, and we had to feed Airy our 'traditional' last breakfast before taking her to the airport and bidding her farewell. Guests always seem to enjoy our 'fries' and they feel well set up for avoiding airline fodder and the long wait till they can get to a proper kitchen again. I hope she won't mind me saying she was a real joy to 'have'. Thank you, Airy. We meant it when we said you could have stayed Christmas if you'd fancied it and you will be most welcome back when you come back; perhaps we will pick a less rainy day to try Connemara, next time!

A nice Stilton at last!

Meanwhile, just one complaint about Christmas. We like a good Stilton in this house and at Christmas we are happy to pay the extra and buy one of those ceramic lidded 'jars' which hold the cheese, sometimes under a white wax airtight plug; you lift the plug to let the air at the (white) cheese and allow the blue veining to develop at room temperature, in time for Christmas. Lidl supermarket's "Long Clawson" brand seemed just the ticket; I was sure I could remember Long Clawson as being a reliable, good quality name. Apparently not. What they call 'Stilton' is not a hard cheese at all, but a Stilton flavoured soft spread, as if the cheese has been whisked or beaten, creamed or abused some other way to make it spread-able and softer than baby food! I feel there should be a regulation making sure that this gets described as 'creamed' or some-such. Luckily, I was bemoaning this fact on Facebook and not one but two of our friends happen to live within a stone's throw of REAL Stilton country, home of "Cropwell Bishop Creamery" and other proper manufacturers of good cheese. One of these (Thank you, Sarah) offered to rescue us from cheesy hell by posting us a pot of the good stuff and this duly arrived, safe and sound this (Tuesday) morning courtesy of Ireland's wonderful postal system, 'An Post'.

Well, this is likely the last post I write before the big day, so please all my readers have a brilliant and memorable Christmas. Good Luck, Now.