The Admin System Creaked....

Another egg from 'Laundry-Pile' hen

John's weapon of choice, my Old Father Time scythe. 'Cigar'
whet-stone in his pocket, these nettles don't stand a chance

A shorter post this time as befits the fact that I should be spending more time with our guest, good friend from Kent, John W. He is with us till Thursday and shows every sign of loving the slow-paced rhythm of life here, the 'plod' of gardening and the chances to relax, walk the dogs, eat good food and quaff a few beers or sip on a nip of Kilbeggan.

We finally open up some lovely clean ground
and get a load of long overdue seedlings in.
Here kale, chard and calabrese.

Some of the time I have been working with him but some I am off in another part of the site doing something else and we just cross paths then on coffee breaks or at lunch. Then we'd be off on an errand or a mission, shopping or whatever and he was happy to come along and get a look at the local area.

John contemplates a meal of duck in Guinness sauce

On Monday this ended up being more than once, as we are currently trying to get a replacement driving licence sorted for Liz. The local licencing office may be good at many things but it is not firing on all cylinders when it comes to the unusual request by a returning Irish citizen who has lost an English licence while in Belfast and now needs an Irish licence. Add to that the fact that this lady has changed her name on marriage from her maiden name to mine but VIA, on some forms, using a double-barrelled combination of both.

The admin system creaked mightily as we tried to prove that UK-Liz and Roscommon-Liz are one and the same even though both looked identical in their pictures and had identical signatures. At one stage the clerk even asked if it would help if she took a copy of a cervical smear appointment letter (?). In the end, after 3 runs to Roscommon (an hour round trip each time) that day we sorted it with a Marriage Certificate but even that the girl had a long reluctant look at "from corner to corner", as Liz said. Now we just have a 12-week wait (!) for the document/card to appear in the post. Don't hold your breath.

If anyone is reading this blog and dreaming of making the move out here, like we did, then I would offer the following short list of advice 'bullet' points.

New tiles for the kitchen. The mark on the
middle one is just tile-dust we'd not yet
swept off. 

• Don't change your name on marriage (taking your husband's name) and certainly not via a hyphenated combination of both names.
• File in a special file examples of utility bills in your chosen surname for both your old address and your new - don't let your husband pay all the bills or do all the admin and leave you with no inbound letters bearing your name. 
• Keep your passport and book all flights, car hire etc in your 'old' name. Also sign onto doctors, dentists and anything else in that name. 
• If you have to attend any interview like this then take your passport, PPSN card, any other 'smart card' with photo ID, marriage cert etc but probably NOT your letter of appointment for a cervical smear test.
• Don't lose your driving licence in Belfast. 
• Drink plenty of tea or maybe some gin.
• Be prepared for a 12 week wait anyway.  

In the middle of all this, our heroic builder-man, K-Dub, rocked up, first to cement in the step from one kitchen to the other, covering in the dish-washer waste and then to tile the kitchen floor.  He also created the step down from new kitchen to garden out of doors. The latter new cement was immediately walked on by chickens and kittens and I was thinking about painting in these prints to show them up, but heavy rain came and obliterated the prints. We (mainly K-Dub) did a really good job on this and it now really only needs grouting, skirting, 2nd-fix electrics and paint to finish the room.

Duck in Guinness sauce. 

So what else is new? The only real notable event was today nipping across to Sue and Rob's place so that they could meet John  and so that I could help/show them how to butcher up the carcass of their 'failed' ram lamb, Silas.

Silas gets reduced to kit form.

Friends of the Blog will know that that lad, orphaned and bottle fed from birth never made the size and stature of a ram capable of getting anyone's ewes pregnant and scored a big fat zero in our flock as well as in Sue's, where he has lived as 'man and wives' for his whole life excluding Nov and Dec 2016 when we borrowed him.

The amateur butchers cut out a shoulder joint

Well, it's a rough, tough world in smallholdering, Silas, and having blotted your copy-book with a nil score you then turned aggressive towards Sue and started butting her hard when ever she went into the field. Well, long story short, he went on that short trailer ride to Webb's in town and came home today in kit form. Most of him is now in the freezer but they kept a shoulder joint out for tomorrow's roast. Happy to help, Sue and Rob, and thanks for the sausage rolls and fresh (poly-tunnel) strawberry gateaux.

Nice tall fox gloves in our woods.

Well, now we sit this evening looking a bit anxiously at the sky. The ewes here have now enjoyed 2 days without rain and if we stay dry we can shear them tomorrow. John will be able to help, which he is quite looking forward to. But it has gone quite 'close' and some grey clouds are cruising through, so this plan may founder. Wish us luck.

Sausage and apple pie.

Star Gazing

The '3rd Quarter' moon passes within 3º of Jupiter on the
night of the 18th/19th Jan

One of the nicest surprise 'bonus' gifts we received on moving here were the crystal clear night skies and the chance to look at the gazillion stars we had never seen from Kent. No air pollution and no light pollution mean we can regularly see the Milky Way and ever since we were building this place and living in the caravan in 2012 we have been coming back indoors and breathlessly telling each other that "Wow! It is a night of a million stars out there!"

A '365' pic of the church looking fine in the slanting morning
sunshine

I have always been a bit interested in star gazing. Regular readers might recall that I fried the mother board of my last camera while trying to take repeated long-exposure shots of the Perseid meteor shower. A good friend of mine in Kent, John W, may have known this when he advised Santa to send me a brilliant book, the Collins/Royal Observatory Greenwich 2017 Guide to the Night Sky.

Clearing the local river

This is a lovely little paperback in full colour packed with maps, 'artist's impressions', charts and other graphics but is specific to the sky as seen from London. That is close enough; they all work. I have had some fun with it just knowing what the moon will be doing and what events are due. The moon was very closely aligned to Jupiter, for example, on the morning of 19th and on the 24th passes very close to Saturn. Next item on the shopping list is a half decent telescope.

We have muscari coming into flower.

Meanwhile, closer to home and working with a different group of 'stars', Liz has another project under way. This is this year's village play, due to hit the stage on Easter week. The play, 'Cupid Wore Skirts' was written by Sam Cree (who also wrote some 'Carry On' stuff) in the 60's  and was originally set in Northern Ireland in the 50s. The gang here have tweaked it into the 80s and moved it South to the Republic but with very few changes.

Director Tom C advises the actors how to deliver a problem
line

Last year, Liz got involved in theory as "prompt", sitting in the side backstage and watching progress of the dialogue like a hawk, whispering in reminders when ever anybody faltered or got lost. They described the role as "Continuity"  but she ended up doing all manner of other support tasks involving admin, tickets, costume adjustments, props and so on. The whole team thoroughly enjoyed themselves, the play was a huge, sell-out success and the Lisacul Players were back up and running after a gap of a few years.

Pussy Willow

This year, Liz is 'hired' as Assistant Director, so she will probably being doing exactly the same list of tasks as before, this being Amateur Dramatics where everybody does everything anyway. I went along last night just to watch them rehearsing and to take a few pics. I am the (unofficial) photographer. It is early doors at present, so the actors are all 'walking the boards' armed with scripts and Director (Tom C) dives in occasionally to get them to move in different directions or change their hand gestures or expressions. It is going to be quite a ride. Good luck to the whole team.

Rhubarb emerging.

Other than that, we continue to chug gently into Spring with some lovely, calm, blue sky days and some lovely sunsets.

Some lovely sunsets

Snow drops just starting

And here

Your basic tortilla.

Poros and Portmarnock

We can now reveal that Diamond has got married to the main man John W on Poros Island in Greece back a couple of Thursdays ago, on the 6th. Of course we knew this was going on but we were sworn to secrecy. We have just been up to Portmarnock, Co.Dublin to collect Mum back from her 10 days in Greece supporting Diamond as "koumbara" (a combination of Lady in Waiting, Chief Bridesmaid and Sponsor in the Greek Ceremony, even in the 'Civilian Version'.

Anyone who knows Diamond will know that she takes almost every 'foreign' holiday on this same Island and has done ever since she was a 27 year old and was taken there by her Mum. She is so regular that she seems to now know everyone on the Island and is like family to many of them. She never sits in the ordinary touristy bits of cafés, but is always gathered up and taken to where the family eat. Most of the guys who are now café owners, she has bounced on her knee in nappies when their Fathers owned the place and many of the men she knew back then are now ancient and venerable or have passed away. One old girl living up in the hills in among the lemon groves is blind and still being looked after up there by her 84 year old Brother in Law. (Please correct me on this Diamond if I have any of it howlingly wrong)

 Mum has been there for the last few years with Diamond and was introduced around as Diamond's best friend, so is now also accepted and John W more recently. It's probably true to say that Diamond has more and closer friends on Poros than she does in the UK and certainly there are more 'out there' who she'd choose to have present on such a special occasion. So it was almost a 'given' that when Diamond accepted John's proposal, that the Ceremony would take place on Poros. The happy couple had to do a load of official stuff in the UK first, to obtain permission to do the deed in Greece but, that done, they booked flights and let the locals know what was going on. Mum flew out on Tuesday 4th, with Dad driving her to the airport in Dublin. We live 20 minutes from Knock Airport but there were no cheap flights to be had to Athens, so Dublin it was and the 5 hour round trip for Dad

Since then, of course, we have been holding the fort here while all the wedding plans were coming to fruition in the Med. Amusingly we had the job here too of 'sharing' the story including the attached picture of the cake. The locals do not really do English, and their alphabet is, anyway, the Greek one which doesn't use use the ABC but rather the Alpha to Omega, "Bicameral" script, derived from Cyrillic (said this dog, quoting widely from Wikipedia) so we were amused by their use of the 'b' instead of 'd' in the cake icing. Happy Webbing, Diamond and John!

And so, home came Mum and we were off to collect her from Portmarnock. She'd got into Dublin Airport in the middle of the night, so Steak Lady had collected her and given her a bed for the rest of the night. Our job had been to collect her the following morning, driving up from here via a nice leg stretch and walk along Portmarnock Beach. Steak Lady fed Mum and Dad with a superb roast chicken dinner with salmon pasta starter and a goodly cheese board. There was loads of chicken left over so we dogs (myself and the 3 Yorkies, Rosie, Tutenkhamen and Rameses) piled in.

Now we're all home and Mum says she feels like she's "First Day Back at School" going mad cleaning and blitzing. No reflection, she says, on the way Dad has looked after the place while she's been gone..... We are not so sure.

Deefs