Farewell Clara Bow

Clara Bow cleaned up for inspection by potential buyers

Readers of my previous post will recall that I alluded to a "hard decision and a life-changing move" described in this one. If you've been anywhere near my Facebook or Twitter feeds you will know by now that this referred to a decision to sell, at last, the 2CV, my precious, loved and cherished friend of 13 years. It was quite a wrench; not quite losing an arm, but up there somewhere in 'momentous'. She has been a big part of my life, a major hobby, maybe a part of my identity; certainly more than "just a car".

Back in the UK, 13 years ago when we first bought the car, she had the UK registration of C 692 BOW and was quickly named "Clara Bow" after the 20's Hollywood silent-film starlet and party animal. If you can recall any of those flickery black and white films of damsels being tied down to railway lines by the villain and rescued in the nick of time, then that damsel was quite often Clara Bow. Her story since then has featured many times on this blog, adventures to far away (or not so far) 2CV Club camping events and 'rallies' but for the last 2 years she has languished in our car port on a SORN (Statutory off road notice) ticket.

I had struggled to get her through the emissions part of the Irish 'NCT' (MOT) test and got fed up with spending the €55 NCT fees (and €28 re-tests) so that by the time I sent the carb off for a complete re-con (€240) I had already decided that I would SORN her to save the tax (€199) and insurance (€400+). We were sure to find something else to spend the cash on, like fencing, livestock feed and similar. She had become an expensive hobby too far. I nursed a vague plan that if the law in Ireland ever changed (ha!) to make this 29 year old bus a "vintage" or "classic" it might be exempt from emissions tests and tax.

Off she goes with someone other than me at the wheel

Black mark for the insurance boys here, by the way. Readers may know different but we could find no insurer willing to cover a car older than 15 years at more than Third Party. We use FBD for the house and for the Fiat and they are problem free and excellent BUT would not play ball on the 2CV. Not even 'Fire and Theft' and certainly no fully comp. Even the 3rd Party premium was €400+. There was no sign of the cosy discounts I had used in the UK (Thank you "Footman James"!) for agreed car value and for limited mileage all agreed through the car club.

Disappearing down the lane and out of my life. 

Ah well, to cut a long story short, selling used cars here is commonly via the huge, on-line classified ads website DoneDeal.IE. You assemble a wee collection of photos of the car including detail shots of not-rusty foot wells, 'new' carburettor, clean tidy engine bay, sound chassis etc and upload them with an honest description of the car and the asking price. My ad quickly accumulated 400+ views and more than a dozen 'saves' and the same evening 3 buyers who wanted to come look. These included a couple of lads from west Cork, a 4 hour drive away!

The car actually sold to a man from Moate, down near Athlone (1.5 hours) who came up to look, decided it was good enough to be drive-able (I was cautioning use of a trailer/transporter or at least an 'A' frame or tow rope in case) and then came back yesterday with a garage-man chum who had green trade plates and could drive it legally (apparently!) even though it was untaxed, un-tested, uninsured (by me) and SORN'd. He checked it over, dribbled a bit more oil in, emptied a gallon of fuel into her from a handy Jerry-can, tested the lights and happily hopped in, keen to get going with my buyer in convoy in a very nice, new, big Citroen saloon (new DS?). My bloke handed over the cash (and, of course I gave him his "luck money" in return by local tradition) and we signed the paperwork and off they went. It was lovely to hear that unmistakable engine note 'fart' off down the lane and I was very envious that it was the garage guy about to enjoy the hour and a half drive back down to Moate, not me. Ah well.

A final view as Clara disappears over the brow.

So now I am one of those people who "used to own a 2CV" and when I look out of the kitchen window, there is no longer that blue, familiar 'nose' pointing back at me from the car port. I must comfort myself knowing that at least now I can replace the 'big' camera and buy some archery gear without it costing anything (ish). Also I have solved that niggling guilt thing that a 2CV should be out on the road giving that superb driving pleasure to someone. It should not be a museum piece gathering dust in someone's barn. Well, now mine, I hope, will. Enjoy her, man from Moate. He was good enough to text me later that day to say that they had got the car safely and seamlessly home and it was now resting in his garage. A garage? Luxury. Clara will not know herself!

(Officially) Off the Road

Well, the year rolled round and the belovéd 2CV finally ran out of tax, so we had to make our unwillingness to battle against the 'machine', official. We want the car to stay registered in this country, so we had to submit a "Statutory Off Road Declaration" promising that we will not use, park or stray at all on the public highway. This stands for 12 months after which time you have to re-new it.

Nectaroscordum.

My hope beyond hope is that the rules around classic/vintage cars will change and exempt the car from the NCT, specifically on the emissions bit which I repeatedly failed. The cut-off is currently fixed at 1980 registrations (mine's 1986). The UK recently changed to a rolling '30 years old' so that, yes folks, even the Morris Marina and Austin Allegro are now "classics" (yep, square steering wheel and all!). Till then the 2CV is an untaxed farm vehicle used for hauling trailers full of tree branches about within the small holding but not allowed on the road.

Pirate the Cat. Sorry about the rubbish picture. 

We MAY have acquired a new cat. We are being visited by a starving stray who is not in the best of health. We have not yet been able to get a hold of this cat and have a good look, but he/she seems to be very manky around the ears, may have a sunken, useless eye and is definitely very thin and undernourished. I am not going to expand on where these cats come from and the animal abuse and neglect by some folk locally; this is neither the forum nor the method. This one though was born locally and is now haunting the area in search of food. Liz  hates to think of the poor mite starving and has started putting food down for him. His one eye and his stealing of our own cat's food (we wondered why the cats here were "suddenly eating their bowls of food right down to the last scrap") got him the name "Pirate".

First 2014 produce - broad beans and radishes.

We now put our own cat bowls outside, topped up with more meat out of the tin, at about 9 pm and sure enough, he slinks in and polishes it all off. Sometimes the dogs are awake and they detect him and bark. Other times he is a stealthy and secret as can be, and he gets away with it. Our plan is to feed him up so he is strong enough to fight off some of "what ails him" and possibly get him tame enough to accept being handled, when we will be able to get the vet, Aoife, to have a good look round him.

George Junior at 4 weeks, looking a bit more goose shaped.

Maybe one day he will join our existing 'pride'. He can be no more than 6 months old. He did not get a lot of numbers in the feline lottery of life. We know that one of his siblings was hit by a car in the lane and that 4 more may have been trapped in mink traps and shot by a farmer. It is not a barrel of laughs being an stray cat in this part of the world. The poor picture is because he is so nervous at the moment that he scoots as soon as we appear, so the pic was taken through the (closed) kitchen window.

The keet gang, hatch plus 8-9 days. A bit of fresh air.

The keets continue to thrive. At day 7, it was so warm in the spare room, that we took them "off heat"; i.e. we turned off the IR lamp and then with day temperatures up in the 17-19 degree range we decided to try them out of doors, out in the sunshine on our front lawn on some genuine grass. They do OK. They tend to patrol around the run a as a close-knit group of 11 birds, steering clear of patrolling cats and visiting the food bowl as a Rugby scrum.

Monkey flower (Mimulus luteus) in the pond.

Who-ever finds the best bit of shredded lettuce first then zooms off with it pursued by the others, so we have the amusing sight of 11 keets zooming about the place in a wing-flapping charge. There are plenty of other bits of lettuce in the bowl, but the one that your 'mate' has got is way more attractive! We have a nice chunk of 'waste ground' between the Primrose Path and the East Field where we can build these guys a run 30 feet long by about 6' by 6'. They should enjoy 'zooming' around that. Tonight we are promised a warm night, so we have actually put them to be in the 'bedroom' bit of the rabbit run outside, with a bit of plywood blocking up the opening. We reckon then will be warm, dry and cosy enough in there in their 'huddle' and not need to be indoors any more.

The pigs? They are well settled now and we have found a food that they love and use as a treat - apple! They have got used to us and our routine. They come piling out of the ark and up to the fence when I approach, calling "Pig Hoo-ey!" (see PG Wodehouse for details), giving my two-tone whistle and tapping my plastic beaker (= food scoop) on the top of a post. They love the pig nuts, and the apple cut into 8 segments (like a Terry's chocolate orange)
and (lately) some chunks of tomato. I was amazed by the delicacy of their nibbling and chewing.

Brought up on all the old clichés of snouts in the trough etc, I was expecting them to hoover up food with a noise like a waste-disposal. Not these delicate ladies. They carefully select a segment of apple and then nibble small chunks out of it, chewing each piece rather squelchily like a child who has been told to chew it all 40 times before they swallow. Takes them AGES to eat an apple. We have been feeding them in an old cat litter tray but now it seems that they have taken to squabbling over the food. One 'claims' the food and stands over and in it, eating their share and defending the rest of the food with the rest of their body, manouvring their flanks to shoo the other girl off, till the other nips round to the other side and head-butts them in the midriff to get back in. We have now bought them a bowl each and that seems to have sorted that out. It is hard to believe that we have only had them a week. They have grown so much - It would not be so easy to tuck one under each arm now for a repeat of last Thursday's post picture!

Foxgloves.

The only other live-stock news is that Squawk, our remaining Marans hen seems to have moved in with the other girls. The Marans ladies had had their own house since they arrived but the sister 'Bubble' expired of old age (as far as we could tell) last week and she has now given up the solitary life and joined the bulk of the hens in the concrete out-building. This is good - it frees up the wooden house; we wish the Hubbard poults would do the same.

Meanwhile, another story which I cannot go into any detail on, so I shouldn't even be mentioning it here, but here is a pic of Deefer celebrating a medical 'all-clear' with a glass of Prosecco. Life goes on.

Keeping in Touch

SB Cambria; Picture by Susan Martin

Naturally. 99% of our time these days is taken up with the 'new life', the farm, the livestock, the new place and our new friends and acquaintances. Every now and then, though, our 'old life' gets a look in and we are staying in touch with some of our old Kentish interests and contacts. One of the biggest ones for me in those days, as you'll know from reading this blog, was the restoration of the Thames Sailing Barge S.B.Cambria. During the 3 and a half year restoration I was heavily involved as a working volunteer but also described all the adventures by writing the blog on their website which started as a quite modest affair managed by a small family firm based in the Kent town of Sandwich.

Well, now the restoration is complete and the barge relaunched and back on the water operating as a proper company on a charity basis. The website was moved from the Sandwich team to a bigger provider company called 'Blue Ant' based in Faversham and at the same time, I was asked to take over the management of the site content as well as continuing to write the blog and, more recently, Liz and I have also been asked to take over the production and writing of the 3-times-a-year Newsletter. The website

( http://www.cambriabargecharter.co.uk/ )

is quite a big and full one with many pages which are quite time-sensitive; there is a calendar, and there are pages entitled 'recent events' or 'future plans' all of which go out of date if you are not in there fairly frequently re-writing them and you need to keep posting new pictures so that the site stays fresh to any 'surfer' coming back for another look. I've put in a good few hours lately re-writing chunks of this, updating pictures and writing blog posts. Liz and I have also spent the time needed in producing the January 2014 Newsletter which will be published soon and I will post a link here to that. Obviously all the real work is happening 500 miles away in Kent, so this has to be done at a distance but in these days of the internet, digital pictures and e-mail this makes little difference except that I am heavily reliant on the locals to take the pictures and feed me the stories. It keeps me out of mischief.

Not starving with Liz away. Lamb chops and Cajun roast veg

Welcome back to Liz who has been away for the week ministering to the poorly Mrs Silverwood and wrangling children on school runs, taxis to Karate and baton twirling. She has been supervising them though homework and cooking fridges full of future foods to keep the family going while Mrs S, now home from hospital and mixing interesting cocktails of three drugs with long names, continues to recover. Liz is exhausted, she says, and takes her hat off to all the 'real' Mums who do this kind of thing as a full time job, not just for the one week. On the Saturday , Steak Lady (and Mr SL) rode in like the cavalry to relieve Liz and unloaded from their car, catering quantities of the type of high class 'ready meals' that the Portmarnock folk sometimes use for dinner parties when they do not want to cook, huge trays of top-of-the-range lasagna, chicken curry, cottage pie, stuffing them into Mrs S's fridge till it cried "Enough!". There was even a chocolate cake for us - Thanks Steak Lady! The relief effort work there was done and, after one more round of taxi-ing to karate and baton twirling, Liz could drive home.

Assembling the flat pack hive.

Of course, I miss her being around but I keep myself pretty busy coping with the 'farm' on my Jack Jones and there is always plenty of food stacked up in our own fridge and freezer and I am a pretty good cook, so I cope fairly well. My speciality at present is roasted veg seasoned with Cajun seasoning - I use our own, huge, sweet parsnips, onions and (shop) tomatoes and butternut squash, as well as sometimes including our own Mira spuds roasted alongside the veg. In the case above, there were also our own sprouts and lamb cutlets. Delicious.

Clara climbs up the ramp from yard to cattle race.

I also fired up the poor, neglected 2CV and took her for a quick blat a few times round the house, through the yard and up through the cattle race just to make her feel a bit loved, to get the oil circulating, some fresh petrol into the carb, the brakes freed up and wiped clean of rust and the suspension moving about. She is actually off the road at the moment and will be put on a Statutory Off-Road Notice (SORN) in May, a month before her current tax expires. The tax was only €99 (it goes by engine size here) but it will be nice not to have to pay the insurance. The latter always annoyed me - it seems that in Ireland you cannot insure a car that is more than 15 years old, for more than 3rd Party, not even fire and theft. If I damaged her or she caught fire or was stolen I would just be taking a 100% loss on the chin. She's not worth a great deal, but with an NCT would probably get you €1000. In the UK you could at least get a fully comp deal on a pre-agreed value (the national 2CV club would do an estimate for the insurers) and a limited mileage (I only ever did 2-3000 miles per year). I will be happy to not have to pay our Irish insurer for that one.

Egg glut

The geese and chickens are now cranking out record amounts of eggs each day; sometimes I have had 2 goose and 8 chicken eggs. Even one of the Marans girls has come back into lay (Bless 'em, they have got to be 6 years old at this stage!) That's a lot more eggs than I either can eat or palm off on neighbours when I am here on my own, so Liz returned to something of a glut, a dozen in the 'posh' box plus 5 goose eggs and a good 9 chicken eggs in the overflow bowl. That called for a blast of baking to use some up, so the table is now groaning with home made lemon curd (lovely and sharp, the way we like it, made with un-waxed, organic lemons), home made mayonnaise, blackberry 'clafoutis' (posh tart), sponge cake and Liz's famed 'chilli, cheese and bacon biscuits'. We also foisted some eggs on Carolyn (K-Dub is back from his motorbiking Bavarian Forest 'Elefant' adventure and it is little H's 2nd birthday soon, so she's baking too) so the glut is looking a lot less glut-like now.

Fancy a stroll down the Lane, Henry? Why not, Min?

Meanwhile, the Guineas seem to have temporarily given up on their wanderings down the tarmac lane (the picture here was taken while I rounded them up and shoo'd them back into the drive one more time) but only because Henry has managed to hurt his right leg and is limping. Poultry tend to be famous for either being fully fit, or dead, with only very quick 'sick' intervals between. Each work-a-day bird is also usually only worth a few Euro. Hence few poultry keepers call the vet to their hobby birds and most vets, anyway, have little experience of fowl. We tend to try to isolate them, keep them quiet, ensure they have food and water and hope for the best. They either fall off the perch or perk up, problem solved either way. We cannot see any obvious cause on Henry, so we think he has pulled a muscle higher up his leg, or bruised himself, maybe in the hip, knee or 'ankle' joint.

Recent damp has put green algae on our Kentish
fallow deer antlers. But look at that blue sky!

Guinea fowl also tend to be very strongly pair-bonded, always scurrying about on foot as a pair. If they ever get separated then they call anxiously to one another and this can be quite loud. Henry's injury has slowed him up a bit, so Min takes off at the usual sprint and poor H is left behind. There is a lot of noisy calling till they can be re-united. But he does get about, hopping along favouring the poorly leg in a new characteristic bounding gait. We fancy that each day he seems to be slightly better; we hope this isn't just wishful thinking. He is not, anyway, getting any worse, so we live in hope that he will recover and go back to aggressively running at all the hens to drive them off and secure the food for his 'Min'. The thought occurs that he may have got injured by trying this on with one of our roosters and been taught a lesson by them.

But, some days are definitely 2-yolk days and Saturday was one of them, with Liz having a problem free 2 hour run up the roads and motorway from the Silverwood's to here, home in time for 'wine o'clock'. It is good to have her back. This place works so much better with 2 of us knocking it into shape and enjoying the fruits (and veg's!) of our labours. Thank you Mrs S for allowing her to come home. Get well soon and enjoy all that 'sugo', cock-a-leekie soup, chicken curry, lasagna and cottage pie.

Not with a Bang but a Whimper

Mademoiselle (left) and Clara Bow (right).

As I write this, the minute hand on my watch is chugging gently through 15:35 pm when I should have been anxiously handing my 2CV in to the NCT testing station in Carrick on Shannon for its 4th run up the testing lane 'sausage machine', its carburettor serviced and pouring a perfect mixture of petrol and air onto the spark plugs, its exhaust emissions compliant and the tester man fanning himself on my signed and stamped police form allowing my car to carry the registration it carries.

A 2CV camp at Preston, near Canterbury in 2010

Instead I am sitting typing this. The car languishes in the garage in Balla D, the carburettor sent off to a specialist despite my request that the garage do nothing if they could not guarantee to get my car back to me for today and the 2 guys at the garage (Father and Son) who are the only ones who seem to know anything about "these old cars" are in America playing at Kart Racing, mechanicking for the Ireland team in some international Karting race meeting.

J-M (left) and Em-J in Mademoiselle

This point, 2 tests and 2 re-tests down, plus a goodly amount of money spent on fixes I had already set in my mind as the end of the road for my 2CV-ownership hobby. It's been a great ride and an enjoyable period, over ten years as 'officially mine' and three years before that when it was registered to Liz (long story involving £2 sterling and 5 David Austin roses!). We have some great fun with the car as well as some misadventures, been to 2CV club camps all over the place including Kelso Castle and we've taken her to France a couple of times too. As I said though, always a hobby vehicle rather than a day to day 'proper' car and funded as such. It was always a cheap sustainable hobby when I was in Kent because I could call on my ace fixer, 2CV Llew who, for a small fee could always get it through MOTs, gearbox changes, body-part swaps and so on.

Ireland though, is a different kettle of fish. Nobody owns 2CVs here so there are no Llews to call upon. My local garage have done very well but the NCT is a much stricter test than the MOT and all parts have to be sourced from the UK. So we brought the car over with us intending to keep it running as long as we realistically could but now its time is up. When the carb comes back from the specialist, the garage will refit it to the car and I will drive it back here, park it up and officially take it off the road on a SORN notice. I am sad but resigned. A bit relieved too, if I'm honest and pleased that the stress of all this battling with garages and anxiously taking it for NCTs is over. A weight lifted.

So, as of about now, when the test would have finished, I am the owner of an NCT failure 2CV which may soon be perfectly repaired and able to sweep through an NCT (No! Don't go there! That way madness lies!) and, as it happens, half a 1961, 425 cc, 6 volt electrics 2CV known as Mademoiselle d'Armentieres which lives in Kent, so I can't get at that one either. I am not sure what the future holds. The rules around cars being 'vintage' or old enough to be exempt from NCT have currently frozen on "cars registered on or before 1980" (they are not rolling annually). I can drive it within the 'farm', of course and could even teach the nieces to drive on it, or I could put it up on good old 'Donedeal' and try to sell it. We'll see. Currently I am contemplating cracking open the Prosecco I bought on a "Win or Lose, have a Booze" basis and getting used to being someone who used to have a 2CV. I apologise for borrowing TS Eliot's much over-used final line for my header - his was a serious poem about the post 2nd WW world, not some classic car owning hobby. Look on the bright side. I nearly went down Auden's "Stop all the clocks... prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone" road.

Rest in Peace, 'Clara' for the moment. You were an excellent and respected friend. I will miss being able to drive you about.

Day 84. A Good Day to Die?

Hubbard chickens at Day 83

For our Hubbard variety chickens, tomorrow is Day 84 from hatching. In the cut and thrust, hard nosed world of commercial free-range and/or organic meat production, this would be the target slaughter date; game over. Hubbards are the variety now widely used in Ireland for this type of system produced in commercial hatcheries (in this case one up by the Northern Ireland border) in their hundreds of thousands and sold to growers as day old chicks. They are then kept in conditions which pass (maybe only just) the minimum standards of welfare and feed to earn a 'Free Range' or 'Organic' certification to produce a big breasted, broad chested, heavy looking but still tender, oven-ready carcass. Even a small amount of research will tell you that 'Free Range' here does not quite mean happy chickens scratching in the sunny farmyard; these are still fairly intensive, crowded systems in which feeding is closely controlled and, although chickens must have 'access' to the run outside, they do not necessarily get out much.

Our 'Mini-Buffs'. 2 hens or one of each?

We got our birds on August 1st (as day olds), you will recall, mainly in order to give Broody Betty something to 'mother' when we took away 'her' ducklings. We took 8 of a batch collected by Anne and Simon from the hatchery, Anne kept a further 8 and the remaining birds went to a friend of Anne's. We had, therefore, the potential for a small scale simple comparison between the groups under our three different systems. We do complete free range (they can go where they like around the 2 and a half acres and beyond) and mixed with the other birds but have, as a result, limited control over diet. Anne does organic starting off indoors but then in a large pen, separate from her other birds so they have a lot less freedom to move but she can give them generous amounts of cooked rice and potato etc. At any given date they seemed to be a quarter to a third bigger and heavier than ours and feathered up much more slowly. The third batch are even more confined and we believe would be legally 'Free Range' but not organic and, says Anne, have put on a deal of weight even more than her birds and possibly been slaughtered by now.

Pure bred Buff Orpington cockerel and hen.

You can see from our first picture that ours look decidedly 'adolescent' and lanky rather than fat and wide-chested. Their legs look massive and out of proportion to their slim shape as if they have a lot of growing left to do. Just for the record we weighed some of them and got a weight range (live, obviously) of between 6 lb 3.25 oz (2.81 kg) and 7 lb and a quarter ounce (3.18 kg). We have decided not to slaughter any time soon. We will keep these as a living larder while they put on some more weight. Anne has warned me that because they are 'designed' (yoiks!) only to go the 84 days they may over run their 'tender' spec and become sinewy and tough, only fit for casseroles and coq-au-vin but that is not an issue for us - we LOVE a coq au vin! I know Anne is off weighing hers today or tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see how the little 'trial' went.

My 2nd and 3rd picture here are of the 8-Ball birds, now approaching 25 weeks and well into lay if they are of that persuasion. Our 'mini buffs' (some kind of bantam-y cross) turned out, we are sure, to be both hens. That is to say that we are both sure we have seen both of them being 'trodden' by roosters and I am fairly sure they are both laying eggs and neither has crowed. My uncertainty today is just seeing them both in this picture the bird on the right seems to have pink legs rather than yellow, maybe a bigger comb and wattles and a more upright tail? Doubts are creeping in!

The 2CV saga moves on one step. I managed to get my official form signed and stamped by a nice lady Guard in Castlerea Garda Station. Now I just need that mixture tweaked one last time by the boys in the garage for our real last, final, ultimate, tail-end, conclusive shot at the NCT emissions test. I have promised myself that this will be it. If it fails this time then I will take it off the road officially (on Statutory Off Road Notice (SORN)  and it can become an interesting garden feature till a better offer comes along. I may sell it. I may keep it till it is 30 years old and doesn't need an NCT. I will have run into the buffers, defeated by the system and fed up with having spent more on tests and re-tests than I have on the car.

The ex-Hastings fig cutting

A quick catch up on the gardening. This pic shows the current state of play on the ex-Hastings fig tree cutting. Grown in Faversham for a year or two in a half barrel, we decided to bring it over with us when we moved, so it was coppiced hard and root-washed. The remains lived with me at Pud Lady's in a fertilizer sack in her front garden till we moved. We planted it in the gravelly soil at the top of the front drive here but then it got driven over by a JCB laying drains. We thought we had lost it but Liz did some detective work using early photos and found it. It languished for a while, then just about managed to produce a few leaves where upon last years sheep browsed them all off and it went into winter as a bare, inch thick 'stick'. Again we were sure it was a goner. Spring came and no leaves emerged till way into June but then it suddenly put on a spurt of 3-4 small branches reaching the 18" or so you can see here. We will give it special protection through this winter. We dream of a bright future for this tree. May it do as well as it's parent which now fills most of the gap behind Pud Lady's garage and over-tops the roof gutters (OK it's a bungalow). I want to see it shading our terrace corner on the SE corner of the house, clearly visible as you come up the drive.

And finally, I know it has been a weird late season and I know these raspberries are Autumn Bliss, but I never expected to be starting to pick a decent crop on October the 22nd. They are not the sweetest raspberries, so maybe lacked sun, and they are very juicy (plenty of rain!) but I am hoping they will stay sound on the canes for just the next couple of days till Liz returns and can enjoy them with me.

Officially Dogs

Today my new adopted fellow countrymen all go to the polls to vote for or against the abolition of the Seanad (pronounced 'Shannad', this is the Senate or Upper House in the Parliament, equivalent to the House of Lords in the UK)  and to vote for or against the setting up of a new high level Court of Appeal just below the Supreme Court. I can only talk for myself here, being a recent 'blow in' and hearing only radio programmes, reading papers and talking to a few locals, but I get the impression that the Irish do not love their Seanad and see it as doing nothing but costing a great deal. The 'Keep it' camp would rather see it kept and possibly reformed but they must wonder why it has not already been reformed and wish that the work that it has presumably done had been better 'marketed'.

To my mind the abolitionists are more vociferous and 'out there' so may well win the day, the 'keep-its' seem to be quietly wringing their hands and anxiously awaiting how the lower house (The Dáil Éireann) and President would fare unchecked by the Seanad. Frightened too that once it is gone, there will be no bringing it back in new clothes, though it has been before, during De Valera's premiership (It was abolished in 1936 and reinstated in 1937). There is a ray of hope for them in that the current Government is not hugely popular after the economic crash and now austerity measures, and the campaign to abolish the Seanad is seen as a campaign sponsored by them. There may be an anti-Government lobby voting against abolition just to make their point. Liz has, of course, gone down to do her democratic duty. I. as a Brit, am not allowed to vote in such Constitutional Change matters (Referendums); I can only vote in local, general and Euro elections.

Closer to home, we have been getting all official with our dogs, and buying them licences. This is another piece of law that falls firmly into the slightly amusing 'Irish RM' school of Civil Disobedience. I had never heard of the licencing system (which I am sure the UK did away with when we were still in pounds, shillings and pence and it cost, if I recall, 37 and a half pee in new money!). Ask the man in the street about it and they give you a pitying look and say "Mmm Yeah... Right-Oh". You get the impression that not a lot of people are inclined to pay it. It is possibly up there with the requirements to pay Property Tax (Ireland's new, but very light, equivalent to the UK's Poll Tax), to Register your septic tank with the Water Board, to ear-tag your sheep and goats and submit movement paperwork to the Ministry, to have your car NCT'd (= MOT'd) or to declare it as Off-Road on the new official 'Statutory Off Road Notices' (SORNs) and to stop cutting turf in your local turf-bog. We asked a friend in the local Post Office whether people pay it and she said, with a wry smile that "some do and some don't". We are not, anyway, the only people paying. Our forms came from well down the pad and have numbers in the 2,347,000 range!

For our sins, we tend to pay these things, probably to a degree seen as ridiculously compliant by some. Our septic tank is registered, our dogs are licenced, we are trying to get both cars NCT'd as you'll know etc. Our luck has been the sort that, in the past, would have got us caught out straight away. We once bought a TV, 3 days from the end of the month and the local (UK) Post Office lady even recommended risking it for 3 days or we'd have to pay a full month for them. Liz argued her down and paid, walked home, came in the front door and put the new licence down on the shelf just inside the door, then walked back into the kitchen only to hear a knock on the door. Yep. TV Licence inspector man! We assume that Curry's, who sold us the TV, had to inform the licence people that we had now bought one, and their man had nothing else on that day, or it was some kind of amazing coincidence. Liz can remember saying  to him "You are not going to believe this, but..."

Meanwhile, in local news, John Deere Bob has killed his tractor. The power steering has given up the ghost, and the beast has had to be towed away as far as Ballintubber to be fixed. We are helping the old boy out for now with a bit of driving around and he has thanked us with a very generous bag of nice dry turf. We have been able to light some good fires in the Living Room much to the delight of the dogs who are basking in the heat. It's not actually that cold yet, so we do not need to light the range every day for the hot water and radiators. That is a lovely room and right below the main bedroom, so at the end of the evening we can retreat upstairs and still enjoy the heat, convecting up the stairwell and conducting through the floor.

I have already posted that I am now the Editor of the newsletter for the Cambria (Sailing Barge) Trust. I continue to be the Website Manager and blogger for these guys and as a result of that I get some nice barge films passed to me for review. Most recently this included a new film (Noble Life) by new film-maker (formerly some manner of Artistic Designer for TV adverts), Simon North. This is a good film and well worth the buying (£12.50) if you are at all interested in barges, being 1 hour 42 minutes long, as well as being the only DVD I know of with our girl on the picture! I have reviewed it on the website if you are interested - so for more detail go to http://www.cambriabargecharter.co.uk/?p=2022

That's all for today.

It's Not All Hard Work

I sometimes worry that all we talk about on here is the next bit of hard work digging ponds or erecting the poly tunnel. I wouldn't want you to get the idea that we are wearing our fingers to the bone :-) here and not taking time out to enjoy just being here and living this life. OK, you weren't worried. You know me too well!

Every now and then I get the urge to fire up the beloved 2CV and just go for a 'blat' around the local lanes purely for the sheer joy of driving a 2CV. The lanes round here are superb for the car and the words 'bowling along' come back to me as we (Clara and I!) bounce over the undulations and roll gently round the corners. I love the feel of the car, the soft suspension, the engine note and, if the weather is good enough, being able to roll the roof right back to the top of the rear window.

We were determined (OK, I was and I talked Liz into it!) to bring the car over to Ireland so that I could continue to enjoy this 'hobby' and regular readers will know the fun and games we had trying to get it imported on paper, registered, taxed, insured and NCT'd (=MOT'd). The insurance has been a bit of an issue still because the firm we went with (FBD) for the house and Liz's Fiat will not insure  any car more than 15 years old at any more than 3rd party level; not even 'Fire and Theft'. I am not comfortable with this as I like my 'fully comp' cover as I used to get in UK on agreed car-value and limited mileage. We have now found a firm are happy to do comprehensive cover, so I can move at next renewal.

Another fly in the ointment was that although it was a fun hobby, it ends up being a rather pricey one 'over here' what with that insurance, the road tax and the fun we had getting it through the test and when we found we were never actually needing to use the car, and only 'playing' in it I began to doubt that if our money had started to be under pressure I might have had to think about whether we should be a 2-car family. The 2CV is the car with the tow hitch and trailer so in theory it is the useful car around this small holding but in fact the Fiat has a surprisingly big load capacity - it will happily take 8 foot lengths of wood, hay bales, coal and feed sacks etc, so the trailer last got used for dumping some thermal panels at our local 'tip' (Barna Waste) at the end of the build-project. We had an option to keep the car registered but actually take her off the road, signing all the necessary paperwork to create what is known as a 'SORN' (Statutory Off Road Notice). The car is 27 years old this year and in three years becomes a 'vintage' car not (legally) requiring testing. I could have SORN-ed it for those three years.

Happily that financial situation has not arisen (so far!) and we are both agreed that we should hang in there and keep her running for the moment. I am very happy to report that I can continue to indulge my desire to 'play'.

In 'other news' we do still do a bit of work around here. Liz has been getting on with her 'Jam and Jerusalem Hedge' in between the Domestic Goddess-ery and I have finished the exterior of the poly-tunnel (the end and door plus tidying up spare plastic sheeting) and started on shaping the floor into paths and beds.

All enthused by another lovely sunny, spring like day
I also got my salad potatoes (var "Ratte") and First Earlies ("Foremost") into the ground. The new raised beds are becoming beautifully dry and crumbly so that hoeing them with my shuffle-hoe is pure joy and I know that those decapitated docks and creeping buttercup will wilt and die in the sunshine instead of merely rooting back into the (previously) waterlogged ground and laughing at me behind my back as I plodded home my weary way.

Keep it air-cooled and keep it boxer-engined!