Of Sliabh Bán and floating hens

We have always loved reading local papers and freebies full, as they sometimes are of amusing really LOCAL stories - not quite 'man bites dog' but generally pieces on the local Flower Show, the Post Office window getting broken (and then repaired in next week's edition!), or small children catching a 3 pound fish in the lake or winning a painting competition. There is always a wealth of pictures of who ever the local dignitaries are - in the Faversham Times you could not get away from Bryan Mulhern, Tory Councillor and a manager in local brewery Shepherd Neame. Here it seems to be local TD (equivalent to MP) Ming Flanagan though we wish he'd release a better picture of himself - he looks both anxious and tight lipped in the current 'everywhere' picture.

We have had some lovely stories, lively discussions in the letters pages almost to feud level. Most recently a 'Letters to the Editor' story caught my eye where the protagonists are actually debating heatedly which is the 'front' and which the 'back' of Roscommon's highest peak, Sliabh Bán (pronounced Sleeve Bawn). One side believes that the 'front' must be where the sun rises, the East face, while the other says that, on the contrary it is the West. When you walk towards a person, opines Mike de Jong, you look at their front and then, only when you are past, do you turn and look over your shoulder at their back. The sun rises in the East, he says, and 'walks' past the mountain and is then looking back, as it sinks in the West, past the mountain. The East has become the back. That seemed to be the gist of it. I will await next week's Roscommon People eagerly and report back! Sliabh Bán, incidentally is not much of a 'mountain' being only 262 m but it is the highest 'peak' in the county and does have a significant landmark (a stone cross) on top. It is, inevitably, also site of a planned wind farm, the turbines being 131 m high - half the elevation of the hill itself.

So here are my own 'local, entirely non world-shattering, stories'. First up, Chickens can swim! (Shock Horror!). We know this because on one of the recent hot days we had been sitting out by the pond with the three dogs lashed to our chair legs on their leads while various poultry strolled about, never coming too close. One Sussex Ponte hen coming out of the 'allotment' then made an odd decision making her way back to the house. She turned off her perfectly safe route and tried to nip though between Poppy and the pond. Poppy had been watching her closely and hearing my low warning commands... "Poppy! Nooooo!" but a chick coming that close had her seeing the red mist. She lunged at the chook to the point where her lead snapped tight, but the charge was too much for the hen and she took off almost vertically, clucking in alarm. She fell back to 'earth' but was by then above the pond, so she splashed down into open water. Of course I jumped up to rescue her but she struck out for the bank swimming like a clumsy duck and then flapped another take-off and scrambled up the bank to dry land, shouting all the time. William and the La Bresse rooster reacted to the noise by charging towards her to protect her, so we briefly had 3 chickens going mad with noise till they all realised that the danger had passed, the hen was just a bit wet underneath and nobody was about to die in the jaws of a Westie bitch.

The local Herberts fashionable form of mischief in the joy-riding line, seems to be turning 'doughnuts' on the roads at any junction capable of fitting a spinning, tyre-burning car. You know they have been 'playing' because the junction is covered in the circular 'skid marks' like those pictured. We used to see a lot of this on the main N5 out to Castlebar when we were running out there for building materials. We were told that groups of these lads gather after dark, then post people as look-outs on these long straight roads before doing the doughnuts at the junctions. Well, now in 'local news' we have our own skid marks on the road at the end of the lane, at the crossroads known locally as 'Shannon's Cross'

Meanwhile, the garage has finally received my carburettor service kit from parts supplier '2CV City' in the UK so they have asked me to bring the car back in today. This service kit includes the fine tapered needle valves and jets (as well as gaskets) which should restore my carb to being able to create the correct petrol/air mix in the engine which will get me back inside the tolerances on the NCT's emissions test. I am hopeful that this may, at last, be a light at the end of the tunnel.

The End of the (2CV) Road?

We can't claim to be a best seller here but we chug away gently at our standard 20-30 views per post but just by dint of posting so many stories over the 6 years we have been in existence, and have managed to accumulate over 50,000 page views. I am happy with that. I am glad that my regulars keep looking in to see what we are about and that they are, presumably, a bit entertained, or why would they?

The heat wave continued for a few more showings, through Thursday and Friday, but we noticed on Friday night that the breeze had swung round to the North and had strengthened, giving us a beautifully cool night Friday night and a misty, cloudy Saturday morning. Our friend Mentor Anne hates the heat and goes into what she describes as 'hibernation' staying indoors, but even she was able to emerge on the Saturday to enjoy the cool. We were all off to a 'new' Farmers' Market they have discovered in Boyle, a small town in the very north of Co. Roscommon which has a famed butcher's van doing organic and welfare chicken and pork (Peppered pork chops 'to die for' says Anne) as well as plant stalls, herb sellers, a fish monger, bakers and other traders. We fancied some mackerel to go with our home grown gooseberries. Well, as it happened both the mackerel and the pork chops were sold out; you have to get there early or the good stuff all goes. No matter. We grabbed some (organic) chicken livers which Liz will convert into paté, some lovely prawns for supper tonight and some thin beef steaks for a future meal.

We stopped at a nice little coffee shop for a cuppa before going our separate ways. We were concerned to get the prawns into refrigeration before they got a chance to do us any mischief. By lunchtime the weather had heated up again and the cloud and mist had cleared. We think that this is the likely shape of days this week, with no more rain in the fore see able. What a change from 2012 when we seemed to be permanently washed out and prey to crop failures due to the wet. I have now ridged up all my vegetable area and look like having to water stuff! You don't do watering in the West of Ireland, surely?

The time has come round again when the belovéd 2CV needs her NCT test (= MOT) and here the story went to pot a bit. Not good news. She is sound on all the difficult bits we fixed last time (suspension, steering and other heavy metal) but failed on a range of daft, lighter weight stuff all of which, had I still got easy access to my 2CV-fixer man, 2CV Llew in Kent, would not bother me in the least.

The exhaust emissions are slightly too high which, if you know what you are doing around the 2 adjustment screws on the carburettor (idle and mixture) and have access to a gas-analyzer, is a 5-minute job. The rear fog light is out - either a bulb or an earth. There is corrosion on the bottom of a door (a seam-weld) and the boot floor and on one wing; the sort of thing Llew buzzes a wire brush over and then makes good in an hour or so. But without Llew I am at the mercy of our (brilliant, I have to say) local garage, so we are off to get a quote on Monday but realistically, when I have done only 112 miles in the car since the last NCT we are both a bit 50/50 about whether we can justify it. Clara has the tow-hitch which has been useful, but we could probably get a tow hitch for the FIAT if needs be.

No matter, we will worry about making that decision when we have the quote. Whatever happens we are going to hang on to the mortal remains because even as an NCT failure the car has a value and is rare enough that someone might want to invest or, failing that, would make a superb chicken house. Meanwhile she is still 'legal' till the NCT runs out on Wednesday, so her swan song may be our trip to Castlerea to buy one more pallet sized water tank, this one to supply the sheep drinker, fed from the down pipes on the east end of the house. Watch this space for updates on that one.

Finally, our swallows seem to have nearly finished their nest right up in the ridge of our Tígín, well out of the reach of the cats. Sensible swallows.

Big scary rooster....

Big scary rooster; poor defenceless sheep?

These days we let the sheep out for an hour morning and afternoon from their run (where the grass is almost grazed off) to the front lawn, woods and hedgerows for a graze and browse; where there's still plenty of grass etc. At the same time the chooks are out free ranging, wandering about as a group. Each hen takes her turn to peel away from the group to nip back to the coop to lay her egg and, when she's done wanders back to find the gang and William (The rooster). William is delighted to see them back and charges towards them making his throaty growly noise, racing up to the returning female and doing his little stompy dance, which seems to translate as "Yay hay! Can we make lurve now?"

This morning the 'gang' were in the woods and the 3 sheep grazing away just outside the woods, all with their heads down so that they'd not have been able to see the hens over the long grass and brambles at the wood's edge. Returning hen appears on lawn from far side, so sheep are between hen and gang. William spots her and charges through the undergrowth, 'exploding' out into the open just by the sheep, who freak and shy, stampeding away! Dad nearly splurged his coffee laughing. Not sure if sheep can look embarrassed, but ours came pretty close.

It occurs to me that we have not reported a visit yet by Steak Lady, Mr SL and Auntie Mary, the Nun (85). 29th September was the date, to nearly coincide with Mary's Birthday but they were mainly here to show Mary around. We have always been close friends with Auntie Mary, who has called Mum her "Little Princess" since a very young age, but who spent most of her life Missionary-ing in Africa. For a tiny, petite, soft spoken 'little ol' lady' she has probably seen more of horrific real life than any of us are likely to see and can quietly relate stories which make your hair stand on end - whole African villages wiped out by AIDS, persecution of Christian villagers, war, turmoil and strife, starvation and hardship. She is a fascinating person to talk to. The picture is left to right, Mum, Steak Lady, The Nun and Mr SL, with Towser sneaking in at SL's feet and Poppy just getting her nose in shot bottom right. The visit went well and they all love the place. They piled into Mum's food, loved what we'd done with Steak Lady's garden cuttings and admired the sheep.


We have also been on a visit down to the Silverwoods, birthplace of Towser and Poppy (and their 5 brothers and sisters). This was to have been so that Dad could see and get photo's of the children's new activity, horse riding lessons, which happens on Sundays with the two eldest and the two youngsters alternating weekends. In the event it got moved to the Friday so that we could babysit little R (4) while Mr and Mrs S took M (6) off to Dublin for an appointment. We could collect R from school and hand her over to Aoife the Social Worker who was to take her on a visit to her natural family, and we could also collect J-M from school in the rain. We took the pups along so that they could experience their first proper car ride and re-acquaint with Silverwood and the S's. So it was a good fun visit with lots of coming and going but never really got going as a whole family event or a meal because everybody was there in snatches in between zooming off on 'things' - even J-M was on a French lesson as soon as she got back from school and Em-J now does homework / study after school till gone 6 p.m, so we never saw her at all. 

Dad's 2CV is now being readied for her NCT test (=MOT). We have finally got the windscreen we needed and she is now in the garage where they are sorting out her ignition and mixture. She's lost the ability to idle, which meant a quick pull on the choke to keep the engine going at every T junction. The garage have tried changing points and capacitor in case it was an ignition problem but have then found the car is leaking air round the carburettor. We are waiting for Monday when the garage will let us know what we need to do about this - is it a new 'carb' or just the gaskets around it. Luckily we have 2CV Llew to call on at the other end of the phone, with a stack of old carbs stripped off dead 2CVs, so we won't have to spend £££s either way. We just need to get Llew to actually put one in the post, which has been, in the past, not anything you can hurry! We love Llew madly but he's nobody's version of 'urgent'. We'll see.


That's about for this one. 

Deefer