Concealed Shoes

Well! You live and learn! Today a fascinating story about a subject of which we had no idea till today. Hiding shoes in buildings, in walls, up chimneys and so on as a lucky charm, historically. It's a well known 'thing' apparently, but had passed us by.

The mighty winds of Sunday night and Monday, we discovered to our horror, had slightly lifted the Tígín roof in presumably a particularly strong gust. All these old buildings are not particularly well put together and the roof of this one must be a good 30-40 years old so that the timbers are quite rotten and the tin fairly rusty. The concrete and stone walls are solid enough to the top (gutter height) but the roof is then put on, seemingly without it being fixed down. The angle under the lower ends of each strip of corrugated, seems to be loosely filled with rubble before loose concrete is thrown into the gap from inside the building presumably to try to hold the loose rubble together and maybe 'glue' down the lowest horizontal as some kind of attempted 'wall plate'. The roof is then held down by pouring concrete over the ends of the roof at the gables, first creating a wooden box of shuttering to take the concrete while it sets.

Our winds had lifted the 'wall plate' half way along the wall and a loose stone had rolled into the gap, preventing the roof from falling back into place when the gust finished. We spotted that the corrugated seemed to be well proud of the guttering. The 'repair' was fairly simple, I just had to poke the loose stone back up out of the way and the roof could sag back onto its wall BUT it as in doing this poking, I spotted a small child's boot up among the rubble on top of the wall.

The shoe is 6 and three quarters inches long and 2 and three quarters inches wide and is of obviously 'stout' agricultural construction with several layers of leather, and most of its nails still there but blown and rusty. Fascinated, I winkled it out to show Liz, but we both then had the horrors in case this was some kind of family bereavement / memorial thing and decided not to use this in this blog or to photograph it.

However, Liz then went a-Googling on the internet using "Shoes found in walls" in the search engine and quickly discovered that this is actually a well known and wide spread cultural and building trades thing, to conceal a single child's-size shoe in your building works as a good luck token and there are whole museum databases and sections on which to record your finds. Northampton Museum in the UK and The Irish National Museum both ask for details.

One website at

http://northamptonmuseums.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/concealed-shoes/

had more.

• "People often hid old boots and shoes," they report, "in chimneys and walls to bring good luck to their houses and to ward off evil spirits.

• The shoes are always worn out.

• Very often there is only one shoe.

• Many of the shoes are for children.

• The shoes were often put in place when building work was being done to the house.

• It may be that if the workmen found a shoe they replaced it with a new offering, or put the old shoe back together with a new one?
• No one knows when and how this habit began.
• The earliest shoes we know of were put in place about 1500.
• Shoes seem to have had a special significance.
• A shoe is the only item of clothing which takes on the shape of the person wearing it.
• A single worn shoe was hidden so that a malevolent spirit could not steal it and  take away the protection the shoe gave. 

Today people renovating old buildings sometimes come across ‘concealed shoes’.  The finds are very important because they show us what ordinary people were wearing on their feet hundreds of years ago. 

We keep a concealed shoe index here at the museum

At the moment the index stands at approximately 1,900 entries from all over the U.K and also records concealed shoe finds in North America, Canada, and a number of countries in Europe including France, Spain and Poland".

We will report our shoe to both Museums and have carefully replaced it in the top of the wall.

Interestingly, this is not the first leather item I have found, so I wonder whether this is a more general farm 'thing'. In the chicken house roof I found stashed a leather over-reach boot. These boots are fitted to horses' rear hooves where the horse has a tendency to bring his back foot so far forward in his stride that it can clout his front leg, which can be a problem on shod horses. 

Also, by coincidence, I was walking the dogs today and was greeted by a near-neighbour in a van who I had not met before. He introduced himself (We'll call him Brian the Roofer) and we chatted away a while before he told me that he was a roofer. A ha! said I and told him my story of the poor construction, rotten timbers, loose rubble and roof trying to get airborne. I invited him to drop by in passing and take a look and give me a quote on replacing the rooves of both the Tígín and the chicken house, which we will surely need to do at some stage, all be it hopefully not THAT soon!

56

Today I am 56, my 2nd birthday in Ireland and my first in the "new" house. We made a bit of a weekend of it with special meals both Saturday and Sunday. Yesterday we invited Mentor(s) Anne and Simon over and Liz cooked up a rather superb supper. Being all chicken keepers this has to be fitted in around 'bed time' for the birds, and with the evenings being now bright till around 7 pm, that means rounding up your birds by about 7.30 pm and socialising after that. The new hearth tiles are now fixed in place with their glue dried, so we were able to light a gentle fire in the main fireplace - it looked very good with the shiny hearth tiles reflecting the light from the flames. Our starter was a pomegranate and goats cheese salad. Main course was an 'Elizabethan Rabbit' recipe from the "Two Fat Ladies" cookbooks served with our own home made naan bread (Madhur Jaffrey recipe). The rabbit was actually one of the progeny of Anne's late buck Peter and our own doe Padfoot (late as in 'since sadly taken by a fox') which was rather nice. Pud was a chocolate mousse. We seemed to crack through a bit of Rioja and French red between us and the chat ebbed and flowed, taking in a fair amount of the recently deceased Maggie Thatcher and the Savita Halappanavar Galway Hospital case, till way gone midnight. Effortless and very enjoyable entertaining in lovely company. Thank you very much for coming, Anne and Simon.

Today we are just 'en famille' with no visitors and Liz is back in action creating a delicious potato-cake breakfast in which I get to eat the 2nd of our latest 2 goose eggs, with lunch as home made soup, coffee breaks featuring lemon drizzle cake and Dorset apple cake and a steak supper. Spoiled I am. I get a rake of birthday greetings through social network site 'Facebook', some cards, a superb (if not that tuneful) rendition of 'Happy Birthday to You' over the phone first thing from the assembled Silverwood Choir (cough), a more tuneful rendition later from Diamond and a lovely phone call from Pud Lady. I am taking a day off the pond-digging mainly because it has finally rained so my gardening is restricted to sowing seeds in pots, trays and tubs in the poly tunnel. The rain seems to have changed the appearance of the grass overnight and local farmers breathe sighs of relief that they might get some grazing for their cattle after all. Careful what you wish for, guys! I have clipped all three dogs, instead and very neat and summer-cool they look.

Meanwhile, in an exciting development in the poultry department, we have a goose (or geese) in lay. The photograph might look like a pile of hay but, trust me, it is in fact a hay box containing the start of a clutch of eggs. Let me explain. We were getting a bit concerned that the geese did not seem to be laying any eggs, although to be fair it was frosty most mornings and that awful NE wind had been whipping through for almost 3 weeks. We had even seen the gander 'treading' at least one of his ladies. Seeking advice from the  poultry discussion forum on the internet I was advised that if the geese were getting 'seen to' by the gander then they were almost certainly either laying or would soon start. Search through the hay in the hay-box and delve into the wood shavings, they said. Geese are pretty good at hiding eggs.

Goose eggs (Simon told us) stay viable for quite a long time while the goose accumulates her clutch at a rate of an egg a day or every 2nd or third day, trying to amass 12-14 eggs before she will go broody and sit on the clutch. So the next morning I headed for the goose house to let them out and to rummage and delve, but was presented with an egg in full view in a lovely cup-shaped, goose sized depression in the hay in the box. There proved to be a 2nd egg under the hay, so we collected both for use in the kitchen but then resolved to see if we could manage a clutch. All this had happened over night, quietly and with no drama from the geese.

The next day (now yesterday) that all changed and we seemed to move into a new format and level of excitement. We noticed during the morning that the geese were all hanging around the goose house door and waddling in and out of the house with much honking and noise every time the three got separated (by one being inside or outside and not visible to the others). It seemed this was the first time they had ever done anything other than as a threesome - they are normally glued together as a group, find one and you found them all. This separation was obviously stressful stuff! Eventually they sorted themselves out and Goocie sat on the box of hay while Gander and Goosey took them off a small distance to graze while Gander continued to honk and shout every few minutes, as if to reassure the sitting goose that he was still around. I went off to dig pond and after a half hour or so, Goocie emerged from the house and waddled over to find the other two.

Liz and I waited till they were safely out of sight and sneaked a peek into the house. At first we thought there was no egg but, no, there was indeed and egg but so carefully hidden under hay pulled across the top that it was invisible from above. I noticed in the evening when I went to round up the geese that Goocie went into the house and straight over to the hay box where she poked about checking that the egg was still there. We hope this means that she is now in 'accumulating a clutch' mode, so we have left that egg intact and will wait and see. There were no more eggs over night or today. Anne and Simon tells us that we may need to try to separate the 2 females if they both start nesting as they can hassle each other and start interfering with each others' nests, stealing or breaking eggs etc. This might have practical problems in our set-up; we'd struggle to fence the two halves of the family apart but still give them access to all their other needs and the gander, so we are just keeping a watchful eye. We will cross those bridges when (and if) we come to them.

Happy Birthday to me. I am told it is also the anniversary of the Titanic hitting the iceberg; that happened not long before midnight on the 14th and Titanic sank on the 15th. So now you know.

Hearth and Home

A tiny amount of rain falls overnight; barely enough to lay the 'dusht'. Everything is tinder-dry and the front pages of the Western Mail local newspaper are full of dramatic pictures of gorse fires raging across County Mayo. One report had that the local Fire Fighters had been called out to 200 fires in the last few days. Our own measure of how dry we are is in this picture of strip-grazing on the front lawn, rabbit-style. These runs are moved every day, 24 hours being enough time for the rabbits to annihilate the grass in the run, so as you look from camera towards the runs you are looking at grass recovery growth per day, the nearest patch having had about 11 days to recover. You can see that the turf is still bald and not a cm of grass has grown in the 11 days, and this in Country Roscommon in Ireland's allegedly wet 'wesht' in March and April.

It's so dry that all the farmers are looking to let their cattle out of the indoor yards but they daren't as there is nothing for them to eat out there. I noticed on my dog walk today that even the ferns in the ditches and hedge-bottoms along the lane have that curled, frazzled, freeze-dried look. Liz and I are both wary of praying for rain as we might bring down another year like 2012 (!) but the garden could definitely use some.

'Hearth and Home' - now there is a nice, comforting expression evocative of the centre of a house, a focus for all the family activity. You'd think then that it would be one of the bits you'd be sure to finish as you completed a rebuild. It was certainly one of the first jobs I wanted to do as soon as we got hold of the house keys in December 2011 and readers may recall the fun we had, just newly in through the door, raking out old jackdaw nests, sweeping out the chimneys and cleaning up so that we could light fires in the old Rayburn range and the fireplace in the Living Room. We lit fires pretty much every day from then till our demolition work got to the stage of ripping out the Rayburn and CAREFULLY dismantling the fire place. We even apologised to the house as we drove away each Friday, for not being able to light fires on Saturday and Sunday. It was an important (and successful) part of trying to get some warmth into the house structure and dry it out.

It is, as well, a particularly fine fireplace. The locals think it was way too 'posh' to have been installed as original and must have been added later when the family got affluent. It was in a sorry state, falling away from the wall and with some sections broken. The copper hood, you may recall, was so black and tarnished that we thought it must be iron and in need of black-lead; luckily spotting a slight glint of shine and then getting some good advice from Mazy-Lou involving tomato ketchup as a cleaning chemical.

But we never quite worked out what to do with the hearth once it had all been carefully cleaned and re-hung. We weighed up a number of options involving a marble plinth and brass fenders, or simple dark tiles, but the stone was likely to be in the €200's and the fender another €250. We have sat there, indecisively, looking at the gap in the sandstone coloured floor tiles and found lots of other jobs to do instead!

Well, not any more. When helping John Deere Bob do his turf we spotted a big pile of old waste tiles including some marble-effect black floor tiles in the barn and Bob was more than happy to unload some on us, they having been gathered by one of his brothers while he was still living in the family home, where Bob now lives. He did not know where the brother had got them or why. Armed with a dozen of those and an angle grinder borrowed from Mentor Anne, and a bag of left-over floor tile adhesive, I was away and in just a few hours had created this hearth which we are both very pleased with. It looks very 'right' in our opinion, with the greener, multi-hued marble of the fireplace itself.

Meanwhile, I chug on with digging the pond, rather enjoying the dryness of the soil. The soil is light to lift by the shovel full and easy to walk around on being dusty rather than claggy, and smearing. I do this at about an hour a day, which translates into about 20 barrow loads. I hear all the comments about hiring mini diggers etc but I ignore them. We are time-rich and (comparatively) money-thrifty and, anyway, I LIKE digging. The thought of getting to the end of this project and being able to look out over the water and say "I dug all that by hand!" is an attractive one. It might take me weeks rather than the half a day of a digger, but we are not in any hurry. I do the hour as a 'constitutional', paying my dues, if you like, earning the right to do the easier, more popular jobs. That's just me.

I have, though, discovered how the French game of 'boules' or 'petanque' came to be invented. There was this gang of rural French villagers back in the day, named Etienne, Noel, Pierre, Thierry, André and Ullyse, who sat around the village pump smoking Gauloises and taking the Micky out of the village idiot who was stone deaf. He was so deaf that when asked anything, including his name, his reply was invariably, "Quoi"? and this became his nickname. So well ingrained did the nickname become that no-one could remember his proper name. Growing bored one summer of hanging round the village pump, this bunch of lads decided to go on holiday to Ireland where their long lost Auntie Elize had started to create a small holding in the 'wesht'. The lads' Mums insisted that if they were going, then they should a) take the idiot 'Quoi' with them and b) help Elize as much as possible on the 'farm'.

Well, as it happened, the job that week was to dig a big pond (wouldn't you know it?) so the lads pitched in and started to dig across the chosen space, digging up along the way, all manner of rocks, mainly hard sandstone lumps roughly round in shape and cricket ball sized. To start with the lads piled these in a heap, knowing that Elize might use them as path edges, but as they progressed backwards across the pond, away from their pile of stones, getting stones to the pile involved an under-arm toss of ever-increasing length. Get it right and your new stone clonked nicely into the pile and stayed there. Get it wrong and your stone bounced off one of the existing stones and shot off several yards across the grass and someone had to go retrieve it. Guess who? Quoi of course!

As the distance became greater, there was a real skill in making the correct toss and the lads, being a bit sporty enjoyed the competition with each other, cheering a good throw, laughing roundly at a bad one and even keeping score. The work progressed well and the pond was dug in no time, but the lads had enjoyed the throwing game so much they decided that a sport along the same lines should exist and that they'd take it back to their village and start it there. What to call it, then? Well, suggested Elize, let's make up a word which sounds like a lump of sandstone hitting the pile of stones, but the word be made up from all our names, P for Pierre, E for Etienne, T for Thierry and so on, with a Q for Quoi, of course and an E for their dear Tante Elize.

Or does that sound like a load of 'Boules' to you?

White Rhino.

Lime-washing the outbuildings; a job that Liz had been itching to do since we finished the house build but had been restrained by the weather and the knowledge that this is a job you traditionally do at Easter. Neither of us had any kind of exact idea of what 'lime wash' actually was, or how you bought it, although Liz had childhood memories of 'Daddy' mixing up buckets of water and powder so that they could paint the garden walls. Of course, the internet had as many versions of what to do as there were websites and our first shopping trip in spring to our faithful builders' merchant, Cooney's, gave us only the rather dim holiday-cover guy who had no idea.

Even 'Daddy' (understandably) let the side down by pleading that his memories of garden walls were 40 years old and that they now use a modern masonry paint like Dulux Weathershield. "Why couldn't we use that?" he asked. But we want to do the traditional job and limewash, we knew, as well as being a coat of white, has strong (caustic) cleaning properties against moss, ferns, creepy-crawlies, goes on nicely with the big-bristled slappy whitewash brushes and copes well with walls which are decent stone but very poorly pointed. The cement in the mixture also works as a 'PVA-style' stabilizer for the dusty joints. It is also way way cheaper than the amount of masonry paint you'd need for these buildings. You would do it every or every-other Easter and your buildings would improve with age. In theory.

Anyway, we wanted the fun of mixing, slapping and 'discovering' this old traditional way. Our barns were both bare concrete and stone and didn't look like they had been limed in 30 years.

So, back to Cooney's we went and this time found the useful guy (Kenny) behind the counter. "Ah!" says he knowledgeably, "You need White Rhino (brand) hydrated lime and white cement" and promptly added them to out order for the wooden laths for the poly-tunnel.

White cement is, as the name would suggest, cement powder with a whitening agent for use where you'd not want your mortar to be the normal grey cement colour. Hydrated lime is, chemically, Calcium di-Hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) or "slaked" lime and is made by 'slaking' (adding water to) Calcium Oxide (also known as 'quicklime' or just 'lime'. We were on our own - none of the websites seemed to know anything about cement mixtures, so Liz had a play with bucket-chemistry. We knew we wanted a mixture of a similar consistency to butter-milk and which would paint onto the walls 'fairly thin and milky looking' but would dry in the sun to that well known blinding white of trad Irish cottages.

We also knew that lime is nasty, irritant, corrosive stuff, so you need to wear gloves and, in our case mix your powder in that keen NE wind which would whip away any 'puffs' of dust before anyone had a chance to inhale them (or use a sensible mask if you are mixing in still air or indoors!). Eye protection is also advised, but that's another story. Old clothes or overalls are ideal. Our best mixture in the end was 5 litres of cold water in a yellow builder's bucket to which was added 2 'scoops' of lime and one of cement. The 'scoop' was a 1 kg yogurt tub so we guess about a litre of volume. That was stirred up with a bit of wood, and off we went.

We both worked at it all day and managed to complete all the way round both the Tígín and the 'milking shed' (now chicken house - goose house). It was not that professional a job and we both found the brushes very slappy. That was handy for firing a rain of wash into crevices and un-pointed bits, but did tend to mean plenty of paint splashed onto the ground, corrugated rooves, bits you hadn't meant to paint, window glass etc.

We were delighted overall with the results. It was a gorgeous blue-sky day and the new whiteness transformed the look of the place. White light is now bouncing around in the yard, kitchen garden and 'pottery' (gap between house and the 'Tíg' which will become a place for potted plants) and we look great as seen from the lane too. The white paint sets off the blue sky beautifully in photographs and I have had much admiring comment on Facebook and from passing locals. We particularly like some of the badly-pointed walls where the stones are now white and the gaps look extra-dark by contrast.

Rather usefully, the mixture, once dry, washes easily out of clothing and washed out of the brushes with plain water. It does tend to rub off on you if you brush against it but we guess that will get better as it ages. It still has not rained so we are both interested to see it all (hopefully) NOT washing away in the Roscommon rain. It also wiped easily off the windows where I had splashed it.

So, there you go, a vast improvement achieved in just 2 'person-days' and for a nice cheap total of just €41 including brushes, indeed, less than that for we did not use up all the lime or cement.

Ma Nature's Lyrical

Oh, the barnyard is busy, in a regular tizzy,

And the obvious reason is because of the season.

Ma Nature's lyrical, with her yearly miracle,

Spring, Spring, Spring.

All the hen-folk are hatchin' while their men-folk are scratchin'

To ensure the survival of each brand new arrival.

Each nest is twitterin', they're all baby-sitterin',

Spring, Spring, Spring.

It's a beehive of buddin'....(and so on in the words of Johnny Mercer's song in Seven Brides)

Well, the East wind might still be blowing and the heavy frosts have all the bud-break and tulip growth on hold for the minute, but our reliable broody hen, Broody Betty, has decided that it is spring and, even if she only has rubber eggs to sit on, sit on them she will. We had just scratched around ourselves to find half a dozen eggs to give to our 2CV visitors, John and Carol and BB's sisters have not all come into lay yet, so we could only manage 5 eggs to put under a hen who is more than capable of covering a dozen. 

We decided that this might be a nice chance to diversify away from our original Sussex Ponte, mainly-white hens, and contacted Mentor Anne who we knew might have an egg glut. We asked what she thought might be suitable and she has generously provided us with a further 7 eggs. Three are of the well known variety, "Buff Orpington", three more from the big black breed "Jersey Giant" and another is a rather uncertain cross of the Jersey, possibly with the renowned French table bird "La Bresse". These 12 eggs were all slid into BB's nest on Thursday 4th, so now we must wait to see does BB stay the distance, 21 days give or take, and then do the babies survive and do they grow up as hens to bolster up our flock, or boys for the table. Watch this space.

We are both delighted that the Irish language is enjoying something of a resurgence in recent decades. Liz was taught it as a dry and dusty museum piece with little use, by rote and using some dire old books like the infamous 'Peig Sayers', a relentless tale of woe, death and hunger from the almost uninhabited, windswept rocks of the Blaskett Islands off our west coast. Children dreaded being 'sent away' to the Gaelic speaking areas (the "Gaeltacht") to live in cottages with little ol' ladies and forced to speak no English. Irish has been compulsory in schools since the state was founded but is now taught as a modern language with fun reading books, it is promoted by the Gaelic speaking societies in a 10 day event each year and there are Gaelic speaking radio stations and papers, and snatches of Gaelic in everyday life. The modern attitude seems to be use what you can cobble together, enjoy it, and don't get too precious about precise grammar and vocab. Be proud of it! 

So we loved that Irish favourite potato crisp brand 'Tayto' with which everyone grew up in the same way as all my UK peers would know Smiths Ready Salted, now do an Irish Language version of their famous packet. Amusingly, the nutritional details on the back still seem to have to be in English, and the little packet held up by the potato man in the standard logo is in English.

The cat Blue is turning out to be our best ratter. His Brother, Rolo, who started well (and youngest) has not caught anything lately that we know about and looks on enviously as Blue plays with this decent sized young adult which he nailed a couple of days back. This is A GOOD THING especially with our hen gone broody. Rats will happily steal eggs from under hens, and the hens, which will happily peck a mouse to death, just seem to grumble quietly and let the rat get on with it. Rats will also steal baby chicks and drag them off. Well, this fella may have been caught napping by the change of light since we painted the barns (of which more in another post) but his days of nicking chicks are over.

Finally, I enjoyed a genuine 'Irish' day today, down on neighbour John Deere Bob's hot, dusty turf bog. There were 4 of us and in 8 hours we collected 7 good trailer loads of nice dry turf, maybe 17.5 tonnes total creating a massive pile in Bob's barn. I ached and was grimy from the black 'dusht' ; I also ached from laughing at the happy banter between the three local lads. This turf should have been 'winnable' back last September but rain set in in August and quickly made the bog un-driveable. I can't quite believe we were dry enough on 5th April in County Roscommon. This rather poor picture was taken using my phone - I did not have my camera. I picked up some lovely local turns of phrase in the process - "This'll tighten us" (This is going to be hard work). "Ah - Sean-een! He was a one for the Whish-key allright! He certainly shifted plenty. He was a bit-een mad" (Sean-een is like 'Little Shawn'). And on the subject of driving tractors over bog-peat without getting stuck, "The secret is, once you are moving,keep it moving.... You'd want to keep it lit alright!"

It was a brilliant day. That barn painting in the next post.

Back to Inspect?

Readers who have been with us since last winter will know that the Brother in Law, known as "Sparks" in these pages was here throughout the house build as our Project Manager and main Builder. Officially 'just a sparks' he was actually able to do all of our demolition, purchasing, general buildering, all the plumbing, carpentering, tiling and all manner of other heroics so that Liz and I, with our much lower levels of practical skill, could stick to labouring and catering and other service functions (driving, shopping for plumbing supplies etc). You'll also know that we were all very proud of ourselves, back in April 2012 when Sparks semi-officially handed the house over to us, big celebratory meal, job done, brilliant, and headed back to his 'real life' Mrs Sparks, son Brian (4, now 5) and North Dublin.

It won't therefore come as a big surprise that we are, as a result, slightly in awe of Sparks (despite Liz being 'Big Sister' in many other ways) and when he comes down on a perfectly innocent visit we always worry that we are being inspected to make sure we are looking after 'his house' in a satisfactory way. We get over this by the time Sparks has been here a few minutes and has not fallen about laughing, and it is well buried by the time he has looked around and seen what hard work we have been doing on poly tunnel and veg garden, and we go on to have a lovely time meeting them all again.

Brian just LOVES it here, his day down on 'the farm' and his chance to charge about doing stuff with Uncle Matt , cooking with Auntie Liz etc. He is as excited as any 5 year old at all the space to run around in, pups and kittens to play with, chickens to feed, geese, rabbits to see and all the other stuff that goes on. He loves to dig up worms for the chickens and spends lots of time, shovel in hand, inevitably surrounded by the chickens who arrive immediately anyone starts to make digging noises here, and is only slightly non-plussed at the rooster crowing within feet of the back of his head.

He was all a bit too much for the geese, who ran a mile every time he appeared, but they are new and nervous and will probably get used to him. At least they were not attacking him.

The visit also gave Liz a chance to do 'hostess' again and Brian coped very well with the fact that the lamb he was helping Liz cook, was one of the ones he fed by hand last year. For Liz it was a chance to use the halogen-light powered slow cooker, which is a gift from the Silverwoods. Liz went for a Moroccan style meal this time well smeared with garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, onion and enough yogurt to make a paste.  Brian was on hand to help grate carrot, mix mint sauce with yogurt, measure out cous-cous and add cinnamon and raisins.

Brian is well able for this, loves his cooking and often helps his Dad in the kitchen. Mr and Mrs Sparks have given him plenty of supervised practice with the 'serious knives' so that he can now be trusted not to add too many fingers to the mixture, and is really good with the measuring and mixing. He knows some recipes off by heart - leek and potato soup for example, and if Spag-bol is on the menu he will have all the ingredients out of their cupboards and on the work surfaces ready to start, without being told.

So, we had a lovely visit and everyone enjoyed them selves. We were sad to see them all go, but also exhausted in the way you are when an important visit has gone off successfully. Thank you, as ever, Mr and Mrs Sparks and Brian. You are welcome back at any time.

John and Carol

Our visit yesterday from John and Carol went really well. They are lovely people, easy to talk to and fascinating to listen to and I think I can safely say we have made some good friends there, all be it we will not see them very often as they are based in Chippenham (Wiltshire in the UK). They had stayed overnight at their camp site in Cong, deciding not to move about too much due to the cold wind, but instead to base them selves at Cong and work outwards from there. They have quite a sophisticated set up, trailer tent, cooking facilities, sink with pumped water, warm and cosy etc, so much so that they declined our offer of a stay overnight. They had come from Cong (to our west) relying on sat nav which had somehow found them a route via Moyne village (east of us!). They had then driven past our door without knowing, and phoned us from Lisacul village, back west of us again.

We are similar age and interests so the chat ranged around over a big variety of subjects including 2CV escapades, the North of France and WW1 sites, the Normandy beaches and then on up into Yorkshire. Both of them hail from the lovely village of Slaithwaite which we know from narrow boating as the village where the canal runs up next to the high-street tarmac, between the house and shop fronts. See also my post on this blog from July 26th 2011 on http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2011/07/nurse-screens.html . They grew up together there and met while working in one of the local factories. John has had a fascinating life having worked for a while in textiles including running an angora rabbit fur processing plant (!) as well as working for Intel, the computer chip makers) and spending some time in Co. Mayo, which is how come he is now bringing the Bath 2CV club 'raid' over this way.

They were intrigued by our own move, the house renovation and the small holding. They had a good look round the house and the garden. Liz's food was a great success; we had cheese, bacon and chilli biscuits as a snack, then an Easter inspired slow-roast lamb with plenty of veg (I did my roast potatoes) followed by a lovely chocolate mousse in which 'floated' mini chocolate eggs. They had arrived bearing gifts including a lovely yellow rose plant for Liz, and we sent them off with half a dozen of our lovely eggs. They were here from about half twelve till gone 6 and we enjoyed every minute. For entertainment, just in case they'd get bored, neighbour Una had a go at setting light to some trees so we raced round there at one stage to play fire-fighter. Never a dull moment.

Thank you for coming, John and Carol. We will see you again when the Raid happens (May/June) and I hope we can now be firm friends on into the future.