THE JOURNAL

19 August Monday

Buffaloes are being bred and raised in County Cork. This is not news.  It has been going on for some years now. The mozzarella cheese that is being produced from their milk is wonderful. Some Italian producers came over to advise and to see how the project was going when it was first starting up. They declared that the mozzarella produced here is superior to their own. They said that buffaloes are better suited to the climate of Cork than they are to the dry parts of Italy where they have been being raised for years. I have just discovered the yoghurt made from the buffalo milk. It is a bright white. It is whiter than any cow’s milk yoghurt. I wonder if more farmers will be interested to switch from cow to buffalo herds.

20 August Tuesday

The bad-tempered feral cat and one kitten have returned. I thought they had decamped up to the farm. There were four or five kittens in the litter, but now there is only the one. I do not know where the others went. Maybe the fox ate them. The one remaining kitten follows the mother wherever she goes. The mother hisses at me outside the kitchen door. She wants food but she cannot be civil in order to get it. The enormous black and white cat arrives every few days and beats up the mother. The noise of their fighting is terrible to hear. The kitten watches.

21 August Wednesday

Is he feeling better in Himself? This is a way of asking how someone is doing, especially if they have been unwell recently.

22 August Thursday

The old door came from the Car Boot Sale in Fethard. It was a normal door made of heavy wood. Simon bought it for 5 pounds in 1997. He sawed the door in half and cut out a square hole for a window. He did other adjustments to make it function as a two-part stable door. It has lasted all these years, but now it is rotting from the bottom up. It has been rotting away for several years. Each winter we expect an invasion of mice through the bottom of the door. Mounted over the door is a glass windscreen from an old Ford. We think it is from a Ford Cortina. We found it above at Johnnie Mackin’s, among his multiple old broken-down cars and his spare parts Held In Reserve. T.J., the blacksmith, made some brackets to hold the glass in place. The windscreen serves as small protection from the rain, but only if a person is standing right up close to the door. We are waiting for the new door to be completed and to arrive. It will be sad to see the old door depart, but it will be good to have a door that is not decomposing. The glass visor will stay exactly where it is.

23 August Friday

I found some old postcards at a newspaper shop. The shop was badly lit.  There was not any light at all except for what came through the front window and since it was an overcast day, there was not even a lot of that.  The cards were old, dusty, and curled up. The rack was old and dusty too. I had to wipe off the sticky dust off the cards with a damp cloth when I got home. I like that the men fishing on this boat are wearing shiny street shoes and the man steering the boat is wearing a dress white shirt. There is not a bit of waterproof protection on any of them. Wearing such shoes would be both ridiculous and dangerous on a fishing boat. I like this card too much to send it to anyone. I shall have to keep it.

When I went to pay for my postcards, I found the owner of the shop leaning over the counter. On first glance, I thought he had collapsed and that his head was resting face down on the counter. I thought there was something wrong.  Instead I saw that he was holding a magnifying glass that was as big as a dinner plate. It was an inch or two over the open newspaper and his head was an inch or two from the magnifying glass. He was reading.

24 August Saturday

The handle from the old door is made of cast iron. Tommie told me that it is part of a Pulper. He said that when he was Coming Up, every house had a Pulper. He explained that there was a heavy wheel that had to be turned in order to mash up the turnips for animal feed.  He said it was sometimes called a Masher or a Mangle. There were two handles like the one we have, one on each side. When the turnips had been thoroughly mashed, two people lifted the container out, one person on each handle and together they carried the mash out to the animals.  He enjoyed telling me about the work and about the pile of turnips waiting to be pulped.  He said this was a job for the young ones and that it was a job that had to be done every single day. For as long as we have had this door, this has been our handle.

25 August Sunday

At this time of year, we are plagued by tiny insect bites. We never see the insects. Nor do we hear them. The insects bite at night and their bites itch and itch for days. I am convinced that they are the bites of tiny spiders. After a few weeks of these bites, the season is over and there will not be another bite until next August. Last night I turned on the light and found a huge wood spider on my pillow. I trapped him in a cup and threw him out the window. These are the spiders that I usually find in the bathtub. They crawl up the drain from outdoors. I am used to that and it does not disturb me to find one in the bathtub. I was not happy to find such a large spider on the bed.

26 August Monday

Take it Handy! is the expression used instead of Take it Easy!

27 August Tuesday

I walked around Cahir yesterday while the last few things were done for the car re-test. I have spent a lot of time in Cahir. The endless tweaking of the car’s problems and the rapidly evaporating state of Mike’s garage have not made things easier. I had to go to Dalton’s to get my tyres checked and to get my headlamps aligned before the re-test. I wandered around the Old Church and saw a good, though damaged, head carving that I had never noticed before. The head has huge ears. I passed the test and drove home relieved.

29 August Thursday

The new door was installed today. It was a difficult job because nothing in this house is straight or even. The old frame was as rotten as the door itself. It took from 8.00 in the morning until 6 o’clock, and still the inside edging has not yet been fitted. That will be done later. There was a large amount of cement cutting done to make the new frame fit. The dust was terrible. Philippe and Shane put up a curtain of blankets to stop the dust from going everywhere but it managed to travel anyway.

The new door is again a stable door in two parts, this time made of French Oak, and it has the same old locks and the same window glass as the old door. One handle has been re-installed. We re-used what could be re-used. The Pulper handle may or may not get put back into service.

30 August Friday

Bunny spent years as a lorry driver. He claims that he has driven every inch of every road on this entire island.  He refuses to take his holidays here because he does not want to go somewhere that he could drive to and back home in one day.  He does not consider that Getting Away.  I mentioned Donegal as being far away and a very long drive, but he scoffed at that and claimed he could drive there in four and a half hours, and four and a half hours back. By his standards, that was not far away enough to be A Holiday. This year he is going to Germany and he is traveling on an airplane.  He cannot go by boat because he gets seasick.

31 August Saturday

Years ago, Tom Browne did a lot of work for us.  One day, he wrote our initials in a piece of concrete: S.E.  Tom has been dead for at least 15 years. Finding that piece of concrete wedged in a bit of the old wall today made me think of him.

1 September Sunday

There are more black currants to pick every morning for breakfast. They never stop. Now the raspberries are ripening daily and with increasing speed, as are the figs. I check the figs every day, sometimes twice a day, because if they show the smallest suggestion of softening, the birds attack them. It is better for me to bring them indoors to ripen than to leave them outside where they will be ripped open.  I am also cutting back the lavender. I have two buckets full that I am tossing and turning to help it to dry, and so far I have barely made a dent in the crop.

2 September Monday

I had one of those days when I used the word CALL when I should have said RING and the use of the wrong word got me into trouble. Poor Tommie waited all day for my visit. Sometimes the incorrect word just slips out of my mouth. When we spoke on the phone at the end of the afternoon, he was petulant and told me that I have lived here long enough to know the difference between the two words. It is not up to him to know how people speak elsewhere. This is where he lives and this is where CALL means to drop in or to make a visit. RING is the word to use when speaking of a telephone conversation. A few minutes later, he apologized. He said that he has slept badly for two nights so he is feeling peevish. He said that he should not take his fatigue out on me.