THE JOURNAL

19 September Thursday

On every day that is bright and clear and dry, the roads are teeming with farm machinery. Everyone is busy cutting and bringing in their silage and hay and working to get all of the harvest work done.  Every road is full of large machines all traveling at fearsome speeds. And there are a fair amount of small spills.

 

20 September Friday

The young feral cat is no longer looking so much like a kitten.  It now arrives frequently without its miserable mother. This is a new development. It sits on the bench outside waiting and hoping for something to eat.

21 September Saturday

There is always yet another discussion on the radio about Birthday Cards.  There continue to be grandparents who post a card to a grandchild and include some cash in the envelope, but the child never receives the card nor the money.  The grandparent phones in to the radio in a state of outrage. There is an understanding that birthday cards posted in brightly coloured or shiny envelopes look like exactly what they are and if the handwriting looks like that of an older person, these envelopes are intercepted by unscrupulous people, maybe people who work at the post office or maybe not. The thieves throw the card away and keep the cash.  Talk show hosts on the radio have been discussing this problem for years and years, but it seems that every person sending cash forgets the advice not to enclose cash in a colorful envelope or else they do not listen to the radio anyway, so they think that they are the only ones who are sending a small amount of paper cash to a child.

22 September Sunday

I enjoy a line up of things at the far edge of a field:  a parade of cows heading toward the milking shed or a row of plastic wrapped bales looking like punctuation.

23 September Monday

There is a dead bird on the path.

24 September Tuesday

The days remain warm but the mornings are cold, as are the nights. The mixture of hot and cold causes misty pockets of fog to settle into low places. Sometimes these pockets are so dense that it is impossible to see for even a few metres in front of yourself. By mid-morning, the fog pockets have burned off but in the early morning the radio warns us to be careful of Clutches of Mist.

27 September Friday

We do not purchase sliced white bread often. When we do it is because there is no bread in the house and because Brennan’s TODAY’S BREAD TODAY is the only remaining choice in the village shop. This kind of squishy white bread is suited to some meals like Beans on Toast or French Toast or a Bacon Sandwich. When we have to buy this bread our menu adjusts accordingly. Since we do not really want this bread at all, the good thing about it is that we can buy a half a loaf. Or a HALF PAN as it is called. A HALF PAN is exactly that. It is a half a loaf of bread, or half of what came out of the pan. Today is the first time I noticed that A HALF PAN contains TEN slices of bread. By the time I noticed this the bread was nearly gone. The next time we buy this sliced white bread might be a long time from now. I hope that I remember to count the slices to see if it is really exactly ten slices. The flimsy white cardboard in the shape of a piece of bread is always in position exactly where the half is determined to be. Which I now know is between the tenth and the eleventh slices.

28 September Saturday

Including the woman behind the counter, there were three people in the shop, besides me. Both of the customers ahead of me discussed their cold or virus or flu with the woman. Everyone has this disease and no one can shake free of it. We do not even know what to call it. It is debilitating but not in a way that knocks one into bed. It just means we are all functioning well below par and we are complaining and comparing symptoms a lot, which does not make us feel better but it is all we can do. The older man in front turned to me as the woman at the counter went to get some paracetamol for him. He asked, “Are you a Quinn?” When I said, “No, I am not a Quinn, ” he squinted at me more carefully and said: “You’re not the one I thought you’d be.”

29 September Sunday

Torrential desperate lashing blustery rain. All day.  It does not matter how well protected one is. This rain comes from every direction and it is soaking. It is a good day to stay indoors.  In between the days or hours of heavy rain, there is bright warm sunshine.  I continue to collect a good bowlful of raspberries daily as well as cutting and trimming back endless amounts of lavender.

30 September Monday

Three pieces of enormous farm machinery meeting up on the narrow road make for a traffic jam. There is nothing to do but wait.

1 October Tuesday

A man stood in front of me at the supermarket. He placed five large heads of iceberg lettuce on the counter. The clerk looked at him and said, “You’re making a salad?”  He said “No. Rabbits. I have fifteen rabbits.They are the ones eating salad.”

3 October Thursday

The two cars were destroyed. No one was hurt. Ambulances arrived from both Cahir and Clonmel. Later the occupants of one of the cars received a bill for 1500 euro. It was a call out fee for the ambulances. They rang the ambulance office and said that they did not ring for the ambulances and luckily for them, they had not needed the ambulances. The question they had is Why do we have to pay? The woman on the phone asked if they were over 65. She explained that if so, they were okay because OAPs do not have to pay the call out fee anyway.

4 October Friday

I went to visit Tommie at the hospital. He was told he would be there only for three days, but it has now been three weeks. He is in the newly opened Slievenamon Ward. Slievenamon is a nearby mountain. We see it in the distance every day.  The name means The Mountain of Women. Tommie says he does not mind being in a ward named for women because he knows that this mountain is a fine mountain. Then he informed me that Women Are Important In A Society. This conversation and every conversation was interrupted by the horse racing playing on an enormous television screen in the corner. The sound was loud. As each race began, we had to stop talking so that Tommie and the two other men in the ward could watch the outcome. I took him a bag of tiny grapes from the Farmer’s Market.  He ate a few handfuls then he told me to hide them. He said that he is not allowed sugar in any form. He said he is not allowed much of anything. He told me that he is longing for a piece of toast but he is not allowed any of that either. Above his bed is a notice directing that his diet be Minced and Moist.

5 October Saturday

There are several places on the road down to the village with clumps of sheep wool all over the bushes. It is not like the old dirty wool hanging from a gate.  I have been driving past this wool all week. I cannot figure out where it came from. Maybe there was a truck loaded with freshly sheared wool and it blew out as the truck passed?  Sheep lose a little wool as they wander around but not as much as I am seeing.  There are never any sheep walking down that road either as it is much too busy. Each time I pass the wool on the ditch I think I will ask someone, but then I forget about it when I get to wherever I am going.

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.

31 July Wednesday

I am picking black currants. I pick one huge bucketful and then I pick another huge bucketful. Black currants. More black currants. I am not filling bowls. I am filling buckets. The branches are so heavy with the shiny berries that they are dragging on the ground. I have given away a lot and we have made a beautiful rich sauce that we are pouring onto everything. We eat fresh handfuls of the currants on our cereal in the morning. I only grow the black ones. The birds have no interest in them. Birds go mad for red currants and for white currants, but they ignore black currants.

We made the sauce and froze a lot of it in small containers to bring out and eat in the coming months. I have bags and bags full of currants in the freezer. It would be nice if I made jam, but I am not a jam-maker, but I consider this every year.

While picking the currants, I sit on a plastic box, with a cushion and I listen to a novel being read to me on my telephone.

Sometimes I do not listen to anything. I just think. Today I was reminded of a young man who was invited to house-sit for some friends one summer. He was told instructed by the couple that he should help himself to the fruit and vegetables all ripening in the garden. The lady of the house emphasized that the black currants would be ready any day now and that he should be sure to enjoy those.

When the couple returned from their holiday they saw that the black currant bushes were still heavily laden with fruit but that the branches had been stripped of every leaf. In the freezer was a large quantity of white sorbet made by the young man.  It tasted intensely of black currants. Apparently the taste of the currants is more intense from the leaves than it is from the fruit. I often think of this, but as well as not wanting to be a jam-maker, I am not interested in making sorbet, though I am happy to eat it if someone else makes it.

1 August Thursday

Simon has many medical tests scheduled. He is required to have bloods taken and analyzed before some of the tests can be done. He went this afternoon to the nurse, had his bloods taken and then he was told that he had to take the samples up to the hospital himself because the blood for the day had been collected in the morning and if he did not take his to the hospital himself it would not get there until tomorrow, which would hold up everything. After explaining where to go to deliver the blood inside the hospital, the nurse gave him a second sealed plastic bag and said, “Since you are after going up there, you can take this other lady’s blood too. She does not drive, so she was not able to deliver it to the hospital herself.”

2 August Friday

The electric stove is not working. We blow fuses each time we try to use it. The electrician is on holiday in Canada. Any and all cooking must be done on the barbecue.

3 August Saturday

Once again, the morning is warm and bright. Discussion on Tipp FM was on the subject of sun screen for tractor drivers. There were a lot of handy tips for both farm workers and tractor drivers. One was not to leave your bottle of sunscreen on the dashboard of the tractor, but to keep it in one of your pockets. Another was to wear a hat all day both inside and outside of the tractor’s cab. If it is too hot for a long sleeved shirt, it is important to keep the arms well coated all day long. I am not sure why this advice is targeted only for farmers.

4 August Sunday

The plums from the Apple Farm are reaching the end of their season. Sadly, it is a short season this year due to the long wet springtime. I took a bowlful to Tommie. He loves plums. He loves most fruit. In less than a minute of me placing the bowl on his table, he had one of the plums in his mouth. He held the second plum up in the air between his thumb and his finger and he said, “These plums are at the Top of Their Game!”
He says this every year about the plums from The Apple Farm. Each time he ate a plum he placed the stone into the left hand pocket of his old cardigan. The front of the cardigan looks pretty good but both elbows are completely worn through. His plaid shirt underneath is exposed both halfway up and halfway down his arm. He told me that the elbows are no longer good for much, but that the pockets are just fine.

5 August Bank Holiday Monday

I have been studying the apple trees below in the meadow. Every apple on the lower branches has been eaten as have the leaves. My first thought was to blame another break out of cows, but there are no dollops of manure nor any big holes from the heavy hooves of cattle. And there are no apples on the ground. I do not think cows even like apples. It took a while to realise that it was the work of deer. We have never had deer around until this year but I have seen one running in and out of Scully’s woods. It must be the one who is eating the apples.

6 August Tuesday

Mike is closing up his garage at the end of the month. He has lost interest in repairing cars and the increase of both digitally programmed cars and electric vehicles is making his work harder and harder. It is too expensive for a small garage to invest in all the necessary equipment.  He might train as a paramedic. Or he might drive a bus. I will miss going to his garage and looking at all the bits of things he has around. Next week someone is coming to take away all of the old wrecks he has used for parts. His neighbour used the stationary cars to position his beehives for a few summers.

8 August Thursday

The shallow water butt is empty. This is a rare state of affairs. The moss around its edges has died. The bottom was full of some manky old sludge. This morning I scooped all of the sludge out. There is nothing to do now but to wait for some rain to refill it.

9 August Friday

Dote is never used as a verb, but always as a noun. A Dote is a cute person. Someone who is adorable or at the very least in possession of a sweet temperament. A Dote is usually female though a young child is often A Dote, be it male or female.

10 August Saturday

I delivered fresh strawberries directly from the Farmers’ Market to Tommie today. Together we lamented the Passing of the Plums. Even while expressing sadness about the need to wait until next year for more of those perfect plums, he dove right into his punnet of strawberries. He pulled the green hull off each strawberry before he popped it into his mouth. He lined the green parts up along his left leg. They looked like a little parade. We discussed the Olympics and the many medals won by the Irish this year and about the events that we enjoyed as well as those that we did not enjoy. He thought the athletes were all amazing and wonderful, but said that he would not be happy to sit down to talk with any one of them. He said, “Sure, they have no conversation but for themselves.”

 

11 August Sunday

The first load of wood shavings have arrived to be moved and stored for the winter cattle platform. I can hear the sound of the tractor going back and forth. The smell when walking through the yard is wonderful.

12 August Monday

We neither exit nor enter the book barn without accelerating. The beehive in the roof and just above the door is home to a big and busy swarm of honeybees. They do not bother us, but the noise of their buzzing makes us rush to get past them. The doorway is no place to linger.

13 August Tuesday

Before Brexit, a great many second-hand cars were imported from the United Kingdom. It was easy to drive a British car into the country and then to re-register it here. Since Brexit, it is impossible. The process of importing is so convoluted and so expensive and must involve so very many different shipping and customs agents, that it is now cheaper and more direct to import used cars directly from Japan. Like the Irish and the British, the Japanese drive on the left so their cars are right-hand drive and fit easily into life here.

14 August Wednesday

I am still picking black currants. The bushes keep producing. I go out every morning and gather enough for our bowls of cereal or porridge. The sharp tartness is a great way to begin the day.  I will be sorry when they stop producing, but I will be relieved to stop picking them.

15 August Thursday

I thought it was just me. I was sitting in the plastic chair with my feet flat on the ground and the edge of the chair snug behind my knees. There was no way I could lean my back against the back of the seat. If my back was straight then my legs could not bend. They would stick out straight into the room. I thought it was just myself sitting in this slouch but as I looked around I saw that five of the six other people were also slouched in their seats. One small girl was sitting cross legged on her chair. Perhaps this is the solution I should try. The chairs are new as is the whole waiting area for the car inspection place. The seat of the chairs are too deep for most bodies. A lot has changed about the ritual and the waiting at the NCT but when the inspector set off in my car, he tooted the horn as he drove around the corner and into the inspection bays. As a constant, the tooting of one’s horn is a cheerful way to begin the National Car Test.

16 August Friday

On Wednesday, I had the car washed in Ardfinnan in preparation for my inspection on Thursday. The man who washed it for me was a Ukrainian from Odessa. He trained as a Vet but he works here on a farm and part-time at the car wash because his English is not yet good enough to to get qualified to work as a veterinarian here. He is glad to be in this country because it means that his family is safe. Yesterday evening, I was walking down the road and a man on a small moped stopped and started to talk with me. He was from Pakistan and he told me many things about the army and the strength and importance of community there. He took off his helmet so that he could converse better. He is working as a farm labourer at different farms and finding life in rural Ireland very lonely. He told me that he has begun stopping every time he sees someone on his journey home. He wants to practice his language and he wants to meet people. His name is Zamann. It is unusual to meet people from other countries when going about my daily business in Tipperary. After these recent conversations I feel like I live in the world, not just in my valley.