May Meeting 2: Salads, sea and sunshine.

One of the first things on the itinerary was a supermarket shop: the one used the most by my friends is a few miles away in Clonakilty so off we went under a blue sky and in bright sunshine.

Going round the back of the small town we passed a Traveller driving in his trap, going at a very brisk trot.  I have seen them before parked in a supermarket car park and they are taken very much as a fact of life around here.

Next door to the shop we were going to is a really nice Restaurant where we stopped to have lunch before shopping.  I gather it is never sensible to do a household shop when one is hungry, although that was not the reason for our indulgence: growing up we were allowed to do very little together as friends and a coffee and cake, or a lunch out, are still treats for us!  In fact our friendship was very frowned upon.

This Restaurant has staff who are very helpful and I asked for a gluten and dairy free salad: this arrived – full of goodies and was absolutely delicious!

P also had a salad and hers came with Irish Soda Bread:

I was sooo envious!!

However, it was not to be for me, so ‘tant pis’.

After a slow chatty meal we departed for the supermarket and parked in the multi-storey car park: I had to take a photo from the roof as I consider it one of the best views I know to be had from such a building:

We found a whole section of gluten free baking including some super ginger biscuits and imagine my pleasure and astonishment to find some gluten free Irish Soda Bread which we promptly bought:

It was delicious and I really enjoyed it eating it during my stay: however I did notice some effects after a few days and on closer inspection noted that it did have a little buttermilk and some gluten free oats in it.  Now the protein Avenin found in Oats contains similar amino acid sequences as  wheat gluten and can evoke the same immune response.  Oats always used to be considered off-limits for people with gluten intolerance since avenin is so similar to gluten: Today, there is no way to predict ahead of time, which people with celiac disease will or will not be able to successfully consume oats without an immune reaction but since 2013 the FDA legislation has been changed so that it is now considered gluten-free in the UK and Ireland.  I don’t know about other countries. This is a problem because in many places I am offered food which is guaranteed gluten free but later I find oats in it: when I query the product the sellers are most offended when I explain that oats are not necessarily OK: I wish the FDA had not changed things!

I will experiment at home trying to make Soda Bread using lemon juice or apple vinegar instead of the buttermilk.

Apparently Ireland has the highest percentage of people sensitive to gluten of any country in the world, hence the large array of specialist food.

After our most successful lunch and shopping expedition we  decided to use the glorious day to go to the beach and go for a walk on the cliffs – so we returned home, unloaded the car, collected the dog and set off.

Beginning to climb the cliff path

We passed Thrift, Violets and Primroses amongst other flowers and herbs: the sea was aquamarine with purple patches and white horses breaking round rocks.  Here we are about 130 feet above sea level: at home we live at 750 feet above sea level amongst moorland and high hills and in the very middle of the country, the furthest you can get from the sea in the UK.  I love it there but do miss the sea terribly so it is a real treat to be able to come here.  Today, in the sun it all looked and was idyllic with unbelievable colours!

You can just see Galley Head Lighhouse station: it stands on the end of this promontary overlooking St George’s Channel.

Closer view with a Gannet in front

from the cliffs we saw this Gannet, a Skylark, two Stonechats and a Gull, plus, lower down on the cove, an Egret and hordes of Swans, Oystercatchers and Curlews.

According to Wikipedia, “Galley Head Lighthouse station was built in 1875, during the heyday of lighthouse building, and within twenty years of its closest neighbours at Old Head of Kinsale and Fastnet. The Galley Head and the Fastnet have the distinction of being two of the most powerful lighthouses in Europe.

(picture from:  https://blogotheirish.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/lighthouses-in-irelandure)

The lighthouse displays an unusual landward arc of light because, it is said, the Sultan of Turkey asked to be able to see it from Castle Freke at Rosscarbery nearby on his visit there. The castle was built in the 1680s but abandoned in 1952 and can be seen from Galley as a Gothic ruin.”

However, I gather that the castle is currently under restoration.

(picture from:  http://angarrancoir.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/castlefreke.jpg)

From 1997 the requirement for an Attendant to live at the Lighthouse station was discontinued.  The tower corridor was sealed off from the dwellings and a remote control and monitoring system linking the station to the central monitoring room at Dun Laoghaire was installed. Then in 1998 the two Keepers’ dwellings were leased to the Irish Landmark Trust, which restored them using traditional materials and building methods after which they have been let to the general public by the Trust as holiday accommodation.

(photo from:    http://www.irishlandmark.com/propertytag/by-the-sea/)

They would be a lovely place to stay:)  Stone is the building material of choice in this area and the fields also are bounded by stone walls, just as at home, but here they use the stones vertically, whereas at home in Yorkshire the stones are used horizontally.  The effect is startling to my eyes!

The air here is so pure that lichens grow in abundance: and they find a suitable home on the walls:

We stayed out long enough to soak up some rays but then had to drag ourselves back to the house to attend to other things.

Turning back for home.

Closer down to the bay.

We felt full of good food, fresh air, sunshine and life could hardly be better.  Back home we were met by an interesting spectacle, but more of that next time.

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Meeting in May

A month exactly after returning from meeting one dear friend in Paris, I have the good fortune to be spending a few days in the Irish Republic staying with my oldest friend and soul-mate from school days P, (we’ve been friends for over 54 years!). She and her husband live in an old cottage in the hills an hour’s drive West from Cork, and you can see the sea from their South-facing fields! Before coming she warned me to bring warm clothes because the weather had been so chilly.  But here I am on my first morning sitting outside the kitchen door on a bench with a mug of coffee, drinking in the sun and the views. Looking South up to the old Stable block (now unfortunately empty of equines), hen house and run, veggie garden and polytunnel: and looking East down over the apple trees into the valley (with the woodshed at the right at the end), from the same bench going through the gate, you first cross the boreen (sorry for the dreadful lack of focus but it gives you an idea of the lushness this Spring) – looking down the hill from the cottage the top part of the boreen looking down to the cottage Having crossed the boreen you see the tool shed and veg garden on the left, with the polytunnel ahead of you The veg garden planted up with onions, leeks, carrots, broad beans, peas, early and maincrop potatoes, beetroot, French Beans, Runner Beans, Cabbages and Sprouts, and –  I have probably forgotten some. Inside the wonderful tunnel, with a super vine producing sweet white grapes, carrots. beetroot, Runner Beans, French Beans, early potatoes, strawberries, tomatoes, courgettes, salad leaves, and numerous flower seedlings.  We ate good sized, delicious new potatoes most of the time I was there, all from the tunnel and a few delicious strawberries.  They were coming along beautifully but each night some creature got to them before we did.  Last year P was getting a bowlful each day. Looking to the right after crossing the boreen you see the old stable block and the hen house and chicken run.  We ate fresh eggs all the time, so very good!

Joseph and his five ladies.

They are very sociable chooks and enjoy visiting us in the kitchen:)

This Spring seems to have brought a veritable munificence of birdlife: there is a Blackbirds’ nest in the woodshed, another in the Quadbike shed, a Robins’ nest in the toolshed, a Wrens’ nest in the workshop, a Starlings’ nest in the first stable bay  and several Swallows nesting in the end bay, So, that is five buildings temporarily out of bounds!  Then there are Crows, Magpies, Great Tits, Bluetits, Greenfinches, Goldfinches, House Sparrows, Dunnocks and a Wagtail all feeding merrily at or around the bird feeders, suggesting nests fairly nearby in the numerous trees and hedges.

The fields in front of the house are let out to a local Stables at the moment and two young horses are spending their days growing and filling out on the ample grass and resting in the sunshine: My little bedroom, partly in the roof, view from the bed: So this is my rural Irish idyll for a few days!

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Midwife to a moth

About three months ago I went to do my greengrocery shopping at my usual shop: a whole-food cum organic co-operative in my area of Sheffield.

It is run by lovely people and quite a few of the part-time staff are university students, which gives me a glimpse of the youngsters I used to teach.  Useful for when I miss that age group.

Part of my shop consisted of a bag of mixed salad leaves, my own as yet unplanted yet alone ready to pick!  Far too cold.

As per usual I left them to soak for about 45 minutes to remove dust, grit, dead critturs and any aphids therein, being organic you know.

Well I got sidetracked and over an hour later I came down to process the leaves: bear with me, there is a point to this story and we ARE getting there.

I removed all leaves and spun them in my lettuce spinner and went to pour away the soaking water.  At the very bottom was a small green blob, which turned out to be a very drowned caterpillar.  I felt dreadful at causing its death: if I had been faster off the mark I would have found it earlier and put it outside in the most sheltered spot of greenery I could find.  The poor thing would probably have died of cold anyway, but what can you do?

Instead of letting the corpse run down the drain I put it on a piece of folded loo-roll, the better to absorb any water, in the undoubtedly vain hope of a resurrection, and left it on the sitting room table whilst I went back to my work elsewhere.

Another hour passed and when I came downstairs I remembered the caterpillar and went to have a look.  It had disappeared.  After a fruitless search crawling round the floor and looking under chairs and sofa I gave up and had one last look in the cracks on top of the table.  (It is an ancient folding table and over the centuries the hinge areas have crumbled and broken, leaves quite deep fissures.)

Nothing to be found so I picked up the loo roll to throw it away and issue warning to my other half to beware of caterpillars when walking through the sitting room.  And there, in the fold of the loo roll was the caterpillar.  It had lost water to the tissue, awoken, and crawled into the crease.  Eureka!  I was not a murderer after all.

But what to do next?  In the short term I placed it in a small container with some of the salad leaves it had come in, and air holes for ventilation of course, and then went to look up all my wildlife books which could throw any light on the kind of caterpillar it could be.  No joy there: a small green caterpillar with few distinguishing marks could be one of many. So there it remained for some weeks, gorging on greenery, growing immensely, and poohing heroically (and astonishingly).

Then one day it became comatose and I worried that I had missed out on some vital ingredient in its diet and it was now dying. A google search of caterpillar husbandry gave me some useful tips which suggested it was about to pupate, so I set to, making a small hatching container –  a large glass jar with kitchen roll around the outside to give cover and privacy,  more on the top to allow air inside, and some folded lengthwise leaning up therein for climbing and support if it wanted, some salad leaves at the bottom and bob’s your uncle.  Over the next four or five days it refused to eat or move: one evening I looked into  the jar before retiring to bed and found a chrysalis.  In the matter of four hours it had turned from a fat, succulent green caterpillar, into a hard, dark brown chrysalis. Presumably its insides had been slowly transforming over the last few days, but the the surface had only suddenly changed.

Photo from: http://abugblog.blogspot.ie/2011/01/angle-shades-caterpillar.html

which has a blog post illustrating the life cycle in photographs for anyone interested.

Thus it remained for weeks.  Of course I kept referring to my books and google, all of which said it should have hatched by now.  Then I had to leave for Paris, having written down instructions for husband in the event of any hatching.  Regular texts to and fro during my trip informed me that nothing changed.

Two days after my return home I was giving an evening meal to husband, son and grandson: roast pork and all the trimmings and a ‘catch-up’:  when I returned to the kitchen at one point to fetch something I noticed that there was a fluttering at the top of the glass jar.  The chrysalis had hatched and a browny-pink moth (I assumed), had climbed up the folded kitchen-roll and was beginning to use its wings.  Huge excitement on my part.  I immediately left the others to their meal and vanished upstairs to look up the identity of my moth.  It was an Angle Shade Moth: very beautiful in an understated way, with serrated wings, little horns on its head and gorgeous green, pink and brown markings on its wings.  Apparently they are not particular as to foodstuffs.

It being about five o’clock on a bright sunny evening I decided to release it at once so that it could warm up/feed/find shelter and generally do what it wanted, before night fell.  I went up to a patch of dense, gloriously flowering pak choi and put the moth on a stem below the yellow flower heads.  And took some photos of course!

Mine are not brilliant not being a photographer and not having the necessary equipment for really close up pictures but they were OK, and I found more and much better on the web.

Photograph by Ray Hamblett (Lancing Nature) from

ADUR NATURE NOTES 2005 at http://www.glaucus.org.uk/May2005.html

 The above photo shows the ‘horns’ better than mine does: there are three on the head, one in the middle and one at each side.  The bottom one is at the front beside the antenna.

Waiting for a while to make sure the moth was comfortable and well suited to its situation, as far as I  could ascertain, I returned to the dinner table and my cold plate.  Enthusiastically, I showed pictures, opened books, told the tale, to a mesmerised and unenthusiastic audience.  Husband to give him his due was also very pleased at a happy outcome and interested, but the others looked dumb with –  well it was not boredom exactly, more kind of expressions of polite interest masking complete astonishment and actual non-interest.  You could see them putting up with, “her usual eccentric behaviour”, which means they never knew what I would do next and therefore from that point of view there was a little interest, but the actual situation bore no interest or excitement for them of any kind.

Some times I wonder how I find myself in the family I inhabit.  Surely genetics is not meant to work like this?

But the pleasure and pride I feel on this little caterpillar’s clever transformation is immense.  On a par with sowing seeds and watching the final transformation to strong plants.  The change from apparently dry, lifeless form to vigorous, glowing life always uplifts.

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From the sublime to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?

So, back home and what have I been doing?

Muck spreading, that’s what!

In order to prevent the garden turning into the Brazilian Rain Forest before my eyes I need to get straight onto gardening duties now I’m home again. It was really hot here when I first returned and so much needs doing at this time of year as all you gardeners out there will know only too well.

The muck heap is enormous (measuring 17 feet long, 7 feet deep and over 4 feet high) and we have run out of space for any more addition: the fruit garden has had no muck on it for years and years so that is the first port of call:

The raspberry patch

The pears, gooseberries and currants

The roses in the front garden have also been neglected so a goodly dollop for them too

                    Then in rotation I put muck on different parts of our little veggie garden-

the runner bean trench (of course the runner bean trench gets it every year)

and the extra pieces of field that I am trying to incorporate.

  The compost bins were a disgrace: a new compost bin needs erecting, and one of the older ones dismantling: well to be honest, it has dismantled itself but I need to sieve and spread the compost to clear a space to put up a new compost bin. A friendly farmer has let me have five pallets and I put one at the bottom to allow for aeration and used the other four to make the sides.  It became full almost immediately but at least the compost is looking organised

and the muck spreading is nearly finished.

This is all that we have left and it has a home waiting for it as soon as we get round to it.

A good thing too because look what we have waiting for us to build into a new heap:

  Fuelled with energy after my superb holiday, I’m fairly speeding through the jobs.  I’m one of those people who needs physical exercise in the fresh air and to feel surrounded by the natural world to stay ‘grounded’ and it is a perfect foil for my mental activities, wanderlust and desire for occasional glimpses of city life.

I’m feeling very pleased with myself:)

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Postcard from Paris 18. 2015. Saturday: Last morning and travelling home.

When I arrived at the flat at the beginning of this trip, one of the things I did was to buy a white azalea in a pot to decorate L’s room:

later on it had looked gorgeous in the sitting room.

With our imminent departure I was wondering how to find it a good home since it was still in full glory:  I had been watching out for the concierge who waters the plants in the courtyard in case he might like to have it, but I kept missing him.

This morning at about 7.30 am I heard him in the courtyard watering the plants so dashed out to catch him: I was actually still in my PJs which are more than decent, however, I don’t think that is what the fashion conscious Parisian woman would do!  On my way down the stairs with the plant I encountered a very distinguished grey-haired man coming up them with his morning baguette and a bag of croissants – incidentally smelling wonderful: on impulse I asked him if he lived here, and looking rather surprised (whether at the question, my clothing, or both I don’t know) he answered, “Yes”.  I explained that I was going home today and asked whether he would like the plant: he looked delighted, readily agreed and wished me a good journey:)  So that is one thing sorted at the beginning of a very ‘sorting-out’ kind of day.  Job done: but I wish I had not been in my PJs.

Looking out of the front window I saw the soldiers still on guard outside the Synagogue.  They had the plain-clothes policemen with them again: sad, but we have got used to their presence.

L and I have done most of our packing and since she does not leave until the early hours of tomorrow, 3.30 am to be precise, and I leave at 3.0 pm this afternoon, we had decided that we would try to do something this morning.  You remember me mentioning that French detective series Engrenages?  Well on one of our bus routes we had passed the Bistro L’Engrenage over on the other side of the third arrondissement,

very close to the Police Headquarters there.

Therefore I rather fancied going over there for lunch, to scope out the area and see if it was named with reference to the Series.

We caught the 29 bus over to the Bistro only to find it closed until the early afternoon: I had not read the website correctly.

So I took a few photographs

and then we caught the bus going back the way we had come.  We got off on the Rue de Turenne and walked over to the Italian Bistro in the St. Paul’s district where we had such a good meal a while ago, remember I had the aubergine dessert?  Well, we were the first there and the Proprietess who had been very friendly was not there and we were met by a surly chap who actually made us feel very unwelcome.  We tried to be pleasant and thaw the icy reception: I ordered bream with fresh orange segments, pistachio nuts, new potatoes and broad beans, and it was really wonderful.  The broad beans had been shelled and then had their skins removed so they were soft and delicious.  I have never had broad beans that tasted like that.  L had a pasta dish and this time the pasta was well cooked: clearly the chef was on form but we managed no improvement in relations with the patron and we felt most uncomfortable.  I hasten to say he was Italian and not French!!!   It was such a shame as it made it hard to enjoy our meal and we left as soon as we could, refusing coffee or dessert.

Not the most marvellous way to pass our last morning:)  Anyway, unwilling to give up we walked over to the super ice cream shop by the Place des Vosges, Amorino,

and bought one small tub each.

and spent a happy time sitting on a bench in the Place in the sun eating our ice creams, soaking it all up.

At 2.0 pm we reluctantly decided we had to drag ourselves away and go back to the flat.  We walked back past one of my favourite shops which contains bronze sculptures covered in some kind of enamel or resin and others set in glass/acrylic.

I have never dared to even go into the shop let alone ask for any prices

but I would love to have this one to take home

We returned to the flat for me to pop the last few things in my case and make sure all was organised for the taxi.  This came promptly and by 3.45 pm I was at the Gare du Nord, through Security and waiting for my train.  The place was packed with Brits returning home after their Easter holidays, and a few French going over for a trip:  a kind woman budged up to make space to allow me to sit down beside her and wait for my train.

Eurostar left late and then waited for a further 15 mins outside the station, so we were over half an hour late into St. Pancras.  I was extremely pleased that I had not booked any particular train home as I would have missed the one I had been thinking of.  So I had time to buy something to eat on the last leg of my journey and I went into M&S to buy some gluten free brownies: normally I can buy quite a lot of gluten free things in M&S but this outlet did not have them.  A very kind Indian lady came out from behind the till and walked round the shop with me to show me the one thing they did have but it was a shock after Paris where there was always something, and it was always lovely.  It was strange being surrounded by the English language and suddenly, lots of fat people, and I felt rather ill at ease for a little while.  A quick coffee upstairs near my platform and then 8.0 pm found me on my next train bound for the North.  I eventually arrived home at 10.40 pm.

I have had the most wonderful trip: Paris just gets under your skin and it will always have a part of my heart.  I am so lucky just to be a couple of train journeys away, but however much I love going, I find it is never as pleasurable by oneself as it is if one can share it with somebody else.  And no-one in my family or circle of friends in England shares my love of France.  Thanks to the generosity and kindness of my friend L, I have had the opportunity for both the pleasure of her company and her equal appreciation of things French.

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