Dublin: the last stop on my journey. Can you believe it?
I arrived by bus and, instead of lugging my heavy and cumbersome duffel bag all over the city like I did in Cork and Clonakilty (the only other time I had the duffel), I immediately hailed a taxi to take me to the hostel. Probably the best €6 I’ve spent during this entire vacation. The driver was Irish (something that I’d been told not to expect in the big city) and we had a lively conversation on the way. He even refused my tip, assuring me that I needed it more than him. Man, nice people here. Had an uneventful evening, which would be followed by four full days to tour Dublin. This would turn out to be approximately one day longer than I really needed to see the stuff I was particularly interested in, so I am damn glad that I didn’t spend nine days there as originally planned.
Day One.
I left the hostel and traveled down O’Connell street, which is one of the main drags of the city. Along the way I passed the big post office, which was the site of the proclamation of independence that started the Easter Rising in 1916. There are still bullet dents from the ensuing five-day firefight in the big pillars along the front, but they’re pretty hard to notice. However, down the street is the O’Connell monument, which has much more visible battle-damage. As the statues are hollow metal, the bullets punched straight through, making very dramatic holes on the angelic figures. Crossing the river shortly led me to TrinityCollege. Trinity is apparently one of the most respected colleges in Europe, and is particularly known for the arts. The campus is pretty nice, in that it has some cool architecture and absolutely the most neatly-manicured lawns I have ever seen. (Though I prefer U of M, to be honest.)
However, the big draw for me (and, I suppose, most tourists) was the Book of Kells. This is an 8th-century “illuminated Bible” – an incredibly lavishly illustrated copy of the New Testament. It was hand-scribed and -painted on vellum (de-furred and stretched animal hide) using natural pigments bound with egg white. I’m not sure what the proportion of each is, but the pages are divided into two categories: pages that are text-based, with occasional important words and letters enlarged and visually embellished; and pages that are entirely composed of unbelievably detailed illustrations of – for example – the crucifixion, saints, scribes, saints’ symbols, Celtic knotwork, and just…indescribable stuff. Before you reach the Book itself, you go through an exhibit talking about the history of the Book and others like it, the processes of scribing and illustrating and bookbinding, the meanings of certain illustrations, etc. Interesting enough in its own right. The Book of Kells is kept under glass in two “pieces.” Since the original binding has been lost, there is no problem with dividing the pages for easier viewing. However, in the interest (I assume) of prolonging the artifact’s life, only four pages are exposed at a time, and they are “turned” to show a new set of pages once every three months. At all times, I believe, there are two pages of illustrations, two pages of text. It’s unbelievable to see what these scribes and illustrators did without the aid of magnifying tools – or, indeed, archival-quality art supplies. It looks like it was painted yesterday! The paint is still glossy! It’s a very cool thing to see.
After this, you are led to the Old Library of Trinity College, which is a very long and beautifully-built room that houses thousands upon thousands of manuscripts from the past few centuries. Apparently, the Library has the legal right to claim one free copy of each new book published in Ireland or the United Kingdom for its collection. Weird! At one point, you can glance over a velvet rope into a room where people are cleaning and restoring some of the more deteriorated books. The Library also contains one of a few remaining printed copies of the proclamation made at the start of the Easter Rising. Oh, and the Brian Boru Harp! It’s the oldest Celtic-style harp in Ireland, dating to the 14th century if I remember right, and it’s the one that the design on all Irish money was modeled on.
Anyway, despite the length of this description, it was only a little after lunchtime at this point! Later, I wandered around St. Stephen’s Green – Dublin’s answer to Central Park – and enjoyed the sun, as did many many others. Then I wandered the labyrinthine National Gallery for a few hours. It had a very large collection of Christian works, including the only Cubist crucifixion scene I’ve ever laid eyes on. Also, apparently W.B. Yeats had a brother named Jack who was a pretty prolific painter. And I guess his father painted too? And his other brothers did some stuff? I had never heard of any Yeats except for William Butler before.
Day Two.
On this day, I had a tough decision to make. I knew the National Museum of History and Archaeology was open, and I also really wanted to tour the Old Jameson Distillery. My final decision was that, since museums always close early (5 PM!), I would check out the Jameson tour early, get lunch, then spend the afternoon in the museum.
…Do you see my mistake yet? You will.
The Old Jameson Distillery is so called because Jameson is no longer made there; production has been moved to somewhere in CountyCork, I believe. Today, the Distillery has been turned into a museum housing a gift shop, a couple of bars, and a small-scale replica of what the distillery was like back in the day. I arrived at roughly 10:15 AM, ten minutes before the next tour. Perfect! First thing, the tour group was led into a mini-amphitheater where we were exposed to a shockingly cheesy bit of filmmaking discussing the history of John Jameson and Son and their products. However, I DID learn a few things from it: before making whiskey, the Jamesons were known for defending ships from pirates; and Irish monks originally developed whiskey-making and shared it with the Scots. The latter bit smacks of competition-fueled tall-tale boasting, so take it with a grain of salt. Afterward, our guide dryly informed us that he “usually sees a standing ovation for that film,” and that it had “won two Oscars, if such a thing’s possible.” Then we moved on to the tour. We saw, as I mentioned, scaled-down versions of the grain storehouse, malting floor, wort-mixing vat, fermentation vat, pot stills (these ones may actually have been to scale), aging warehouses, and blending vat. Then we got to the free drinks!
You’ve almost got it figured out, don’t you?
Everyone gets a free drink at the end of the tour. However, in my case, it turns out that at the beginning of the tour I’d volunteered for the whiskey-tasting experience! How could I refuse such a tantalizing possibility? After everyone but us eight volunteers had gotten their drinks, we were seated at a long table in front of all the non-volunteers. Each of us had a tray in front of us with three half-shots mixed with water (to release the flavors, of course): one Jameson, one unidentified Scotch whisky, and one unidentified American whiskey. As the rest of the tour watched, the guide led us through the process of smelling the “nose” of each whiskey, then sipping them, describing the scents and flavors we should be noticing for each one and the reasoning behind it. Quite interesting, as well as tasty! We were later informed that the Scotch was Johnnie Walker 12-year-old Black Label (not too shabby) and the American whiskey was, of course, Jack Daniels. Each of us volunteers got a silly little diploma declaring us “official Irish whiskey tasters”.
Then we got our promised free drinks. Yes, in addition to the ones we’d sampled. Bringing me to a total of roughly 2.5 shots of whiskey/whisky in a period of fifteen or twenty minutes. This is how I came to be, at roughly 11:45 AM, walking the streets of Dublin in a state of drunkenness that I usually reserve for after midnight in the comfort of my own (or a friend’s) home. Yay Ireland!
After I’d had lunch and sobered up a bit, I headed out to the Museum of Archaeology. I…hm. I enjoyed it, certainly, but somehow I don’t really have much to say about it. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that photography wasn’t allowed, so I don’t have a little compendium of all of my favorite bits. There was a lot about prehistoric Ireland, with stone knives and whatnot, but I’ve seen plenty of that by now. There was a section about Vikings, which would have been cool if it wasn’t so poorly-curated. Though they did have a working replica Viking boat, which was neat! They also had an exhibit – a pretty small portion of a larger collection, but the most interesting part for me – where you could hear some poetry read in Middle Irish, Norman French, and Middle English. That was pretty neat. Middle English is mostly understandable!
The “treasury” room had an awful lot of penannular brooches, which has successfully landed them on my list of things to make or purchase. I think it’d go great with a kilt, you see. Basically how they work is this: The brooch is a ring with a small open space, and opposite the open space is a pin that can move freely along the ring. You stick the pin through your cloak or whatever, then you slide the exposed tip of the pin through the open space on the ring, and twist it so that the pin is resting on the ring. At this point the fabric of your cloak can’t slip out. God, I explained that terribly, didn’t I? Here, this will help you understand:
http://www.runesmith.co.uk/runepens/runepens.htm
Thanks, Google!
Ah heck, let’s just post this now since I’ve got it written. So, one more Dublin entry soon to come, covering days Three and Four!
The internet here at the hostel is pretty slow, so you won’t get photos of Dublin ‘til after I get home, but before the final, retrospective-style entry, y’know.
On Saturday night – my last night in CountyLeitrim – Dan took Aoife and I to “Bridie’s Barn Dance,” hence the title. However, that’s a bit misleading. While it did take place in a barn (or rather, a nice cottage outfitted with bales of hay to appear barn-like), and while there was music, I never saw any dancing. Still, it was a pretty excellent time. As Dan later said, it was like Joe Mooney had condensed itself and come to Bridie’s house. There were three sessions going on most of the evening, two inside and one outside under a tent-gazebo. They also had a very friendly (and…very hard to understand) youngish Irish fellow working a barbeque all night, as well as lots and lots of beer. The makings of a great party, to be sure!
While I was there, I got a chance to have a more in-depth chat with Sam and his lady friend Ferris, who I mentioned a few entries ago. At the Swan, Sam was the Viking-lookin’ guy with the lute and Ferris was the lady with the assortment of wind instruments. Sam is actually from London (or sounds like it, at least), while Ferris is from the area, and they’ve been living in a caravan since January (!!!) as they’ve been constructing a house from scratch. Turns out they play frequently at Medieval reenactments (not much surprise there) and have a band with the two of them and a hurdy-gurdy player. “What is a hurdy-gurdy?” I hear you asking. I was not entirely sure until I looked it up just now! Oddly, I think I would have been able to visually identify one for you, but I couldn’t say what it sounded like or how it worked. It’s almost like a mechanical fiddle, wherein you crank a handle and a turning wheel (covered in rosin such as that used to prepare violin bows) makes the strings sound when they come in contact. In any case, I bought a CD off of Sam, and it’s pretty excellent! …If you like Renaissance-faire-esque stuff, which I totally do.
The next day I woke up to Dan getting a phone call from the hospital – Muireann was much, much improved and could come home that day! She’d had a bout of chicken pox (apparently didn’t really have it the first time) at the same time as the developing skin infection, and the antibiotic treatment knocked the infection out while it improved the pox. This was great news. However, it further reinforced my thankfulness that I’d never had the chicken pox; the poor girl was nearly unrecognizable for the spots and bumps all over her. After lunch, Rebecca gave me a list of things that I needed to do while in Dublin. I reluctantly said my goodbyes to the Hillman family and got on a bus to the final destination of my trip.
…Actually, I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about what my work schedule was like when I was staying in Leitrim. For some reason I just can’t motivate myself to write about it while I’m actually doing it, choosing instead to focus on the fun stuff I did after-hours. What a crazy thing, huh?
So every morning (Monday through Friday, that is) I’d get up around 8. Thankfully, I managed to wake up naturally and pre-empt my alarm clock every day except for, I think, two mornings. I would then go outside and feed the dog, cats, goats (three separate buckets of feed, so they don’t fight as much, plus hay), rabbits (feed, hay, and move the hutch so they have access to fresh grass), and fowl (scatter feed on the ground for them to peck up, then collect all the eggs). Later on, this routine was expanded to include watering all the dry patches in the polytunnel. Anyway, after this I’d come inside, usually to find everyone else awake, and sit down to have some cereal and tea for breakfast. Then I’d figure out what the plan was for the day (there was a small chalkboard upon which was written the to-do list) and get to work until 12 or 1, at which point I’d come in for lunch and tea. Then it was back to work! In fact, usually I’d be the one finishing my tea quickly and saying “well, better get back to work”. On the whole, I got the impression that Dan and Becky were surprised by my work ethic; I think this is because I went into it with the mentality I’d been using during my time with the Van Dams, who (as discussed) scheduled most of my time to be working rather than socializing. In fact, I was often pleasantly surprised when I was told I could call it a day after finishing some job. “Really? But it’s not even six yet!” was always my reaction (sometimes only internally). Then around six or seven it’d be dinner time.
The food was always good and fresh and largely composed of home-grown or –raised stuff. There was always the challenge of cooking to be dairy- and gluten-free, on account of a handful of afflicted people in the family. I suppose they’d get used to it after a while, but whenever I cooked, it became surprisingly difficult to work around that kind of thing. Here’s all the stuff I cooked for them during my stay:
- Pork fried rice
- Pureed black bean and salsa soup
- Bean chili and skillet cornbread (This was exciting because they’d never had cornbread before – I guess it’s mostly an American thing? Anyway they really seemed to like it!)
- Chinese-style roast pork belly
All in all, my time in Leitrim was probably the best part of my trip. Got to make new friends, actually had a social life for once, got back into cooking, learned a lot about caring for (and, to an extent, butchering) animals. I was sorry to leave, but it really is about time for me to come home.
Alright guys, one all-encompassing entry about Dublin coming up in a couple days!
Today, being Friday, was my last day doing work on the Hillmans’ smallholding. I somewhat guiltily managed to make my last two days Saturday and Sunday, meaning I won’t be doing any work. But it’s a lifesaver, because I don’t need to pay €58 for a Saturday night hostel. Thanks, guys!
Also: wow, only one more week ‘til I come home.
This morning, I woke up, ate breakfast, and in less than an hour put the final touches on the longest-running job I’ve been doing here. The job in question was the clearing of roughly an acre of field that had become overgrown with blackthorn trees. Yes, trees – ranging from 1’ to 7’ in height, and up to maybe 4” in diameter. Needless to say, I had to break this up over several days’ work, but when I finished it was sooo satisfying. Now there are four or five significantly-taller-than-me piles of wood and leaves and such that will be burned as soon as the wind is blowing the right way. Sadly, I may miss that event.
Two baby rabbits, one day after birth. Don't worry, these ones are alive. I'm not callous enough to take/show a picture of dead bunnies.
Speaking of sad things, I also discovered that there had been a bit of a bunny catastrophe over the night. Two babies had died, as did two adolescents, and one more adolescent is currently looking unhappy and barely responsive. We’re not sure why it’s happening, but we thoroughly cleaned all the hutches and we’re hoping for the best.
The barn. For scale, the little red awning on the left side of the building, by the electric pole, is about 7' high.
The other big job of today was clearing out the barn. This is a huge corrugated-steel enclosure that was largely filled with decaying unused furniture and boxes of junk left over by the previous occupants of the land. Our plan was to make a bonfire with the wooden furniture and put everything else into a pile to be driven to the garbage dump sometime in the near future. It was actually a super awesome job, due to my love of fires and my love of useless old crap. Going through the junk boxes was like a goddamn treasure hunt! I asked Dan if I could keep any stuff I found that he didn’t want for the house, and he said “Go for it.” So, here are some of my new souvenirs, which I hope will all fit in my luggage safely:
- Old-fashioned scale, the kind where it’s a spring inside a metal thing with measurements and a hook on the bottom that pulls the spring down to the correct level.
- Several old-fashioned syringes (unused and with no needles, don’t worry).
- Some totally classy (read: not at all classy) wooden signs with Irish proverbs on.
- A mysterious contraption including a small slotted spoon, a square porcelain bowl, and a metal stand that holds both of them. Theorized to be a jam- or chutney-serving implement.
- Mini physician’s encyclopedia.
I kind of wanted the mint-condition white porcelain chamber pot, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to transport it, so Dan kept it. I like the ambience it added to the lavatory.
Poor Muireann has gotten some kind of severe systemic skin infection – possibly cellulitis? – and had to go in to the hospital last night at 3 AM. Poor kid. It’s doubtful that she’ll be home before I leave, which is a bummer. She also missed the coup de grace of the meals I’ve been occasionally preparing for the family: Chinese-style roast pork belly. Here’s a picture of someone else’s version: http://yeinjee.com/food/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/chinese-roast-pork-01.jpg
I used some skin-on pork belly from the Hillmans’ own hand-raised pigs, applied a spice paste (fennel, clove, cinnamon, pepper, sugar, salt, minced garlic, miso), let it sit for a day while I painted it with salt and vodka (supposedly makes the skin turn into good cracklings), roasted it, broiled it, and served it with a home-grown veggie stir-fry and some basmati rice. GOD was it tasty. The cut was…about 55% fat, though. Not exaggerating at all. Good, but sinful.
Bunnies: adorable, but eventually food. It is the great circle of life.
Also on the subject of food, last week we ate one of the older rabbits in a paella. Delicious! It had been years since I had ever tasted rabbit, and even then I’d only had a bite of chili given to me by a fellow Boy Scout on a campout. It’s a surprisingly mild meat, very similar to a chicken’s white meat. The butchering was a bit less disturbing than with the ducks, because the rabbit is killed with a blow to the neck rather than by decapitation, and he also did not have a desire to flail around postmortem.
Frank McCourt (author of Angela's Ashes) Gidget (the original Taco Bell chihuahua) Les Lye (the guy from You Can't Do That on Television! [think green slime from Nickelodeon])
One thing I forgot to mention: for about a week and a half, starting some five days after I arrived, Aoife and Muireann had the chicken pox. And…I’ve never had them before. Uh oh. I called my mom a few days into the outbreak:
“I’ll talk to you later, honey!”
“Wait, Mom – one more thing. I, uh, I’ve had a chicken pox vaccine, right?”
“Yeah, you and your sister got them at the same time. Though she was scheduled for a booster this month…you probably should have gotten one before you left for Ireland. Why do you ask?”
Uh oh, I say.
Well, apparently I wasn’t in dire need of the booster, because I haven’t shown signs of illness yet. I did try to keep a safe distance from coughs and whatnot, so I’m hoping nothing develops later. Knock wood!
Anyway, let’s see. Joe Mooney’s Summer School is going on in the nearby down of Drumshanbo. Joe Mooney’s is one week every summer where Drumshanbo (normal population of 700) becomes home to a slew of traditional Irish music classes for kids and adults alike – bodhran, fiddle, accordion, tin whistle, uilleann pipes, black whistle, banjo, dancing, etc. – and downright explodes with visitors. The summer school goes on during the day and in the evening every single pub in town has at least one music session, often two or three at once, and sometimes one going on in the street outside the pub as well. It’s a rollicking good time, I say. Dan and Rebecca are both doing classes (piano accordion and fiddle, respectively) in the mornings.
Last night I went out with Rebecca, Natalia, Willie, and Tim. We arrived at our pub early enough that we were able to get seats next to one of the sessions. However, we quickly discovered to our dismay that the session we’d chosen was one that only played one song every ten or fifteen minutes, spending the in-between time relaxing and drinking and chatting with one another. Ah well. One of the other sessions in the pub had two harpists, which was very cool, and I stood and watched them for a while.
Actually, I’ll be honest – the most intriguing part of this whole thing is that the city is filled with girls roughly my age. Cute, often quirky, instrument-playing girls. Ahh, if only I wasn’t leaving the country in ten days. Maybe I’d actually talk to some of them!
A man can dream.
Also that night we ran into Michael, the German fellow from the Swan Lake sessions.When I found out that there wouldn’t be another session there until after I’d left for Dublin, I told him that it had been a pleasure to hear him play and sing. He kind of chuckled and muttered something and shambled off. Natalia said “There goes the shyest man in the world,” and I think she wasn’t far off. However, I ran into him again later and was privileged enough to have a proper conversation with him! Nothing earth-shattering, just chatted about where we lived and music and such, but it was cool nonetheless.
Oh – in case you were wondering what the heck I’m still doing here, I was invited to stay longer because the Hillmans (apparently) don’t mind my presence and think I’m doing a good job! So I decided to skip Galway, which I wasn’t that keen on anyway, and I’ll be here until Sunday, at which point I leave for Dublin. That’ll be my last stop before coming home! Wow!
The prodigal son returns! ….To the Internet. Man, I haven’t been doing a very good job keeping you updated on things, have I? One downside of actually being involved in fun stuff is that I don’t have the chance to sit around bored for hours every evening. This, of course, means that I don’t have as much opportunity to write blog posts! Make sense? Of course it does! Now, have some pictures of the Hillmans’ farm so you know what things are like here.
The house.
The entrance to the polytunnel and the fowl area.
Most of the work I’ve been doing has been clearing away the land. Reclaiming it from nettles, brambles, thistles, grass, what have you. Though I complained about weeding in the past, this is different. Instead of being on my hands and knees pulling roots – making two feet of progress in an afternoon – I’m doing, well, everything but that. The nettles are all four-ish feet tall and strong enough that if I yank near the top, the connecting bit of root will usually come out with it. Brambles and thistles come down easy as pie with hedge clippers or the mini-saw that I’ve been using as a pseudo-machete (when, you know, I’m not using it as a saw). And once I get the big stuff, we bring the lawnmower over and take down everything that’s below two feet tall. It’s incredibly satisfying to look at a freshly-cleared patch of land the size of my backyard in Troy that, the day before, was impossible to walk through.
Cleared orchard and the fire burning the leftovers. All the "grass" you see used to be a nettle/bramble patch about five feet high.
On the subject of complaining, though, I want to make something clear. I showed Dan and Rebecca my blog, and they said they liked it, but that they’d have to be extra nice to me. I protested that I didn’t write mean things about people, and they said “yeah, but you can read between the lines”. Now, I know I’ve been gushing about what a good experience I’m having on this particular WWOOF hookup, but make no bones about it: I had a great time at the Van Dams’ place in May. I had a period where I was unhappy, but I chalk that up to a combination of depression, homesickness, and culture shock. All in all, I was treated very well, got to eat great fresh food, had a lovely time playing with the kids and hanging out with Mark and Debbie when they invited me along to something. It was just very…different from the way things are going here. Different WWOOFing methods work for different people, I understand that – I simply recognize now that the kind of WWOOFing that Dan and Rebecca offer is more in line with the way I work than the Van Dams’ method. Nothing wrong with that! It was a learning experience, too. Some people, I’m sure, would absolutely love the independence I was offered in May, would have taken more advantage of all that free alone time than I did. I just learned that solitude wasn’t for me.
So, Mark and Debbie, if you happen to read this, try not to be offended by the fact that I seem more enthusiastic about my time here than at your place. I really did have a great time with you guys! It’s just that this particular style of WWOOFing is more for me. Nothing personal, I promise – just the way my social preferences work, I guess.
Anyway. On to the pun explanation!
Poteen (pronounced puh-CHEEN) is a “traditional” and “highly alcoholic” Irish moonshine made from potatoes in home pot stills. The internet tells me it ranges from 60% to 95% ABV. It is illegal – at least, the unlicensed homemade stuff is. A few companies have recently been allowed to produce and sell it. Anyway, I tried some! The Hillmans don’t make it (with good reason) but I was offered some of the homemade variety by an unnamed third party at a gathering they brought me to. Woo! You can tell the stuff is strong, but there’s a subtle sweetness and just a touch of flavor that makes it more palatable than a neutral spirit like vodka. Let’s say it’s the equivalent of the color “cream” to vodka’s “pure white”.
There’s been so much that I’ve been involved with since I got here that I can’t really organize my thoughts on everything. However, there are some highlights:
Johnny Marky (the bald dude I mentioned in an earlier post) had a huge party. Apparently I was slightly wrong when I said he was “very Irish”; he’s actually from Northern Ireland originally. So, when the Orange March was going on in the North, Johnny’s (Catholic) extended family all came down to crash in tents on his property for a few days, and that period was kicked off with this big party. The Northerners (Norties, as I heard Dan call them) were a very fun and boisterous lot. I was given food off the barbeque, then informed that I would have to muck out the latrine to work it off. Those kidders!
Learners’ session at The SwanLake. The bald dude is Johnny, who I just mentioned. Rebecca is looking away from the camera.
The SwanLake is a pub not terribly far from the Hillmans’ place, and only a stone’s throw from the home of their friends Natalia and Willie. So, it’s only natural that we all went to the learners’ session, where people of all skill levels were invited to perform. The pub is super weird. It’s in the same building as an undertaker’s, and I learned that the two businesses are owned by the same guy. It’s also in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by farmland and isolated farming homes, but on the inside it looks like a 70s or 80s nightclub, and could be the epitome of the word “swanky”. The room we were performing in could easily have included somebody doing coke in the corner – he wouldn’t look out of place.
The music was great, though. The aforementioned Johnny was there, as was his friend Tony, and they both played lots of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and…well, non-Irish trad stuff, which was a nice change. There was a guy named Sam, about six and a half feet tall, with long reddish hair and a wildly long goatee. He looked kind of like an Irish Viking, but he later turned out to be English. He’d brought a guitar, a bouzouki, and a lute, and said that he’d “traveled light” that night. His girlfriend/wife also had an enormous collection of flutes/pipes/whistles, and the two of them made an excellent (if renfest-esque) team. There was also Michael.
The coolest dude.
Michael is an extremely soft-spoken older guy. He’s got an impossible-to-identify accent (I later learned he’s from Munich originally, and now spends six months a year here in Ireland and six in Germany) on the occasions when he does speak up. The highlight, though, is his music. He plays a “coffin fiddle”, a homemade instrument about the size of a violin, but with six strings and played held strings-forward like a cello. When he sings, his voice has tons of character; he’s got an odd speak-sing style, wherein it seems like he has a singing range of four notes or so, outside of which he’s either growling or shrieking. It’s very cool, though, because everyone at the pub clearly respects him a lot: people actually invite/encourage him to play a solo song (something I’ve not seen offered to others), the place goes dead silent when he starts singing, and he gets raucous applause when he finishes.
Heck, you know what? Here’s a recording, so you know just what I mean about his weird (but great) singing style.
Tim on the left with a squeezebox, Dan on the right with a piano accordion.
Tim is another traveler. He comes from Austin, TX and is staying with Natalia and Willie. He came over a few months ago for an artist’s residency and now he’s sticking around Leitrim to enjoy the Joe Mooney music thing (which is coming soon and I don’t entirely know how to describe it, but you’ll hear about it eventually). He plays a mean squeezebox, knows tons of musicians (like Glenn Danzig and the guys from Fugazi), and has tattoos of all manner (including an awesomely weird one on his elbow which, I’m pretty sure, is a charicature of his own head done in the style of Japanese Oni demons [ like so: http://www.tattoosymbol.com/gallery/oni-big.jpg ] ).
More on the Hillmans’ friends. Natalia is also pretty cool. She’s from the Ukraine originally, but moved to the States young and lived in Oregon and Pittsburgh (and attended Carnegie Mellon, AND had my uncle Jim as a professor – twice!). She plays the mandolin and makes very neat zines. I haven’t spoken much with her husband Willie, but he seems like a good dude. He’s from Dublin, I think, and wears lots of flannel and metal band t-shirts. He also plays the washtub bass, which is so cool I don't even need to describe it. Apparently the two of them have a small publishing company and record label. Neat! Also they have cats with the greatest names I have ever heard: Chairman Meow and Pussolini.
They invited me and the Hillman clan to join them at the Arigna Mining Experience. This is a guided tour of one of Ireland’s big coal mines: the first one to open, and the last one to close (1990). The coolest thing by far is that the tours are run by former miners, so they’re interesting characters and they know everything there is to know about what went on in there. Our guy was fifteen years old when he started at the mine, and made the equivalent of €1200 a week shoveling coal into carts and running them out of the mine. Not a bad gig, even though it was “fierce hard work”. Another good tidbit: the miners who were actually picking away at the seams of coal had to lie down on their sides in order to do so, which often meant lying in an inch or two of water. This meant that they had to keep working hard in order not to get freezing cold from the soaked clothes. On their lunch breaks, they only rested for 10-15 minutes and had “cold tea and sangwiches. They was good sangwiches, though.”
Things that aren’t long enough to justify their own paragraphs:
-I made mead, which is fermenting happily as we speak.
-Eating a duck that you plucked yourself is extremely satisfying. Also, delicious.
-I’ve never spent time around horses before. I’m not seeing them daily (maybe once or twice a week) but they’re fascinating animals.
-I got a haircut from Dan’s mom, who’s visiting. It may be the best haircut I’ve gotten in quite some time.
-I think I mentioned that Rebecca gave me a camera that would have gone to Freecycle otherwise. It’s a Canon EOS 300, which is a pretty dang nice film camera, and has an even nicer telephoto zoom lens. I only had to pay €12 for new batteries, and it appears to be working like a charm! Not a bad deal at all. And definitely an upgrade from my $12 garage sale held-together-with-Bondo camera.
-The Hillmans have a blog of their own, detailing life on a smallholding. It’s actually a really neat read: http://sallygardens.typepad.com/sallygardens/
Anyway, I think that’s good for now. Talk to you all soon!
So in my first entry I held off on telling you a few interesting things about the Hillmans’ smallholding, because I wanted to have extra stuff to talk about in the future. And now, WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!
In addition to an average septic system, they have a compost toilet. That is, it’s not simply an outhouse, but an outhouse wherein human waste is collected and composted into “humanure” (a word I have seen on the internet but, thankfully, not heard used by the Hillmans) for use as fertilizer. If there’s still sunlight, and it’s not lashing rain, you’re encouraged to use the compost toilet instead of the normal one. You simply use the outhouse and sprinkle sawdust into the hole after you. Looking at it from the outside, the only difference from a normal outhouseis that there’s a load of straw underneath the shed, which presumably is part of the compost process.
Also, in case you’re wondering, it doesn’t smell bad at all. It doesn’t smell like you’d expect an outhouse to smell, if you’re just used to the portajohns that are so prevalent these days. Somehow, despite the soup of blue chemicals inside those plastic things, they manage to smell like nothing less than a pile of sun-baked shit. This compost toilet, on the other hand, simply smells natural. Earthy. Almost enjoyable, and somehow right.
They also have, in addition to oil-based heating, a solar heating system for their water. So on sunny days they can leave the heat turned off and by evening they’ll have a full tank of hot water that, I’m told, will stay hot for a full day and a half or so. Pretty cool stuff.
Here is an incomplete list of the crops that they’re growing at the moment: sugar snap peas, broad beans, passion fruit, strawberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, garlic, onions, spring (green) onions, leeks, a few types of potatoes, butternut squash, Hungarian hot wax chilies,sea kale, curly kale, some kind of French kale, lettuce, spinach, two types of broccoli, the type of cauliflower that forms a beautiful fractal spiral thing, celery, celeriac (what is this?), tomatoes, dill, parsley, sage, coriander (cilantro), courgettes (zucchini), and sweet corn.
Don’t you wish you had stuff like that in your backyard? It takes a lot of time and effort, though, to keep a smallholding going. Neither Dan nor Rebecca has a regular job; they’re landlords, and most of their income is from tenants in their other properties. Dan makes (very cool) painted wooden hobby-horses, and Rebecca writes e-books. They also, conveniently enough, run occasional courses on how to run your own smallholding! Even so, most of their days are filled with the upkeep of the crops and animals. It’s interesting – and very tempting – to think that one can eschew a “career” in lieu of self-sufficiency and non-time-consuming work to keep an extra cash flow coming in. Will I do something like this myself? I dunno. As I said, it’s tempting, but I don’t know if it’s for me. Once I’ve got my own home, I would like to do some fraction of what the Hillmans are doing, but I doubt I have it in me to turn it into a way of life.
Oh - I got my first tick today. Knock wood I don't get Lyme Disease!
