It's okay to stop

I plugged away at Independent People all 225,000 words of it, but not because there was anything attractive about the central patriarch. Perhaps it was insights about the transition from poverty and backwardness to prosperity during a boom. Or a sense of gratitude that, compared to Iceland, our our climate in Ireland is so much more benign for sheep. But I doubt I'll switch to reading fiction for edutainment anytime soon. 

Evidence for this is that I have quietly put aside two novels recently with the thought that sitting on the sofa gazing at the ceiling might be a better use of my remaining days than reading something that fails to nourish. 

 Having enjoyed Sean Bean as Sharpe adventures on YouTube, not least the Over the hills and far away  theme tune, I decided to give Bernard Cornwell's books a try. It seemed sensible to start at the chronological beginning rather than in publication order. That has two advantages 1) Cornwell had presumably found his beat by the 15th book he wrote b) there is no back-story to be revealed. So Sharpe's Tiger (1997) it was: set in and around the Siege of Seringapatam in 1799 India [Commem Medal L]. The series appears to be available as ear-books on Borrowbox. The storyline of the whole series is the growth and development of a young tearaway who takes the King's shilling and rises to greatness through a series of daring [and improbable] adventures. The message is that, despite a rigid class system 200+ years ago, smart and courageous people could win through. There is a pantomime villain and some dopey, venal, lazy officer-toffs who can be manipulated to do Sharpe down. But we know that Sharpe survives [because 25 books about his later life], so his recurrent jeopardy just gets to feel manipulative set-pieces to spin each tale out to 350 pages. I balked at the casual killing off of another "nice guy" by the villain about 40% through and returned the book to the library for someone else to enjoy.

I'm in general more of a fan for things Portuguese than things Icelandic, so when I was informed that António Lobo Antunes had died, I opened the library catalogue to see if any of his books were available in Ireland. There were! An English translation of his Explicação dos Pássaros (1981) was on the shelf in Carraroe, Co Galway. I got 30 pages in before "The distinction between fact and fiction, between past, present and future, blur in Antunes brilliant narration" [Publishers Weekly] left me only confused, rather than inspired or interested. Pity because the book is set in the era of Portugal's Carnation Revolution in which I have an abiding interest. Rather cool was that the family-except-me had 5 days Carraroe just after Easter and were able to return the book to its home library much quicker than it shuffling about the country in a plastic box. Of course Dau.I the Librarian made it a busman's holiday and dropped in to talk Dewey Decimal cataloging and backed-up toilets with the Galway librarians.

It's okay to throw some back in the water. There are thousands of new [non-fiction] books published each year. Not to mention enough back-catalogue on library shelves to last a life time; or at east waht's left of mine.

Family Yomp to Black Church

Don't Label! Everyone is on their own journey, getting surprised by joy and finding out what matters. After me, the least sporty person in the family is was Dau.II. Then she moved to Dublin and took up walking; getting to see the city step by step at 4km/hr. Last Spring, when I was in training for our GR65 walk into the French interior, she came home for the weekend and came up the hill to keep me company . . . and then insisted we carry on another 1000m Along and 150m ↑↑↑Up to Stoolyen, the S facing shoulder of Mt Leinster.  Later that Summer, when all 3 generations of the family were back together, Dau.II set her sights on Sturra: a 3km hike requiring 500m of elevation. It would be churlish to let her go alone, so The Boy and The Patriarch went with. So glad I went! 

MetÉireann has gotten really good about predicting the weather. Just, maybe, a slight tendency to big up incomming storms with yellow and orange warnings, which turn out to be mere asthmatic wheezes. Therefore, when The Clan gathered home on Good Friday 2026, we had a choice of Sa Su Mo to launch up a hill together. Easter Sunday dawned sunny-but-windy in the aftermath of "Storm Dave" breezed through the day before.  Pilot Dau.II decided that we would walk to "The Black Church", a turf-cutters lodge at the Moats of Craan, along an Easterly spur of MtLeinster. It's near the beginning of the annual Blackstairs Challenge. 

Accordingly, after brunch a 3 generation party aged 10 to 70, departed for a 5 hour, 9 mile, 1700ft elevation circular yomp up the hill behind the house. It's all too easy to slip into a choco-coma on Easter Sunday afternoon, but Dau.II will walk and will dragoon accept company.  Gdau.II, with the shortest legs, was given a bailout option when we briefly touched the [Wexford] county road but stoutly turned it down and pegged along after her older rellies. We encountered a farming couple taking the tea-time air along that road and they asked "Where did you leave your car?" to which we chorused "We have no car, we walked from Home" and explained where Home was. I think they were impressed [maybe only by 10y.o. Dau.II?] because farmers tend to go by quad-bike nowadays. When we got back we sat down to an Easter dinner that couldn't be beat centering on paschal lamb and [most important] roast potatoes. Vegetarian options available.

Eeee it were great, a perfick day! The weather gave us the merest shake of sleety snow and only for a few minutes, otherwise sunny, breezy with scudding clouds. X marks the destination as seen from near the summit of Mt Leinster:

 

Men behaving badly

. . . and then what?

I've been quite the fanboi for Rory Stewart, not least because of our shared fancy for long-distant walks.  I've read a handful of his books and also listened to hours and hours of his two-hander podcast The Rest is Politics. The other hand on that podcast is Alastair Campbell, known in some quarters as Tony Blair's Liar-in-Chief. I've read a few of his books too. The LiC label is applied primarily because Campbell enabled the British Prime Minister to help destroy Iraq in an absurd-in-hindsight hunt for WMD - weapons of mass destruction. The 'Second Gulf War', starting in 2003, resulted in 4,800 deaths for Coalition forces: +90% of them US troops. That butcher-bill more than doubled the US casualties as a result of 9/11. And of course that is discounting uncountable numbers of Iraqi dead: estimates for which vary between 100,000 and 600,000.

From March to April 2003, it took The Coalition 26 days to topple the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. At the end of September 2003, aged 30, British diplomat Rory Stewart rocked up in Al-Amarah as Deputy Governor of the province of Maysān overseeing the security, welfare and development of ~1 million people. The consensus is that the government of Saddam Hussein was a corrupt kleptocracy. Many might have gone along with a plan to replace him with something 'better'. Bush and Blair didn't have anything 'better' beyond general platitudes like democracy, equality, the rule of law, honesty, welfare, market forces.

Deposing the dictator, sacking his dependents and apparatchiks and dismantling the army left a power and security vacuum which was quickly filled by entrepreneurs who seized assets for their own use or to sell for profit. And, like, fair dues: if you're the first through the front door as the Ba'ath-appointed mayor flees out the back why not take the mayor's new desktop computer? It looks like a victimless crime. Same for the police-chief's Mercedes . . . and that nice carpet . . . and an AK-47 might be handy. What is a mighty collective pain in the arse otoh is when entrepreneurs target electricity transmission cables for their value as scrap copper. The easiest way to access abundant copper wire is to push over the [steel] pylons. So one gang's loot !bonanza! requires 20x the investment by the community to restore service. 

You might expect that kind of shittiness in a war-zone. But other shits are available. When UK citizen and laundry consultant Gary Teeley was kidnapped in Apr'04, it was part of Stewart's brief to secure his release. Hours and hours of dickering on the phone with multiple parties to apply pressure in the right spot was difficult enough when all the Iraqis they called claimed more power and influence for themselves than was perhaps strictly true. The local Coalition troops were Italian (a minor partner in the country as a whole); in the midst of these delicate and protracted negotiations, the Italians decided to assault the HQ of one of the political parties "looking for arms". After a week of [mis]communication, Mr Teeley was delivered to Stewart's office, smelling rank but apparently unharmed. Stewart sent him by ambulance to the Italian military hospital to be formally checked over. Consequence: all the immediate global press coverage showed the Italian General welcoming Teeley back from the edge of the abyss. Within a week, it was reported that the [British] SAS had masterminded the rescue . . . using borrowed Italian uniforms. Success has many friends, but failure is an orphan

Rory Stewart was required to be a cog in the machine of a provisional government tasked to disburse (honestly & accountably) b/millions of USDs to restore water-treatment plants, cratered roads, RPGed schools, other aspects community infrastructure which are invisible to, but taken for granted by, us. The Iraqis were conflicted by their hatred and contempt of an alien invasive horde vs the !ka-ching! chance of free cash for pet projects. The US & UK developed a fantasy that after smashing to pieces a functioning [if violent & corrupt] polity, they could replace it with now for something completely different [whc turned out - surprise - to be a sort of idealized version of their best selves] and walk away feeling smug in the accolades of 'success'.

If capitalist democrats maintain that democratic capitalism is the summit of human achievement then excuse me for calling out narcissist delusion. It's like Charles I of England & Scotland claiming the divine right of kings. One of the nicest things about Stewart's book is that he admits that in hindsight he was wrong about the pragmatic effect of some of his political certainties. Can't read the book? At least read this interview.

And whoa-shoa, it hasn't escaped my notice that, even as you read, another US President is seriously contemplating the invasion of another Middle-Eastern Islamic state. What could possibly go wrong?

Grumpy the Cobbler

I mentioned earlier that I was no longer in the market for Hi-Tec brand walking boots. Corporate HQ must have shifted production to a different sweated-labour facility possibly in a different East Asian country. OR Finance showed that 3c a shoe could be added to the bottom line if the glue recipe was altered. Whatever the explanation, after a decade of believing in the quality of the brand, I had two pairs of shoes on the trot (2016 and 2024) fall apart on me. In 2016, I salvaged the laces to tie up tomatoes in the garden and landfilled the boots. 

But I only had ~20 days [over 500 days] of use from 2024 pair, when I noticed that the sole was separating from the upper at the toe. The agéd shoe-mender on my way to The Institute closed during Coronarama, so I phoned the cobbler in another town in the next county.
"The toe of my boot is separating from the upper, can you fix and how long might it take?"
"If you drop 'em in today, I can do it in an hour"

But when I rocked up to the shop, he ripped back half the sole and said "This is not the toe separating from the upper, this will require a lot more work, I'll have to rip off the whole sole, clean out all this grass and mud, dry them out, re-glue the sole. The glue will smear on the upper so it won't look great. I can't do it today. It will cost €35. Your call." He wasn't going to help on the money vs utility math, whc fair enough. Nor was he going to bother with an opinion on brands except to say that to get good quality boots you need to spend at least €200 the pair. The tenor of his tone was that I was a complete gull to buy the sort of boots that sat between us on the counter. But I agreed to pay €35 and he agreed to fix.

There was more confrontation on the matter of when I would collect and pay for the boots. Next Tuesday wouldn't do. He had a pair of shoes in back that had been "next Tuesday"ing since before Christmas. I didn't get down on both knees but I did genuflect & swear on my mother's bones that I would return at 11:00 next Tuesday . . . with cash. Which I did, because protestants, even boot-gull protestants, can be punctual even if parking can be a nightmare. 

When I lived and worked in Dublin in the 1990s, I came to believe that people who worked in sub-Post Offices projected pissed-off pretty much all the time; which I found strange in someone who had chosen a public-facing profession. I developed a theory that, because subPOs were often hidden away at the back of other premises, the lack of natural daylight for the whole working day turned employees gruff&surly: they'd been full of spring flowers and sunshine earlier in their lives. "my" shoe-mender's premises have the same cave-vibe as the back of Greene's Bookshop on Clare Street D2 where I used to buy stamps 30 years ago.

But there's no such excuse for the mower guy, whom I supported for several years. Every . effing . time I brought him a lawn-mower or chain-saw needing fixed, his expert eye would instantly find something that showed I was a massive abuser of lawn-mowers and should not be trusted with kitchen scissors, let alone power tools. This went from being insightful and informative to wearingly predictable to a serious pain in the neck. It never seemed to dawn on him that, if I could maintain mowers, I wouldn't be troubling him with fistfuls of folding money every time we met.

I now go to Tom the Sawyer of Ballyteigelea. He's an interesting fellow who was born to be a farmer and that is indeed his day&night job; but Tom gets far more joy and fulfillment from tinkering with engines to make them Go. I have huge affection & respect for people who invent the self that are they are happiest to be. Tom can drop clues about chain-saw care and maintenance without making me feel an inadequate rube.

Seeing the wood for the cheese

When we were young and foolish and [therefore?] had a 2y.o. at foot, we all lived together in a single room, sharing a bathroom with several other inhabitants of bedsit land. There was probably a 2kW electric fire but sticks were free and I'd go out after dark for fallen branches to burn in the fireplace. This despite having zero rights of estover in Dublin 4. The something for nothing [ and devil take the beetles] thriftiness of picking sticks appealed to me.

A few years ago, I encountered a woman on our lane walking her dog but carrying a large gnarly ash branch which, she said, had fallen from one of the trees [waves one arm vaguely behind her] and she was taking it home for the fire. I felt such a rush of empathy that I forebore to tell her that the branch had fallen from my ash-tree into my lane and, but for her, I might well have picked it up myself. I saw here quite a lot after that because she was renting a converted byre about 1 km West along our valley. Let us call her Geal. About the same time, we acquired another new neighbour, Ford, who moved into the little wooden house at the bottom of the lane. And lo! Ford also came with a dog and soon enough the two canines were besties-on-the-block. I'm not sentimental and defo not a doggy person, but it was touching to see these two middle-aged dogs romping around like arthritic puppies plainly delighted with each other.

In December 2024, Storm Darragh blasted through, and we lost a few trees. But neighbour Ford woke up to a garden catastrophe. Two adjacent grossly overgrown Leylandia Cupressocyparis leylandii had been batted out of his Western hedge and carried away an enormous Eucalyptus. The latter came to rest across his driveway requiring bushwacking skills of those needing access to the house. It took much of 2025 and a mort o'money [and a lot of neighbourly labour] to reclaim the garden.Through the year, a certain amount of the smaller timber was sawn up and taken away by Geal. 

Then, in the back end of 2025, Ford heard that the owners wanted to sell his home of 2½ years. That's the way in Ireland: the Constitution privileges property over welfare. But the new year brought better news: Ford having been approved and on the wait-list for council housing in the adjacent county for nine (9!) years, heard that his number had come up and he'd be able to collect keys to his new gaff at the end of February. I was bereft because, although we had nothing in common, I really like Ford. But I was also delirah, because he was getting a home with better insulation, fewer crashable trees and much closer to his family.

But the change of address put the skids on saving the wind-thrown sticks and passing them up the chimneys of people in Ford's network. A few weeks ago, I offered Ford my labour until the tank ran dry on my chainsaw. It turns out that, if the chain is sharp, a surprisingly large heap of firewood can be generated in ~1 hour:

So much, indeed, that Ford's suburban sister complained her allotmen wouldn't all fit in her fuel store. Geal, who has a proper rural sized wood-shed, was so happy with her heap that she sent me a selection of fine cheese [with a couple of avocados for scale!]:

That was nice, and timely, because I love cheese and it was Caisleán na Cáise for the Clan when they came home for Easter. But the potlatch [mutual exchange of extravagant gifts] was set to continue. On Fig Tuesday evening Ford knocked on our door to ask three (3) favours: 

1. His fridge being shipped, could he borrow a corner of our freezer until he followed  it in a few days time?
2. Could I take him & a last load of household gubbins to the new place sometime over Easter weekend ?
3. Could I give Geal another tankful of gas and reduce another cache of branches to logs ?

A: Yes I said Yes I will Yes. And furthermore I would help load Geal's car and shuttle loads to her woodshed until the wave of firewood ebbed to mere sawdust and grass. And that was its own reward because we nattered about the weather (and the neighbours) as we made the short journey back & forth.

Boot Bonus

 In 2004, I walked from Portugal to France wearing the pair of boots which I happened to have on the go at the time. The brand was Hi-Tec and they pounded away for me for 8 weeks and 900km. In  contrast to Imelda Marcos, I don't have a lot of shoes. For the next 12 years, I was a Hi-Tec loyalist but the last pair of four crapped out on me in ~2016 . . . much sooner than 'expected'. I got far better mileage from a pair of Lidl walking boots that cost €22.95. Though, in fairness, these weren't my hill-walking years and the Lidl-boots did most work between my office and the bio lab at The Institute. At the time Dau.II started to drink the Columbia Coolaid

In the backend of 2024, Dau.II informed us that Rambler's Way [the Nort'side, 1981 era, family-run, outdoorsy shop] was having a going-out-of-business sale. She had already splashed out on two (2) pairs, heavily discounted, of her preferred Columbia runners. I went up on condition that she held my hand because I am the world's worst shopper. In less than an hour, we came away with two pairs of boots for her Old Man: one black&red Hi-Tec with added ankle support plus one grey&gray Columbia [Peer-pressure = ON!] with slightly lower cut. I use my new Columbia boots all the time, except for going up the hill when I'd sometimes give the Hi-Tec an outing. 

The going-out-of-business sale has been chuntering on for nearly100 weeks now: rumours periodically  sweeping the streets about an imminent end. The last weekend in March, we were invited to a significant-zero b.day hop and I got to bunk with the girls. On Saturday AM, we strode out for some retail therapy between Smithfield and the ILAC centre, looking for: cheese, flowers, tomato seeds, Georgian flat-bread, hot-cross buns and . . . boots.

We go back in Rambler's Way 18 months after my first trip. For reasons, I'm only looking for Columbia boots same as before. They've run out of my [median bloke] size of preferred boot, but they do have the same model in black&black. While we're faffing around at the till, Dau.I points at a €4 webbing haversack and asks what webbing is. Mis-hearing, I turn to the young chap serving and ask 
"Would you throw in the bag for the price of the boots?"
"For sure, we usually throw in a pair of €10 socks, if anyone asks, but if you want the bag, you got it"
But that's okay, I have socks, so many socks; enough to see me out. But I haven't had a webbing haversack since I was in college 50 years ago.

Many years ago, I went shopping with my father in the small market town in England nearest to where he lived in retirement. Among other things, he needed to buy a new toaster. There wasn't A Lot of choice in the white-goods shop, so he picked one and took it to the till with "What kind of a discount can you give me for this? I am morto entirely. The spotty youth, not having been trained in the souks of the Middle East, was confused and went to ask the manager. A while later, he returned with "My boss says we can knock off 5%". And the deal is done. 5% of a toaster is much less than a cup of coffee, and it didn't seem worth the trouble to me. But I never asked him WTF at the time. He fell down the stairs and died the following year, so I'll never know if asking for inappropriate discounts was evidence that he was slipping into dementia. We'll have to see how it pans out for me.

 

M is for murder

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; etc.

Saw H is for Hawk (2014) by Helen Macdonald on a library shelf and snagged it, despite having a handful of books on the go. Maybe just as well because it is tagged with multiple reserves: doubtless a consequence of the 2025 Claire Foy film of the book. My reading this continues a human goes for wild theme on The Blob: hares - baby hares - shit on yer head magpie.

[a sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus] "looks the hugest, most impressive piece of wildness you've ever seen, like someone's tipped a snow leopard into your kitchen and you find it eating the cat". But A.nisus is a sparrow compared to goshawks Astur gentilis which happily scarf down sparrowhawks as a starter. Macdonald gets themselves a goshawk[R attrib at End] as solace after their beloved Dad dies. It is bad luck to name your raptor something appropriately vaulting like Cutwind or Scythe, so Macdonald dials M for Murder Mabel as a banal, old-fashioned maiden-auntie name. There is a rich literature in the Art of Falconry but the most accessible for a child of the 70s is The Goshawk (1951) by T.H. White. But shout out to Kes by Ken Loach (1969) for a working-class perspective.

I read The Goshawk as a teenager, after Mistress Masham's Repose (1946)  but before the chunkier Once and Future King. My memory of The Goshawk is of a battle of wills between man and beast centred on sleep-deprivation. We now know that sleep-deprivation is a more effective form of torture than the bastinado, electrodes or pliers. I read the 'manning' of Gos as adjacent to 'breaking' horses or 'training' a dog with a rolled up newspaper: something that other people did to animals. I was never about to assert my dominance on/over a sentient being [altho I was heartlessly cruel to insects as a child] - it was hard enough training / reining myself to fit in. Macdonald also read The Goshawk but was inspired to walk the falconers path as a young person and acquired enough competence to teach others; and a network of hawking friends.

H is for Hawk is a griefwalker's journey but also a critical evaluation of T.H White as a person [they fuck you up your mum and dad and their proxies in boarding school] and as an austringer [barely competent, would not be licensed]. But hey, where I live anyone is allowed to be a parent, altho 'we' require higher standards for would-be adoptees. Falconry is a minority sport and, for the greatest good, we should require a dog-owning test before a falcon-training test. In Maine, I learn, falconers are tested and licenced. In contrast to TH White, Macdonald comes across as much better at not visiting their baggage on the poor bloody hawk. The end result is that, whereas White lost his bird in the woods, Mabel will fly off after pheasants and rabbits . . . and come back to Macdonald's fist. This success is aided by making the human self small and reading the bird. Gets crotchety when tired, perky when prey present; tendency to hangry. Read her wrong and you might get a dig . . . from 4 sharp talons.

cw: Whatever your position on cruelty in the process of taming / training animals, spare a thought for the rabbits, pheasants and passerines which get terminated by Mabel. Eaten alive, they be; unless the falconer interferes with an efficient cervical dislocation. 

Picture credit: "Goshawk" by Andy Morffew is licensed under CC BY 2.0. via OpenVerse.org