Splut

They say that, in medieval times, there was a rather intense rivalry between the ports of Waterford (on the R.Suir) and New Ross (just downstream from the confluence of the Rs Nore and Barrow). I don't know nuttin' about medieval trade except that transport by water was considerably more efficient [in terms of, say, ton-mile-days] than by land.  And if that's true it must have been a case of ¿porque no los dos? I mean if the final destination is Carlow, Kilkenny, or Kildare then New Ross is  the best place to tranship to a barge and off upstream. For Clonmel, Cahir or Carrick, Waterford is your only man.

Howsoever, Waterford won that trade war long long ago and became a City. And New Ross declined despite several interventions to prop-up the economy [see Albatros Fertlizer] and is now a local market-town. On Friday 23Oct26, The Beloved and The Blob scheduled separate meetings in New Ross. Carbon-foot-Bonus for sharing the 80km round-trip. I went to the fancy hotel for my meeting and we agreed to meet in the forenoon at the Dunbrody Visitor's Centre. Herself: "It has a great clattery café upstairs which is hanging out over the water, you'll love it, I'll treat you to a flat-white".

My meeting went well, despite me gabbing a deal too much. I repaired, with some bounce to my step, to claim my coffee. Unfortunately, the tide was out and the view out the window was foregrounded with slobby mud the colour of duck-shit [iykyk]. It is sort of surprising that, despite being 25km North of the actual sea at, say Ballhack, the River Barrow is tidal ~4m rise and fall twice a day at New Ross. Indeed, there are still visible tides [1½m to 2½m] at St Mullins a further 15km upstream It is no coincidence that the Barrow Navigation and its towpath starts at St Mullins. 

But look at the sun, the O'Hanrahan bridge across the broad reach of the River Barrow, the Disney-experience Dunbrody! Note to self: stop glooming at the mud, look up and smell the sun. Over coffee, we reflected on how deep the mud might be. Fortunately we were behind a plate-glass window or I would have been tempted to hoik my empty coffee cup over the edge just to hear the Splut! Mud? Projectiles? Crocodiles!

For part of the Summer of 1977, we lived in New Ross with Pat the Salt and his younger children. He was engaged in some building work just upstream from the then new O'Hanrahan bridge [which was opened in 1967]. You can still see the abutments of the earlier bridge which we used to cross every Easter holiday through the 60s driving between Wexford and Waterford visiting agéd relatives. The older bridge was even more decrepit than my rellies. The speed limit was 5mph and there were 55gallon steel drums as chicanes in the roadway to keep the traffic inching across. Impressionable me reckoned that if 10 cars, or two trucks, stopped in the middle then the roadway would sigh and dump itself into the murky river below. Michael O'Hanrahan was New Ross's contribution to 1916 Easter Rising being 2/o/c of the Jacobs Biscuit Factory garrison. He was executed on 04 May 1916 along with Joseph Plunkett, William Pearse & Edward Daly.

Imperfect

I've been on a P.J. Kavanagh jag recently. Paradoxically first reading a more recent memoir (Finding Connections 1990) which focused on the old dead; and now his first book (The Perfect Stranger a memoir of love and survival 1966) about a tragic young death. The death of young people is normally tragic, dying in the fullness of his years less so. The ever young [Sally 24] and the finished up old [PJ 84]are buried in the same grave, same churchyard [R] in Westwell, Oxforshire [photo Tom Robinson wikimedia commons]

The Perfect Stranger apparently found it difficult to find a publisher. It's partly because PJK is not as good a writer as he thinks he is: some of his run-on sentences baffle me and I'm a native speaker. As a poet, he claims a pretty good internal critic, but if the lines cross this bar then the poem is Good, and several examples finish up in this memoir. I'm not judging - I skip embedded lyrics because they are a detour or paraphrase. This self-satisfaction extends to other areas of his life. Recently, Dau.II accused me of weaponized incompetence when I said that such-a-thing was outside my wheelhouse. Blokes are allowed A Lot of this even in these modern times: can't cook, can't do laundry, can't make a bed (it's only a duvet, wot's to make??), can't clean a toilet. Thus when PJK is called up for National Service, he can't march, he can't make his bed, can't master army book-learning. When, through privilege, he lands an entry-level job in early television it was "by this time I more or less agreed with the general tacit assumption of my uselessness" because infrastructural grunt work is beneath him.

In a 1991 Foreword to a reprint of The Perfect Stranger, he is irked because 25 years of librarians and booksellers have classified it as autobiography rather than the memoir of love and survival which it seems to the author. But FFS, the love interest doesn't walk on stage until the final quarter of the book: the first ¾ is solid autobiog fodder: cruelty at school, continental adventures, getting shot in Korea, being employed [he is apparently too useless for it to be called work] on the stage, in telly, in publishing. 

In 1989, I retired (again!) from working in a British University and looked for other work. One of my ventures was to apply for/to the British Council  - a UK govt quango that shows the flag abroad through culture and things intellectual / educational. I passed the first round of the hiring process well enough to be invited to interview in the London head office. It never went further for me [who knows? wrong tie, looked stupid, sounded stupid, went to college in Dublin?]. In 1958, it went much better for PJK and his shining new, not to say numinous, wife Sally. He was deemed appointable and they were posted to Indonesia; which everyone agreed was the shittiest, most dangerous station on the British Council register. 

There, like Pat the Salt at about the same time, they kicked over the traces of colonial exclusivity and talked to their staff, respected their students and trenchered down the local food. It was going to be wonderful and then ". . . at four o'clock in the morning, midsummer's day, Sally Died"

The End 

Austen, Boelo: double whammy

Storm season starts 1st September  [you have to start somewhere] but the first named storm "Austen" slugged in from the Atlantic last Th/Fr night NullSchoolWind windspeed snapshot 20:00 22Oct26 [L]. At Caislean Blob, it has been standard policy at least this year, maybe a bit longer, to heed MetÉireann's weather warnings and park the car in the next county, if the deluge is scheduled for overnight. I've been banned [you're too decrepit for that nonsense you blitherin' old ninny] from nipping out of the house at 02:00 with a head torch and mattock "I'm awa' off to see to the drains". 

I did clean the drains of this year's brambles, but in advance, in daylight, indeed in the sunshine. It's part of adulting in the country that y'have to do this every year. It's a chore. But a single bramble is like steel wire, and can snag a water-impelled twig; which may catch another twig with leaves; which holds back a trundling rock long enough that a clot of dead sycamore leaves forms a dam . . . and rushing water blurfs out onto the gravel of the lane and two hours later the lane has been delivered as heap onto the county road. I also beefed up the berms which run diagonally across the lane surface: slowing down any running water and delivering it into the drain .

If the lane gets washed away as it did in July 1997 and Jan 2010 at least we'll have a vehicle on the outside for shopping or hunting around for a JCB and 40 tonnes of 804 gravel. Parking in the next county? That is formally correct but rhetorically over-dramatic. My neighbour farms the other side of the river (which marks the county borrrder) and I park in a corner of his yard. Sometimes scones are exchanged. Tea-time Thursday I drove down our lane [300m], along the county road [500m], up his lane [300m] and tucked the car in  against a [solid] wall. But I walked home parallel to the county road by completing the rectangle crossing his fields, the river and our fields. It's much shorter and much more hello trees hello sky than dodging 18-wheelers and shit-spattered tractors on the road.

Storm Austen duly came and duly went, and there was no more rainfall that any other front. The following morning, as soon as it was light to see by [and I'd consumed a quart of hot tea] I went to retrieve the car. I wore m'wellies because stream crossing. 16 hrs previously the stream was 15cm deep and 75cm across now it was grey with crud, 2m wide and of indeterminate depth. But there was a stable looking rock awash in the middle of the current and I boldly used that as a hopping stone to reach the far side. I did not fall on my arse and fill m'boots as I did at the same place in 2023. Win! Friday turned out fine: lots of sun to clock up some solar-kWh; some of which baked 800g of brown soda bread. And the Polish Stove-guy [artisans of '26 prev] came back for coffee to refix the seal round the door of our new wood-burning stove. 

Storm Austen grazed the South coast of Ireland. Storm Boelo, 36 hours later, debladdered itself mainly on the North and West coasts but the whole country got stormy rain all day. A day for huddling next to the toasty stove . . . !?! . . . the stove was out of action Saturday because the sealant needed 24 hours to set. Fall-back plan: huddling under a weighty-blanket with a hot-water bottle. With occasional forays outside to count sheep and look sternly at the drains.  Amazing skyscape on Sat/Sun night: not quite full moonlit mackerel skies with stars, planets in the holes. And Sunday morning started gusty but sunny & all sheep reported in with the requisite number of legs. Come on Storm Chloe we're ready.

Ploddy

To my great surprise, then and now, I walked 700km [aged 35], then 800km [aged 50], then 160 km [aged 70] through Europe. The last walk, with The Boy, was crammed into a few Blobs. That middle walk to & from Santiago was transformative: I even wrote a book(let) about the transformation. I never imagined that my detail-filled journal-of-journey would be of the slightest interest to anyone, even me, except as une aide mémoire. 

Sean Rothery (1928 - 2014) was an academic architect from Dublin, who retired from UCD in 1994 and took himself off for a long walk in Europe to clear some cobwebs and stretch his legs while he still had the use of his knees. More ambitious than me, he started like Patrick Leigh Fermor from Hoek van Holland and walked to the Mediterranean along the GR5. He was already a published author, having written books on vernacular architecture Everyday Buildings of Ireland (1976), The Shops of Ireland (1978) [looks interesting, I've reserved a copy in the library]. He was encouraged to write a book about his trek which was published as A Long Walk South. An Irishman's Trek on the GR5. (2001). It was re-released in 2014 both as paper and an e-book.  Over a short week in mid-October, I stomped along in his footsteps from the mists and polders of the North Sea to his plunge into the Med at Nice.

I found it very difficult to publish my analysis of the process of Pilgrimage in 2004, 2005, 2006. It was too short for one thing. Collins Press of Cork, otoh, undertook to publish Rothery's book in 2001 at least partly because it was of normal book length. It only achieved this threshold because it's bloated with quotidian detail. I got blisters. . . I met this bloke . . . I stopped for a beer . . . there was a surly waiter . . . it rained . . . it cleared . . . it poured . . . there were butterflies . . . I lost the way . . . I met this couple from [insert place] . . . we ate dinner together . . . more injuries . . . the bed was lumpy . . . the refuge had a snorer . . . Mont Blanc! . . . another 'revolting' slab of pork-fat for dinner . . . I hate ski-resorts. This is just the unavoidable infrastructure of distance walking - it's not going anywhere.

That being said, Rothery has an eye for vernacular French architecture and upland landscape. He prefers to stop and capture a scene in his sketchbook [another addition to the 1994-weight back-pack] rather than snapping a pic and moving on: " The intense blues of [Cezanne's] pictures; cerulean, prussian and ultramarine, could be sensed in the distant views, while the wonderfully overlapping greens; viridian, olive and sap suffused the foreground. The approaching autumn tinted some of the flat planes of the Provence landscape from light siena to dark umber."  [colour-prevs: flowers; flags; fonts]

What is interesting is how things have changed since 1994, or indeed 2004 when I walked the GR65 from Santiago. Rothery rocks up to the Tourist Information guichet to sort his in-advance accommodation. The Boy did all this for us last year on his smart phone. Rothery is lugging maps and guide-books rather than getting a location fix with GPS and satellite maps. Cash-points exist in 1994 but he pays a premium to convert punts to francs. He makes arrangements to meet up "see you in two days at the first bar in Vadoncourt" because only Richard Branson has a cell-phone.

And some things hadn't changed in 80 years. Parts of the GR5 teeter through the static killing fields of WWI. The upland wilderness disfigured with rusting barbed wire and warnings not to leave the marked way.    

Also interesting for me is that Rothery was great pals with Frank Winder [prev] when they were both young rock climbers ca. 1950. Winder taught me Biochemistry 25 years later and was still active as emeritus prof 25 years after that when I found myself in the same academic department. I liked him because a) he always remembered my name b) he had a wide-range of interests and miscellaneous domains of true expertise.

Exec.Summ. A Long Walk South reads true: so much matches my experience. But being true doesn't make it interesting: walking is not a spectator sport, you have to do it yourself, or better by yourself.

Descendant of kings

I had a great idea in my early days at The Institute, which finished up creating a Dr Kavanagh, PhD, while generating some quite noisy [ie useless] data about Lithium in the groundwater. There are so many Kavanaghs hereabouts [like Powers down the Déise, and Burkes in Galway] that nicknames are given [Butt Kavanaghs; Bonesetter Kavanaghs] which adhere to descendants long after the actual short-arse or healer is dead. 

I forget the inducement, but, in September, I reserved a bunch of books at the Library by poet, journalist and novelist PJ Kavanagh. The first to arrive was Finding Connections (1990). The conceit is that this Kavanagh was born, lived  and worked (1931 - 2015) in England, wore tweed jackets and spoke with a middle-class southern English accent but had a distinctively Irish surname. He goes on a road trip to try making a connexion with his Irish Catholic ancestors starting in Co Carlow and then shipping off after their trail through Tasmania = van Diemen's Land and New Zealand. Along the way he meets several genealogists (amateur and professional) but enough vaguely interesting people to fill out the book to 200 pages. I was stuck off-site for the weekend with no internet and the one book, so I plugged away through a blizzard of dead Kavanaghs, Cullens and Pauls. 

Turns out two of my collateral relatives, brothers, left King's County [with a pot of gold] for New Zealand in the same decade (1860s) as Patrick Kavanagh. One went on to the USA, one stayed and started a family from which eventually popped my Cousin Trevor. Lookit: the three biggest islands of the archipelago were named New Ulster, New Munster and New Leinster.

PJK's memoir only came together in the last couple of chapters, so I'm glad I didn't fling it aside [borrrrring] somewhere between Auckland and Wellington. In this wrap up he mentions a line by Henry Mayhew (1812 - 1887), from his mighty research tome  London Labour and the London Poor (1851): "The Irish are unusually clear about their origins". But PJK is quite skeptical about whether any evidence or actual history sticks to this clarity. As illustration, he quotes from correspondence between his Uncle Paul and his father Eddie = Ted. Paul writes that, ~100 years previously, Cardinal Cullen, a collateral relation, funded the elopement of PJK's Gt.Grandmother and even married the besotted couple in Dublin before they upstakes for the Antipodes. But documentary records show that the youngsters were a) really married in Carlow b) while Father Cullen was for sure in Rome that year. Which was yonks before he returned to be Archbishop, Cardinal and Primate-of-all-Ireland. "How did he, barrister, editor, student of racing form, pass on this hearsay as truth when a glance at a reference book would have shown him it was impossible?".

We do this all the time. We bumble through life and shit happens. Our brains work overtime to make sense of these buffets and come up with a compelling narrative which is internally consistent. The idea that life is series of uncontrollable random assaults is too hard to bear. And we also chop and dice the memories so that we come out kinder, cleverer and more in control than we actually were at the time. "The present can be looked at and interpreted with more confidence than the past, it is under your nose" (PJK, Finding Connections Ch.19). Massaging the story?? see also recent Word of Mouth podcast in which Michael Rosen and Jamie Tehrani talk about how Fairy Tales evolve and diversify over space and time. Tehrani Bloboprev on the phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.

Another nice object lesson is that Paul and Ted were supported in the education by their at-last-affluent Kiwi father. One was destined for the Law, the other Medicine. But in their youth both boys booted their respective careers through heedlessness and lack of commitment. Nevertheless they went on to be stellar in other professions [Paul: legal journalist & editor; Ted: comedy writer]. This is why my advice to young people about going to college is: don't sweat it. At 17 you are such a n00b that you don't know what 'Medicine' or 'Law' actually entails. Your capacity for happiness is an internal matter, not predicated on what course you choose and/or finish. 

St Willibrord

Last week-or-so, I mentioned that the Polish Ambassador to Ireland had been cutting a ribbon in Glenties Co Donegal. It was on account of a) the commemoree was born in what's now Poland b) for the second half of 2026, during Ireland's Presidency of the EU, each Irish County has been paired with one of the members states of the EU 

But wait and, like, whoa! are there not 26 counties but 27 members of the EU. That was my gotcha and I had to download the two lists and cross reference to see which EU state had been [frisson - diplomatic incident] excluded from the pairings? Ans: duh Ireland IE is not paired with any one county, but with all. I felt a bit like Newton [arguably the smartest man of his generation] cutting a half-pint-sized kitten door beside the cat-flap in his study after his moggie delivered a litter.

Then on Friday 9th Oct, I was at a cultural event in our wee post-town which was opened by one of our County Councillors. Afterwards, I buttonholed him to ask which country was pared with his/our County. Luxembourg he replied without looking at  his notes. Blimey, why Luxembourg?, I responded, and who decides the divvy-up?. It seems it is because St Willibrord [who he?] a) is Patron Saint of the Grand Duchy b) had been born in Northumberland but trained in Carlow and died at Echternach, LU. All good fun; I really hope taxpayers money sends missions of  county officials to the far ends of Europe to spread their wings and learn about other ways of doing.

You may remember my happy-out pairings of all Ukrainian Oblasts with Irish Counties back in 2013. There were only 24 oblasts and one Autonomous Region, so I had an ingenious fudge to match 26 counties to oblasts. The following year the Autonomous Region (=Crimea) was annexed by Russia and I couldn't make the twinning work any more. None of this held me back from pairing 6 civil regions in Belarus and Nor'n Ireland.

Out in the Community

Last Friday for the first time in + a year, we went into our post-town for the Friday artisanal market: it is small but perfickly formed: Peter the veg;  Cormac the cheese; scones, pies & cakes; fresh fish. We came away with a cheese selection; spuds and fractal brocolli. Food fit for comp'ny - a bit too expensive for everyday. Then we repaired across the street to the pub-undertaker for coffee and viennoiserie from Seamus the Plúr, who was previously up the way when Fərmεntary was a thing. The Blob has been there before. We also met our friends & neighbours: the poet, the film-buff, the physiotherapist, the conceptual artist, the herbalist, the pilgrim. Three of these contacts flagged up the fact that there was a Talk "Bringing Rock Art in the The Cold" by Muiris O'Suilleabháin Emeritus Prof at UCD that very evening in the boutique hotel at the top of the street.

Since 2019, 9th October has been designated 
European Day of Rock Art! 
Who knew?! 

Ans: Not many, not enough.

We spent too long nattering over buns and coffee, because we had a different Agri meeting an hour+ away northern edge of the county. Rushed home, collected wellies, to stand in a shed being told about worms, silage, hoose, drench, scour, mineral-lick, selenium. Turned around, went home, had a quick cup of tea before I went back to town for The Talk, alone . . . The Beloved had run out of spoons for social interactions.

Not many, not enough? The County Heritage Office had laid on tea & sangers, and set out seats for 100 people but only 30 turned up. on European Day of Rock Art! that's missing a trick. All the more sandwiches for me. Early arrive also provided a chance to see the results [L] of an earlier Rock Initiative where local Artists Jules Michael and Máiréad Holohan had a session with 6th Class in the local National School. Dr. Seimi Ó Murchú also shared his deep knowledge of the landscape.

Emeritus Prof's talk ran on a theme of Rock Art across Europe (well at least Sardinia, Brittany, Galicia, Ireland) and seemed to make a big deal differentiating Rock Art from Megalithic Art: something something passage tombs something something orthostats something something steatite. before coming to the conclusion that the distinction was fuzzy. I may have missed something because I dozed off [free sandwich overload coma]. More accurately Emeritus Prof ran on and on and on finally closing out at 100 minutes.

The talk was fine actually, covered some ground, had excellent pictures of Rock Art from all over and talked about late neolithic, early bronze age long-distance trading (deer antler artifacts, serpentine and steatite beads). He floated some hypotheses (geological, ethological) about why Rock Art is here rather than there. Mentioned some of the tech.kit which is now available to pick sites to precision dig.

I met yet more friends and neighbours: the stone sculptor [of course], several hill-walkers and the adverb guy from Fáilte Isteach. I'd actually missed going to Fáilte Isteach the previous night despite my best intentions. I'd remembered at tea-time, then I was called to solve a software problem, which put a delay the count-down; then I had to see to the sheep before full dark; and water what's left of the veg; and so I found myself chopping wood in the gloaming when I should have been driving into town in a clean shirt. Next week! for sure!!