curloo-oo shall be saved?

We last met Róisín Normanly BC Before Coronarama when she scooped and classified some 000s of beetles out of ponds as an undergraduate. She is nearly the youngest of The Blob's Women in Science list. No shame in transitory beetlemania; at a similar age 200 years earlier, Charles Darwin was an avid beetle collector, famously popping one in his mouth when a greater Coleopteran prize presented. Of course, Darwin's scientific interests broadened out over the next 50 years . . . 20 of them getting down and dirty with barnacles.

At the turn of the century, I shared a house with two long-haired botanists and a long haired cat. The kitchen and bathroom were 'blokey' and the sofa furry but it was warm, dry and watching Match of The Day [The Ref is blind, I tell you, Blind!] could be good fun. I am happy for the younger fellow that he has been working as an environmental consultant for the last 2+ decades: currently looking at the impact of grazing on saltmarshes. If you point science at the natural world, it is possible to achieve trade-offs between diversity and profit to a win-win-win.

As Darwin went full metal barnacle, Normanly graduated [1st class hons!] from beetles to birds. For her MSc in Wageningen NL [been there, me], she GPS-tracked lapwings Vanellus vanellus) to determine the extent of range and interactions. But she also surveyed the invertebrates because that's what lapwings eat

Normanly is a RSPB nature conservation officer across the border in N.Ireland. At the end of April, she found & electric-fenced off a curlew (Numenius arquata) nest on an upland heath. Curlews are 'near threatened' on the IUCN Red List; so it's hard to find nests. A week later 175 ha of that heathland went on fire but [with some help from 85 firefighters] she was able to snatch 4 eggs from the nest, although the electric fence-posts had melted to blobs. [Note to self: always carry a lunchbox and spare socks]. Those eggs have now hatched [R from RTE video] and will be released into the wild later this Summer. RSPB Press Release.

The calculus: 4 curlews saved! The more abundant ground-nesting meadow pipits (Anthus pratensis) and skylarks (Alauda arvensis), not to mention legions of beetles and butterflies . . . not so much. 

Making money

“Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had £20 a-year for his income, and spent £19 19/6, he would be happy, but that if he spent £20 1/- he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up. ” 

We had a farrrm in Afrika bought a farmlet in the Irish Midlands in 1996. We were able to do this because a) Boomers b) we'd sold an Edwardian row-house in England which more-or-less covered the price.  We set the fields at conacre for a tuthree years while we found a) our feet, b) plumbers, chippies, sparkies and roofers c) grew two girls from nappies to more-or-less continence. Then we fell out with our conacerer (and knew thereby that we'd arrived in the community) and had to rustle up some sheep to eat the grass.

But a sustainable number of sheep over 365 days can't eat the beneficence of Summer, so we've had to cut hay / haylage / silage to deal with the surplus each year. From standing grass to hay requires a reaper, a tedder, & a baler; silage needs, in addition, a wrapper. Even if we owned a tractor, all these additional bits of kit would have to be bought [insane expense] or borrowed. Borrowed when everyone else in the parish wanted to use the same machinery for the same purpose. Then we had to sell the surplus fodder. Every year has been a problem to get all the ducks in a row and fall on our knees for suitable weather. Last year, for example,  one of the contractors knocked two granite gate-pillars out of true and never stopped to say sorry; let alone make good the damage. 

This year, at short notice, for the first time, we contracted to harvest wildflower seed from the Traditional Hay Meadows THM which make up about 80% of our pasture. A dinky Hege plot-harvester [as above] made a few passes but most of the seed harvest was with a brush-harvester which cuts nothing. Rather it runs across the top of the grass [height set by eye and experience] beating the tops with a cylindrical bog-brush and collecting this thrash into sacks. Periodically, they empty the bags onto tarpaulin sheets to let the insects and arachnids escape. 

Because no cut, there was still a bunch of hay to knock, ted, bale and cart away. We found another, more local, more careful contractor after last year's pillar-tonker who charged so much an acre to knock and turn and so much a bale to, like, bale. In 1998, after a long hot summer, the first haying on our watch yielded 105 4ft = 1200mm round bales from 12 acres = 5 hectares. It has been an unsteady decline ever since. We are so averse to pelleted nitrogen that the nutrient balance is quite out of kilter. All that biomass going offsite to feed someone else's cattle in a sweaty tuberculous shed in Winter is not getting replaced. 

In 2026 we sold 21 round hay bales to our neighbour across the river at €23 each = €480. Whoohee! But it cost €450 to contract out the process of harvest.  If Farmer Micawber's calculus applies, we are happy! The details are commercially sensitive but the price we got for the wildflower seeds was wildly absurdly greater than €30 nett for the hay. That's part of why you the consumer have to pay €5 to €15 for a 1oz = 30g packet of Irish Wildflower Seeds. But it's like milk, the farmer (who owns the cows, takes the risk and does all the work, starting every day at 05:00hrs) gets 35c/lt, and you&me pay TescAldidl €1.20 for the same thing. The creamery, the tetrapac plant, the Aldi shelf-stacker, and the truckers delivering product from hither to yon all take their cut.

Bottom line: Wildflowers? Would go again!  

Sloppin' Bob

We have a polytunnel. At 17m x 9m its footprint is quite a bit bigger than the 2-floor area of our house. At one time we had a straggly grapevine trained up a trellis inside the tunnel. A friend, who knows a thing or two about wine came to view the tunnel when it was new and the plastic was clear and clean. I asked him: if were were to propagate our vine and have a 17m run of plants suitably pruned and fed and cared for, how much wine might we get in a good year? Oh, he replied,  a bottle a day with a following wind. We contrived to kill our little vine shortly thereafter. But for nearly 20 years, we've had on-again off-again success with green beans and tomatoes and courgettes. And a mighty triffid of a rosemary bush.

We do have a garden-tap in one corner which ultimately comes from our domestic 30m deep borehole but I'd rather use rainwater which falls on the plastic and gets guttered into various receptacles. Years ago, I bought 50m of perforated pipe with the intention of subterranean drip-feeding our ~10m long 'middle bed' where we most often grow the beans. But a different know-it-some pal assured me that such a project would be futile unless the pipe was perfectly level, Otherwise the water would just pool at the lowest point and everything else would be Sahara. So I'm still slopping out water into the bottomless buckets into which the various veg are planted. 

It rained on Saturday 27th June 2026 and I used that to top off all our water containers, down to the pair of 10lt plastic watering cans. Circled L is our Outside IBC, which is 2m higher than the plant roots it serves and the 2-wheeled stable barrow whc can double-job to hold ~250lt water. At this full capacity, we have a reservoir of close to 3 tonnes. That sounds like a lot, it is a lot. One tonne is about what I need for drinking in a year. But IF we have 3 dozen bucket-beds for veg ANDIF they get ~3 lt every time they're watered THEN 1 tonne will only last 10 days. 

But this year, it didn't rain again until a 25 minute Summer downpour at tea-time on Weds 29th July; and again more sustained on Mon 3rd August.  By 29th July we had more-or-less drained our reserves and I was tap-topping up the big-blue wheel barrow with cool clear well water. And leaving it to get to 'room-temperature' for 24 hours. That 29/07 shower delivered at least 120lt of water. The steady drizzle on the afternoon of 03/08 has put 500 litres into the Outside IBC and as much again has been captured in other containers.

But we've had most un-Irish multi-week rain-free spells in the Summers of 2018, 2023, 2025 and now 2026. The Beloved says I'm too old to be heaving buckets of water about. But I demur: I'm not about to pay ready money at a gym to get a similar workout.

I don't keep good records of when it rains, because it's Ireland. But I do notice when the weather goes all Ancient Mariner [With throats unslaked, with black lips baked / We could nor laugh nor wail/ Through utter drought all dumb we stood . . .] and the grass turns crisp and yellow. We are close enough that daily rainfall records from Alan O'Reilly at CarlowWeather are a pretty good aide memoire for past rainfall

Beard stokes food

Back in my YouTube days [ie before I went cold YTurkey  in Jan 2026], I went on a sub-jag watching, with fascinated horror, Adam "Beard Meats Food" Moran engaged in gluttonous food challenges usually against the clock. Restaurant will account it positive publicity to offer food for free IF the punter clears their enormous platter. 5kg of coleslaw, a 40oz steak with chips and trimmings, a gumboot full of fried clams. It is gross on many levels but Moran is affable and funny and the variety of challenge options keeps the channel going: 6+million subscribers & 2+billion views is apparently enough to give up the day job [wikipedia, I cannot obvs link to YT].

More paint is needed! The latest tradie to be living with us is slapping emulsion on the interior walls - one room at a time. It is hugely disruptive because although our home is modest at 1,000sq,ft = 90sq.m the amount of clutter is Mighty. books do furnish a room More books than I care to count is okay: IF they are stacked on shelves up against a wall THEN they are effective sound and thermal insulation. But boxing t'feckers up and moving them is a royal PITA. Note to self: do serious triage on the library [and the photo collection] before mobilizing the tradesmen. Yesterday we drove to Waterford for another 10 lt of fancy paint. 

It wasn't a total blow to the carbon foot print because a) we filled the car with The Recycling and b) two fruit-boxes of de-cluttering [one of books and one of nonsense] for Oxfam; c) & d) we fulfilled two health-adjacent appointments for The Beloved. I was required as chauffeur-paramedico after the treatments; and to heft the clutter. She promised to buy me lunch. I said I'd make a sandwich and bring me own. But between appts, there we were at noon getting seated in Hook & Ladder. Lunch menu didn't start until 12:30 so, despite preferring a ham'n'cheese toastie, I ordered a second breakfast. Begob & begut! It was like a Beard Meats Food eating challenge or reg'lar breakfast at The Pig & Whistle Diner in Brighton MA ca. 1982. But nothing that a Kobayashi shake won't settle, or running down a tuthree sheep. Also I was brought up to polish my plate, and so

Burp! From the Menu FARMER’S FAIR  2 Sausages, 2 bacon, 1 black & 1 white pudding, ½ tomato, mushrooms, rosemary potatoes, 1 fried egg, 4 x ½ toast 4 butter pats 1a,c,d,2,5,14 €13.95 (1a. wheat, 1c. barley, 1d. oats, 2. Crustaceans, 5. Eggs, 14. Sulphites). WTF crustaceans? Maybe Pill-bugs Armadillidium vulgare in the black pudding?

Lick it off a stone, didn't

I was at this gaahden  paahty in England with a mission. Actually, of course, I went for free booze and sausage rolls but I found myself getting all Ancient Mariner "long grey beard and glittering eye, now wherefore stopp'st thou me" etc. on the poor wedding (anniversary) guests. I had to explain to anybody who couldn't escape [wheelchair, dodgy hip, emphysema, whatever] just how brilliant my pal the hostess was. My formative experience of this multitalentedness was in the world of molecular biology, which has a technical language quite opaque to outsiders, so it was Work to make sense. Two glasses of fizz didn't help.

Anyway, I button-holed a misfortunate 30-something niece, and gave it socks on the auntie-propaganda front. Not least because Mark ch.6 v.4. When I slowed down a bit, we fell to talking about how it was, as a Greek woman, living and working in middle England. It was okay, so long as you didn't let the niggling casual racism get under your skin. "And how is it in Ireland?", she asked. I wasn't going to trot out some tired old platitudes about Ireland of the welcomes; nor did I feel qualified to quantify how prevalent was the setting fire to direct provision centres.

Accordingly I replied brightly that my 30-something daughters and all their friends were a) colour-blind b) embracing the entire range of the LGBTQ+ spectrum c) giving me some optimism about the future of Ireland as a multi-cultural h[e]aven. Their collective watchword seems to be "you do you, knock yourself out, none of my business". The Niece raised a quizzical eyebrow and said that my children didn't develop their inclusive sensibilities without any input from their parent[s]. "No No", I replied, "it's not just my daughters; it's their entire cohort, their entire generation, they are all kind, tolerant and forgiving, I delight in their company".

"Yer, yer", said the Niece, "but you can't escape all responsibility, I blame the parents". We had agreed earlier that her Aunt had a finely tuned crap-detector. So her clincher was "You must be a good person, you wouldn't be my Aunt's friend else." And that was the Last Word on the matter.  

Folding money

The great Euro currency project is 25 years old and Der Mann has decided we need a new design on the banknotes. Which is kinda quixotic given how much change kaChing! has happened in the world of currency transactions. On the shuttle bus to Bristol Airport last week, for example, I sat behind two Australian backpackers who were settling up their debts [in UK£ AU$ and €€€] with a few swipes on their smart phones. The olde tea shoppe in Bath refused to accept cash. I can use "quixotic" because Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra features on half of the proposed designs of the new €50 note.

The design brief was either famous European cultural icons: €5 Maria Callas €10 Ludwig von Beethoven €20 Marie Curie €50 Miguel de Cervantes €100 Leonardo da Vinci €200 Bertha von Suttner. Gaah! Marie Curie is such a usual suspects choice to represent European Women in Science: I have blobbed a couple of dozen more interesting names. And Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicitas von Suttner née Countess Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau ?? - never 'eard of 'er, although she clocked the 1905 Nobel Peace Prize.

The other option involves specified birds with a compulsory river feature  and Eurobatimentson the reverse

• €5 wallcreeper Tichodroma muraria || European Parliament 
• €10 kingfisher Alcedo atthis || European Commission, 
• €20 bee-eater Meropidae || European Central Bank, 
• I think they mean Merops apiaster the only bee-eater endemic to (Southern) Europe
• €50 white stork Ciconia ciconia || Court of Justice of the EU 
• €100 avocet Recurvirostra avosetta || European Council & Council of the EU
• €200 northern gannet Morus bassanus  || European Court of Auditors 

These banknotes are so freighted with 'meaning', stipulations, baggage & metaphor ["embodying cohesion through diversity" etc. etc.] that they are camel (a horse designed by a committee). That's probably okay because new banknotes, in contrast to new flags [NZ and AU], are meant to be hard-to-draw but it is a handicap preventing designers reaching for the sky. I liked series B because they cut us some slack by including some small print info including Linnaean binomers for the birbs and IDs for the EuroGebäude on the reverse. But I think my final pref is for Series I by Isabelle Daëron from which the €10 kingfisher is clipped above: a) having portrait banknotes is cool / different b) there are Easter-eggs like the radio-telescope and the dragonfly [sooo River] c) all the birds are haloed by the 'sun'. You / we are all invited to vote and give crowd feedback on all the designs. From me: please, no people on currency, they always turn out to have feet of clay.

Did I mention see a kingfisher? I did. Which gives me the opening to cite Halcyon or The Kingfisher of Gortrush Wood a poem [vimeo] embedded in an essay about loss, trust, family by Mark Roper. A few years ago, Jack, my more famous brother, was on the bill at an Arts festival in our post-town. Because family, I was invited to Sunday lunch at the home where he was billeted. There was one other couple at table and everyone were chatting away about, like, The Arts. I didn't have much to say! Until I suddenly twigged that the 'Mark' sitting opposite was Mark Roper the poet. I became a blushingly effusive fanboi stammering how much I'd been affected by Halcyon.

Trinity House

When I was a teenager, I spent a tiny bit of time at sea on a working ship. The gig was finagled for me by an old boyfriend of my mother. Note the passive tense: I did essentially nothing to make this happen. Nowadays, there is a whole industry mapping out Gap Years for privileged youth so they can get into the socially preferred colleges and universities. One week as a supernumerary 'working' for Trinity House was plenty enough to convince me that actually working at sea would be a long old way outside my comfort zone. Trinity House* are / were responsible for maintaining and operating lighthouses, lightships and buoys round the coast of Great Britain. The Commissioners of Irish Lights = CIL = Coimisinéirí Soilse na hÉireann does the equivalent work for the island of Ireland.

While in England recently, I idly picked up a copy of Granta 61: The Sea - Voyages, Mysteries, Discoveries, Disasters 1998, like all Grantas there were a number of interesting pieces inside. Including one about the North Carr lightship by the son of one of her last skippers. In December 1959, that vessel broke away from its moorings in a gale and drifted engineless out to sea. The Broughty Ferry lifeboat was launched but came to grief on the rocks and the entire crew of eight was drowned. By luck, determination, situational awareness and bower anchors the lightship was just able to ride out the gale on a lee shore and everyone aboard, and indeed the ship itself, survived. Let us bow our heads for the RNLI.

It was natural in that context to reference an earlier lightship tragedy, when the South Goodwin Sands lightship's anchor chain parted in a gale on the night of 26/27th November 1954. The only survivor was a 22 y.o. government scientist Ronald Murton who dived through the galley hatch as the ship rolled onto its side on the notorious sandbank. He clung to a topside stanchion [pointed out with broad arrow L] for eight hours in the dark until he was winched off by a USAAF rescue chopper from RAF Manston. That aerodrome is more recently used as a lorry park to mitigate the logistical disaster known as Brexit. RIP the crew who perished that stormy night: Horace Skipp (Master) George Cox, Ken Lanham, Sid Philpott, Walter Viney, Henry Lynn, Tom Porter. [Wreck picture credits Lighthouse Digest September 2009].

After his ordeal Murton continued his life's work on the migration and ecology of woodpigeons Columba palumbus. He was employed by the Dept Ag and Fish for this project because pigeons were a scourge for cereal farmers. In the 1950s farmers could indent in triplicate for a supply of free shot-gun cartridges and blast away at these profit-depleting avian pests. Murton's [obituary] appraisal of the Evidence concluded that pigeon numbers would never be reduced by any economically justifiable quantity of lead. That conclusion changed government policy on control methods. He wrote the book on his bird The Woodpigeon (1965).

That storm on 26th November was wreaking havoc in other parts of these islands, as noted by my pal Russ in his blog in 2019.  

(*) Formally, by royal charter of 1514 "The Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood of the most glorious and undivided Trinity, and of St Clement in the Parish of Deptford Strond in the County of Kent". A mouthful! like “The Provost, Fellows, Foundation Scholars and the other members of Board, of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin” my other Trinity.