Rain!

We don't run a weather station Chez Blob, although gathering & tricking about with scads of data might be a good fit for obsessive me. We are blessed with data from 30km to the north by sharing a county with Alan O'Reilly at CarlowWeather. It's not quite the same weather because Mt Leinster rises between us, but O'Reilly keeps meticulous records, makes them available, and they are usually good enough. 

We collect rain-water because the plastic of the polytunnel is, like, waterproof and there's a feast of salad underneath. The N and S edges of the plastic bottom out into gutters [neatly levelled by Kamil and Rene last Summer] and rain is diverted thence to a pair of herring barrels at the SE and NW corners and a 1 tonne IBC inside the NE corner. The N side of the tunnel is about 500mm higher than the S and this allows us to quietly siphon water from "on high" to plants and buckets that little bit lower. Like everyone else in the count[r]y we had a good spill of rain on Mon 15th May which recharged all our containers . . . then nothing: for days, then weeks. It was like 2018 all over again when I wrote about 22 days without rain and nationwide hose-pipe bans.

After a week without rain we had distributed all our reserves and had to start pumping water from our bore-hole to service the lettuce and peas. After two weeks, the grass on the thin soil of the front yard was turning beige and umber. Dau.II announced that now would be a good time to clean out all our water containers and that involved disconnecting our two 1-tonne IBCs and going at the inside with a yard-brush. I could get inside the herring barrels [R] to give them a robust scrub and a touch of bleach. After an afternoon of heaving and rolling, everything was sparkling and sweet-smelling . . . and ready for more rain. 

I wasn't until Sat 10 June that we got any! After the droughty weeks it seemed like a lot and we took off all our clothes and danced to give thanks to the Great God Pluvium. On Sunday morning, The Beloved asked How much rain did we get yesterday? To which I replied If you wait a bit, I've just plumbed the depths of the herring barrels and need to do the calcs. The total catchment of the tunnel is 17m x 9m = 150 sq.m. or 1,500,000  sq.cm. Volume of an cylinder = π.r^2.depth

NW barrel: ⌀ 40cm was 35cm full = caught vol 43lt = 43,000 cc ; area served 375,000 sq.cm
 so rainfall 1.1mm
SE barrel ⌀ 50cm was 30cm full = caught vol 58lt = 58,000 cc ; area served 750,000 sq.cm
so rainfall 0.8mm

That seems scarcely credible and it's at variance with what O'Reilly recorded 30km North. But I had checked Met Eireann's rainfall radar at about lunchtime and it showed that we were between two belts of feeble rain moving SE to NW. I also checked out two wheelbarrows which had been left out through the 24 hours - they had but a few tablespoons of water in their downhill corners. So my best guess is that we had 1mm of rain on Saturday after getting nary a drip for 25 days.

“The rain it raineth on the just

And also on the unjust fella;

But chiefly on the just, because

The unjust hath the just’s umbrella.”[prev]

Elf Jun Bit

Sunday Misc

• History
• Caesaria Maritima
• Deducing the age of a school globe
  
• Water to wine
  
• A well in Sénégal
• Filipino water entrepreneurs go up hill
  
• Two wine buffs try Old Red biddy
• PâtisserieYann fancy French buns
• Fud: James crits Jamie on carbonara
• FudII: James salivates over Gordon's Beef Wellie 
  
• Varadkar interviewed by The Rest is Politics
• Sheldrakes [prev] - [inner-viewed]
  
• Piano Man
• Granite: d[ist]ressing the edges
• Uncountable - Blob Cantorable
• Free the fox
  

Gnomon

Whereas I am a deeply religious chap of the Methodist persuasion because Founder John Wesley did, on Tuesday, 13^th June 1749, preach in the entrance hall of the olde family pile in King's County and notwithstanding that Methodists world-over celebrate Aldersgate Day upon the 24th May each year to mark the occasion when Wesley was vouchsafed a Witness of the Spirit, nay even an assurance of everlasting life . . . I did on the self-same morning approach The Ringstone as the forenoon sun shone obliquely upon its decorated face.

OR

I was down in the Field Over The River on 24th May working along the Southern margin before the grass was too high to conceal the blackthorn Prunus spinosa suckers which have been marching out steadily from the hedgerow we planted 15 years ago to make a stock-proof fence along the boundary with our neighbour. My task was to extirpate, grub-up, destroy and wreak havoc upon these suckers, lest they get included in the hay when it be cut in July. It was hot, there was no tearing hurry, I R an olde, so I limited my effort to an hour. On the way back to the kitchen for a well deserved cup of tea, I captured a spectacular view of The Ringstone:

Whichever of the two versions of Truth you believe, and notwithstanding the mangling of picture quality to achieve a sub 100kb file size [I have readers in The Third World with cruddy bandwidth] I do declare we have a rather wonderful artifact in our custody. I have occasional twinges of guilt that after 5000 years, most of which, we surmise it was buried, either beneath the peat or in the 19thC wall, we have exposed the Ringstone to the steady fall of acid rain . . . and the reverent strokes of Wiccan-folk at midnight. When looked at, face on, in normal overcast, drizzly weather it looks quite unremarkable. Perhaps it's the familiarity but clearly an acute slanting sun brings out every scratch ad maioram deorum gloriarum [I see you Loki, Pan and Set].

I thought it would be symmetrical and neat to take another picture with the sun in the West and the other side of the marks are in shadow, so I went down at ca. teatime the same day and found that the sun was still very much on face, when I went back an hour later I was still too early. And shortly thereafter a belt of rainless clouds [did I mention we were two weeks into a drought?] put an end of any direct sunlight of whatever angle. I'm a busy fellow, so I wasn't about to tramp through our traditional hay-meadow every 15 minutes to check if the angle was right. So (clever me) I whipped out my smart-phone to take a bearing on the face of the Ringstone to find that it was oriented at 112° or more-or-less ESE - or WNW if you dig with the other foot.

We only have one sun and its rays are parallel regardless of local position. Accordingly, I transferred the geomancy geometric / astronomical problem to the stone coffee table in the yard about 4m from our front door. A metre-stick stolen from the trash at The Institute 5 or 6 years ago [be friendly and polite to the cleaning staff!] was set to the correct angle [see R] and a fancy olive-oil bottle was co-opted as a gnomon. This showed that I'd have to wait until about 19:30hrs to get the right sort of sun . . . and pray for clear skies. Conjunction! - everything came together after supper in Friday 26th May.

And I therefore bring to the eternal record of religious artifacts and practices a picture taken of the Ringstone Left Ascension:

Which is different, yet the same, as the representation at the top of the post, no?

Sorry for your trouble

Ann Marie Hourihane is a Dublin journalist, she has written memorable obits on such media.ie celebs as Gay Byrne and Marian Finucane. Her father, Dermot Hourihane, a pathologist and social pioneer who took the fight to the Catholic church before it was fashionable to do so, died in the first summer of Covid [Obit BMJ].  Because she's a writer, she wrote about the messy, busy days surrounding that transition. Hindsight allowed the chagrin that her own demeanor and actions had been, hmmm, imperfect. Including some of those acknowledged insensitivities in the account shows a certain self-awareness and humility. Someone, quite possibly herself, must have suggested that others would benefit from hearing the story because it would surely resonate for anyone who was a) Irish b) recently bereaved. Too short for a book, too long for a column . . . why not make it a book chapter?

And so Sorry for Your Trouble; the Irish way of death was published the following year.  I was recently gifted a copy by a friend who is, like me, engaged with end of life issues. It is well written if, given the subject matter, not always an easy read. But it's like Hourihane has riffled through her back-catalogue looking for keyword "death" and decided to incorporate all the hits into the one book. One standout inappropriate inclusion is a superficial (1500 word) look at the horrors of the meat trade, including a visit to a working abattoir.  This section is tucked in between a chapter on cillíní - where unbaptized children are interred - and the Islamic burial practices for men of our Bosniac community. The funerary practice of Ireland's Muslim women is in yet another part of the book. That's great; Ireland is no longer a Catholic monoculture and we need to know - respeck! - how our neighbours do this stuff.

My beef? In predominantly meat-eating Ireland, giving parity of esteem to the slaughter of a surplus heifer and the death of children with fatal fetal abnormalities will be a juxtaposition too far. But maybe that's okay - a book that doesn't change the way we think is not worth reading.

There are other chapters - which all deserve a book on their own - 

• about the terrible association been drink, invincibility and driving that runs through young Irish men
• about the sad, brutal, high-life and mean death of drug-dealers in our inner city ghettos
• ditto young republican foot-soldiers during the troubles
• the brutal degradation, abuse and death-by-who-gives-a-fuck-here of kids by [members of] the Catholic Church . . . and the Church's institutional insolence and entitlement in response to whistle-blowers

The book still contains some examples of authorial entitlement and affect-blindness. The opening chapter and the penultimate chapter are about the passing of "Bernie" who seems to have come over the Hourihane horizon because a) she was dying b) it wouldn't be too long c) the family were willing to accept a crow on the wall to witness their comings and Bernie's going. A whole blanket of unconsidered conflict of interest permeates those bookend chapters. Likewise Hourihane manages to arrive late to country singer Big Tom's funeral in Monaghan but still manages to blag her way to a seat in the church - depriving that access to someone who actually knew or was related to the star of the media show. And pronoun-sensitive me winced when dead babies were by default referred to as 'it'; that's tone deaf.

If you're Irish, or live there, and you're going to die then there's much to be gleaned from reading this book.

eeee y'have to larf.

Agar agar

Years ago The Boy came back from his year in New Zealand and stopped off in Bali because it was there: on the way, like. He even fell in with a French girl with whom he sustained a long distance relationship - London / Montpellier - for a while. But beyond "Indonesia", I might have been hard-put to locate Bali within the archipelago. It turns out that it's the island immediately to the East of Java and only a 4km ferry journey from the larger island. It takes 45 minutes from Ketapang in Java and Gilimanuk in Bali and costs 6,500 IDR one way which is about 50c US!

It's a wider passage to the next island, Lombok, and the intervening strait is much more significant because the Wallace Line [prev] funnels straight through it. The Wallace Line marks a major change in the flora and especially the fauna between Asia vs Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia [lorra marsupials, Eucalyptus etc.]. If you look closely at the map [L] filched from Wikipedia, you'll see that the line [carelessly] cuts right across an island on the Bali side of the strait. That can't be correct, and it turns out that there are three islands- Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Penida and Nusa Ceningan - not just one; although they are all in the same administrative district . . . and on the Asian side of the Wallace Line.

I think it's probably fair to say that nobody who lives on Nusa Lembongan cares tuppence about how close they are to the biogeographical delimiter. They are much more interested in scrabbling together enough to send the kids to school in shoes and have a few beers on the weekend. The island is, literally, a tropical paradise IF you rock up with some hard currency which, as we see from the ferry price above, goes a long way. A few beers all week long, indeed. Someone has to serve those beers and rent out surf-boards and so there is a living to be made from tourism.

During the pandemic, however, tourists dried up and blew away and local entrepreneurs returned to their previous vocation of farming sea weed. In particular the red algae Eucheuma cottonii and E. spinosum. The islands of Lembongan and Ceningan are separated by a shallow tidal lagoon and currently drone-footage shows the sea-bottom is carved up into roughly rectangular patches of different colours depending on how recently the algae has been harvested. It's a bit precarious because the whole area could be tossed to buggery if/when a powerful tropical cyclone passes through. But depending on the global market place for carageenan seaweed can be part of the local economy as well as supplying sunscreen to beach-bums.

It wasn't ever thus! Before the sea was farmed it was fished and however the commons were distributed then, it surely wasn't dependent on a rectangular grid.

Carageenan is widely used as a stabilizer, thickener, gelling agent, emulsifier, and protective colloid which prevents crystallization when a paste is desired. The gloop is widely used in the food industry, medicine, microbiology [Petri dishes] cosmetics, textiles, paints, toothpaste . . . so many emulsions in tins and tubes across the developed world.

Pat his day

It's June, it's Sunday, it's miscellany

• Kiwi flag change: [prev] - closure [no change] 
• Steel!
  
• Peening a scythe blade
• Tim Dyck recycing rail to axe
• Anvil nerderie
• Bessemer bad 
• Unseizing the Tally-Ho capstan
  
• Me sir, me sir, ask me - Binfo in University Challenge
• Earlier this week Paxo did his last U.C. gig
  
• London cabbie [R] etiquette
• Yak-shing [cooperative wood gathering] in Ladakh
• Solo wood-working restoration section
  
• Ghost Dog under scrutiny 
• Granite City they speak Doric
• Wine buffs don't get snotty about Old Red Biddy
• Lithium in landfill - Fire! 
  

Knuttel gone

Back in the early 90s, before we acquired two more children, we had a social life. Our pal D was visiting from London and we all went into town on Saturday morning to get coffee and buns and check out whaaat's happenin'? It was a teeny bit more focussed for D because he wanted to check out the New Apollo Gallery in Duke Street for contemporary art. D was a very successful corporate lawyer [with a heart of gold!] and was acquiring a modest collection of paintings. The Beloved and D dove right in, pulling paintings out of bins and appraising those which were good enough to deserve hanging. The Arts Block is quite outside my wheelhouse, so I chatted in a desultory manner in front-of-shop with The Proprietor, hereinafter "cloaky-bollix", who was high camp self-consciously artistic in demeanour. I was able to establish that I was The Money -  ready to whip out the cheque-book if T.B. saw something she liked. Eventually, they came from out back with a medium sized oil: Still-life with aubergines by Graham Knuttel:

I cut a cheque [remember them?] and we came away with another item of stuff. D preferred Knuttel's pictures of gangster's and cooks and, although he bought nothing that Saturday, he acquired a good few Knuttels in that style. A few years later, Sylvester "Rocky" Stallone was shooting a film in Ireland and discovered Knuttel on one of his rest-days. Back home in Hollywood, he shared his find with Robert de Niro, Frank Sinatra and other celebs. Prices went up! Institutions [banks, colleges, galleries] jumped on the latest fad. Prices went UP! Those aubergines became our successful flutter on the Grand National: without knowing much, through happenstance, we turned out lucky. Nobody could have predicted the cultural collision of eggplants with Der Penis in Emoji-speak, for example. Perhaps this makes our acquisition even more valuable than Knuttel's fascist chef vibe.

Knuttel's dead now. From one of his supporting galleries an Obit. I guess our aubergines will have another brief spike in 'value' as cognoscenti twig that there will be no more new Knuttels to hang or hoard.

Dau.II was born in 1995; more or less bald but blonde round the edges. This was in stark contrast to her dark curly-haired older sister. A month later was their mother's birthday and I took time off work [I was the Director and Sole Employee of Binfo Ireland so I could] to rustle up a giftie. Heading for Bewley's for chocolates or coffee, I passed Cloaky-bollix's store front and, on impulse went in. I don't piffle about. About 10 minutes later I came out with two Madonna-and-childs by Rachel Strong who had recently broken up with Knuttel. Some people have seen her as Frida Kahlo to Knuttel as Diego Rivera. They clearly shared a palette and way-of-seeing as well as breakfast:

I thought it was clever-hilarious that these two views of motherhood were such a good match for our own two childer.