Category: General

So, in a slightly odd turn of events I found myself on EVCast. Yeah, ‘cos my old Viva EV conversion plan (and generally opinionated nature) make(s) me perfectly suited to comment on the current state of the EV World and politics as related to EVs :)

That and knowing Ms G-B.

:)

What was weird was Robert Lewellyn, the awesome host of Scrapheap Challenge (Red Dwarf and Carpool not-to-mention), being one member of the panel, and the founder of the G-Wiz owner’s club, and uh, me. Odd, yeah?

Anyway, my brand of ranting delusional insanity will be in EVCast 224 (i.e. the next one), so watch out for that. Those of you who recall my foray into video (and near-foray into television) from many years ago (well a few), may have fear struck into your hearts by the fact that Nikki poked me to do some video stuff again. Maybe I will. Or maybe it’ll make it as far as my plan to do some stand up comedy…

I’m not a graphic designer, which will be obvious to you all when the picture loads (or if it’s already loaded)… but I am still whining, internally and probably externally, about the concept of giving people money to scrap old cars so they can buy new cars, hybrid or no. I think it’s foolish, environmentally horrific, and short-sighted.

I think we should be building local skills, I think we should be using these skills to help build local economies. Instead the government is leaping in to help multinational corporations that really need to completely change their business models.

We don’t need more cars, we need less.

So I think this is a better idea. EV Conversion grants.

Local engineers make the bits for older cars, for newer ones the big multinationals can make drop in conversions. Everyone gets their bit of the pie, and we don’t scrap hundreds of thousands of viable cars…

What I’d really like to do is a whole series of posters – along the lines of the 1940s/50s ones – Some for EVC, some for keeping older cars on the road… – interesting ideas, but lack of skill at the mo.

Originally I was going to put a DfT and a DEFRA logo on it, but I thought better of that :)

Image taken from Santheo’s Flickr Stream. CC licenced.

So, I left you most of the way through Day 5…

Day 5 – continued

The other thing I *think* we did on Day 5 was a horse uh..trek. Kathryn’s been jonesing for a horse for a while, she being the ex-rider. Me being the ex-flung into a hedge-er I maintain that my lack of horse control is simply respect for another being. Others may disagree. I’ve always actually enjoyed riding, I just…well…amn’t very good at it.

So we booked a little Trek. Kathryn was brutally honest about it, explaining she’d not ridden for years and that I was about as competent at riding a horse as I am at riding a goldfish. We turned up, met some very nice Irish people, sat on some lovely horses (one of which was, somewhat miraculously, pregnant*), and they led us for an hour. This wasn’t quite what either of us expected, and I have to admit I was somewhat startled by it…

…it took me a while to twig that that’s what they were going to do, I kept thinking ‘ah, they’re just taking us to wherever their horses are’…

Anyhow. It was very pleasant all the same, but not really what we were after :-/

Day 6

Day 6 was Holy Island…

Holy Island is an abandoned monastery on… an Island. It was a dinky little boat-trip to get across to it, and very peaceful. The buildings are, again, in an arrested state of decay, some of them have been re-roofed, some not, and the gravestones have been preserved, at least some of them. In fact, some of them are fairly recent. The whole place felt very peaceful, although, that’s not how it would have felt when it was a monastery. The island would have been covered in many small wooden hut/structures and other monastery buildings. It would have teemed with pilgrims. It is certainly interesting how time changes these places.

More info on Holy Island here. We ended day 6 in an unexpected and incredible way. I’d been wanting to go for a walk, being as I am, used to wandering mountain fells. We’d looked at the map and found a bit of the ‘East Clare Way’ which appeared to go through some woodland, round a lake, and past a holy well. Kathryn wanted to see a holy well (we didn’t make it that far on Holy Island before we had to get back for the boat), we both like wandering through woods and by lakes, so it seemed rather a nice plan.

Our first attempt found us trapped on private land in woodland. It was very pretty, but we’d reached a point where fences prevented further movement, so we retraced our steps and tried again. This time things went better. We wandered through pretty woodland and found… an abandoned logging company (this isn’t the really cool bit).

Lurking in the woods were concrete slabs from the equipment once there (initially, identifying one pointy-window’d building as possibly some kind of small church, it was near a holy well, in the distance I thought they were grave stones). But in the undergrowth was this:

And a more modern block-building housed a cooker, abandoned logging detritus and paperwork relating to an operation running up until the 90s.

My theory (I like this bit of wandering round abandoned places, trying to work out why things have been left, or what happened) is that the steam equipment, of which the above shot is a part, was probably disused in the logging yard many years before they closed. When the place did finally close, all the newer equipment was sold off or scrapped out, but this heap of rusting iron was left as being essentially valueless.

Anyhow, (this is the cool bit, coming up now); we continued down the path (now it’d stopped raining), and came upon a big green pointy fence. In the distance, on the other side of the fence was this:

Now, we had no particular intention of trespassing despite my desire to go looksie, outside it, and visible from our distance were a couple of shipping containers, the building was obviously open though, and it was…tempting. We wandered along the ‘new’ path that people’d created alongside the fence which cut viciously across the path we’d been following. Suddenly the big green fence ended.

Then there were….a couple of strands of wires on poles….for a fence…

Then someone’d trampled the wires down. There was, essentially, no significant barrier. We um’d and ah’d. Kathryn reminded me of my nurse status. But standing there, in that isolated spot, it was clear that there was no activity, and no one around.

I stepped over the fence, explaining that Kathryn most definately didn’t have to come with me and I’d be quick…

About 2 minutes later we were standing in a manor house built in 1799…

It was and is one of the most utterly fantastic places I’ve explored. Very little remains, the floor only stays standing, I presume, because it’s solid vaulted brick. Apart from a bookcase / cupboard (it’s difficult to tell) built into the second floor wall I couldn’t see any original features inside. There was a small amount of plaster in one of the alcoves next to the door. The house looked out over the lake, it’s decaying frontage displayed to the world. But inside it was a feast for the eyes. Overrun by plants and vines, the place displayed a beauty it never would have had in life.

It was utterly enchanting to walk around.

As Kathryn said, it was like a children’s fairytale.

It had obviously been bricked up and reopened in the not completely distant past, and there was some evidence that someone, at some time, had been wanting to renovate it. I wanted to renovate it. Were it not in rural island, and instead in Canada I’d be trying to work out how to get the money to restore it.

In the cellar lurked a couple of very clearly abandoned bits of builder’s tables, but the plywood door to the front of the house lying on it’s back (and having clearly been lying there for some time), and the overturned and empty oil container (the drive area reeked of oil) told the story of an abortive attempt to resuscitate the home. I’m not sure it wants to be renovated.

The foundation stone lurks behind a (presumably) later addition to give a courtyard type area near one of the cellar doors, Kathryn spotted it, and photographed it. I, distressingly ran out of both batteries and space on my CF card as we were there.

So that was the real, proper abandonment. Not held in abatement by humans, just nature and it’s slow and beautiful destruction of what we have wrought.

Day 7:
We flew back, thanks to the AA, on Day 7. Our Ferry ticket going unused, as Rebecca is coming back tomorrow, with a delivery truck. To do so, we had to make our way across the country, and we decided to spend a few hours in Dublin.

We wandered around the city centre, popped into St Stephen’s Green, had a little wander around the Temple Bar area (and had an incredibly good tea, very good cake, at an extortionate price). And then had a generally pleasant day before a somewhat stressful drive through the edge of Dublin up to the Airport.

Dublin airport, like many an airport appears to have had it’s road system designed by someone accidentally picking up a child’s random scribbles instead of their design for a road network. Either that or someone had a little too much acid the day they designed it. On our 3rd attempt, we made it in to the car-park. Eventually we found the (very well hidden) Enterprise desk where they informed us (on the phone, because it’s unstaffed0 that we shouldn’t have parked there… but after it became apparent that since that’s what they told me to do and I wasn’t about to attempt to navigate back out of their car-park and hell-begat airport, they offered to collect it from there…

The flight back was pleasant and uneventful, and we made it back to home unscathed. :)

And that was our holiday.

…

Thoughts that I am thinking, the AA rock. I am well enamoured with them at the moment. So long as Rebecca comes back unscathed they’ll get an incredibly nice letter from me thanking everyone I dealt with. I am *so* pleased I spent that money on cover. The holiday would have been a disaster without them.

And an expensive disaster at that.

I have no idea how anyone in Ireland affords the living costs over there. Food is insanely expensive, fuel is expensive, eating out is extortionate – for the cost of two drinks and two cakes we could get a full meal here). Interestingly, the crafty stuff was very reasonably priced, for the most part.

It is a really beautiful country, and very interesting. It seem much more it’s own place than it did last time I visited. Not to say it wasn’t before, but in some ways, last time I visited it felt like it was defined by being not_the_UK. But now it feels more like their cultural heritage, their people, their choices are what have made them different. Perhaps that’s my perspective shifting though.

There is one road marking I’m still completely baffled by. Not that road markings mean much, while the standard of driving has move up quite dramatically from last time I was there, people still regard the road markings as useful information rather than anything to be meaningfully obeyed.

I’d like to go back and spend more time exploring Dublin, but suspect I need to earn rather a lot more to do that.

Taking the ferry is way better than flying. It takes almost as long, if you include check-in time, waiting for baggage and so on, to fly, as it does to go by ferry. Going by ferry you wander about, lay down for an uncomfortable kip, and don’t get treated like a terrorist having to remove your belt and wander around holding loose jeans up. Flying is an uncomfortable experience involving invasive behaviour on the part of the security theatre around you.

But it’s much cheaper than the ferry.

And finally, when we tour Europe, in one of the fleet, I shall be truly sure to treat all the niggling ‘in the back of my head’ things before we go.

* Apparently it’s rare for older horses to get pregnant, and this one was 23 – and they’d been told she was ‘barren’. So it was a bit of a surprise when she turned out to be pregnant. She’s going to be not doing riding school stuff for a bit – in fact she may already have stopped.

So, we got back from our holiday in Ireland a few days ago (2, actually); getting there turned out to be an adventure, and getting back involved being airbourne, but the trip itself was excellent :)

Day 0 – The Journey:
So, after my nights, on Kathryn’s birthday we spent the day cleaning the house, packing and generally preparing to be off. Not quite the ideal plan for a birthday, but with the ferry going at 0230 we needed to be off in the evening and we wanted to come back to a clean house.

Dozily I looked at the GPS route and the Google route. The Google route went down the A55, and took 5 hours. The GPS route went down the A5 and took a couple of minutes less. The GPS was perkily announcing that it knew where we were and how to get there, so I was happy to follow it…

…I added on an hour to the journey time to allow for disasters mid-route, we piled into Rebecca and set off.

For some bizarre reason, and following an increasingly frustrating series of coincidences, apart from one service station part way there, we missed them all. As Rebecca was reporting over a quarter of the tank was full we skipped on. After that every service station fell after the junction we took. Giving in, we passed the junction on the M6 and took the opportunity to pause for a cup of coffee/tea and some birthday cake, and on heading back out to the car the GPS decided that all the satellites were now neatly in a line, and it had no idea where we were. But since we were following the GPS directions, and I knew roughly where to go we set off, turning around and down the M6 and then onto the A5.

Now, remember I’d been on nights? Well, I didn’t look that closely at the ferry documents, and of course, it slowly dawned on us that we needed to be there at least (according to the form) 45 minutes before the ferry left to get on… This dawning occurred the same time as the realisation that the GPS had directed us over what was, essentially, a mountain pass. To add to the angst, it was now raining.

Now, those of you who read my tedious car posts will recall that the gearbox on the minor was a bit noisy. It’d caused me some concern, initially, when the new engine went in, because it was ‘very’ noisy (or at least, seemed so, now that I couldn’t here the clatter of the dying sickly 1300 that was in before). However, it seemed to have ‘settled down’ to a constant level of noisyness. It stayed in all the gears, and apart from occasional finnickyness from second appeared to all intents-and-purposes to be fine. The last oil change didn’t reveal anything too unpleasant, no great shards of metal, not even a great deal of fine metal shavings. No more than I’d’ve expected, tbh. I’ve been getting another gearbox rebuilt, but haven’t been angsting over the 4 months they’ve had it…

But I did worry a bit as I up-and-downshifted through the gearbox trying to clear a Welsh pass as rapidly as possible. Imagine a 1960s rally, but with less style and grace and a bigger-bore exhaust. By the time we whined our way into the ferry port it was sounding ‘a bit worse’ and had started to jump out of fourth under *really* heavy loads (let’s not discuss the speed we did down the last stretch to the ferry port; it was, shall we say, swift, but then what’s a 1300 with a fast cam if you never use it). Now, I’ve known minor gearboxes go on for thousands of miles with completely shonked internals, they’re kind of known for their resistance to abuse, so I was wary, and thinking we may have to cut down our touring a bit in Ireland, but not desperately concerned.

We, incidentally, made the ferry with about 10 minutes to spare. They, apparently, decided to close check in 10 minutes before departure…thankfully.

Day 1: To Tulla
So, we pootled off the ferry, having bought an AA Road Atlas of Ireland and with Google’s directions to various potential points of interest. Getting out of Dublin proved to be the first difficulty. First of all we didn’t want to pay the M50 tunnel toll. After getting lost around the port twice we decided we did want to pay the toll and made it out. Then the M50 wanted another toll and we thought ‘screw that’ and hopped off. Atlas in Kathryn’s hand we started scooting through the Dublin suburbs, and out into the country.

Finally around 8am we made it to a fort/castle near (I think) Killcullen…

And here’s Rebecca sunning herself in the early morning light

The fort was, as usual, very old and had been rebuilt many times. I want to say 16th c., but it is quite possibly lots older. We’d not quite got used to just how much there is in Ireland in terms of forts, castles, ring-forts, abandoned manor houses…

The day was cool and crisp, and despite the wind up on the surface and it’s proximity to a town of some-sort, it was in remarkably good shape. It took a while to realise that the earth we were stood on probably stood on fallen walls and stone, and the apparently very low down windows could once have been far up other walls.

These places, the solitude of them, when not covered in Tourists, they are just wonderful places to be. The quiet, still, contemplative nature of them. Of course, when they were active they were anything but. It would once have been filled with people and noise, and would, probably have been stark-limewashed-white. But they are beautiful in their decay.

So, until the biting wind made us cold we savoured the castle, and then meandered down. The gearbox on ‘becca started to get noisier – and about 30 miles from our destination developed what sounded like it was working on becoming a screech in fourth. And third. At this point I switched from hoping that she’d carry us round Ireland to hoping that she’d carry us to the cottage.

Twenty miles from Tulla and about midday, as we made our way gingerly down the N7 (50mph is pretty ginger by my standards) the bearing that had been singing to us decided it’d had enough and the engine started having to work harder to pull us along. I dropped onto the hard shoulder and out of gear. Praying to Issigonis, Morris and the gods of all things classic I put her in first. There were no new untoward noises, and we crept along, second also was not exactly hunky-dory, but was working, and we limped, wounded off up the slip road to a pub.

I rang the AA.

The AA man came and told me what I knew (a bearing’s collapsed in your gearbox, you shouldn’t try and drive her like that, it might seize). And that she’d have to be recovered. I spent the next hour waiting for the recovery truck essentially hiding. Kathryn patiently looked after me as I swung between having to pay for a new gearbox to be fitted by Irish mechanics who’ve not seen anything over 5 years old for the last 10 years, the possibility of us not having a car for the holiday, or of getting the car back after getting that box that’s being rebuilt shipped over, so trying to cope for a several days without a car. I was stressed.

The AA recovery bloke came, and the AA rang and told us we had a hire car for 2 days. We relaxed a bit, knowing that we’d be okay to get food and such.

While we waited for the very nice Alex from Enterprise to collect us from Nenagh and take us back to Limerick to collect the car, we sat in a very pleasant hotel and discussed our new carless holiday.

Sleep deprived and exhausted (28 hours awake and still going) we attempted to make conversation with Alex, and the AA phoned us and said that we had the car for the week. Did I mention that the AA currently rock, as far as I’m concerned. We then had a very stressful hour trying to find the Minor having got back to Nenagh and followed the guy’s directions which, well, let’s say if you’d lived there your entire life, and the school that was now a community hall was still a school, and the recently built housing estate wasn’t there were just fine, to collect our luggage. Finally at 10pm we rolled up at our cottage, ate our Tulla-supplied pizza and fell into a very tired sleep.

Day 2: Inis and Tulla.local

So, Day 1 having been fairly and squarely exhausting (36 hours awake, not good) we had a slow, quiet day Wednesday. We had a very gentle morning before heading in to Inis. Rick Steve’s 2002 Ireland book recommended the Friary there, and we also had a nose in a Celtic music store (I resisted, impressively); the museum in Inis is free, and excellent. It did remind me though that some in Ireland remain very hostile towards the British; bringing back memories of I.R.A. positive slogans sprayed on walls and Aisling’s “there are pubs you don’t want to go into” from my last visit in 2001. As the narrator paused before describing the period of British rule in Ireland and then finally spat out that Britain had tried to ‘swallow Ireland whole’, sounding as he said it like this was the most mild thing he could possibly have been brought to say on the matter, I contemplated whether I should ever mention being English (or stick to my fairly groundless claim to be Welsh*).

We wandered off, discussing the Irish opinion of Britain, and found Inis friary; which is very pretty. It was also closed, ironically opening the day after we arrived.

Having pootled, and paused at a [jesus christ how expensive? how to people afford to even live in Ireland?] supermarket and stocked up on decent quality Irish potatoes, and a limited selection of produce, and some fairly uninspiring cheese** [and it came to 30 quid!] we headed home. And then we headed out for a brief but pleasant wander in the countryside around Tulla. I keep saying we’re in Tulla, but in reality we were a few miles outside Tulla.

When we got back I made a hash of lighting the fire, on the third attempt I succeeded (but had given in and used a firelighter which appeared to mostly be kerosene in a brick), and thus succeeded in making the cottage warmer and snugglier.

Day 3:

The weather decided that one good sunny day was enough, we’d preliminarily decided to visit the Polnabrune Dolmen and the Cliffs of Moher (oh, such tourists), and instead spent today heading, I think, to Limerick. I’m not entirely sure that’s what we did. What we did do was tour an(other) abandoned abbey and monastery. I know it looks like that’s all we did, but there were so many, and we went everywhere by scenic routes; and we spent our time pootling, and thus discovered many, many places.

Anyhow, this one was very pretty, but locked…

On the way home, possibly from Limerick, we happened across a dinky little hexagonal structure, which we spent some time running up and down trying to get near. Sadly there was no (public) access to it, and it was on a fairly fast road. While hunting we found this bizarre, truly 70’s, petrol station.

The amount of abandonment, not just of abbeys and churches is astonishing. The world has changed around Ireland, and while Ireland has changed with it, the detritus of these changes is scattered around. Disused petrol pumps lurk in nearly every village we passed. Railway lines litter the countryside, tracks and crossing barriers in situ, but overgrown.

It is an explorer’s delight. More time and we probably would have spent days just hiding in the jungle of abandonment.

Apart from – oh I recall – we went craft-centre hunting. We found a really nice little pottery, where a woman was sat listening to Radio 4 and making really gorgeous pots, pigs, and plates. We also found somewhere marketed as a craft market but which was, in fact, a local enterprise centre with just ordinary local businesses in it. We also visited the Hunt Museum. An intriguing place mostly filled with items from a family collection. They were antiquarians who kept – and used – items from many, many centuries. There are photos of one of them wearing a brooch from the 16th century. I speculate the conversation may have gone thus:

:: Famous person: Oh, what a beautiful brooch. Where did you get it?
:: Mrs Hunt (or whatever her name was): Oh, this old thing? I picked it up from the 16th Century. Why do you ask?
:: Famous person: Oh-ah. Um, I was going to ask where I could get something like that… but I guess an archiological dig’d be best.
:: Mrs Hunt: Yep *smiles and wanders off to drink her champagne*

Day 4: Castles, Cliffs and Dolmens

We had a long day Friday, our plan was to visit the Cliffs of Moher and the Poulnabrune Dolmen. Our usual ‘the journey is the destination’ approach to navigation; OS map in hand; was successful as usual. We found Kilmacduagh abbey / monastery and Dunguaire castle on the way. Apparently at the castle they do ‘medieval banquets’, if that is the castle.

Kilmacduagh abbey was a beautiful (I keep saying that) location; it’s out in the middle of no-where, and while it’s signed for tourists, it didn’t look like a major attraction. The scruffy sign by the sign says ‘Ask Caretaker for key’ however it doesn’t say where a caretaker might be found. The sing also gently informs you that they’re doing some kind of restoration work on the Abbots house, which sports windows and a door, but no other obvious signs of life. Again, silence and solitude are an incredible thing.

In the time of the Famine, the tenant farmers rose up and burned the manors of the absentee landlords. Ireland is, therefore, not only littered with abbeys, service stations, houses, but also manors and estates. Near the Cliffs of Moher there’s an abandoned estate house up for sale – we found out by Kathryn (thankfully Kathryn) asking in the local service station – the long-gone English Lord was not, necessarily, popular.

I don’t know if that was the fate of this, unknown, manor. But it stood – more or less – gently disintegrating into the Irish scenery. Again, inaccessible unless you knew the local farmer, but seriously pretty.

Distractions complete we made it to the Dolmen. 5000(?) years ago this was built by people who’s lives we have only the tiniest insight into what they look like. We wandered, explored, sat, Kathryn painted and I just absorbed the atmosphere.

And tried to avoid other tourists.

The burren is such an incredible environment, an almost alien terrain, limestone crevices with small cracks of life.

Having frozen our arses off we headed on to the Cliffs of Moher. No holiday exposition would be complete, at least not one of mine, without a rant. A good, full size, nutritious healthy rant.

The Cliffs of Moher are incredible. A natural wonder. The beauty of the untamed environment.

Only they’re not anymore. They’re a demonstration of human power to pave anything, anywhere. The visitor centre is actually pretty darn cool. Not that we looked in it, but from the outside.

But outside, they’ve paved and barriered the whole ‘public’ bit of the cliffs. I could understand a temporary keep back – it’s all eroded fence – while they recover from the enormous trampling that they get. But no.

It’s all stairs, faux rock and walls.

This, incidentally, is what it used to be like (in 2002):

And this is what they’ve done:

Just remember, nature is scary:

Thankfully, disregarding signage and risking our life we crossed into the unknown. The fearsome abyss of the unprotected natural world lurked all around us, and Kathryn, the intrepid explorer passed ‘the sign’.

Back on true terra firma, the real nature of the Cliffs resurfaced…and we were able to appreciate them without human intervention. Unfortunately, the car-park guy told us that the car-park closed at 7. We hurried back to the car as 7 approached, only an hour on the cliffs, only to discover the lie. The car-park payment system closes at 7, but the car-park remains open, and in fact, you can leave without paying.

Day 5: Moving locations, pottery and abandonment

So, Saturday we shifted from our cottage near Tulla to a lodge between Scariff and Mountshannon. We packed up carefully, cleaned up, piled into the rental Focus and shifted location.

En route we found a gorgeous pottery place, where I definitely didn’t purchase two really very nice bowls. I also spent rather a lot of time photographing some really rather nice petrol pumps outside the pottery place. Yet again they lurk, unused and rusting, but they’re very pretty in their decay.

We paused in an inbetween village to take photos of…an…abandoned…pub. Yeah, yeah, I know. I could’ve taken photos of pretty countryside. If you want pretty countryside photos, go read someone elses blog :)

We made it as far to Portumna where we had a quick look at the very interesting house, but more on that in a bit. And we also visited Scariff. I think we were hunting for breakfast cereal and milk. But the Astor cinema in the vibrant and popular town of Scariff (a large proportion of one of the main streets was closed and abandoned) was, as you might imagine, closed. I’m not sure if it opens on-season or not, but it didn’t hugely look like it.

Bizarrely that’s actually one of my favourite shots from the whole trip. I just adore the colours.

Day 6: Portumna house, wandering and a Peak at Holy Island

We spotted this house the previous day, it turns out that it burned down in a fire, not an intentional famine fire (that happened later) some time in the 18th century. The then Lord, who it seems was actually pretty good as Lords go, built a replacement for his rather nice manor. This was then burned down and the stonework taken to build a church (and houses, probably) when a later earl did the whole ‘absentee landlord’ thing during the famine. Nothing remains of the later house, but ironically the earlier one remained, sans roof, disappearing into the undergrowth (and overgrowth, I suppose).

In the 40s it, or more specifically, the land was bought by the Irish government to protect the woodlands and park surrounding it. In the 60s they came up with the interesting idea of saving the house too, but not the whole traditional renovate-and-furnish. No, instead they stabilised, the renewed the roof and put in floors, well, some of them. They had leaded windows made as close to the original as they could, and that’s it. It gives you some idea of what a renovation of this scale involves…as do some of my later photos from another place we visited that’s altogether rather more untouched.

The Kitchen gardens at Portumna are awesome, they renovated them a few years ago, and they’ve won awards for them… the rest of the gardens they’re archeologsising and surveying, but remain untouched… They’re very early in the whole ‘formal gardens’ idea, so it’s intriguing to see what they might be like.

On the way back, we paused to examine prices for Holy Island, and a ferry point for the Lough.

We then endeavored to go for a bit of wander. This, it turned out, is not quite the same as Britain. Britain is filled with ‘permissive paths’ and ‘public footpaths’ and ‘rights of way’ in a way that no other country seems to be. Other places have lax land owners that allow you to wander unfettered, but only in the UK, it seems, is there a vast network of paths on which you can wander and explore.

In Ireland, you wander on the roads. Eventually we worked this out having tried a few permutations of ‘but it says there’s a track there…

Right, it’s taken me much of the spare-bits of the day to write this, and the whole of The Matrix** so I’ll stop. Days 6 and 7 can wait until tomorrow.

* By which I mean, my dad was Welsh, but I was born in England.
** I still wish I looked like Trinity, still, training starts soon (next week at the latest) for the Commando Challenge, and when I get fit…well, maybe my figure will reappear.

For those uninterested in holidays, Kathryn gave me an awesome present a Cheese, Science and Wine evening. How super-cool is that?

I appear to have signed up to do this: The Commando Challenge in October; with peoples from work; assuming I’m still here.

If anyone wants to sponsor me, that’d be cool, I think we’re doing it for Berkshire Air Ambulance; but I’m not certain. I needed an excuse to get fit, and I’ve just given myself one.

In other news, the iPaq continues it’s run of attrocicity. Microsoft Mobile looks altogether more attrocious each time I used it. Yesterday it crashed and properly locked up while I was setting the ‘phone number’ field, and required a reset – thus losing all the software. Well, I say ‘thus’; it was ‘backed up’ using it’s convenient ‘compact flash backup’ – but that appeared to have missed out some vital DLLs and restoring from the backup resulted an an iPaq that crashed and popped up little error messages every few seconds… Garnering another reset.

Having dinked with it before bed this morning it appears to be working again. I did take it to work before it crashed and it was entertainingly GPSy. It is, as far as I’m concerned, a deep shame that you can’t get modern maps for it. When it’s installed and working the rest of the software works fine. I’m tempted to dink with NavIt.

We made Tangine… it’s disappointly not as pretty as it tastes, but hey, I’m no food ‘tog.

That’s not mash, it’s polenta. Next time, less chickpeas, more apricot.

What made a more interesting photo though was the voddy glass filled with spices.

…and for completeness, here’s a dinner we made earlier (well, part of a dinner) – a while back we attempted Tortellini. I can’t say as it was completely successful. It was tasty though – but the pasta was a bit thick and they were a bit overfilled. Next time we’ll cook the mushrooms in wine first, and we’ll make the pasta thinner, and probably make less mushroom goop to go in them…

So, I’ve updated the garden pics (March ’09 Set) with some new ones to show a few of the things that we’ve grown. It’s amazing and awesome to look at these leaves peeking through the soil and to think of what was there before. And amazing to think that just a few weeks ago we planted seeds. Just seeds. And now look. There’s beans and peas and onions and a garlic and Angelica (whatever it is!) growing.

There’s flowers appearing on our Daffodils. There’s leaves on the blackcurrant and the gooseberry (the raspberry canes are still somewhat on the dormant side). Even the inappropriate but bought-anyway Japanese acer’s got leaves.

It’s so cool.

We did this.

We made this garden.

‘course, nature’s doing all the growing for us, and generously raining since we don’t have an outside tap so have to fill the watering can in the kitchen.

But it just…rocks. I like gardening, I’ve decided.

[in tedious car news: turns out the brake hoses are standard parts, so I can go down to Allparts and say I need something that’s this; which should mean it’s cheap and not unreasonable to replace. Hopefully then the brakes will truly be sorted. If not then that’s the end of the line for Vixy (I said that before, but I mean it this time). No more new parts].

So after 5 hours of work on the DAF (Vixy) she’s in exactly the same state as she was before, only now the brake fluid instead of looking like this:

Looks more like brake fluid. That there is brakefluid with added flecks of crap. I suspect it’s disintegrating rubber from the insides of the tubes. Not teh internet’s tubes, but the brake hoses. The flexible bits. They mostly look fine from the outside, after much footling, one of them looks ‘iffy’. Plan is to whip one front and one rear off and see how much my local Allparts want for a set. This really is the last-and-final thing though.

I footled with the minor – the ‘safety’ on the passenger door is now working again, and I think that the exhaust probably isn’t fouling the suspension any more – but it’s lowest point remains ridiculously low and I can’t see any way of making it higher… anyway. Bed beckons.

So, yesterday I was angry, today I’m antsy. I want to do something.

Society in the UK, and elsewhere, is under attack from those who would wish it destroyed. But this isn’t some attack from outside. It’s not extremists and fundamentalists (of any stripe) attacking it. No; this is a sneaky and subtle disintegration of society from the inside by individuals who would have control over me, you, and everyone else.

People who understand that community, trust, friendship and family are things that make them weak and societies strong. People who are scared of losing power because the people have new ways to communicate, new ways to meet and organise, new ways to find each other.

People who don’t just want to maintain the status quo, but who want more control, who want deep and oppressive laws which reach into the very fibre of your every-day existence. Who want you to not trust anyone, not friends, not family, certainly not neighbours, and not your community. Who want you to assume that that which you do not understand must be hostile.

And to do this they must spread fear.

They must spread hate.

I think this has to stop. I think that if society in the UK is to survive it must stop. Now.

But I don’t know how to do that yet. I want ideas, anything that will help us build up communities, develop trust, remind people that that which is different and which we don’t understand does not have to be feared.

We need to transform this fear and repression into something positive, and now is the time to start.