Midsummer Bonfires and Beaches

Last Saturday, the 23rd June, was Bonfire Night.

It still seems strange to have a bonfire on practically the longest day of the year, but after living in Ireland for so long, I've grown to love it - although I have to say, I miss the fireworks!
It is St John's Eve, the 23rd June, but before the Catholic Church hijacked it, of course Bonfire Night was really about celebrating the summer solstice.

Perhaps some people still say prayers over their crops, or take ashes from the fire to spread on their land as a blessing. People may still eat 'Goody' - a dish made with bread and milk, sugar and spice; but these days,  Midsummer is mostly about family get-togethers, having a bit of a knees-up and lots of food and drink.

Of course, bonfires are illegal in Ireland, but as a country, we don't let a little thing like that stand in our way.
On Bonfire Night, the plumes of smoke arise like signals in every direction. And just as in England in November, you would have seen the bonfire sites being stacked with old timber and pallets and goodness knows what, for days in advance.
We don't need old pallets for our bonfire. It's the one chance - well, there is always Hallowe'en of course - to burn a mountain of garden waste that has accumulated like the Tower of Babel for six months or more.

Other bonfires, other years

What about composting, I hear you cry!

Well - composting is all well and good, but for one thing, the heaps don't get hot enough for long enough to do the trick.. Woody prunings (of which we have bushel loads) never breal down imto compost, and, well - this is the north west of Ireland for goodness sake! - in this climate it takes about a squillion years, and more manpower than we can muster, to turn all our waste vegetation into fine, dark tilth.

There was one year when I thought we really had cracked it at long last.
Joyfully I spread my crumbly, black gold over the vegetable beds, and stood back in proud admiration.
Three weeks later I had a fine, healthy, infant lawn.

However, this year we didn't have a bonfire.
It rained - really rained, as you may have read on my last post - right through to Sunday morning.
It did it again last night, and the night before.
We measure rain very scientifically in this household.
It's how full the dog bowls are. Model Dog has an old frying pan for her bowl (handle removed), and this morning it was full to the brim. Again.
Mind you - I think we are lucky - my great friend, DodoWoman (like CatWoman, but less extinct) had to

rush to Belfast today to rescue her tenant from her flooded property. I don't think she had to go in with a rowing boat, but it was all pretty dire nonetheless. And Cork - scene of ghastly floods in 2009 - has been washed out again, poor city.
So having no bonfire is a small price to pay really.
It just means the Tower of Babel still stands!

Our favourite beach

But all is not woe.
Despite the teeming night and soft morming, this afternoon has been a real summer's afternoon.
Sunshine and clouds and the warm breath of the south kissing midsummer softly goodbye.
It was a pleasure to be outside.

We went to our favourite beach and rambled along it for two hours. There was no one else there.
I gathered shells as we drifted along, and the In-Charge found a tangled lump of washed-up rope which he happily sat and unravelled.
The dogs swan and rolled in the sand and were too lazy to chase the seagulls.

The beach yields trophies

Eventually we got to the rocks at the far end.
'Have you, by any chance,' I asked the In-Charge, 'got a picnic hamper in your jacket pocket?'

I was quite ready to sit there for another hour, drinking tea and eating cake before moving seamlessly onto a bottle of white wine, chilled nicely in one of the rock pools.
Sadly the answer was no, but it didn't really matter.
Just being there was enough.
We both felt as unravelled and liberated as the In-Charge's skein of rope.

What a sky!

The Property Tax is a Riot

After we'd looked at what the Market had to offer yesterday, some friends and I sat in its nicely old-fashioned cafe and had a cuppa, and the talk, as so often nowadays, turned to the situation in Ireland. Someone mentioned the new property tax.

The Market has lots of good things on offer. Like these...

Now I should explain that we have no council charges, domestic rates, property taxes or whatever they are called in other parts of the world. I have even heard it said that 'rates' is a swear word in Ireland, a hark-back to the bad old days of the British. Fair enough.

I have even heard it said that 'promises were made' that such an evil would never be re-introduced.

Hmm.

(Perhaps it was a Government that made that promise. Enough said.)

and these...

The new Property Tax is going to be a hundred euros per household.
Well - this year, anyway.
Once they have managed to make the country swallow the idea that rates (that old swear word) are indeed on the annual menu, then I suppose the sky's the limit. 

I guess you may all be gasping with amazement that we don't have a local taxes of some kind, but we're not getting away Scot free. Ireland is an expensive place to live, everything seems to be loaded, one way or another and we have a high rate of VAT, high road tax, income tax, some people pay water rates (soon everyone will pay water rates) and so it goes on... And if you want your rubbish collected (what else can you do with it in a country where bonfires are illegal?) you pay a private company...

Back at the table yesterday, someone voiced the opinion that the new tax was illegal. Someone else said you couldn't be forced to register for it. Only one person said they didn't mind paying, as the government needs the money - how else can it claw back the gazillions Ireland owes?
Another person said 'But it's not my debt!'

I'd have to agree with that one.

and these...

We then got on to discussing all the side issues - corruption, the lack of justice being meted out to the wankers, sorry - bankers who caused all the problems in the first place, the bonuses still being paid by the banking sector 'so that we can continue to attract the right kind of employees'.
Yeah. Right.
That really worked last time.



And the fact that the Irish secretly admire a chancer, someone who flouts the system and gets away with it. Lots of 'chancers' in positions of authority here.
It comes, one person said, from all the years of trying to get one over on the British.
Very true. But as she pointed out, now they are getting one over on themselves.
Not such a result perhaps.

and these soaps...

We discussed the current gloom and doom in the country and the sorry fact that the economy is flatter than last weeks pancakes.

It was what we didn't discuss that I found myself thinking about afterwards.
We didn't discuss standing up and shouting about it.
Or marching, or fighting back.
Or even having a jolly good riot. Riots seem popular in other places.
Riots, it seems to me, come about when people don't think they are being heard.
But you have to say something for there to be any chance of being heard.
Is anyone in Ireland shouting?

For shouting to be effective, it needs to start somewhere and grow.
Maybe the Property Tax would be a good starting point.
Why it needs to be levied in the first place.
We've all given up dreaming that with all the bank debt ladled onto Everyman's shoulders, there would be some kind of moratorium on mortgages, but at the very least everyone who pays the Property Tax ought to get the same amount knocked off their mortgage bill.
That's something else we could shout about.

We refilled our cups and the chat moved on to other things.

not to mention these samosas and goat's cheese tartlets...

And now I am wondering. Is it just my perception, or is that the problem?
In Ireland we love sitting around a table with a cuppa, chewing the fat.
We can do that for an Olympic Gold.
We're not given to shouting enough.
And I can't see a riot taking place.
Shame.

So I guess we're all just going to pay.
And pay.
And pay.

and locally made cards and crafts....  It's a very good Market!

Happy Hallowe'en?

I've been wondering what it is that makes occasions special.
What tingles through the blood like an unbidden electric current?
I'm not quite sure, but I think that for most of us, it's things that hark back to childhood traditions.
Like Hallowe'en.

Yesterday, at the market I belong to, we had a fancy dress parade for the kids.
Well, theoretically it was for the under 12s, but either there are some very tall 12 year olds in Beltra, or else various adults were enjoying a second childhood.
Fantastic
It was great. As you can see for yourself -
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beltra-Country-Market/146394695386284
A really happy occasion.

But this morning I found myself lying in bed pondering.
I loved yesterday, but it's not a big thing for me, Hallowe'en. It doesn't tingle my blood.
Put it like this, if I suddenly moved to some part of the planet where Hallowe'en was unheard of, I'd never think of it again. Even after living in Ireland for nearly 20 years.
And I suppose that's because Hallowe'en's not lodged somewhere deep within the marrow of my bones.
And it's too late to change that now. I guess marrow develops very early on.

I feel as if I'm chancing my arm by making such a confession, living here, as I do.
Perhaps ghosts and ghouls and witches would haunt me on that distant side of the planet - Irish witches.

Irish witches plotting my downfall.  OF COURSE they're out of focus! Duh!

Well, I suppose it would be no more than I deserve.
Many, many years ago I remember listening to an episode of that wonderful BBC Radio 4 programme - Alistair Cooke's Letter From America, a once-a-week aural capsule that slow-released for days afterwards - I'm sure it started Sunday morning for many of you; always interesting, and sometimes an eye-opener, as this specific one was for me. I was decorating the bathroom at the time (weird how things are anchored in the mind) - and it was with amazement that I learned that Hallowe'en - as it is known and loved by millions today - was imported lock, stock and barrel into the USA by the Irish. I really thought it was the other way round, but no - it is an Irish, or perhaps, more accurately, a Celtic phenomenon.

There's a possibility that it dates back to Roman times apparently, but by and large it grew out of the inevitable - perhaps I should rather say the 'arranged' marriage of Samhain (the Celtic festival marking the end of summer) with the Christian festival of All Souls. Or let's be more accurate still - I daresay All Souls gatecrashed the party in order to make Samhain kosher. (Um, that choice of word probably throws an un-necessary spanner into the works!) However, Hallowe'en got its own back by taking over the medieval custom of 'souling' - when the poor went out begging pennies in return for saying prayers for the dead.

Whatever.

Thegargoyle laughing at the Hallowe'en moon

In Ireland Hallowe'en's a really important festival. It lights up autumn like a great beacon. Families get together, everyone dresses up, houses are decorated and kids start trick-or-treating practically as soon as they can walk. It's even a Bank Holiday weekend. My kids loved it, and I sewed Dracula cloaks, cut up old sheets to create teeth-chatteringly scary ghosts and made fangs and face masks with the best of them. I bought all the usual sweets, peanuts-in-their-shells and traditional Barmbrack to keep by the door, awaiting the dread knock, ready to appease the fearsome (if small) creatures looming in the dark We even got pretty slick at carving jack'o'lanterns - my gorgeous son's intricately chased pumpkin creation remains unsurpassed to this day.

But I have to say, it was a learned response.

Hallowe'en just isn't in my soul.

Maybe it wasn't widely celebrated in my family, or in the West Indies where I lived as a child, and I certainly don't remember it being a feature of life when I moved to England in my teens. The 31st October just isn't a red - or orange-letter day in my calendar. I don't think 'Bah, humbug!' - but there is a blank where witchery-pokery should be. It doesn't resonate.


But Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night! That is a different matter altogether.
When I first moved to Ireland from London, people used to ask if I missed the theatres - the galleries - the shops, and when I paused before replying, the first thing that always sprang to mind was the 5th of November. That was what I missed, and still do.
'Remember, remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot, I see no reason why gunpowder and treason, ever should be forgot...'
Well - the gunpowder and treason fell by the wayside long ago. I wouldn't be mad for burning Catholics myself. Or Protestants for that matter.Or anyone.(Although, now I come to think of it, there are bankers out there...)

Glorious Bonfire Night

But like Hallowe'en, the origins have ceased to be material. It's the date that matters, and what you do with it. And the 5th of November still stirs nostalgia within me. The excitement, the anticipation: the shortening afternoon falling rapidly into night, shutting the pets away with their beds and supper, and then out - out into the darkness tingling with expectation, hats and scarves pulled tight against the damp November chill, the massive bonfires starting to crackle in every garden, spitting and licking greedily around crisp autumn leaves. And then, your face smarting with the heat, your back chilly in the darkness, sparklers spelling your name quickly, quickly in white light before they fizzle into burnt, spent sticks between your fingers. And hot sausages and mustard, melting, burning marshmallows and crunchy, tooth-achingly sweet toffee apples that were so impossible to break into. But most of all the fireworks - the fireworks, oh glory be, the fireworks! Explosion after explosion of multi-coloured, glittering fire spilling magic across the sky. You wanted them never to end. And finally, when everything had melted back into darkness, with just the glowing embers telling the night's tale, the smell hanging in the air like a pall. What was it - cordite? Hanging in wreaths so heavy that sometimes it seemed like the first fog of winter.

Now that's what tugs at the marrow of my bones.

Hallowe'en? Bonfire Night? It doesn't really matter what kindles your blood.
As long as something does.

Happy Hallowe'en!