Nollaig na mBan and Other Seasonal Traditions

The Hunt is in the village today.
Sometimes we hear the hollow clopping of hooves on the bridge, or the steady beat of them streaming up the road, excited yelping, the sonorous call of the horn.
They are all very smartly turned out in their dark coats, the odd flash, here and there of a scarlet collar (or should that be pink?), the horses splendid, the hounds seemingly oblivious of anyone but the whipper-in. They certainly pay no attention to me, anyway, calling after them when they occasionally peel off through our gate and check out the orchard or the garden.  I worry for my hens and cats, and always keep the dogs firmly shut in the kitchen. I don't know what might happen if they met and would rather not find out, but there has - mercifully - never been a hound-incident.

The Hunt

I don't know how I feel about the hunt.
I don't condone killing creatures for sport, and by and large consider that everything has as much right to be on this planet as I have.Even when a fox ate all my chickens many years ago, I felt as sorry for the fox as I did for my poor hens. She took them, one by one during daylight hours and there was nothing we could do to protect them, other than keep them locked in all the time, which they hated and didn't understand. She was a mangy creature, and desperately thin, and her need was very great.

Anyway, I'm not really in a position to be judgemental about the hunt, as I have always kept lurchers.
They're not ever used for hunting, my dogs, but lurchers are lurchers, and I wouldn't fancy a hare's chances if SuperModel and the ModelDog caught sight of one whilst walking in the woods. They go like bullets out of guns, an unseen switch triggering my sweet, gentle couch potatoes into deadly predators. They cease to hear anything except the archaic call of the chase and their own blood thrumming in their eardrums.

Couch Potato One, aka Model Dog

Couch Potato Two - Super Model

In fact it was Top Dog and his brother who brought the poor fox to justice. The In-Charge had taken them for a walk in the fields behind the house, they saw the fox on the far side of the field and were gone before he could even summon a whistle to his lips. Less than a minute later the fox was dead, her neck cleanly snapped and not a drop of blood spilled. I have wondered if she even heard them coming.
It's how we know that our hen-thief was a vixen, and eaten by mange, and bone thin, the poor love. In many ways I felt it was a release for her, as mange in the wild is incurable, and passed on to the cubs. A terrible sentence: itchy, sore, debilitating and eventually overwhelming.
The dogs paid a price too for their un-planned kill. Inevitably, they both caught the mange, even though they had no more contact with her - the In-Charge brought them home and then returned to bury her. The cure for mange is a painful injection.

Top Dog and his brother, Under Dog, rolling on the beach in years gone by

Life in the wild is pretty merciless, as we all know from watching nature programmes.
You can't remove an animal's instincts, and although I have taught my dogs that our cats and hens are family, not food, that's about as far as I can hope to go.
Anyway, where is the border-line between killing for sport and killing for food? My dogs' instinct is to try and catch things in the wild, but would they eat them? Probably not, they are well fed at home, but if they weren't, then they would need to catch their dinner, so the line is blurred. And nowhere more blurred than with felines, as anyone whose cat has caught a bird or stalked a shrew knows.

So I make no comment on the hunt, except to say that I always hope they return home tired and muddy but bloodless and empty handed. And with all their hounds. (I long ago asked for a phone number to call if a hound gets separated and left behind, which does happen.)

The end of Christmas is a time for traditions, and some are more universally popular than others.

Epiphany is one. The 6th of January, means different things in different countries. Here in Ireland it is Nollaig na mBan, the Women's Little Christmas. It is the day when, having done everything for everyone else for the whole 12 day festival, women can finally sit down and enjoy their own little celebration. I don't know if they still - as in olden days - go off and leave the men at home doing the chores and looking after the children, but go off they certainly do.

Celebrating Nollaig na mBan

This year I went with them to a great evening at The Model in Sligo.
There was music, some great singing from Mary McPartlan, resonant poetry from Anne Joyce and Mary Looby, readings of letters from Constance Markievicz to WB Yeats, and a fiery and inspirational talk from Tanya Dean on 'Waking the Feminists'. And it all took place to a backdrop of charcoal portraits by the amazingly talented Emma Stroude who spoke movingly of her own journey in creating them. Her pictures, 'Women of the Rising', feature some of the women who played instrumental roles in the Easter Rising of 1916. Many of them became widows, some were arrested, one sentenced to death (a sentence later commuted) and as the centenary year kicks off, it was a fitting focus for the evening.

Much as I enjoyed all the entertainment on offer, one of the best parts of the evening for me was going along with two good friends and seeing - unexpectedly - so many others who I hadn't known would be there; lots of women I have met through so many different aspects of life.
I don't know if the In-Charge was doing any chores at home, I expect he was watching TV or online, but that part of it aside, Nollaig na mBan was a rich and sisterly way to start the year.
Thank you, ladies!

Two of Emma Stroude's portraits: Women of the Rising

Christmas and the Mystery of the Missing Spoons

 
We had some friends over for supper on Boxing Day - or Stephen's Day as I always forget to call it.
It was a lovely, informal evening of food and wine and chat.
#2 Son was home for Christmas, and as he is an excellent cook, I was only too delighted to have him help with all the preparations. He made some lovely baby peppers stuffed with a spicy cous-cous, feta, mushroom and spinach concoction; and butternut squash in a creme fraiche and mustard sauce.
Along with roasted sweet potatoes, Christmas gammon and Jamie Oliver's gorgeous rainbow salad, it all went down a treat.
We probably could have stopped there, but there were several puddings too - two of them based around oranges and bitter marmalade.
Yum.

Why are rooms only ever tidy once a year?

I know that many - quite rightly - lament the fact that Christmas has become a meaningless financial blow-out.
It isn't in our house. I don't mean to sound priggish or virtuous, but for one thing we've never had enough money to do that, whether we wanted to or not.
But we do tend to eat a lot. Not caviar and champagne, but a lot, nonetheless.
So I guess Christmas is perhaps as much of a blow-out, just not in financial terms.
But after the rain and the drear and the sheer, utter greyness of the year's last quarter, there is something totally wonderful about sitting around a house full of fairy lights, firelight and Christmas decorations, whilst eating, drinking and laughing with friends and family.

I bit the bullet big time this year. For ages, while the boys were away, either working or simply being too far away to travel home for the season, we didn't have a tree. There didn't seem to be much point, and oddly, in this part of the country where so many seem to grow, it can be hard to find a nice one.
When I was visiting my parents in Suffolk in early December, the lovely, old-fashioned greengrocer opposite their village house had masses of them, clustered outside his shop on little wooden stands. Each one was as gorgeous as the last, and I'd quite happily have brought any of them back with me, except it would have caused a bit of a problem at the airport.
Then, when I got home, I decided we'd just not bother, but after a bit of thought, I realised that actually, despite my years of abstinence, the tree is an integral part of what Christmas is. So I bought an artificial one.
I'm slightly wincing, just confessing to that, but you know what? I think it was a good decision. OK, it took ages to put up (but only because I'd never done it before. And there were no instructions), but it looks good, it gave me a reason to unearth all my favourite decorations, and there's something about a tree glowing in the corner of the room that takes me back to all the Christmases that ever were, and kindles warm memories that I can't even place or name.

The friends who came to visit said they liked it too, and it's still there, reminding me that there are a few days of the season still to go.
A tree isn't our only traditional 'event' - there's the Christmas Jigsaw. The In-Charge rather turned his nose up at my choice of puzzle for this year's festivities. I wasn't really surprised - I chose it because I liked it, not with him in mind this time round. It's a sort of collage of Victorian Christmas designs in cigarette card format.
Lovely.
So after our Boxing Day glut was over, #2 Son and I moved on to conquering the puzzle.We transferred it onto the kitchen table (on it's handy pin-board) and spent a couple of evenings and a rainy day putting it together.
It was a tricky one,as they seem to have introduced some very weird shapes that are, quite frankly, not only meaningless,but which don't actually hold the thing together. What is that about?
Anyway, it looks great, and I'm now postponing the day when it has to be broken up and go back in the box.

My lovely Victorian inspired jigsaw

We went for a walk on our favourite beach as well. The ModelDogs raced and chased and sank into deep pools left by the tide, and were generally thrilled with life. They looked splendid in their special Christmas collars.

SuperModel is still afraid of accidentally dissolving

And we started Christmas, as always, with the service of 9 Lessons and Carols from Kings College, Cambridge. It was rather a bitty affair this year, and not the satisfying fix it usually is for me, as our broadband is so appalling these days that it came and went, went being the more operative of the two.
Fortunately I have a CD of another service, from long ago, so after the official one had fizzled away in a haze of buffering silence, I put that on instead, before we set off for a jolly dinner at a friend's house to welcome Christmas in. During the evening the rain even stopped, the clouds parted, and I went outside and stared at the full moon. I didn't catch a glimpse of Father Christmas speeding through the sky, but it was magical all the same.

Model Dog likes to open her own present all by herself

So it was a very good Christmas, despite missing #1 Son like toothache.
But there still remains a mystery, that several days into the New Year remains unsolved.
All the silver spoons that were used at our Boxing Day party have disappeared without trace.
The In-Charge - apparently - washed them up, dried them and put them on the table in the late hours after our guests had departed.
(So I can't even ponder whether they each left with a spoon in their top pocket or reticule.)
It is a puzzle even more brain-defying than the Victorian cigarette cards, and one that my repeated searches of drawers, dressers, rubbish bags, hidden corners and laundry baskets has failed to solve.
My sister, who also lives in a very old house - as does my mother - swears it is the pixies.
Well, I hope when they've finished staring at their reflections, the pixies will feel moved to return them.
To the right house.

 

The birds had a Christmas present too - a wreath full of goodies

Merry Christmas, Belfast!

A window in City Hall

I've been dodging the rain recently - if at all possible.
I was back in Suffolk, visiting my folks, where it is notoriously dry compared with the rest of the British Isles. While I was there, the In-Charge was nearly washed - and blown - away here on the west coast. I ended up staying on in the UK for an extra few days, not as a deluge-avoidance tactic, but because my Dad wasn't in great form, but it was a sensible decision all round, as it seems doubtful that my plane would have landed - mid Desmond - at our exposed local airport, had I returned on time.
When I did get back, I just about had time to swap the contents of my suitcase over before we headed off to Belfast for a long-booked, three-day break - a wonderful present from a friend.
Gorgeous #2 Son came home to mind the shop, as it were, in our absence, bless him.

City Hall, with the Christmas Market clustered around its walls

Bliss.
I would quite happily live in a hotel, if the Model Dogs could come too.
What, as they say, is not to love? Especially at this time of year.
The Christmas trees were up, the bed was gloriously comfortable, hot water power-hosed out of the taps whenever I wanted a bath, the room was cleaned and the bed made while I was out doing happier things, and we had only to lift a telephone to receive sustenance, night or day. There was also a fridge to chill my prosecco, and breakfast, each morning, catered for every whim I might have had, the restaurant offered dinner if you couldn't be bothered going out, the bar drinks.

We were both tired, and decided to just have a relaxing couple of days pottering around.
At least, that was the plan. But no sooner had we dumped our stuff in the hotel, than out we went for a scrummy - but restrained - lunch at a delectable city cafe up the road, immediately blew that by having large helpings of pudding; staggered off to see The Lady in the Van (wonderful); got caught in the rain, missed the bus (my fault), hailed a cab; steamed in the bath to ward off rain-induced chills; and then settled down to a long, lazy dinner over a bottle of nice red in the hotel restaurant.
(If the Models had been under the table to discretely receive the bits I couldn't manage, all would have been perfect.)

One of the tables in Harlem Cafe - a glass-topped box of shells. Beautiful.

The lovely interior of City Hall

Over breakfast the next morning, which neither of us did justice to (too much dinner), we planned our day. It was miraculously dry, but breezy and cold outside.
At home we'd have been eating porridge, but as we'd both peered separately into the steaming silver vat on the buffet table and decided that we only fancied porridge if we'd cooked it ourselves, we opted for other fare. Porridge, let's face it, is not felicitous to behold.


The In-Charge then went off to catch up with his mate Colin, and see his studio. I went - surprise, surprise - to the Christmas Market clustered around the City Hall, five minutes walk from the hotel.

By the end of our three days, we'd done at least a week's worth of walking, visited most of the shopping  areas in the city centre, wandered around St George's Market, seen the Christmas Market at night, bedecked with fairy lights, eaten and drunk our fill several times over, been to IKEA and an English supermarket, shoved all our festive UK-bound mail into a British post box and seen three movies. We'd also popped in to St Malachy's, the lovely old church the In-Charge helped our friend DodoWoman to restore a few years ago, and visited Colin Davidson's amazing 'Silent Testimony' at the Ulster Museum. It is a superb exhibition - portraits of people bereaved or injured during the Troubles.

St Malachy's Church in Alfred Street, Belfast.

The In-Charge helped our friend DodoWoman repaint the specialist artwork of the interior a few years ago.

St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church, whose foundation stone was laid in 1841. The church is an unusual shape - wide but not deep, as apparently it was decided not to build the nave, but instead to give the money this would have cost to poor relief. The 1840s were the period of the Great Famine in Ireland, in which over a million people died of hunger or related diseases. A further million emigrated, with many more following in later years.

 

Colin Davidson's portrait of Jeff Smith who was paralysed by a bomb in Fermanagh

Colin Davidson's portrait of Mo Norton, whose brother was killed by an IRA bomb

The In-Charge went for a drink with Colin in his local. It had one of my favourite WB Yeats poems on the wall, put together out of old printer's blocks. He took a photo of it for me. I think it's rather wonderful, but I wonder how quickly, after it was made and polished and put up on the wall, its creator spotted the spelling error?

It was a lovely few days in a beautiful city.
We were almost too tired to drive home, but fortunately the In-Charge is deeply reliable at times like that.
I just about caught a snap of 'Rise', the vast football-shaped sculpture on the way out of town, before I fell asleep and left him to get us home.

Thank you, Clare.

Belfast's sculpture 'Rise' - it looks like a vast football within a football. Perhaps that's the idea!

The Ghost of Christmas Present

We're Country Hicks these days, the In-Charge and I.
It wasn't always thus - back in the day, we were happy-go-lucky Londoners, but these years there's a good bit of straw in the auld hair and heaven knows what on the boots.
But recently we threw some vaguely respectable duds in the back of the car and headed to Dublin for a couple of days.

Listening to some radio show en route, I instantly resolved to see Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty at the Bord Gais Theatre. I feel very deprived with regard to Matthew Bourne, as I never did see his Swan Lake. It was, the radio said, the last few performances of the ballet, and - knowing the In-Charge would rather watch paint dry, I planned to sneak in a matinee while he visited a friend's studio.
We had several lengthy appointments to work around, but still...

A meeting on the way took a bit longer than anticipated, so we got to Dublin later than planned, too late for that day's ballet matinee, anyway.
After checking in to the hotel, we headed round the corner to Oliver Sears - an obligatory pit-stop every visit. The In-Charge knew that the gallery was showing a Donald Teskey exhibition, so definitely not to be missed. It was fabulous, and if it's still on, go and see it for yourselves.

We play a game in galleries - daft but inevitable.
We separately decide which painting we can't possibly leave without.
Teskey's prices being what they are, it was going to be a picture imprinted on the brain or the phone, but better than nothing.
It took me ages to choose.

One of Donald Teskey's paintings at Oliver Sears

And even so, I'm still not certain.
I loved the Carrowkeel series too, and would have been happy to have left with those under the other arm.
Teskey spent a period of the summer up in Sligo, so the paintings particularly resonated.

One of the Carrowkeel series, Donald Teskey at Oliver Sears

After that, there was nothing for it but to nip into the National Gallery for another fix.
They had a new exhibition of portraits by John Butler Yeats, father of the more famous William.
The In-Charge liked his self-portrait. It makes him look a jovial sort of chap, but I'm not sure that he was.

JB Yeats - self portrait

I preferred the portrait of his daughter Lily (Susan) but on balance I'd probably have chosen a Sargent or an Orpen.
Or a Lavery. I've always wanted Lavery's portrait of Hazel and Alice and Rodney Stone.

Lavery's portrait of his wife

Maybe it's really Rodney Stone I want. He's just so beautiful.

Rodney Stone

After that, of course, we had to go into the National Gallery shop where we fell in love with more dogs.
This time Charles Wellington Furze beguiled us with his fanciful Diana, but there were lots of others too.

Diana and her hounds

We bought a book for a friend and moved out into the streets, slightly punch drunk. Looking at wonderful paintings seems to do that.
But being in Dublin's streets had another effect on us - they time-warped us forward. Although it was only mid November at the time, everything was wall-to-wall Christmas. I suppose that's normal, but not in our sleepy back-water and, to us at least, the 'Festive Season' still seemed a long way off.
The shop windows were spectacular, the pubs and restaurants were decorated to within an inch of their lives, and pre-Christmas sales were in full swing.

A Dublin pub in full Christmas regalia

 

 

 

 

A cross between Twenties glamour and Narnia's snow queen

Windows on Grafton Street.

I didn't make it to the ballet. Sadly, our appointments on both days overshot the matinee performance.
We didn't even make it to Suffragette, a movie I'd really wanted to see, as we'd missed it at home. On arriving at the cinema which still advertised the film on its programme, the box office said: 'Not Tonight, Josephine', or words to that effect. It was late by then, so we gave up and went to James Bond.
A bit of a damp squib, but there you go.

Before we knew it, we were heading back to the sticks, and now, several weeks on, our brief Dublin trip is receding into a ghostly reminiscence, but we both feel we've done Christmas.Somewhere along the line, there was even a turkey, ham and cranberry sandwich.

Now I am in the UK, where, amidst the floods and winds, there are Christmas trees and sparkly lights.
It feels rather odd, somehow, because surely by now we ought to be launching into New Year?

You Have Been Loved

She came to us back in the summer of 2000.
I think I remember the date so easily because, not only was it Millennium Year, but also, most of my family were visiting from the UK to celebrate my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary.
The circumstances of how she came were unusual enough to need no aide-memoire.
Three little boys, classmates of my sons, rang the front door bell.
'Is this your kitten?' they asked guilelessly. 'We found it on the bridge.'

So lovable

I didn't think for a moment that they had found her on the bridge, I assumed she was from an unwanted litter, but the bridge is narrow and sees a constant flow of traffic, and would be a very dangerous place for a tiny kitten, so it made a perfect opening gambit.
We had quite a few cats at the time, most of which had been dumped on us, literally dumped. - just left in sacks or boxes somewhere on our property. Everyone knew we were animal-lovers, and back then neutering just didn't happen by and large - especially for cats.
'Have you tried Denise?' I asked hopefully, although I wasn't counting on anything. Denise, who lived at the other end of the bridge, was another cat-lover.
'Yes,' they replied promptly.

I looked at the kitten and knew that the patience of three small boys wouldn't stretch very far. I guess her future hadn't really been in doubt from the moment I opened the door.

My boys fell in love with her straight away

My own two small boys were thrilled to bits, the In-Charge less so, but he's good at bowing to the inevitable.
Dottie was over the moon, but then Dottie loved nothing so much as someone who needed a bit of mothering, and the kitten was only too happy to be mothered.
We named her Pushkin, but mostly she was called Pushy

Beautiful Dottie was a born mother

Even the puppies loved her.
But then, she was a very lovable cat.

She got on with everybody

She rapidly became #1 Son's cat, and - unbeknownst to me - slept in his bed every night.
When I say in his bed, I mean in his bed. Apparently, she wasn't content with curling up in the crook of his knees or anything external, she would crawl under the duvet and lie against him, playing the piano with her little claws against his tummy.
She was quite happy being smothered under the bedclothes, and he adored her.
She disappeared once - while I was out shopping - and we turned the place upside-down, frantically searching for her. Eventually we found her in the bottom of the sleeping bag stuffed underneath his bed, warm and boneless and fast asleep.

SurferSon adored her too

She was quite a small cat. What the In-Charge calls 'a short wheel-base', but she was a demon-hunter nonetheless, and when she'd caught something she'd come to the back door, yowling like a soul in pain until I went out to be presented with her trophy.
I remember one evening, she was curled up on my lap in the Library, when some movement caught my eye. To my horror, a mouse was scurrying along the bottom edge of the bookcase. I don't mind how many mice live in my sheds, but I do not like sharing my living space with them, I'm afraid. As a sort of reflex action, I threw Pushy off my lap. From fast asleep, to - literally - the mouse firmly locked in her jaws was instantaneous. In cars it would be 1-60 in two seconds.
I picked her up gingerly and put her outside the front door and, politely, neither of us mentioned the incident again.

One of her favourite perches - an old ladder propping up the Solanum crispum

The potager was her private garden

She loved the garden. On sunny days she'd always be out in the potager, sleeping on the bench, or stretched out on the warm gravel - highly camouflaged. In really hot weather, I'd find her curled under a shrub.

I nearly trod on her often, lying right beside me, she just disappeared into the gravel

If I was working outside, she'd always come and roll in the flower bed beside me, and many a time she'd take me on a tour of the whole garden if I'd been away for a few days, as if to tell me that she'd looked after everything in my absence.

Rhubarb from her very own potager

In the house, she was the only cat allowed beyond the kitchen door, because she was the only one who could be trusted never to pee in some corner if she got shut in for too long.
These last few years she's had her own little routine. #1 Son has worked abroad for years now, but if SurferSon was home, she'd usually go to bed with him. If not, she'd go outside for the night, spurning the cat beds I have thoughtfully placed in the turf shed in favour of doing who-knows-what, although in the mornings she would generally appear from the direction of the garden.

Breakfast was always on the kitchen window sill, where she could enjoy the sunshine, if there was any, and, from the comfort of her warm seat, watch the birds on the bird-table outside the window, no doubt catching at least a dozen in between mouthfuls of food. The window-sill was her domain, where she could take as long as she liked to eat, as none of the other cats were allowed up there to muscle in on her. Afterwards, she would wait patiently by the door until I let her into the house where she'd spend the entire day either following the sun, or just sleeping on our bed until supper time.
If we were at home, she'd then spend as much of the evening as possible on my lap.

She helped me knit the pole warmer for Beltra Market

She'd not been in great form, the last little while, and I knew she was slipping, but she was still eating well, and sitting in my lap every evening. But finally I took her to the vet to see if there was anything we could do to make her more comfortable.
So soon after losing my little Pixie, I was desperately hoping she'd be all right for a few more months.
It was such a relief to bring her home with antibiotics and a glimmer of hope that I felt a bit light-headed, but by the next morning we knew she wasn't happy, and that is the only signal I ever need.
We took her in together, the In-Charge and I, and held her, and told her how much she'd been loved.


It is the end of an era, to lose someone who has been a part of the family for so long.
Such a quiet, untroublesome little member of the family, too.
It was only when I drove her to the vet's that first day, I realized that I couldn't even remember when she had last left the property. She has never been sick. And she was as good as gold in the car, not making a sound, just staring at me with saucer-wide eyes while I tried to stroke her through the bars of the cat basket.

Even SuperModel loved her, against all her lurcher principles

It is a couple of weeks ago now, that we lost her, but I haven't felt able to put it down in black and white.  It was so hard, after losing my little Pixie just a few weeks ago.
The house seems empty.
My lap is cold and empty night after night.
I miss her. I see her every day in so many places. I go into our room for something and - before I catch myself - I find I am wondering why she's not lying on my bed in the sun. Her blanket is still on the sofa in the drawing room - I've shied away from moving it.

SurferSon came home for her funeral, and wept with us, but #1 Son was far away, doing exams that day, so we didn't tell him until afterwards. Everyone else came too. They usually do, though it's up to them.
Model Dog sat shaking, pressed against me, and then lay down and put her head into the grave. SuperModel danced around the edges and wouldn't come very close, her eyes big and anxious. In the kitchen, when I had left her in her bed for them all to say goodbye, Model Dog had licked her face and SuperModel had nudged her, and nudged her again, as if to try and make her get up.
Hobbes and Henri, who had circled her and sniffed, and stared, sat near us in the orchard and watched, wide-eyed and sombre.
And Hobbes has been restless and upset since she went, walking round the kitchen crying.
He misses her too.
She was only a little cat, and very quiet.
But she's left a huge gap that none of us quite knows how to fill.
 

She didn't take up much space, but she's left a massive gap