Mountains and Stairs

There are two main differences between the house we now live in Ireland's North West, and any Australian house I've lived in.  

1.  I haven't ever had a mountain in my backyard before, and
2. I've never lived in a two story house, with a flight of stairs.

Both of these things have taken more getting used to than you would imagine.

The first adjustment was a very pleasant one. That's only when I remembered I had a mountain in the backyard, and the weather was kind enough to allow me to see it.

During the recent winter months, I would leave work when it was dark and return home again in the darkness.  I was conscious of an imposing large object looming over us, but without seeing it, there was just a strange sense of calm and some slight shelter from the strong winds that battered the coast a short distance away before they hit dry land.

Yesterday was the Equinox, and boy, am I pleased to see some serious daylight.  There is something special about the light in this part of the world.  I am not sure if it is because I have hung out all winter to see the sun, or whether being this far North provides for a particularly luminous horizon.  Either way, my backyard fully lit brings me much joy; I understand why so many great photographers come here to capture the landscape.


I don't profess to be anywhere near as good as any of the professionals. All my photos are taken using my camera phone and I am very lazy....I take a lot of photos from my back step.  The photo above was taken five minutes ago.  The one on the right was taken when a low lying cloud meandered in from the sea, and then just as quietly, meandered away again. The photo below is the only one slightly altered, to bring out the rainbow.  And the last is the rear view as you leave our place.


I love listening to the sheep bleating in the mornings as they cling on with their sheepy toenails to the side of the mountain.  Watching sheep dogs-; flecks of black among the white-, round the sheep up and bring them safely down the mountain has helped me truly appreciate the scale of this place, as well as the challenges of farming the land. Paragliders have floated into line of sight from the comfort of our kitchen table, and then drifted away to the right, following the wind currents as far as they will take them, and away from our own peace of paradise.

I can't wax as lyrical about the stairs in the house- they are a pain in the arse.  While the second storey helps me see the mountain from a different perspective, I still haven't learnt to take everything with me when I need it. I am sure that I am not the only resident of a two storey house to consider buying two of everything, just to avoid that extra journey up the stairs.

My main grievance at the moment is hairbands.  I am sure I have accumulated hundreds of them over the years.  But for some reason, I can never find one on the bottom floor when I am heading out the door. I'm pretty sure this is the absolute definition of a First World Problem, equivalent to finding that two loops of the said headband is too loose for your hair, while three loops is too tight.

On that profound note, I will sign off to go and enjoy more of the one view I hope I never tire of seeing.  

The fine art of speaking like a local

In his excellent book, 'Death Sentence,' Australian speech writer Don Watson mourns the death of the English language in Australia, killed off by bureaucrats and advertising executives alike.  He writes:

'Ireland remains a place where there is pleasure in hearing public language spoken.  It is a pocket of resistance in the empire of the English language.  On the upholstery of Aer Lingus planes, slices of Ulysses and poems have been embroidered.  William Butler Yeats's 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree' spills over the back of the seat in front of you - truly a beautiful arrangement of words. With the plane going down, what would you like to enter your head in the moment before you realise death is coming at a thousand miles an hour, Hugh Grant, or:

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the heart's deep core.

On the planes and in Irish airports, announcements are made in full, flowing sentences with living words; passengers may close their eyes and think they are arriving in a hay-wain.  The words draw you in, at least partly because the speaker appears to take pleasure in speaking them.'

Watson's words were written in 2003 and they struck a chord with me then.  By that time, I had already visited Ireland several times, and had always felt at home, with the country, its people, and their love of the spoken word. In 2015, I sit in my new living room, within a stone's throw of W.B Yeat's final resting place, and in the 150th year since his birth. And I sincerely hope that the least relevant part of the passage above is the reference to Hugh Grant.

I am sure that Ireland has not been immune in recent years, and that bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo has slowly infiltrated the Irish use of English. (Of course, this can in no way be compared with the displacement of the beautiful Irish language by the English language itself, a point that is not covered by Watson, and one which I am also not qualified to discuss). That point aside, from an outsider's perspective, there is still poetry everywhere, including in common words and phrases spoken daily. Here are just a few of my favourites, with no surprise that the weather features prominently in some of them:

'I have a strong weakness for chocolate/coffee' (substitute vice of choice)

'I'm just after doing it/telling you'  (I've just finished doing it/telling you)

'Gone Doolally'  (Gone mad, as in 'Those young wans have gone Doolally for Ed Sheeran)

'Wee dote' (good child, of kind disposition)

'It's a nice soft morning' (Translation: 'It's been raining since 2 am with no sign of letting up any time soon)

'There's a nice long stretch in the evenings'  (Translation:  It is no longer dark at 3.30 pm and before you know it, it'll be summer, when it won't be dark until midnight)

'Sure if it isn't'...(to begin a sentence)....and...

'.....so it is'  (to end a sentence).   Contrary to the popular view of many Australians, the Irish do not go around saying 'To be Sure, To be Sure'  (or 'Potatoes!!') after every sentence.  I have only ever heard 'To be Sure To be Sure' said once and it was completely in context- the woman in the print shop was going to print something twice for me, to be sure (and sure again).  There is, however, still room to begin and end a sentence with superfluous words that somehow add rather than detract from any conversation.

'Ah, would you stop'  (I have struggled a bit with this one, but in context it seems to mean 'you must be kidding/well aren't you the one for stating the bleeding obvious?'  For example,  Question: 'Have you any sweets left over since Christmas'  Answer 'Ah, would you stop'.  It usually has the desired effect, as you do stop, and move onto some other, less controversial conversation, usually about the weather).

And, my personal favourite:

'he could hear a fly fart on Knocknarea'  (Translation- he had excellent hearing...you can probably guess that it's very windy at the top of that mountain).

So, there you have it, a good turn of phrase is still alive and well in the North West of Ireland.  I am sure there are a lot more fantastic phrases out there that I am yet to pick up.  And when I do, I am sure they will be grand, so they will.