SiliconBog.com

Year: 2020

Back to the bog

After the total non-event of Saint Patrick’s Day, we head up to the house on the bog to see how things are going. It turns out that things are going pretty well, apart from the weather which is bleak.

The daffodils are starting to flower (well, technically one daffodil has showed up, but better than nothing).

First daffodil of the year

In other news, the gates have been mostly installed now: one near the top of the drive (the main entrance), and one across the entry into the first field (over which there is no right of way).

First field gate

The main entrance gate hasn’t been fitted properly yet, as the distance between the gate posts was wider than they’d anticipated (due to tree roots / dodgy ground, either of which is actually believable). He’s going to have to come back again with different gate hinges once they’ve been made. Picture shows the not-very-confidence-inspiring temporary measure of a wooden block to keep the bolt in:

A visionary fusion of galvanised metal and wood unites the past and the future in a hopefully-temporary hack…

The gorse is flowering beautifully and it feels like Spring is beginning to take its job more seriously than it has up until now.

Gorse

We spent a bit of the afternoon walking on the beach and up on the cliffs in Ballybunion, which blew the cobwebs away nicely.

March 18, 2020
The empty streets of Cork

We wandered around Cork today, a surreal experience with so few people on the streets. Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day, which will have no pubs open and all the parades cancelled.

People are being optimistic, hoping that the impact won’t be too great, but taking it very seriously nonetheless. The theatre sign shows they’ll be closed until March 29th at least:

Cork theatre closed until after March 29

Shop signs up give warnings about keeping your distance from others, and pharmacies have taken to printing notices telling potential customers what they do/don’t have (and sometimes appearing to be cashing-in on things a little):

Pharmacy offering 2 masks, 10 gloves and 50ml antibac for €9.95

The roads are a lot less busy, and street signs show advice to wash hands regularly. The below photo also shows a hint of normality still (someone parking on double yellows in the bus lane).

Wash hands regularly road sign.

March 16, 2020
[Not] raining in Baltimore

As our enforced staycation continues (due to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis), we headed to West Cork for the day, taking in a few towns on the way to our final stop in Bantry.

There seemed to be a marked difference in the level of health measures taken in different towns as the pressure to close things stepped up.

The first ‘big’ place we passed through was Bandon, ancestral home of Graham Norton and formerly a bit exclusionary towards Catholics – a sign at the walls from the 18th century apparently read:

Entrance to Jew, Turk or Atheist; any man except a Papist

We went on from there along quite narrow country roads, stopping next at a small pub we came upon at a crossroads (the Beehive at Dungannon).

Beehive bar in Dungannon

After a quick non-alcoholic pint and general discussion of the evil virus taking hold, we headed on.

Baltimore was a nice place to stop and have lunch. We ate a fantastic meal of hake, chips and salad while looking out to sea.

Hake and chips from La Jolie Brise, Baltimore

Baltimore has a decent enough seafront and harbour, with regular boat trips out to Sherkin Island, Cape Clear and Fastnet Rock.

View out to sea from Baltimore

March 15, 2020
Staycation day 1 – heading east to Midleton and Youghal

The COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent risk of humanity’s weakening and ultimate destruction by gangs of emancipated horses has meant that we are unable to fly off somewhere sunny for a well-earned break… so we’re going to be exploring county Cork for a few days.

First stop was Midleton, which has a food market on Saturday, amongst other attractions including distilleries of whiskey, gin, vodka and er… oil. Cork is known as the foodie capital of Ireland, and the market had a quite a few stalls selling expensive but nice home-made things like wild garlic pesto (from the Ballymaloe stand). I didn’t ask if they had any other under-the-counter remedies, as it seemed like it might cause offence.

There’s actually a lot to Midleton, and it feels like a very solid town with an excellent high street. They also have some sculptures worth a look, including the “Kindred Spirits” feathers, which commemorates the selflessness of the Choctaw Native American people in sending money to the famine-stricken Irish back in 1847, and the significantly less tear-jerking “Flock of Geese And Boy” one near the market:

Flock of Geese and Boy sculpture

March 14, 2020
Apocalypse when?

Obviously horsemen (or women) of any kind are not to be welcomed, but it seems like some of the classic ones are very busy visiting people right now.

Rainbow

We’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of named storms, the most recent of which is being enjoyed in Ireland because it gives people the opportunity to mispronounce ‘Jorge’ in revenge for the mangling of ‘Ciara’ earlier in the month.

There’s been snow, hail, sunshine and horizontal rain at unpredictable times, so we’ve had to make the best of any outdoor time available.

Sunny view

Sunset

February 29, 2020
Missed the badger by a gnat’s nadger

As soon as we went, and of course after I’d relocated badgercam elsewhere, the badger returned.

And they wonder why people gas them.

Blurry badger from pylon-cam

End of.

February 25, 2020
This aug[e|u]rs well
They said it couldn’t be done, but they were wrong. The drilling device / soothsaying blog post title was just waiting to be published, albeit messily.

We’d bought a load of daffodil bulbs a few months ago and still had some hanging around in their net bags, silently judging us for not planting them.

I got to wondering if there was something I could attach to an electric drill to make the holes in the ground without the hassle of using a spade.

I found quite a lot of things on Amazon that looked like they’d do the job, and bought the one that looked the most solid:

Auger

I’ve cunningly taken the photo hand-held from close-up, with the door quite far in the distance. This makes the auger look massive, but it’s actually not too hefty – it drills holes 8cm in diameter, and 30cm deep.

From extensive use this afternoon, I came to the following conclusions:
- Drills are fun, but dangerous
- The outdoors is a messy place
- There are a surprising number of rocks and stones in the soil
- Worms encountering it end up like spaghetti wrapped around a fork
- When you get a clear run down, it’s like using a food processor on the earth – it goes all broken-up and light
Here are some of the holes produced. It should be noted that there aren’t any moles in Ireland (probably despite the efforts of UK mole-catchers attempting to create a gap in the market). It absolutely wouldn’t be quite good fun to make some of these at a golf course. No, it wouldn’t. No.

I like the concept of making little molehills out of a mountain, anyway.

Fake molehills
February 23, 2020
Everything But The Badger
Not, disappointingly, a band specialising in covers of songs by the Hull-based sophisti-pop duo fronted by Tracey Thorn, performed by someone looking like the frizzy-haired brock-loving guitarist from Queen, but an update on the wildlife captured from the device formerly known as badgercam.

badgercam in situ

So far, it has been visited by:
- A magpie. I can sort-of see the point of this – an easy mistake for the bird to make. I could try to make the camera look more like a large mammal, I suppose, but don’t have the raw materials to hand.
- A blackbird. Hmm. Not impressed.
- An aggressively-inquisitive robin. Actually, the robins here all seem to be like that. It’s impossible to do anything outside without it being watched-over by one.
So, not a resounding success (except that the robin didn’t manage to destroy it, despite its best efforts):

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I suspect that the badger was just passing through looking for somewhere with food and shelter… maybe it has given up now and is standing in the middle of the road, waiting for the eternal release of a speeding Ford Mondeo.

Ceci n’est pas un blaireau
February 23, 2020
The festival formerly known as the “Kate O’Brien weekend”

We dipped into a couple of events in Limerick for the now-branded “Limerick Literary Festival in honour of Kate O’Brien“. Presumably KOBstock was ruled out early in the marketing meetings. Everything’s a festival now, so can’t complain too much I suppose.

Anyway, Limerick’s always good for a visit, so we did.

The first talk we went to was non-Kate O’Brien-related:

Christine Dwyer Hickey, Edward Hopper: Turning an icon into a novel. Christine will discuss the writing of her latest novel, The Narrow Land. Set in Cape Cod in the summer of 1950, it tells the story of two young boys who befriend a couple living nearby in an isolated house overlooking the sea – the artists Edward and Jo Hopper.
http://limerickliteraryfestival.com/Programme/

This was excellent – the author was a brilliant presenter and really brought her adventure writing the book to life.

Stage for Edward Hopper book talk in Dance Limerick Space (organiser Vivien at lectern)

The following day, we attended one of the hardcore Kate O’Brien talks.

Disclaimer: I’ve never read anything by Kate O’Brien. I feel that if I’d devoured every book she ever wrote, I still wouldn’t have had the level of interest that many of the audience clearly exhibited – they were geeks of the highest order, and why not?

The dreaded part of the Q&A session when someone (normally a man, often English) starts with “this is more an observation than a question, but…” and proceeds to ramble on about something for 10 minutes happened, but wasn’t too painful.

Stage at the Bell Table, Limerick

After the debut novel award presentation that followed (congrats to Nicole Slattery, who was well-feted at last year’s Festival of Writing and Ideas, so not a great shock to me), we went for a roast beef lunch at the Alex Findlater nearby, which more than made up for the dryness of the preceding hour for me.

February 22, 2020
Badger watch

Last night a badger was caught on one of the security cameras bustling off into the undergrowth down the side of the driveway/track/ditch.

The weather has been brutal here for a number of weeks, punishing us with the full range of named storms. This has led to some of the wildlife being a bit more visible than normal – the other week I had to slow down while driving along as a couple of rabbits chose a really daft time to try to cross the road.

I’m hoping that the badger has taken up residence here, as at least it shows that we’re not the only things daft enough to spend a lot of time in this wilderness.

Anyway, last night’s footage was from a camera mounted on the electricity pylon (tall wooden pole with bits taken out of it by careless turf-cutters and their tractors), reasonably high up. The camera’s wireless, just to be clear – I’m not running a cable up the side of the thing of course.

The angle of view wasn’t great, but you can make out enough to know it’s a badger at least.

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I decided to try to go one better today, so added another camera at ground level. To make the badger feel more comfortable with its extra surveillance, I designed a stunningly realistic badger-cam so it would blend in.

After careful consideration of the impact on the badger of any uncanny valley-based reaction, with heavy heart I had to tone down the realism just a notch to this:

I’m still not convinced it will be enough to prevent the badger running off into the sunset with the device, but I’m hoping for the best.

To sweeten the already massively alluring deal, I fecked a lot of vegetable peelings into the hedge around the area of last sighting. So with a bit of luck tomorrow will bring some better wildlife videos…

Update: day 2 of badgerwatch has resulted in absolutely nothing. The barcode-furred monster hasn’t made its way past the new camera at all, despite being showered with gifts (well, potato scraps)

February 21, 2020