Author: silicon

My last confession was 11 days ago and these are my sins:

Looks like the mad big house rental thing is a goer, and we’ll hopefully pick up the keys on Monday.

We’re now on a ferry back to Ireland with V’s car packed full of all the stuff we didn’t take the first time.  It was quite nice being back in Harrogate for a week as a kind of tourist – probably the best way of experiencing it, although we couldn’t be arsed to queue to get into Bettys.

Harlow Carr was as great as ever, and it was pleasing to see that they hadn’t built any more structures in the few weeks since our last visit – maybe they’ve got rid of all the trees they didn’t like now.

We got a quote back from the builder to renovate the property in Ireland.  It’s about what we expected, which is to say “a lot”.  Needs a bit of thought before we proceed, but it would be nice to get the roof watertight at least.

… try to rent a large 19th century townhouse with castle views.  Let’s see how this one goes… surely if we attempt enough random manoeuvres one of them will pay off?

Great day at the beach.  Journey home was less good however, as I got a call and it turns out that the cottage we were planning on renting for 6 months has fallen through.  Plan B is now in effect, which is to wonder why we didn’t have a contingency plan before.

Afternoon on the beach at Ballybunion in blazing sunshine. We had a swim then went back to where we’d parked the Bongo to brew up. A local lady came up and asked if we were going to be here long – oh dear… trouble! Then she said “if you want any water or a shower or anything my house is just over there”. How nice (assuming she’s not a serial killer).

So we can’t move into the house on the bog yet, and it’s not clear how much it’ll cost to fully sort it out.  If the bare minimum got done before the end of September, we’d have a sound roof, new electrical wiring and new plumbing.  Not knowing how much this would cost yet, we’ve decided to put things on hold while we work out exactly how we want it, rather than having a rush job that might entail paying for stuff we want/need to change later.  We’ve found somewhere we’d like to rent for 6 months that offers similarly desolate tranquil surroundings, but with no damp, working central heating and all that sort of thing.  It even has running water.

I realised I’d missed out quite a few days of what we’d been up to.  That’s because we’d “joined holiday” with some of V’s family who’d rented a house in Killarney and kindly invited us to go along.  Killarney is justifiably one of the must-visit places in Ireland, and we had a great time with everyone.

Excursion highlights were walking around the outside of Muckross House in the sun (!), and going a bit further afield to Inch beach, which you can drive onto.  It was a very blustery day, but we’d brought along a couple of windbreaks and with careful positioning alongside the Bongo, we managed to create a reasonably comfortable beach picnic zone.  Some of us (including me) made it into the Atlantic Ocean, which was a bit nippy and full of seaweed, as you’d expect.

Non-excursion highlight for me was playing roulette using V’s old Fabulous Fred computer using sweets as gambling chips at the insistence of niece and nephew.  V’s mum won more Rolos than she knew what to do with, but we graciously helped her out.  Hopefully this will not set the little ones on the path of ruin that betting can lead to – we did try to explain that 7/1 odds were ridiculously generous for a straight bet on a number with a 1 in 9 chance of coming up.  And that casinos tended not to operate using Smarties, and frowned on snaffling from the dealer.

We happened to notice while wandering around Glin on Saturday waiting for the cafe to open for breakfast (10am!) that Glin castle had an open day on Sunday.  We went along, and found it very interesting.  The castle is really a large house, that until recently was home to the last Knight of Glin, who died a few years ago.

The Glin Development Association guides were really entertaining and informative, and we got a good sense of the history of the house and gardens.  It sounds like there were some real characters in the house’s past, especially Margaret Blennerhasset who was the only female member of the Limerick Hellfire Club.  You can read more about the castle here, as otherwise I’d just be badly re-hashing what we’d been told.

Anyway, it’s up for sale if you’ve got a spare €6.5m.  The walled garden is really decent, but I think you’d be able to haggle them down to €6m if you pushed it.

We survived the night camping in the Bongo.  I didn’t sleep brilliantly due to listening out for noises that might disturb me – not a great strategy.  I’d also accidentally left a swiss army knife in my pocket which was quite uncomfortable to sleep on – I’d assumed it was the car seat, but was very wrong.

Earlier in the evening we’d brewed up and started batting at midges when we heard a car approaching along the road.  The driver pulled up and I introduced myself to him.  It turned out he was the brother of the previous owner, and he’d actually been born in our new house in the late 1940s.  He reckoned no-one had lived in the property for the past 15 years, which doesn’t tally with the contents (newspapers from 2012, a calendar from 2012, etc.)  I remember from my archaeology A Level that this is the TPQ, although I’m not sure it specifically rules out the machinations of factually liberal estate agents, for example.

After he’d gone on his way to check his turf or whatever, we lit a fire in a metal bucket we’d found in the house.  It carried on burning for hours, to my annoyance when trying to get some rest – flames flickering between the vehicle full of diesel you’re trying to sleep in and the house you’re hoping to live in don’t make for pleasant dreams!  On reflection, trying to put it out might have been the best idea.

Bought a slasher today that’s the most practical means of cutting back the rhododendrons and so on that dominate the rear of the cottage.  There’s not much point doing anything inside the house beyond clearing out all the junk left behind – the previous owner didn’t want any of it, and neither do we.  This evening I will be mostly annoying V by doing Grim Reaper impressions 🙂

So the builder was a lovely man who spoke at a fair rate sprinkled liberally with swearing and sensible advice.  It’s going to take a while to fully tune-in to the language here, but I got the gist.  The gist is that the roof needs fully replacing, as does the wiring and plumbing.

Probably a low point in our conversation was when he opened the range (kitchen stove) to see what it was like inside and there were the corpses of several crows that had made it down the chimney but not out again.  That’s going.

He might be able to start work the week after next, but the other necessary trades are unlikely to be available until September due to the summer holidays.  Cost hasn’t been established yet, which is the real worry.  Stay tuned!  We’ll be camping there tonight to see how spooky it might be 🙂

Oh, and V is rejoicing at discovering that she only has 8 hours contact time a week on her course.  Alright for some!