Well… September, technically, but that wouldn’t match the title of one of my favourite albums.
That break in posting makes my previous efforts at neglect look like mere blips.
Quick summary of what’s happened since my previous properly-posted-at-the-actual-time entry, from a seasonal perspective:
Summer. Well, it actually didn’t happen, but the space reserved for it passed anyway. Thankfully we had a break in Portugal and Spain to remind ourselves how lovely sunshine was.
Autumn. Rain.
Winter – in-progress. Cold rain, snow.
I’m try to back-fill what I didn’t bother to post over the past few months – if I’m honest there wasn’t a whole heap of good news to report, but could have been worse, I suppose.
The Bongo is very sick again. It pretty much gave up and has let itself go a lot – I looked inside it the other week and at least mould spores are making good use of it.
The house is doing pretty well. Flooring still intact, tiling complete.
Progress will magically appear over the next few days, but logged against the date at which the events actually happened, rather than when I bothered to document it.
One Sunday (well, probably quite a lot of other days too, really) we had a moment of crisis, wondering what the heck we were doing in Ireland. The solution on this occasion was to drive to Killarney, then Ladies’ View (so called due to Queen Vic’s ladies-in-waiting liking the view back in the day (or made-up stuff from Wikipedia – you decide)), Moll’s Gap and along to Kenmare. I’m a software developer, so I’m allowed to nest brackets if I feel like it, incidentally.
The weather was fantastic – a perfect day. Lunch in the Avoca cafe at Moll’s Gap was a treat too:
When we got to Kenmare they were making a big deal about the upcoming Halloween celebrations, but apparently health and safety had made it less dramatic than previous years – there was a crack-down on the use of flaming sods of turf soaked in diesel being used as torches on the procession, for example. Killjoys!
We were in Harrogate for the week, so checked out our favourite places and revelled in the order and comfort of our house.
Favourite places in Harrogate:
Bean and Bud cafe. The best coffee in town, and some excellent dark hot chocolate.
Harlow Carr RHS gardens. The gardens are looking brilliant, with the exception of what appears to be a pretty lame commercial venture with Toyota that has seen one of their cars parked prominently where part of the Gardens Through Time used to be. Either that, or maybe a local pensioner had too much sherry and went rogue with their driving.
Harlow Carr Bettys tea rooms. A separate item from the above, as you don’t need to go into the gardens to experience it. The best hot chocolate in the world ever, I reckon. At this time of year they also do Little Rascals, which are a smaller, tastier version of the Fat Rascal for which they’re more famous. Compared with their more portly parents, Little Rascals are more cookie-like, and have orange peel and chocolate chips instead of glacé cherry.
Harrogate Antiques Centre. Lots of decent furniture here, but not easy to transport over to Ireland in a Ford Fiesta.
We went to Carlow (south-east Ireland) for the weekend of the 10th June as there was the http://festivalofwritingandideas.com/ on, and quite a few interesting-sounding speakers.
The first talk we attended was with Mary Robinson (former president of Ireland, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, eco hero, etc.) and Louise Richardson (VC of Oxford University). They were both extremely engaging and inspiring. Most of the audience questions focussed on their gender, which was a bit annoying really, but as they noted, nowadays there never needs to be a ‘first woman to…’ label attached to anyone growing up as it’s all been done!
Next up (after lunch) was Rap ‘n’ Slam, a session with three separate performers. First came Lemn Sissay, who’s a reasonably famous poet from Manchester. He gave a very strong, confident and dramatic performance which was ideal to start.
The next performer was Emmet Kirwan, a playwright from Dublin who I hadn’t heard of before. Apparently he does a lot of voice-over work in Ireland, in addition to having written and performed quite a lot of material. He was absolutely amazing – when he stepped up in the small family chapel at Borris House to read, I thought he seemed like a bit of a cheeky schoolboy type. This impression was quickly dispelled when he launched into his material – a section of Dublin Oldschool being the highlight for me. The words and their rhythm were perfect (the ones I could understand, that is) as he took us through the streets of the capital in a drugged-up haze using the Dublin vernacular.
Finally, there was the very shy-looking Sam Coll, who didn’t seem like he was that keen on being on-stage at all. He stood staring at the pages of his open book, muttered something from Hamlet, then began an epic reading from his novel The Abode of Fancy, barely pausing for breath. I don’t really know how to describe it or him, except to say that I’m fairly sure he’s a proper eccentric genius. I definitely need to sit down and read his debut novel anyway, if the snippet we heard is anything to go by.
That was it for Saturday – we took the rest of the day off.
Sunday started for me with a talk on the Border with Colm Tóibín, Garrett Carr and Fintan O’Toole. Garrett Carr hasn’t long released his book about walking the Border from east to west, Colm Tóibín wrote one years ago about the journey in the other direction, and Fintan O’Toole is my favourite journalist in Ireland. They spoke movingly of the pain and horrors that have accompanied the Border, as well as providing some lighter anecdotes and political commentary regarding the current travesty of democracy that is ‘Brexit’. Seriously, if your interest in the subject extends beyond getting your opinions from the side of a red bus, Fintan O’Toole’s columns in the Irish Times provide a perspective and analysis that’s often lacking in England at least.
L-R: Garrett Carr, Fintan O’Toole, Colm Tóibín
The final item in the schedule for us was Artemis Cooper and Edmund White discussing their biographies. They both had plenty to say, and Artemis Cooper’s stories about Paddy (Patrick Leigh Fermor) were particularly entertaining. They both had disturbing admissions about some of the things they’d done to get the inside scoop on their subjects (sneaking down in the middle of the night to copy letters they’d been told to leave alone, getting a student to befriend a ‘target’, etc.).
All told, an excellent weekend at a very civilised festival. Not too busy, but plenty to see.
So I’d contacted the estate agent we’re renting through on Friday morning to request another month’s extension to the lease in order to minimise stress. No bother, she’ll let the landlord know, happy days.
Lunchtime today, a phone call from landlord: “how do you get internet there, as I’ve got some AirBnB people coming on Wednesday from Brazil – are you taking your internet with you?”
Me: “Argh. But, but…”
There ensued a discussion where it became clear that the estate agent hadn’t bothered to let the landlord know of our intentions, and had assumed that because she didn’t have any viewings lined up, it meant that we’d be grand.
The landlord called back sometime later and said we’d be ok for another month, so hopefully that’s the case now. The bog house isn’t finished yet, and the ESB still don’t have the wiring certificate from the electrician, so are refusing to schedule an engineer to come and move the meter (thus bringing us the wonder of electricity).
We’ve settled on a kitchen layout with the builder, and hopefully clarified what we want doing with the sockets and switches elsewhere.
Aaand relax…
If anyone’s interested, my internet solution is pretty cheap and cheerful to run month to month (no contract). I’ve got one of these Huawei boxes that I use with Three Ireland’s €20/month mobile broadband SIM, that provides unlimited 4G data (regardless of what the terms and conditions state). Note that the same deal definitely isn’t available in the UK – they do check which device you’re using the SIM with there, and sharing it to provide home broadband is right out. I did try. Also, the “feel at home” thing that Three UK do to allow you free data roaming doesn’t apply to 4G, so that didn’t stay for long as a solution.
In our rental property, I can easily get 40Mbps down (sometimes nearer 60) and about 10Mbps up. If you compare that with something like TalkTalk in the UK, for £20 a month (and a commitment to 2 years of it) you’ll get up to 17Mbps down. One of the few things that’s cheaper over here.
A bumpy couple of days, but things seem to be sorting themselves out a bit more now. Our rented house isn’t delivering a fond farewell, with a broken washing machine and running out of oil for the Aga being recent highlights.
Thankfully I got some more kerosene from the incredibly nice and helpful people at Regional Oil in Mungret on the way back from work today, so we should have a warm kitchen again tomorrow.
The landlord has arranged for a new (yes, I suspect ‘different’ might be a better description) washing machine to arrive tomorrow, which would be great if it happened.
I wasn’t able to get hold of the builder today, so hopefully that’s because he was so busy putting the finishing touches to our house, but I fear not. Down to 19 days before we need to leave our current residence.
I did a bit more wiring work on the Bongo, so it now has this mini fan heater installed. I fitted a 1000W inverter behind the glove box and connected it directly to the leisure battery with some fairly beefy cables, so it can take a reasonable load before melting wires. Handily, the inverter’s fitted next to the recirculation vent for the air conditioning, so keeping it cool should be straightforward if the need ever arises.
The dehumidifier arrived today, so it’s getting a trial run in this cold house before moving onto smaller, more humid, pastures soon. I left it working away for a couple of hours in the hallway and it’d collected about 150ml of water, so it’s not doing badly. It’s a desiccant model, so should perform well in the cold, and it’s relatively quiet and energy-efficient compared with the compressor-based models.
Irritatingly, it doesn’t have a Relative Humidity display, so maybe I’ll deploy part of my weather station indoors to measure the levels for a while, as I haven’t got around to fixing the whole lot outside yet, but have at least wired up this humidity sensor to it over I2C.
I got an email this morning letting me know that the parcel I’d had sent to St. Albans in the UK (which arrived there on Monday) had made it to my nearest post office in Ireland. I collected it after work and paid €3.50 for the service – very happy! I now have this plinth heater (electric/central heating switchable) and it cost a lot less than it would have any other way. Barring minor details like my An Post ID not having made it onto the address label (despite having entered it when I ordered), things went very smoothly. The consequence of not having the ID on the parcel was that someone stuck a label on it threatening that things might not go so well in future if I didn’t buck my ideas up (in slightly less aggressive phrasing).
The featured photo attached to this post is of the box concerned. Note how I’ve carefully shot it to remove any visual cues to help you see how big a parcel can make it through. The answer is “quite big”.
I’m trying to motivate myself to blog more frequently again. Things are moving at a reasonable pace on the cottage renovation now – I spoke with the builder again today and apparently the wiring is done. I’ve got lots of photos still on my camera covering house renovation work but have been very pushed for time recently, which has resulted in their upload being put on the long finger. See, I’m like a native now.
As a not-in-any-way seamless link, I’ve added a new “glossary of terms” section to the blog to cover stuff I’ve heard in Ireland and what I think it means. Please let me know if I’ve got it all wrong.
Progress continued on the bog house. The last time I saw it before Christmas, it was full of rubble and in an utter state. It reminded me of when we first met the builder and he told us to bear in mind that we were seeing it in the worst condition it would ever be in. That wasn’t actually true, as with the ceilings all pulled down it looked significantly less homely.
Anyway, a week or so ago we met the builder on-site, and they’d removed all the rubble from inside the house, and had also demolished the (correct) wall between the two bedrooms to make one big space.
We talked through where we wanted sockets, radiators, etc. and he spray painted their locations onto the walls. The main push now is to get all the fittings for the bathroom, a special plinth radiator for the kitchen, and the new stove ordered.
As of 17th January, all this is pretty much done. I’ve ordered the plinth radiator thing from the UK, which will make it here via An Post’s “AddressPal” forwarding service. You sign up with them, get given a special code to use as the first line of your address for UK deliveries, then get stuff sent to their place in St. Albans. An Post then pop it onto a plane and it arrives at the nearest post office in Ireland and they let you know. It should cost €3.50 when I pick it up.
I went to look at a heavily-discounted solid fuel stove today, and will be buying it tomorrow (their card machine didn’t work properly and despite their request for me to fix it, I thought better of meddling). The stove is really heavy, as it has a lot of metalwork in it for water pipes, etc. (it’ll be our boiler for hot water and central heating). Last main item to buy now is a bath…
