photography

Princess Affreca and my new hens.

| Mairead

7 8j

(We travelled the peninsula and the lough)

We went to Northern Ireland for the weekend to visit friends (Hi Naomi and Liam!) They were excellent travel guides and packed a lot in – including a picnic. I’ve grabbed a map from Wikipedia to show you where we went. Even though it’s only three hours away from our house I had never been to this part of Ireland and it is truly beautiful. Our friends live less than thirty minutes from Belfast but we didn’t visit the city… this time.

07 08a

We began Saturday morning in a pottery for a breakfast of scones and coffee! Yes, I know how great! There were plain scones and fruit scones and rhubarb scones and another type of scones, possibly almond, all yummy. It was here I spotted my new hens. Yes I have hens. It was a difficult decision but… I bought a cereal bowl with hens on it and a plate with a cockerel.

7 8i

Then we set off to visit Grey Abbey a Cistercian abbey in the town of Greyabbey. The abbey was founded in 1193 by a princess called Affreca, her father was King of the Isle of Man. She was married to John de Courcy who ruled most of this area at the time. Anyway, she had a rough sea crossing from the Isle of Man and set up the abbey in thanks for a safe landing. On the way in we met Stephen, the guide to the Physic Garden, so he gave us a quick tour. I thought this might be something to do with mind reading but no… it’s to do with healing.

7 8b

There were lots of gardens at the abbey which were mainly tended to by the lay monks. As well as orchards and kitchen gardens there would have been the physic or medicinal garden. Stephen was very informative and funny and I now recognise some herbs from my own garden that I thought were weeds! By the way, if your roses are bothered by green-fly, then Calendula (also good for liver problems, insect and snake bites) attracts hoverfly who in turn eat green-fly. If you become overrun with hoverfly then let me know and I can give you Stephens’s number. After the garden we had a look at the abbey and the interpretative center.

7 8k

(Calendula, English Marigold, loved by hoverflies)

More from Grey Abbey tomorrow, Mairead.

Killruddery Farm Market is on again this Saturday.

| Mairead

02 8a

(This way…)

Last month we went to the Killruddery Farm Market again and it was lovely again. As it happens only once a month (for the moment) I decided to keep the pictures until just before this month’s one, so that anyone who is inspired to visit can do so. It will take place this Saturday 4th August and starts at ten am, (http://www.killruddery.com/whats-on/july-farm-market/)

02 8b

(Margaret and a small selection of her creations)

You might remember I met Fiona from Treasurepalace designs (http://www.treasurepalacedesigns.com) well, she’s encouraged her neighbour Margaret to come along and set up a stall. Margaret has been making and sewing for “years and years” and she does it for different charities. People give her material all the time and she turns it into something beautiful. The result of these gifts of material is that no two finished items are the same. Margaret makes whatever she can with whatever she has – creativity.

02 8c

(Treasurepalace’s stall – notice the dried Hydrangea? Margaret showed Fiona how to do that!)

After our chat we went off for some coffee and I had a blueberry scone. We were sitting at the long table in the middle of the market and we got talking to some other market goers (they were eating the crepes, yum!) It’s a very friendly atmosphere, the stall holders are delighted to chat about their products (we got some lovely pesto and amazing teas and new potatoes) and their’s a constant stream of people happily munching and chatting. We had a great time and felt the benefit of the outing for the whole weekend.

02 8d

(Kingfisher Teas from Enniscorthy, Wexford also have a stall at the Dun Laoghaire market on Sundays)

We’re off to Belfast this weekend to visit friends and we can’t go to the market…. so, if you get a chance do go along to Killruddery Estate (it’s off the Southern Cross road in Bray) and tell Fiona and Margaret that Mairead sent you!

Pause…. now, have a look at that thing you did….

| Mairead

30 7a

(Seagull, taking a pause in Bath)

I was digging in the garden yesterday and my project is very close to completion. You might remember the garden was overrun by weeds and I wondered how I might clear it? Turns out clearing it one step at a time works! At the moment though it looks very bare and I almost miss the green of the weeds… There’s a layer of weed control membrane and pink-grey stones, soon it will need some pots and colours, but not today. Today my body is aching and it may be a little time before I return to the land. In the meantime I can enjoy just looking at the stones…

30 7b

(Taking a pause looking at the sea in the ferry)

This looking got me thinking about all the times I’ve completed something and I didn’t take time to appreciate it or me for the completion. Take something as simple as cooking dinner, when it’s cooked we eat, we clear away and we go onto the next thing to do. When I finished school I went straight into exams and then worried about getting into college. Last night I had a dream that I was back doing those exams! When I finish posting this blog I will get my breakfast and go straight to my to-do list.

30 7c

(Pausing to look at the coffee in 3fe, Dublin)

Maybe not today. Today, I will remember something I learned a long time ago on a mindfulness course. It was about pausing between tasks. When one thing is done, pause, before beginning the next. When you do this there’s a chance you notice you have done something and you prepare yourself to begin something new. Noticing that I have done something gives me a sense of completion. Completion is nice!

You’ve come to the end of reading, pause……. Mairead.

Friday’s Quote. The path to beauty holds a little pain.

| Mairead

09 7d

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”  ~ Elizabeth Kubler Ros

Recognise your hero beauty, Mairead.

The sun always shines… even if we can’t see it.

| Mairead

26 7a

(Shadows)

Would you believe, it’s very sunny today? It is! It’s not very hot and there are a few black clouds on the horizon but overhead the skies are blue and the summer shadows are very pretty. I was thinking that it’s only when the sun shines that we see those shadows and then we can choose to sit in a cool shadow or sit in warm sunshine. When the sun is behind the clouds we only have the shadows and it seems like the sunshine is gone for good.

26 7b

(Shadows)

It reminds me of the Hero’s Journey. How we’re all on a journey (or journeys) throughout our lives. Just like the hero we have to deal with difficulties on the ground, we have to fight battles or maybe even save maidens, but those bits are not the only story. The big story can only be seen from way up high, in the sky-view. Sometimes we get stuck in the ground view and we can’t see the bigger picture, we can’t see our beauty. We can’t see our sun shining behind the clouds.

26 7c

(Shadows)

When I was a young parent, I was very stuck in the ground view. In the nappies, in the crying, in the doctor’s visits, in the tedium. I thought my life would always be this way, the sunshine gone for good. I rarely saw the beauty of my hero. Whether you are a parent or an aunt, an uncle, a grandmother, a grandfather, a daughter, a son, a niece, a nephew or completely alone in the world, you are a hero and you have a hero role and it’s always there. Whether the sun shines or not, whether you are stuck in the mundane or not, you are always a hero.

Wear your hero hat, Mairead.

Summer in Ireland…. an opportunity for acceptance.

| Mairead

25 7a

(Raindrops…)

We’re back home again and I’m wondering what happened to the sunshine and hight temperatures. Just a few hours east of here the sun is shining and some people are complaining about the heat. They are perspiring from the inside while we are being precipitated on from the outside. At this moment I think it would be great to have sunny weather all the time but I know I’d get fed up with it. I know I’d start complaining. I know I’d start fantasizing about soft rain on my sun-burned face…. Wouldn’t it be so much more useful if I realised that what is here right now isn’t too bad? What is here right now is what someone else (even me on a hot sunny day) wants?

25 7b

(Ducks like rain)

There’s a quote from Eckart Tolle (The Power of Now), “When you are in a state of gratitude for what is … that is really what being wealthy means”. He’s talking about acceptance, when you are content with what’s right in front of you, you are rich. So I’m going to practice being content with this type of summer….. I’ll start with my thinking: I got a little too much sun in Bletchley Park and this cooler weather is very calming for the burning…. There’s no way I can cut the grass in this rain, I’ll have to do something more relaxing, instead…. Isn’t it great we have no flies buzzing in through every open window? It’s so much easier to go walking in this cool air….

25 7c

(Isn’t that pretty?)

Feeling richer already! Byron Katie (Loving What Is and http://www.thework.com) has lots of quotes about this, it’s her main theme, but here’s one…“I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.” So for today I’m not going to argue with the reality of the weather. The weather is all around me physically and visually, so making friends with it might be enlightening.

Love the soft rain dripping down your face, Mairead.

Bletchley Park… it’s a secret.

| Mairead

22 7b

(The big house)

We’re in Bletchley Park (near Milton Keynes) the home of World War II code breakers and the birthplace of digital computers. Ciara and I are sitting in Hut 4, having lunch and resting after a guided tour. Denis is on his second tour… of the Computing Museum section. Bletchley is a very interesting place. Way back in 1937 the big house and about 500 acres went up for sale when the owners died. The estate was divided into lots and a local builder bought fifty acres along with the big house –  he wanted to knock the house and put up a housing estate.

22 7g

(Hut 1.. with part of its protective wall)

The secret service at the time were watching Hitler and considered war a likely possibility. They needed to be in a position to do secret things and not be noticed and Bletchley Park offered the perfect solution. It was forty miles from London so protected by distance. It was close to a railway station. It was halfway between Oxford and Cambridge – where the smart puzzle solvers were to be found. And I can’t remember why but it was in the perfect location for telephone communication, and people who were smart communication device builders (telephone engineers.) A compulsory purchase order meant that there’s no housing estate and the big house still stands.

22 7c

(An Enigma machine)

So the secret stuff began… when the British found a German coding machine called the Enigma. Also, three Polish secret service officers, realising they would soon be invaded by Germany, gave information they had uncovered about a very similar coding machine to the British and French governments. With that information smart puzzle solver Alan Turing took four months to break the puzzle of the Enigma and uncover how it worked. But that was just the first step….. they had to build a machine (with more help from the Polish secret service) that would turn the coded messages into German language messages and then into English. This was in 1940 and for most of the rest of the war all messages sent from the German military were coded using the Enigma, thinking they were secret. It gave the British military a big advantage.

22 7f

(The lake with the big house in the background)

By the end of the war there were 8,000 people working at Bletchley Park. Everyone who worked here signed the official secrets act and had to keep the secret of Bletchley and they did. Stephen, our guide told a story of a recent woman visitor whose mother had worked in the Japanese message-breaking hut. The woman told him that she had only recently discovered that her mother worked for the secret service and spoke fluent Japanese. Today Bletchley is run by enthusiasts and volunteers who maintain the grounds, the house and the huts, they also run the tours and make the sandwiches.

Take the first step, it’ll give you a big advantage, Mairead.

Ring, ring… River river… Lies and good manners.

| Mairead

22 7d

(Bath Cathedral)

We’ve moved into England, the journey that should have taken an hour and a half took four hours. There was an accident, traffic got backed up and so we were stationary for two hours. There was nowhere to go as we were on a motorway and when we took the next exit there was almost stand still traffic there too. It could have been worse, the car next to us had steam billowing out through the bonnet and water gushing onto the road. I can’t imagine how long she had to wait for a tow-truck and even when it did get there, where would it go?

22 7i

(Hot air balloons over Bath)

All this meant that we arrived in Bath just in time for dinner. We had booked an early table at a vegetarian restaurant, so we could take the Bizarre Bath Tour. It’s a comedy tour and the guide went to great lengths at the outset to ensure we understood that there would be no history. The tour consists of about twenty of us following him around the Bath streets while he told lies or performed some magic! There was the escapologist rabbit (stuffed) and the key that opens up a prize of £300 (we lost, he won) and the volunteer’s ring that accidentally floats up into the Bath night sky attached to a helium balloon. I thought it was really funny…  I’m sure our travel insurance will cover a new engagement ring.

22 7j

(Our guide about to perform the £300 trick)

On Saturday we took a bus tour and it turns out Bath is where English “good manners” began. Seemingly a gambler, called Richard Nash, got the job of Bath’s entertainment manager (it was called Master of Ceremonies then…) in the early 1700’s (the previous manager lost the job when he was shot in a duel). Nash promoted Bath as a place where you could come for the spa waters and the dancing and regardless of your social class you would be comfortable in the knowledge that the other classes knew their place….

22 7k

(Seen in the Jane Austin Museum… manners?)

I also learned that the river running through Bath, the Avon, is not the same as the one in Stratford-upon-Avon. Turns out there are lots of rivers called Avon in England and there’s a really good reason. The Romans when they arrived, pointed to the river and asked “What’s that called?” and the natives said “Avon.” The Romans assumed that was the name of the river, but Avon was the word for river, any river. So the river Avon is really the river River.

Don’t make assumptions, Mairead.