See Ghin walking

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Hee bee jee bees - ladybirds hatching - i'd never seen the like. The boys pointed them out as they scaled this tree just outside the museum.


Little boy drives horse and cart - very small horse and cart...


Shire horses gee up for the ploughing...it's a very zen exercise really. To plough properly you need strength and skill and good horses. The earth has to be soft, but not too soft, and the skill and stamina required will have to be built up over years and years of exericse and labour. It is deceptively easy. you hold the plough as the horses pull it - nothing could be further than the truth. The horses must be guided, the plough is heavy and it is an art just keeping it on the straight and narrow. But oh, the satisfaction of well turned earth - and to know that you did this yourself. And the silences, the poetic silence, only broken by the tramping of the horses as they tilled the earth with you. Wagtail landed every now and then to pick at the freshly shown sods. Sparrows and robins waited their turn, being less extrovert. And the pleasure on the farmers faces as they spoke to their horses - you could see love in the effort, love in the invisible wires that connected them to each other. Such respect and teamwork - a perfect picture of man and beast working. I'd like to think, a partnership of equals, as the farmers coaxed the animals and they horses pespired. Every now and then, they'd say something to each other - the horses, i mean. And i think it was, will see you down at the pub after this then?





Yesterday we went to the UTFM - the transport museum. It was pretty cool. Rope making, thatching, pigs, and horses, of course. We are incredibly lucky having the place next to us. It cost £55 to join, but it's absolutely worth it. It's like being in the most perfect town and village in Ireland. No cars, no weirdos, no teenagers gathering round SPAR. One day SPAR will be nostalgia- the way these derelict flats in England are nostalgia, but really, i'd rather the fantasy which we are given everytime we step drive through those gates gives us. The staff are also from another age. An Ireland that's gentler, kinder, less efficient, less with it - and it does not suffer from the slightly damp edges.

I was entirely inspired by the cottages to restore our little dwelling. No more two floors, but a half loft, with three tiny rooms. Sod those honking large monstrosities that now stalk the landscape. One day they shall pass - they just have to.

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