We drove up to the Wicklow mountains at the weekend to look at the snow. On the way up there was no sign but after we passed Enniskerry, there was lots. We went for a 40 minute walk covering the exciting combination of bog and snow; even wellingtons and salopettes were insufficient to ensure entirely dry feet but all very beautiful. And we had spare shoes and socks in the car.
If this is of interest to you, I suspect you already know. But just in case it has escaped you, as part of the EU presidency excitement, the book, “A History of Ireland in 100 Objects” is free to download until tomorrow. Everything you wanted to know about Irish history but were afraid to ask.
When you find yourself flicking around and settling on watching Euronews in German you know that both public and commercial broadcasting services have failed you. That is all.
I was in a bric-a-brac shop with herself and there was an old bakelite phone which she rather liked. The nice lady behind the counter said, “I have one plugged in here, do you want to try ringing your mother’s mobile?” We laughed as she poked at the cumbersome dial in amazement. Of course, she went wrong half way through and had to start again. “Push down the buttons where the receiver goes until you get a dial tone” we said. She looked at us in disbelief – really how primitive was this system? Wait until I tell her you had to wait three months to get a phone when I was a child. And that you rang the operator and gave the name of the town and asked for a number, in the case of our country cousins, this was 42. It turns out that 35 years is quite a long time.
The parent of a colleague died and I sent him a mass card. I wrote a few lines hoping that my colleague was bearing up and that his father was “well before he died.” Really? Beautifully put. Go me. What, was I hoping that the gentleman had been hale and hearty and run over by a car? I despair.
Herself is learning about the famine in school. She had a great time doing a dramatisation where she got to play the lady from the big house increasing the rents of misfortunate tenants who had made improvements and then tossing them out. Another day, they made a coffin ship.
One night, she had a couple of questions for homework, the first of which was – “Why were the Irish so poor at the time of the Famine?” “Why were they so poor?” she asked me. “Well, lots of reasons: landholdings tended to be small as they were divided up between families; landlord and tenant law was unsatisfactory in a number of ways [insert digression on land league]; there were, of course, absentee landlords and unfair agents [digression here to cover Captain Boycott]; then remember that the Catholics had been disenfranchised for a long time and there was the legacy of the Act of Union in 1801 and the penal laws…” I began. “Does this go back to William of Orange and James II?” she asked. “Well, yes, even before that, I suppose it is the nature of history that it is informed and shaped by the past.” And so on.
I checked her homework later. In response to the question, “Why were the Irish so poor at the time of the Famine?” she had written: “Because the English were not very nice.”
Is it any wonder that her aunt has vetoed all talk of the Famine when she marries her English man in London at the weekend?