Rainy Ireland

Here we are in Kilkenny, where it’s pretty cool, grey, and wet. Such a contrast with the heat and scorched browns and golds of the Sardinian lands. We flew in to Cork on the day that Hurricane Lorenzo crossed over Ireland, but everything stayed on schedule. The only real signs of the storm that we saw were great flocks of rooks up in the air, apparently surfing and playing in the wind. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them altogether.

There’s something about all the birds of the crow family - their power, intelligence and beauty. Though, this morning, I read about a mob of magpies flocking together - nine of them - to kill a hare.  The hares are wondrous in their own right, demanding a special sort of attention. You don’t forget it if you see one.  

We are in a quandary (like millions of others, of course)….what to do if Brexit goes ahead? We have these two delightful little grandsons growing up in Ireland and we only get to see the about 5 or 6 times a year. Maybe we should leave England and come and live here? 

Faversham has its own problems - mostly do with suburban expansions around the town, undersupplied with services on the new estates and therefore inevitably bound to add to the traffic and parking problems in the narrow medieval streets, which are already difficult at times of day.  And the traffic in Kent will get worse, whether or not Brexit goes ahead. We frequently find the town has come to a standstill because of some road accident maybe 10 miles away, where everything has backed up.   So - much as we have loved living there, we are wondering if it’s time to move on. After all, most of the time, there are just the two of us (+ our lodger) rattling around in our rambly old house. So we did a bit of online house-hunting yesterday, and found a huge old place in the bog with a ruined castle in the garden….. 

Just my sort of thing, but it won’t happen. My dream would be for some sort of arts centre, or retreat, to help it pay its way.  Sigh!

We all wait to see what will happen at the end of this month. The ‘news’ and the politics of the last three years has been almost completely unbelievable - like some sort of mad melodrama, and we feel as if we’re watching the destruction of great chunks of our civilisation, and for what? To make a few billionaires richer?  No doubt the old smug post-colonial Little Britain attitudes needed to be challenged, but so far they seem to be in the ascendant - there’s a kind of myth propagated that that is the will of the people. It isn’t.  Coming away, to Sardinia and Ireland, and before that to France and Denmark, in the last few weeks has been a relief.  We have to go back to it all tomorrow.