After the long hours of the last two days, we've had a quieter time today - late breakfast with Tasha, Lulu and Matt, getting some ironing done, looking over childhood photos of David (and Lulu) to be embarrassingly or cutely displayed at the party on Saturday.
I wanted to append a couple of thoughts….
Why it is that so much of the place looks French, for instance. One reason is
the scattering of tiny little 'model' farms which are very like the ones you
see all over France, with a small farmhouse set back from the road, flanked by
two sturdy buildings which stretch forward on either side, creating a neat
courtyard. This seems to reach back to Napoleonic or even Roman design - the
same practical arrangement created and recreated wherever you go. We see very small versions of this layout all
along, many if not most abandoned or in poor repair.
Another thought. Why is that while we are
experiencing being in one particular place, with its own characteristics and
details, we are constantly driven to compare it with some other place? "This
reminds me of - France/Northumberland/England…" We do it with people too.
Doesn't he look like x? No, I thought he looks like y.
We had a brief misting of almost-rain this
morning, but set off determined not to do too much driving. Tasha suggested we go
to see a ruined abbey - at Athasell and by golly we found it (tourist roadsigns
are excellent). The old abbey was colossal, stupendous. Makes Tintern look
cramped. We climbed over a neat stone
stile, across a liitle field and then over a gorgeous old 4-arch bridge now
spanning a muddy gully but once (presumably) a real river. The bridge had no
walls. Then through various portals, courtyards and ruins, with violent changes
of door arch, height, wall-thickness, level and design all evident in the
stonework, and all higgledy-piggledy. What a story these stones could tell.
Parts of the structure rear up - 3, 4, 5 storeys tall. There are blocked up
arches, new supports, vaults, even a pair of silent medieval larger-than-life
statues in prayer emerging from a wall, and some modern graves in old the nave,
the chancel, the centre of the cloister.
I have never heard of this place, and it is astonishing. There are no
interpretation boards. What was the
business of the abbey - we couldn't see signs of (say) a water-mill. Whatever
they did they must have been very rich at various times because of the great
range and spread of buildings.
Then we headed to Tipperary itself. The
tiny lanes are very quiet and wiggly, but at this time of year they are the
natural pathways of huge tractors loaded with massive bits of gear folded in,
so they look like some kind of massive insect in a stage of
transformation. These creatures are
frequently driven by very young men.
To the south lies the range of the Gaity
Mountains which looked fabulous - velvety-purple, swooping down in a gentle
curve to the Aherlow river - itself a
branch of the River Suir whose name offers endless possibilities for bad jokes.
Tipp seemed to us a less merry place than
Nenagh but very business-like and we found lunch (genuine Irish cooking) in a
place which seemed ridiculously French in décor. Only when we left did we
realise it was called the Shamrog Bistro. The service was initially dour, the
food was hearty and nostalgic as regards the cabbage (chopped fine and cooked
to a brownish pulp), but the lamb's liver was tender and delicious, the beef
casserole sweet (all our beef is Irish), and the chips and creamed potatoes
were sweet and memorable. Two of our number chose pudding: apple crumble with
custard for one, and jelly and ice-cream for the other. Nostalgia? School
dinners.
Shopping (I am ashamed to say) was back in
one of Lord Tesco's accouterments). Lulu couldn't face it. We'd be feeding a large part of clan Mussett
at our house so we chose a menu of mushroom stroganoff and what not…. All accomplished v easily.
Texts still flying back and forth about
arrivals, arrangements.
Home - to unpack, walk about, meet up with
new arrivals. We changed the booking for
the second s/c house to be a 3-bed one, so the Hills with their three kids
could come over - Tasha showing them in after they'd called on us to say hallo.
The afternoon was warm enough, and light. It was a blessing not to be driving
around… Andrew started making the
supper, I was steam-pressing my outfit. Gradually people gathered - by seven
o'clock we had the wine-boxes open and the party began. Everyone was looking through David's
childhood - the masses of pictures I brought with us from the days of prints…
Here he is new-born, here in the arms of my mother, then his other granny and
his aunt Gillie, then being pushed in a pram, feeding the ducks, here in his daddy's arms looking alarmed at
the sound of a steam-train at Tenterden, here half-naked having fallen into the
duckpond at Worth Matravers, here crashed out on the back seat of the car, here
eating ice-cream, here on a horse for the first time, here looking divinely
glamorous in France, here in school uniform for his first day at the
Chaucer… Everyone is delighted with the
photos. It's all so long ago. The photos bring a whole different world back to
life, just for a moment or two.
Gillie and James brought Granny Rye to the
hotel so Andrew and Lulu whizzed down there with her cases to install her in
her room, and came back saying she was
pleased to have her toast and pate in her room and crash out.
We sang Dubliners songs over supper, ate
and drank liberally, and then split up for the evening - the young heading to
another music evening in a pub/farmhouse, while some of us oldies stayed around
the hotel at their Irish night. A roomful of even older people, sedately and
expertly dancing to ceilidh music - they knew all the steps, needed no
caller. It was brightly lit, charming,
friendly, another trip back in time. Gillie and James took to the floor,
glowing with love and happiness. My brother in his white suit took photos and
flashed his smile at everyone.
Eventually I left them to it and came home and went to sleep in about 4
seconds.
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