Another slice of real Irish life

At 3pm on Sunday I walked through the doorway of the Kildare Club. The club is located in one of the august brick Georgians that line St. Stephen's Green, the huge public park in the center of Dublin. Outside, the panoply of an Irish summer weekend was in full force. Horse-drawn carriages lined the curb just in front of the massive European tour buses that are in scale only when they travel on the broadest city streets. A juggler worked the crowd in the plaza across from the park entrance. Shoppers with bags from Zara and H&M filed into Insomnia for a shot of caffeine and a sandwich.

Inside the club I was greeted by my host, Anthony Malcolmson, the archivist who did the original indexes for both the Ballinderry and Ballindoolin archives. Anthony was in Dublin for a brief stay between a trip to Limerick and his home in Belfast, and had phoned me to ask if I would like to meet with him. I left my own shopping bag with the doorman (not for security reasons, but because it wouldn't look seemly to carry it into the club; evidently shopping smacks a bit too much of real life in these halls) and followed Anthony up to the drawing room, a high-ceilinged and plastered space that looked like a slightly dingier version of how Hollywood would picture a gentlemen's club c. 1940.

After our tea was delivered on a silver tray by the concierge we talked a bit of business about the archive (talking business is also forbidden within the club's walls, along with, inexplicably, the carrying of umbrellas). But as it turned out, Anthony loved nothing more than a good gossip, and I was happy to oblige. We chatted about the more reprobate members of the Tyrrell family (my maternal relatives, and the subject of my research), and Anthony gave me some canny insights into some of the contemporary characters I have come across (being careful to except any close relative; he knows when to be discreet). After an hour of so, Anthony and I headed to the most hallowed of the club rooms, the library. With a large Members Only sign on the door (which happily for me Anthony ignored) the room is straight out of Agatha Christie, complete with a member buried in his Irish Times--I hope not literally, but with the oversize paper held up in front of his body who could tell?-- in a wing chair in the far corner of the room.

Here we met Anthony's partner Bruce. After picking up my shopping bag from the concierge, we all headed over to St. Patrick's Cathedral, considered the main edifice of the Church of Ireland; Anthony had invited me to book launch for a new history of the cathedral, evidently many years in the writing, that his own publisher, Four Courts Press, was hosting. As we walked through one of the more nondescript areas of central Dublin, Bruce told me about his various feats of academic prowess as an economic historian, listing the places he had lectured (Yale, Harvard, many locations in Europe and Asia). When we arrived at the cathedral, the narrow street that ran alongside the church was lined with more of the gargantuan white tour buses, all with two wheels propped precariously on the sidewalk to allow traffic to squeeze past. Eastern European tourists were pouring into the church after waiting outside during the Evensong service, which had just ended. Our destination was not the cathedral itself, but a small door in the wall across from it. We walked through it onto what must have normally been a hushed space protected from the noise and dirt of Dublin traffic, not to mention the curious, by a high garden wall overhung with vines and roses. The private lawn was now filled with scattered clusters of people chatting, wine glasses in hand, their pale faces occasionally looking skyward in an anxious search for what looked like impending rain. Small boys with the cherubic faces that signify boy's choir membership passed sandwiches on little trays. A miracle! Anthony had transported us to a 1970s British garden party here in the dense center of Dublin.

Here was another side of this country, one that had largely escaped me despite my attendance in church one Sunday. As I have been struggling with a way to understand what my ancestors' lives had looked like, living in a small landowner's house in the Irish Midlands, I realized that this is the part I hadn't pictured, the gentility of it, the need to grasp onto the Anglicized part of their lives so easily subsumed in a country that is so washed with Catholicism that the main national news station pauses three times a day to ring the Angelus. This hidden garden, which we entered like Alice going through a keyhole, seemed an apt metaphor for the space the Protestants inhabit here, grand but furtive, its occupants proud, separate, with the full awareness of the complex history of their families.

I stayed for about an hour in this time warp, listening to conversations, meeting Anthony's friends, and eating strawberries and cream, the de rigeur sweet this time of year. As people drifted away I asked Anthony when the actual launch would take place. Ah, he said, evidently the Dean of St Patrick's had some difficulty with one of the authors of the book, so a decision was made to forego any speeches. The fact that there were also no copies of the book itself in evidence was never explained, although one mother and son duo proudly held up their copy when I asked if they could take a photo.

As the three of us walked back, Anthony and Bruce to their club and me to the car park, Bruce explained why he would never again travel to America. He refused to be finger-printed or otherwise physically marked in some way for his passport. He was repulsed by a country that would elect a George Bush, and while he recognized that in electing Barack Obama the country was making the ultimate visible apology for its horrific gaffe, he remained skeptical. Finally, as a Northern Ireland native he continued to be furious at the fact that the main funding for IRA activities over the past 25 years came from Americans who refused, in his mind, to recognize that the IRA was a terrorist organization. Divisions run deep under the generally friendly facade on this very small island.

(real) Life in Ireland

A couple of nights ago I pulled into my parking spot in Clonmullen Hall, where I live, about 10:30pm. I was returning from Dublin, a trip that no matter how I do it remains fairly arduous. This time I drove to Kinnegad, a town about 20 minutes from Edenderry, parked the car and took the bus into central Dublin. After a 6pm reading at the Abbey Theatre and a rather unfortunate hotel meal with my cousin Deirdre I took the bus back to Kinnegad and drove home over the nearly pitch black and narrow roads. Driving at night is a challenge I don't relish at the best of times, and tonight I just needed to get home and go to bed.

I hadn't opened the car door when Darren, a smart 12-year-old with a faceful of freckles and an eyebrow piercing, ran up to me. "My uncle's mad for a cigarette. Could he borrow one?" I told Darren that I didn't smoke (a fact I'm sure he was aware of) but he repeated the question, adding that his uncle would get money from the ATM but his card wouldn't be activated until tomorrow. This story isn't as implausible as it sounds, given the hysterical nature of password issuance here when it comes to bank accounts, but I pretended that I didn't understand that he was asking me for money for the cigarettes and just said again that I didn't smoke.

Darren's uncle is undoubtedly one of the statistics here. In Edenderry unemployment has increased 130% since last year. That is not a typo. 130%. This town is now one of Ireland's unemployment 'blackspots', with the third largest unemployment figures of anywhere but the major cities. The effects have been swift and highly visible. Storefront after storefront is vacant here. Men are visible in the streets all day long, hanging out in front of the two types of businesses that seem to be stable, pubs and bookies. The level of litter has risen even since I came here, one sign of a community that has given up its sense of pride. Today the manicurist, chattering in a strong Irish lilt to me during my pedicure (the first attention my nails have gotten since I came), told me that she has gone from full time work in the salon to working two days a week, and that there is barely enough work to sustain those two days. She lives at home, as many young people do, in the same house where she grew up. To most of the people that I meet, California is a place they see on the telly.

Darren being sent by his uncle to hit me up for fag money was most likely precipitated by my paying four of the neighborhood kids to wash my car. This was a mistake, since it sent the signal that somehow hadn't occurred to anyone before: that I was an American with money. The four girls did a fantastic job with the car wash, especially considering how filthy it was after two months of driving on country roads and the fact that there is no outside hose. They did it with a bucket and some thin rags. James, one of their endless stream of cousins, showed up late and was given the job of washing the wheels. I paid each of the girls €5. James got €4; as he put it, one for each wheel. Little Kaitlin, age three, who worked away with the rest, got a euro.

Even before Charlene, her sisters and her cousin Shannon finished the car, Charlene's mother (whose name, like mine, is Kathleen) and her friend showed up with an ancient car seat in tow, asking for a ride to the shops 'for baby food'. Evidently the fact that the girls were washing the car gave their mother errand rights. In the time it took me to grab my purse they had managed to cram five people and the baby seat into the back of my Ford Fiesta. When I balked, they sorted themselves out, Charlene took the baby and the car seat off, and the rest of us drove away to the Spar. The shop is on Main Street, perhaps a ten-minute walk. It was an entirely unnecessary trip from the standpoint of driving, but that wasn't the point. I realized that a car ride was a rare occurrence for this family. I'm not sure what they bought at the Spar--I waited in the car with the two little ones--but I don't think it was baby food, judging from the size of the two bundles and the sour smell of alcohol coming from the back seat. On the way back we stopped at the chipper to get some takeaway for Jessica, the daughter of Kathleen's friend.

On the night I turned down Darren's request for fag money, Kathleen and her friend, who were as usual sitting on Kathleen's front stoop and drinking, called me over for a conversation. I climbed the stairs to their apartment reluctantly; I was not in the mood for a chat, especially with someone who was drunk. When I got there Kathleen said something to me about electricity. (She has no teeth, and between that and the slurred speech I sometimes have a difficult time understanding her.) I had to ask her to tell me again what she meant. As I was listening to her I slowly realized that the house behind her--the front door was open--was completely dark, and it began to dawn on me that she had an electric meter inside that needed replenishing but she had run out of money to top it up.

Later, with the hindsight of remorse, I realized that what I should have done was to ask where the meter was and whether it took coins or just the card she was trying to tell me about. What I knew was that I couldn't hand her cash, since there would have been no possibility that it would have been used to activate the meter, even if she had been able to top up the card at 11pm. I told her that I couldn't help her right then but said I would check in the morning to see what she needed. Then I left for my place, where I sat up for a long time worrying about what I had not done.

This incident was, luckily for me, forgotten, or forgiven. I suspect that they took a shot, missed, and moved on. Kathleen sends Victoria for my phone from time to time, and the girls sometimes ask if I have work for them. I have been photographing the kids here, and I am making prints for them. I plan to put prints of the three girls, Charlene, Victoria, and Kaitlin, in small frames. One photo posted here is of Charlene and Kaitlin; the other is Victoria. I will miss these girls, all the more for knowing that the childhood they are having now, in a dark apartment with a toothless, alcoholic mother in a town that exudes anything but hope, may be the best time they will ever have.

Bloom

Ireland's main garden show has its eye on the Chelsea Flower Show as both a model and a goal. Having been to both, I would say that the Irish show has a way to go but that Chelsea could watch its back just a bit. Bloom takes place in Phoenix Park on the edge of Dublin, an enormous swath of land that is, at over 700 acres, the largest enclosed urban park in Europe. On a hot bank holiday Monday the park was already jammed when I got there about 10:30. This was virtually the first decent weather that we had had, and everyone was wandering about in tank tops and sandals. The scene reminded me of the parks in London on the first real summer day; the very pale-skinned office workers bask in the sunshine, and you can practically feel the heat of their sunburns rising off of them as you walk by. Irish skin is if anything even more delicate; they should have been handing out sunscreen along with the The Irish Times at the gate.

         My friend Isobel and I have an annual day out at the San Francisco Garden Show, and I was curious to see how our show held up to Bloom. No contest: Bloom sweeps San Francisco right off the garden plot. The first thing I noticed were the number of families. Kids are free at Bloom, and families obviously take full advantage of this. (Otherwise the tickets are very expensive, at €25, or nearly $40, for an adult. This was a splurge of a day for me.) Isobel and I go to the garden show during the week, so we may not see how many kids come on the weekend, but for Dubliners this was clearly a family day; I think the San Francisco demographic is quite different.

         This show had everything. Inside the main hall there were elaborately constructed wedding bowers, but there was also a gorgeous display of produce in carefully constructed mounds. The Irish Craft Council is given major space in the retail hall; ceramists were throwing pots on a small wheel next to the stalls selling garden tools and outdoor ware. Of course there were weavers. I spent a long time talking with the stone carvers, and will try to get to one of their studios before I leave.

         The show gardens, all outdoors, were small miracles of scale and freedom. There were truly teeny plots along one side, dressed up to resemble cottage gardens in an Irish village. There was a replica in small scale of Darwin's garden to mark his 200th birthday, with markers explaining how he grew various weeds to test their survival ability. The best of the larger gardens were characterized by their embrace of the natural, as if the gardeners had come along a month earlier and scattered seed in the wet earth, although of course every inch of these gardens is planned down to the last detail. There was very little of the relentless hardscape plans we always see in San Francisco, since it's in the hardscape that money is made. When there was hardscape here it went all the way: one garden had nothing but long bright red sticks stuck in gravel to represent plants. The winning garden seemed somewhat mundane to me, but that might be because it resembled so many I have seen in San Francisco (and indeed at my only visit to Chelsea, which by the way was with Isobel's sister Tess): careful planting, walkways, the table set up with wine glasses, a water feature or two, and the latest garden must-have, a plant wall. I fell in love with a garden that looked like it had been gently flown in whole from a back garden in the country here, although the one with the chickens was a close second.

         Phoenix Park contains a walled garden of several acres which forms part of the show. It is planted in vegetables except for a massive herbaceous border that is planted in precise mirror image on both sides of the main path. While Isobel would have been appalled at number of plant names I have forgotten, I was able to identify catmint to two women looking at the herbaceous bed. (This might be because the stuff grows practically wild in my front yard, the only plants to manage to look healthy throughout the long dry summer.)

         What San Francisco definitely does not have at its garden show is food. At Bloom there is a building entirely devoted to Irish artisanal food products, nearly every one of them offering generous tastes. I had goat and sheep's cheeses, hummous, pickles, bread, sausages of all sorts, and as many jams, preserves, chutneys and relishes as I could have possibly wanted to eat. There were chocolate bars, truffles, and desserts piled high, and although I tend toward the savory rather than the sweet I did notice that the purveyors of sweets were far less generous with their samples than was everyone else. Perhaps they have found it isn't worth it, as people will buy their biscuits, scones and crumbles anyway.

         After all the tasting, lunch wasn't much of a necessity, which was a pity, since there was a very decent looking glassed-in cafe in the center of the show grounds. (Just outside the cafe was a replica of the new White House vegetable garden, an Irish homage to America's new regime.) What I did eat was a plateful of organic, vegan, raw salads. Every one of the six salads I chose was handmade and incredibly fresh. I loved them all, although I now know that eating raw chickpeas, even well prepared, is not something I should do with my allergies.

         I was of course not able to buy any of the thousands of plants on offer. What I came away with was a small wheel of sheep's cheese, tied with raffia, that still held the imprint of the cheesecloth it had been aged in, a small round of honey and garlic goat's cheese, a container of hummous (about which the sales person said, It should keep for awhile, I made it last night), and a tiny glass jar of sweet pepper relish. I took the sheep's cheese as a hostess gift to the barbecue I was invited to that evening; it was slightly sharp, smooth, and delicious.

Chester Beatty Library

Today Eleanor and her mother Janet invited me on an excursion to the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. The museum is a special love of Janet's, who was introduced to it through a friend who works there. Although I had heard very good things about the museum I had no idea what to expect, especially as the museums here can be a bit disappointing, more promise than delivery.

         The first stop when we got there was the usual film (the Irish accent makes the word film into two syllables--fi-lim) about the founder. I usually dread these introductions, filing them away with headphone commentaries than has everyone moving like lemmings through the galleries and tours on the hop on and off buses, but this time I was glad I watched. Beatty was born in New York in 1875, one year after my Irish grandfather. Like my grandfather, he graduated with a degree in mining engineering, which they both received in 1898. And, like my grandfather, Beatty went off on a great adventure, Beatty to the Colorado mines, my grandfather to the much more adventurous territory of the Yukon. The similarity ends there. Although the film shied away from his background, Beatty clearly was raised in privilege in New York. How many kids were collecting Chinese snuff bottles as a hobby back in 1880? There is no record of what my grandfather might have collected as a child, and certainly his degree from Trinity was no less at least partially the product of privilege (and maleness) than was Beatty's from Columbia, but my grandfather had only a modest family income to help support him. He was also probably not as smart and was certainly not as connected or ambitious as Beatty, who managed to work his way very quickly from a mine hand to being called the King of Copper.

         While my grandfather was dutifully returning to Ireland to take over the family farm in the early 1900s, Beatty was amassing a fortune. He began buying European and Persian manuscripts for reasons that are not fully articulated, then branched out into editions of the Qur'an around 1914. Supposedly he began buying these Qur'ans at Egyptian bazaars; there is a quote in the film that suggests he found that people would happily part with any number of these sacred books for the price of a Chevrolet.

         Beatty amassed what has to be one of the most fabulously varied book collections in the world. Whether he did it by magnanimous purchasing to save fundamental artifacts from certain dereliction or by exploitive actions toward impoverished populations that robbed them of their heritage is a question that will probably remain open. 

         In the first exhibition room, The Arts of the Book, the European collection showed that Beatty went for the splashy over the substantive. The lovely paperback-sized Aldines were dwarfed by the bloated magnificence of huge, elaborately illustrated or flashily bound texts. Upstairs it was a different story. The room, again divided into three sections, this time by religion--Christianity, Islam, and Asian religions (chiefly Buddhism and Hinduism)--held a breathtaking array of artifacts. Beatty managed to collect nearly every important papyrus fragment of the Gospels and the Letters of Paul. Parts of the papyri codices were displayed here under carefully controlled light on purpose-built plexiglass stands. The mounting of the work in the museum overall was some of the best I have ever seen. There were gorgeous binding fragments that showed how the layers of papyrus were piled up to make thick bindings, there were examples of early books of the separate gospels, there were Bibles in Coptic. Despite the low light the artifacts were alive; from time to time there was nearly a trompe l'oeil effect, when the glass partition didn't even appear to be there and it felt like you could touch the work so temptingly close on the other side.

         The other two main areas were equally vibrant. Beatty had, for instance, collected the dharani in its turned wooden container that was commissioned by the Empress Shotoku in the eighth century, a work often referred to as the first instance of printing (from wood and copper blocks) and the first example of mass production. Modest Qur’ans sat alongside thickly gilded folios. At the entrance to the gallery two video monitors showed looped footage of baptism and marriage rituals from the religions represented in the collection, helping to breathe life into the books and artifacts.

         The portrait of Beatty used to advertise the library shows a jovial, well-fed man in the robes of some honorary doctorate. The rare television interview included in the introductory video gives us a smallish man, hatted in the outdoor location, perhaps to give him more height against his very tall female interviewer. His fabulous wealth in the often ruthless enterprises of mining says something as well about the facts of his life. Beatty, a naturalized British citizen, moved to Ireland later in his life because he was fed up with British tax laws. The Irish embraced him, and he was good to the country in return. He became their first honorary citizen, and in thanks he left them this marvelous collection of works, and the money to support it in the style to which he was quite obviously accustomed

A country festival

Dawn comes very early this far north; the sun is up well before 5am. Yesterday it shone through my bedroom curtains with the promise of a heavenly day, and for once the promise was actually delivered. With no walk on tap and no desire to spend a big part of the day driving, I decided to have a lazy Sunday morning with the papers and the laundry, which I could finally hang out to dry with no concern for the rain, then head out to a local festival. The first challenge was finding it. This is not a festival with a website and driving directions. The one road sign I had seen advertised it as being in Carbury, which around here could mean anything. So I started by driving to Nodlaig's, source of all local information; she suggested I head in the direction of Derrinturn, about about 5 miles from her house, and declined to accompany me.

Of course she was right. As soon as I got near Derrinturn there were arrows pointing the way to the All-Ireland Turf Competition and Festival. As I drove deeper into the country I began to wonder about the All-Ireland aspect of the festival. For one thing, if much of Ireland descended on these narrow, pockmarked lanes there would be a serious traffic problem. Finally I got to the the steepest canal bridge I have yet encountered, a terrifying up-and-over ride that, although quite short, meant that it was not possible to see if there was a car coming in the opposite direction. Once safely on the other side, I turned down another thin strip of lane and finally across someone's driveway and straight onto the edge of the peat bog, where I paid a worker the €5 entry cost and parked the car.

In front of me I could see a giant bouncy castle, a midway trailer selling popcorn, and, far in front of where I stood on the edge of the bog, people moving across the brown turf with wooden barrows. This was clearly the most local of festivals, with everyone greeting each other by name, asking after the kids as if they hadn't seen each other at mass in the morning, and yelling over the din of the loudspeaker, which was in the hands of the usual glib and very chatty older man who is always given the job of emcee. When I arrived he was asking people to ante up for mouse bingo, a game which I discovered to my horror is played by releasing a live mouse on a table with numbers on it and paying off the bettor who holds the number where the mouse lands. I'm not sure where the bingo part comes in.

But the main attraction was the bog itself. Nearly 20 teams of turf cutters worked in the heat, cutting turf by hand with a variety of shovels and specialized two-sided rectangular-shaped spades. Each team had three people on it: the cutter, the thrower, and the barrow runner. The goal was principally to cut as much turf as time permitted, but the teams also had to wheel the cut turf bricks to a spot opposite where they were cutting, then spread them carefully so that they could begin to dry. Judging would be based on how much turf was cut, how clean the bricks were, how well spread-out the piles were, and how neat both the piles and the cutaway were left. The best teams would cut all the way down to the water, about 10 or 12 feet from the bog's surface before their time was up.

Cutting turf is hard work. The peat is dense and heavy with moisture, as if you had a plot of highly compacted earth that had to be cleared of any plants, then made into neat bricks that you had only one chance to shape. The cutter was therefore the skilled position on the team, and while the other two positions might trade off, the cutter worked all the way through the competition. The barrow runners seemed like they had the easiest job, since they got to sit while they waited for the thrower to fill the small wooden barrows, with their wooden wheels and no sides. But the barrow runner needed the rest: a full cart, with maybe 15 or 20 of these turf blocks on it, would be incredibly heavy, and the wooden wheels do not glide easily over the muddy surface of the bog.

Despite the grueling work, the teams were for the most part not made up of burly young men. In fact, it was men in their fifties, sixties and even seventies who formed most of the teams. There were a couple of all-women teams, there was a woman well into her seventies who was a cutter for another team, and there were two or three teams of kids learning the ropes from their parents or scout instructors. The cutter on one of the women's teams had on shorts and a tee shirt; when she leaned over to dig, the tattoo on her waist was visible. It was the word fiach, meaning a duty to someone or something.

The Irish have a duty to the turf. It has, along with the potato, provided livelihood for many generations of Irish laborers and farmers. A bog on your property meant an income source as the turf was cut, dried and sold. Many people still heat with turf. In the chilly evenings of April and even May the pungent smell of burning turf lays across the air, like the smell of coal so familiar to me from my childhood but with an earthiness that coal is missing. As someone said yesterday, if the turf were allowed to stay another million years or so it would become coal. 

Nodlaig heats exclusively with turf, which her neighbor delivers to her doorstep now that Charlie is dead. Until he got too fragile to do it, Charlie used to love to foot the turf, or take the partially dried bricks and stack them so that air could circulate. These days the turf is cut by small tractors and shaped into neat logs that are baked dry. Many of the bogs have been decimated by automated techniques. The Bog of Allen, at the extreme edge of which the festival took place, was once an enormous mountain of a bog that extended for close to 400 square miles but is now a shadow of its former noble self. The festival was begun as one very small way to save and pass on the traditional way of harvesting the turf, a touch of the old craft in a pause from mechanical production.

The bogs are also treacherous. People and things disappear in the bog, sinking down fast without leaving a trace of their existence. This has meant that the bogs have preserved historical evidence remarkably well in their completely unoxygenated depths, but they also can hide all manner of nefarious deeds. Falling into a bog is a serious event.

When the teams took their tea break (tea being a euphemism for beer, since bog cutting was as beer-soaked as all activity is in Ireland) I wandered around the festival grounds, which ran to about an acre all told.  I watched the dog shows, four separate categories of dogs--small, medium, large, and mutt--as Sparky, Gypsy, Elizabeth and Rover were walked around the sitting-room-sized ring by their owners. I bought a half-portion of colcannon (potato, onion and cabbage), the only food other than the popcorn and some soft ice cream and candy for sale at the festival. The women prepared the colcannon in huge pots and served it in deep blue plastic bins like the ones the supermarkets pack produce in. I looked at the local jams, but since I had just been given a jar of homemade raspberry preserves I didn't buy any. As I left I noticed, just beyond the edge of the car park, a small area of natural bog. The bog cotton was in full bloom and the field held both the promise of summer and the guarantee of warmth next fall, with none of the bog's treachery visible in the peaceful scene.

kittens

At a quarter to ten this peaceful Sunday evening there was a knock on my door. When I opened it, expecting to have to tell the neighborhood girls--again--that it was not okay to call so late, Claudia, my 6-year-old upstairs neighbor, and her friend showed me their big find; newborn kittens. What, they asked, should they do with them? I had noticed earlier in the evening that Claudia's mother Liz had left on foot, dressed up and heading for what must be an important occasion. I know she doesn't get to go out much, so I was glad to be here for Claudia even though I had no idea what to tell her.

They had two kittens, and said there were two more that they had left behind. The kittens looked like they had just been born. Their eyes were closed and one of them was gently mewing. Claudia told me they might carry them to the pet store in the morning, and asked me if the pet store would take them. Since this is a bank holiday weekend, the chance that the pet store would be open was very slim. I told them I would look online to see what newborn kittens need, and asked them to come back. Claudia and her friend asked me if a cat could have four such differently colored babies. With no personal history of cats (my family's cat allergy has been lifelong) I told them that cats could definitely have several babies that were different colors, hoping that I wasn't misleading them.

A half hour later they were back, this time with all four kittens. One was calico, with lots of buttery yellow in it fur, one was black and white, and two were twins, all grey. In the meantime I had read that what the kittens needed was to be kept warm, that underfeeding was better than overfeeding, and that dehydration was the biggest danger (outside of predators, of course). Mostly I told them what I had said earlier, that the best thing they could do was to put the kittens back where they found them, in hopes that their by now no doubt desperate mother would be looking for them. I got a small box from the boot of my car, and Claudia's friend brought a big towel to line it with. They put the kittens in the box, and the girls and one of Claudia's brothers carefully carried the box back to where they found the kittens in the first place. I told them I would help them in the morning if the kittens were still there, but I have very little hope that they will be. This is a challenging neighborhood for anyone who lives in it, kittens included.

No joy in M'Ville

My friend Isobel reminded me via email that the European Cup soccer (aka football here in Europe) final was this evening. Her team, Manchester United, was playing Barcelona. Barcelona was the underdog; Manchester is an iconic team (think Bend It Like Beckham). Even though my TV here in Edenderry gets very few channels, I was able to watch the game, which transported me to my years and years of Saturday morning AYSO, watching my three children on the field from my folding chair on the sidelines, spare water bottles and baggies full of orange slices in hand. Today I am still trying to grasp the offsides rule, explained to me probably a hundred times by Nora. 

Owen as the eldest was first on the soccer field. He was the kid in the backfield, turning cartwheels or following a butterfly while the action moved around in front of him; occasionally someone would yell, Owen! Watch out! The ball is coming! Did he save any goals? I leave that to the imagination of anyone reading this blog.

Nora was the quick one. At halfback, she showed her dazzling footwork, and was happiest when she was covered with mud; she played all the way through high school, although she didn't like to hurt anyone and was careful not to be too aggressive.  Claire's last year in soccer was with the All Stars. Every time someone scored a goal the coach's wife hit the on button on her boombox: Hey, we're the AllStars, get your game on, go play. This song remains Claire's anthem to me, although I have always applied it to her life as an actor.

None of my kids played for a winning team, so Man U's 2-0 loss tonight was not unfamiliar. Still, I was sad that Isobel's team didn't win, as if I had somehow let her down, in my house in Ireland, not rooting hard enough for the home team.