Monday Morning and the Anger Slipway

We took a walk into town this morning to do a couple of errands. We've been here for 10 days now and I've been outside every day but yesterday with no ill effects at all. No headaches, no nausea, no sinus pressure, no brain fog. I am SO grateful! I have not even needed the allergy meds every day, even though pollen counts have been high.

The heatwave is over for now, they say, and Wednesday could bring rain, glorious rain!

We called into the Tourist Information Centre this morning to get a copy of a walking routes map that we used to have. This was out front:

This is taken from the same spot, but facing across the street. The pier there is newish--I think it was not yet quite finished when we left.

The 'anger slipway' has always made me chuckle. I thought they might have added back the D, but hasn't happened yet!

Here are the last few May books:
A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)
Adam inherits a house from a wealthy relative during the long, hot British summer of 1976, much to the dismay of his father, who expected to inherit. Adam ends up living there over the summer with a friend and some people who just sort of end up there. Bad things happen. The book goes back and forth between that summer and some of the people in the present day. It is bookended by scenes from the perspective of the people who currently live in that house. Throughout the book, the point of view shifts. I picked up this book in a charity shop, and it was in the last pile to be packed, so I read it and Bill put it in the wee free library.

Two For Joy: Scene From a Marriage by Dannie Abse
This is a poetry collection containing a series of poems about the 50+ year marriage of the poet and his wife, who tragically died in a car accident. I came across it in the e-book section of the library website. The subjects of the poems range from courtship to early marriage to long marriage to grief to the first date as a widower. I found them quite moving, if sometimes painful.

Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie
During our move, when all my books were packed, I decided to read an Agatha Christie on my e-reader and ended up choosing this one, which is not one of her better known works. It was an enjoyable read. I know I've read it before and remembered bits of it, but not all.

We're off in a bit to get a few more tasks completed. I hope it's a pleasant start to the week in your neck of the woods!

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Relief!

I've been grateful these last couple of days to be free of the sun! It's been cooler, too, which I am also happy about. We went to get some groceries yesterday afternoon and it was a bit stuffy and on the verge of too warm on the way home, but it's nice and cool in the house. There was a bit of fog or haze or something, but Benbulben in Sligo was still just visible in the distance.

We've spent the day just hanging out. We only have a little bit more to put away now, but tomorrow is another day. It's been nice to have a day to just meander through instead of feeling like we have to get stuff packed or unpacked. I'm sure I'll be switching things around and reorganizing as time goes on, but for now it's good enough.

Here are a couple more books from May:
Unnatural Causes by PD James
Crime novelist Maurice Seton is found in a washed up dingy. he is dead and his hands have been cut off. Adam Dalgliesh happens to be right on the spot, visiting his aunt. he is not in charge of the case, since it’s not his jurisdiction, but he investigates anyway. This book was originally published in 1967. The edition I had (picked up from a charity shop) was published in 1989 or thereabouts--I was surprised at the strange mistakes in it--both grammatical and typographical. I didn’t engage much with this book, but it could have been that I was a little distracted, since I read it while we were packing to move house.

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China By Jung Chang
I’d read the author’s book, Wild Swans, a few years ago and really liked it. I’d also heard her talking about this one on a podcast around the same time, and when I saw it at a charity shop, I picked it up. I decided to read it before we left so I could have one thing less to carry. I found this book to be very informative. It is exactly as the title describes. Cixi had been a concubine to the emperor, and had a son who took over at the age of five. Cixi and the empress, who were great friends and remained so for decades, launched a successful coup to seize power from the regents who had been appointed by the emperor on his death bed. Technically, she was ruling on her son’s behalf, and when he died, she adopted her nephew and continued to rule. During her decades in power, she ushered in a good many reforms and modernizations, although there were some setbacks as well. I get the sense that the author may take a somewhat different view than most historians. Coincidentally, at the time I was reading this, I discovered a 20-episode podcast on BBC Radio 4 called Chinese Characters. each episode is about 15 minutes and taken together, the aim is to tell the story of China by telling the stories of Chinese lives. I downloaded them and am listening to a couple at a time. I will be curious to see how Cixi is discussed and whether it is different than how she is portrayed in this book.

I hope you're having a relaxing day, too.

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Shampoo Sling

This morning, faced with a shampoo issue, I told Bill that there was no need for concern, because this is a house with yarn and I know how to use it! I grabbed a wee scrap ball of kitchen cotton and a 6.5mm crochet hook and in a few minutes, whipped up a shampoo sling.

 We have a very small shower.

It's about the size of a phone booth (remember those?)--possibly slightly smaller. So we bought our bottle of shampoo and stuck it in a corner. But then I discovered that I did not have enough room to bend down and pick it up when I needed it, so I turned off the water (this is a good electric shower, so no bother about that), opened the door, and backed my ample behind out so I could reach it. Then I stuck the bottle on top of the electric shower unit. Bill didn't like it there, because he was concerned that it would slip off and fall on our toes, which we both have some issues with anyway. It's not like there's a lot of room to jump out of the way! The more we used it, the more slippery the bottle got and I could see that he was right. Of course, I assumed that yarn would somehow provide an answer, so I began to ponder. I considered making a bag to hang off of the piece that holds the shower head, but it seemed like the shampoo bottle would be too heavy. Then I thought of the little spritz bottles that came with me from the other house. Someone who lived there before us left a box stuffed full of them and, thinking they might come in handy, I took a few with me. I won't be spritzing shampoo, but I've filled the small bottle and we can simply remove the cap as needed. It's quite light, so I could make the shampoo sling for it and solve our problem. I knew yarn was the answer! It so often is.

The other day, I took some more scrap cotton and the same 6.5 mm hook and made a small pouch to hang off one of the hooks attached to the back of the kitchen door. The under sink cupboard is small, so I keep my tea towels in a canvas bag on a hook and wanted a smaller pouch for the dishcloths. It serves the purpose well.

I do love my scraps.

Here are a couple more books that I read in May. I find that when I have a lot going on, my reading time is even more important to me, so I was particularly grateful to have so many books to choose from. Since we moved in stages, there were times when I wanted to be packing or doing something towards our departure, but couldn't yet. During those times when I was antsy, having a book to get stuck in was an extremely enjoyable way to focus my mind on something other than what I would pack next and how. At this point in the month, I'd decided to read some books that I'd picked up at charity shops and did not plan to keep, so I read them and we either stuck them in the wee free library or brought them to a charity shop.

The Saint Zita Society by Ruth Rendell
The ‘society’ of the title is a group of people who do service work for the well-off people who live on a street in London. Their lives are intertwined and there are secrets, mishaps, quirky characters, and a guy who feels he has to eliminate the people hosting bad spirits.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
This is a novel based on the true story of Agnes Manusdottir, the last person executed in Iceland in around 1830. As she awaits execution, she is sent to a farm where she engages in household and farm labour. At first the family is very upset to have a murdered there, but as she lives with the, works with them, and shares her story with the priest assigned to save her soul (which they cannot help but overhear), their feelings change. I found this book heartbreaking, gripping, and well worth reading.

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Slow Going and More May Books

We are slowly creating order out of chaos as we get our stuff put away. It's the most summery summer we've experienced in Ireland and that is slowing me down. But I make some progress each day and one week after we moved in, we're getting there. I made the Friday night pizza for the first time in a few weeks--the bread machine was in the first load we brought down. I have it on a TV cart in the kitchen, along with the yoghurt maker and slow cooker and some cookbooks. I'd asked for the TV to be removed before we moved in and the letting agent asked if I wanted the cart. I did. It's coming in handy. I'll do some more organising tomorrow and I might just leave it all alone on Sunday and spend the day reading and stitching. I'll see what I feel like.

Here's a bit about a couple of books I read last month:
The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon
This is the first novel by this author. I requested it after reading her second, Three Things About Elsie. Like that book, this one was full of sentences and paragraphs that made me stop and read them again. Here are a couple of examples:

‘July had found its fiercest day yet. The sky was ironed into an acid blue, and even the clouds had fallen from the edges, leaving a faultless page of summer above our heads. Even so, there were those who still nurtured mistrust. We walked past cardigans draped across elbows and raincoats bundled into shopping bags, and one woman who carried an umbrella wedged into her armpit, like artillery. It seemed that people couldn’t quite let go of the weather, and felt the need to carry every form of it around with them, at all times, for safekeeping.’ (p 157)

As I recall, I pulled out a paragraph about September when I read the Elsie book--she’s good at describing seasons! Then there was this, about words and a 10-year-old girl.

‘I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owner of you.’ (p240)

The story revolves around The Avenue, an English suburban estate, and the community of people who live there. Mrs Creasy, one of the residents, goes missing one hot July day in 1976, which causes great distress to the others, for many different reasons. As one of them pointed out, Margaret Creasy knew all their secrets, and when she went , they went with her. Grace and Tilly are 10-year-old best friends who spend a lot of time with a neighbour, Mrs Morton. One day, they attend church with her and Grace tries to talk to the vicar about god. He tells her that god is everywhere and somehow, Grace associates this with Mrs Creasy. She and Tilly decide to investigate, sure that if they can find out which house on The Avenue is where god is, they will also find Mrs Creasy. They start calling on the people in their homes and they start to uncover things that they often do not quite understand, although Grace, who considers herself the more sophisticated of the two, is often surprised by Tilly’s insights. It is Tilly who decides, while listening to the vicar speak at a funeral, that god has divided people into goats and sheep--but how to tell who is which? This is a question that recurs for Tilly, thus the title of the book.

The book is not completely from the point of view of the girls--it moves around The Avenue and each section tells a story from another person’s perspective. Within these sections, there are sort of subsections that take us back to the end of 1967, when a big event happened on The Avenue. Interestingly, while the 1976 narrative is moving forwards in time, from the end of June to the end of August, the 1967 narrative moves backwards. The first time we read about 1967, it is a few days before Christmas, and as each person remembers back to that time, it is a little bit earlier. Finally, we learn what Mrs Morton remembers about a day in early November, 1967.

I quite liked this book and I will be watching out for future novels by this author.

Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order) by Bridget Quinn with Illustrations by Lisa Congdon
This is a collection of 15 short essays about the work and lives of artists, some of whom have been overlooked and are not so well-known in art history. Each artist is depicted by the illustrator at the beginning of their section. I loved this book. I learned a lot and enjoyed reading about these women, even if I was not always in love with their art. That said, I fell in love with Ruth Asawa’s hanging chain mail baskets. 

It seems like such a long time ago that I read these books! As Bill pointed out earlier today, it hasn't even been a month since we gave notice at our old place. Once we did, things got a little busy. It will be nice to get everything put away and organised properly, but it's also nice to not have to rush.

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Scenes from the Bus: Letterkenny to Killybegs

We had to make a quick run to Letterkenny this morning and we managed to make the early bus home. I love looking out the window on these journeys--the landscape through which we move is so beautiful and gives me such a feeling of peace.

I took a few snaps out the window. There will be some odd reflections in some because of this, but here they are anyway.

between Letterkenny and Fintown

just past Fintown

just past Fintown

stacked turf between Fintown and Glenties

colourful scene on Main St, Glenties

fast food truck in Ardara--I've not eaten food from here, but the name is cute

Also, since we were in transition at the end of May/beginning of June, I didn't do my monthly books post. I'll add a couple to the end of the next several posts.

The Murder Room by PD James
This is, I think, the penultimate Adam Dalgliesh book in which he and his team investigate a death at a small private museum devoted to the the UK in the years between the world wars. One of the rooms is filled with exhibits about notorious murders that took place during that time so it is nicknamed The Murder Room. The museum is owned by three siblings--it has been passed down through the family--but there is a stipulation that when a new lease is to be signed, all must agree. As the book opens, it is time to consider the new lease, but one of the siblings does not agree that the museum should continue, in spite of the plans the other two have for making changes and improvements.

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari
A friend sent me a blurb about this book and it piqued my interest, so I requested it from the library. I do not have a background in psychology, but from my anthropological perspective, it has seemed to me for a long time that people living in consumer capitalist systems are living in cultures which are not adaptive, in many ways, to human well-being. High rates of depression do not, therefore, seem surprising. I’ve also suffered from serious depression myself, and know to expect my annual depression, which is not as severe as depression that I've experienced in the past, every spring. This lasts through summer. So I was interested when I read that this author (who grew up in the UK) argues that the usual story told by medical professionals about depression is wrong. He became interested in the topic because he suffers from depression and started taking medication for it when he was a teenager. He says he became something of an evangelist, encouraging friends to get prescriptions, too. As time went on, he had to increase the dose, but he was still a believer. One day his therapist said he was surprised that Johann felt they were working, because he still seemed depressed. Johann had an attitude of, as he puts it, ‘pissy superiority.’ The therapist brought it up again at various times and one day, the idea stuck. So the author began to investigate the research regarding depression and he went to various parts of the world talking to the researchers. He makes a convincing case that there is much about our societies and cultures that leads to depression. I am uncomfortable stating that these things are always the cause of depression and that it is never a result of brain chemistry--I simply do not know enough about it from that perspective. But it was a worthwhile read that taught me a lot and gave me new ways to think about my own experiences and relationship with depression.

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Finishing Up Some Odds and Ends

Tomorrow is our last day in Moville, so we're tidying up the loose ends. Today someone from the letting agent's office stopped by to look around. Bill is off to recycle bottles and tins. I am creating meals from the odds and ends left in freezer, fridge, and cupboards. Everything but what we'll need up until the last minute is packed. Laundry is hanging to dry--it's quick in this heat. This afternoon, I managed to finish the book I was reading so it can go into a charity shop box and it's one less thing to carry. I also finished a pair of socks for Bill that I'd been working on off and on for months.

Nice autumn colours, which allowed me to daydream about cooler weather and far less sun. I'll be casting on for a pair for me later in the week, when I am reunited with my yarn. I am going to do a slouchy cuff, I think, but not sure yet about what sort of design, if any, I'll use for the instep.

I cast on 68 stitches with US size 1 needles and did a 2x2 rib until the cuff was as long as I wanted. I switched to US size 0 needles, starting at the heel flap and for the rest of the sock. On the gusset decreases, I stopped when I had 72 stitches. My preferred method for sock making is to use 3 double pointed needles with a 4th working needle, so in this case, I had 19 stitches on needles 1 and 3 and 34 stitches for the instep on needle two. I continued with the 2x2 rib for the instep until it was time for the toe decreases, when I knitted around to the end, doing the star toe.

Tonight I plan to crochet and listen to podcasts, then read the novel I have on the go--hopefully I can finish that, too, and leave it in Moville. I will be by a window, hoping for a breeze. I hope you have some relaxing and peaceful moments in your day, too--and a nice breeze. 😊

.

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Flowers Loving the Sun

It is hot here--hot and sunny. I'm not keen on that sort of thing, but the beautiful flowers blooming in Killybegs yesterday clearly are!

We made a quick trip there yesterday and returned to Moville today. On the way there, we had time in Letterkenny, so Bill stayed with our bags while I went to a nearby grocery store to pick up some cheese, crackers, and hummus for lunch. I passed this anti-cafe.

I am not sure in what ways this cafe is anti, but there it is--hopefully people use it.

After I got back, it was Bill's turn for a wander, so I stayed with the bags. The bus pulled up an hour earlier than I expected it and I wondered whether they'd changed the timetable, so when the driver got out, I walked over and asked him if the bus to Killybegs still leaves at 11. 'Aye, it does,' he said. Then he glanced over and saw my bags. 'Want to put the bags in the boot?' he asked. I said that would be great and started bringing them over. He placed them in the boot and went off for his break.

We took the same bus driven by the same guy back to Letterkenny this morning. There were two women talking to one another--one in front of us and one across the aisle from her. But grew up in England, but had parents born in Ireland and they live here now. They chatted about things and foods they missed and stuff like that. I was finding their conversation and ways of speaking quite interesting--they were not speaking quietly. At one point, I had the opportunity to ponder the arrogance and rudeness of people who think that being on a small bus mostly full of Irish people is a good time to discuss, rather loudly, everything you find annoying about Irish people!

I hope that this is a good day in your neck of the woods!

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