Guided tour

We had a week in Tramore minding Pat the Salt. On Sunday, he was settled after breakfast, so we snuck out for a brisk walk out along the Doneraile cliff-tops and down to Tramore Cove. 

Pat's knees cannot really bear weight anymore, so there was no danger of him doing runner or going up to the Garda barracks to cadge a lift to Áras an Uachtaráin. Even falling out of bed would be a bit of a stretch in his current condition. Some of us are in training [got the t-shirt!!] for Darkness into Light for Pieta House on Sat 11th May . . . cue Dawn ♪ ♫ ♩ Walk. So 'brisk' was the walking.

The tide was in when we got to the wee harbour, and it was too gorgeous not to bide a wee in the sun looking out across the bay and back at the cliffs. On the way back up the hill we paused at the RNLI station and peered in the windows to scope out the zodiac within.

You will surely want to do the jigsaw of this picture!
As we turned away we encountered a couple with a canoe on a trolley and they invited us in for a proper look! Hail and well met Noirin and Fergal, who are part of the RNLI team as well as canoeists. It was, of course, super interesting to see everything and have some parts of the kit explained by folks who had gone out on many a shout. I think I can share that they have a matching kettle and toaster in the same livery as the zodiac. 

On the way back, the Coast Guard were doing a practice Cliff Rescue.

TIL that multiple sledge-hammers are part of the standard kit along with ropes, stretchers, band-aids, splints . . . like with television: [insert TV star here] is supported by the AD, best boy, continuity, director, ELT, gaffer, hair&makeup, key-grip, locations, PA, wardrobe. The star of cliff rescue is probably Abby Abseil but the ropes are each secured by six [6] steel spikes driven into the turf. I'm imagining there is a 🔨🔨 John Henry like scene 🔨🔨 at the cliff top when so many spikes must be hammered home before anyone can start the Rescue.  

Because nautical things have to come in Threes, I'll note that it was exactly 77 years since Thor Heyerdahl had set out from Peru in Kon-Tiki to people the Pacific.
It's not everyday I get so much excitement.

Vote early and vote often

The head quote is attributed variously to three Characters from Chicago: Al Capone, his partner-in-crime Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson or Mayor Richard M. Daley. The latter not to be confused with his son Mayor Richard M. Daley who also headed the city for 20 years.

We came back to Ireland in 1990, having spent the entirety of the 80s recession in the US then UK. The colour of my passport was inconsequential because my sense of identity was nailed to the masthead of the great wonderful Project Europe that became the EU. After the débacle of Brexit, like far too many non-dom Brits, I got all my paper ducks in a row and vindicated my rights to citizenship in 2018. It took a year of time and a mort o' money but my FBR [Foreign Birth Registry] cert came in the post with the sheaf of birth, marriage and death certificates I'd submitted for the FBR audit trail.

A couple of years ago, and still today, we were encouraged to update our details on voter.ie, the electronic register of voting rights. I have issues with my birthday because I appeared just after midnight during British Summer Time [clocks forward] and so am astrologically born the day before. And I have issues with Eircode. But I am also severely institutionalised, so I obeyed and submitted the details. I was a little hacked off when I didn't get a polling card in the run up to the Referendum of March 2024, which made an attempt to reduce the rights of women, under the guise of asserting equality.

I put updating the register and lack of polling card together and went online to verify that a) although the local county council [voting registerers] talks to MyGov.ie [social welfare, tax, driving licences] b) MyGov doesn't talk to the Dept Foreign Affairs which is the gatekeeper of the FBR. And sure enough my PPSN+DoB+Eircode = Nationality, UK. In April, I set to rectifying my status. For voting, it is straight forward: 

• download ERF1.pdf
  
• fill in the boxes
  
• sign 
• submit with photocopy of naturalization papers or FBR

Job done:

Changing nationality seemed to be straight forward after I phoned MyGov central in Carrick-on-Shannon: go to any local office of the Social Welfare/MyGov with your paperwork - you may need to make an appointment.

Accordingly, I phoned the nearest office in B'town (where I had been photographed and whence I had  acquired my Social Welfare = Free Travel card). I explained why I wanted an appointment and got back a wave of alarum and despondency. No no no, Bob, this FBR you're talking about, that won't do at all, you're only at the beginning of a long process of naturalization, when you've got your naturalization papers come back to me. That was but a glitch because the main task [Votes for Olds!] was in train for resolution. But after lunch I phoned Carrick-onShannon again . . .

. . . and got Declan. Yes yes yes, Bob, sure your grandparents were born in Ireland, of course your nationality should be Irish; you make a copy of that FBR and send it to me declan.goodman@welfare.ie and I'll sort it out for you. I should be able to do it this afternoon but sure amn't I in the office tomorrow?

Two hours later Declan emails Thanks for the document, that’s done now.  I also updated your address to Include your Eircode. We still live in a really small country where legacy employees of The State have time to give individual attention to small problems. 10+ years ago, as designated driver, I spend some hours over several visits in ArdKeen hospital. One of the public facing employees had a job which seemed to involve conducting patients and their files from the ante-room of the Xray department into the waiting-room of the Xray department. You may be sure that as ArdKeen puffed itself up to Waterford University Hospital and this kindly lady [was] retired, she wasn't replaced. More paper, more cross-checks, more audits, less care-and-attention for Jo Poiblí.

Go on you must be joking

At the mill with boons

• Woodies
  
• 2 years ago Beau Miles planted 1400 whips; check-in time!
  
• milling and turning storm fallen timber 
• Judgement of Paris by Rubens is being restored
• Hügelkultur: log filler for raised beds.
  
• Plywood made in Pakistan 
• History and Folklore
• Andrew A1 Doherty talks Costa na Déise
• Templeludigan fairy whiskey
  
• Phylogeny of painting: spot the diff in Hokusai [whom prev] 
• See [R] for one of the other 36 Views of Mt Fuji
• Pot roast - Chesterton's Fence - Skeuomorphy - Primo's Onion - Five Monkeys . . . MeFi thread about historical inertia
  
• ♬ ♪ ♫ ♩
• Idris Sardi is 10 years dead today
• Во поле берёза стояла
  
• Grace Cummings - Sweet Matilda
• Cantadores de Alenejo
• Grândola Vila Morena - Amália Rodrigues. Thursday 25th April was the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. Playing this song on the wireless just after midnight was the signal that the Coup was ON. More? 45m on The Rest is History
• Biodiverse Belfast Sink in the English Peak District [location location] 
  

Scenic Routes

Did I mention being Grand Marshal of the Scullogue Gap last weekend? I did. The night before, I threw together a steward's pack incuding a  HiViz  jacket. Imagine my mortification when I arrived en poste to find I had snagged a  HiViz  bolero [R] from the coat-rack. I'd been dancing at the same cross-roads 5 years previous when I had to make my own signs, this time signage was a lot more professional because of sponsorship by Aptus the broadband people. We all have a tendency to big up our contributions to any common venture but my station was key because it was where the shorter route-options [50km and 80km] turned for home while the 100km and 140km hard-chaws headed for the full circuit of Mt Leinster.

It was a brilliant sunny day with just enough chill on the breeze to prevent overheating - sunscreen defo advisable. I got to see a poor bloody buzzard Buteo buteo being hunted off the premises by a pair of crows Corvus spp. They say that 360 people had registered for the Blackstairs Cycling Challenge and it seems that €17,100 has been raised for the cause. You'd think that everyone would be happy, but I heard two separate tales of angry car-drivers taking the trouble to roll down their windows and curse at the cyclists for getting in my !&*%ing way, can't you proles see I have an Audi? which really helps people who might be a bit wobbly in the saddle. I was contracted to Be There from 10:30 to 12:30 for the anxious [nobody needed my spanners, tire-pump or blister plasters] because the signs were many, large and self-explanatory. But a really enthusiastic volunteer swung by on the dot of 12:30 and scooped all the signs into the back of his van. I was asked to hang on for a bit because there were known stragglers who by definition were less fit and more anxious. It would be a propaganda fail if such people were to miss 'my' crucial turn for home and get lost in the wilds of Wexford.

It was thus 13:30 before I Escape!ed and headed off for Costa na Déise. I was in a bit of a rush because family were >!surprise!< over from England. But less than 5km into my journey South, I got caught behind three [3] elderly but spruced up tractors. I hung loose reckoning they could be over-taken at the Ballinlug Long Straight. But when we finally reached this zoooomportunity, the long straight was old red tractors as far as the eye could see. I did a U-eee and nosed along the Scenic Route through Askinvillar Rathduff Ballygibbon Ballindoney Balligalvert Templeludigan and back to the known path at Ballywilliam. I've never been to or through Templeludigan (St Joachim's church! 1909 National School! ball-alley!) before, so [✓] to that.

Had a wonderful time with the family in Trá Mhór, including some care-and-attention for Pat the Salt as he lurches towards his 99th birthday. We came away at 15:50 on the Monday - I R Retire, so can go home when it suits. I had been apprised by my pal Russ that Belview Port is a designated landing point for 80m wind-turbine blades. In February, he suggested I look out for changes to roundabouts in the area to allow these monsters to traverse a national road network originally designed for the ass-and-cart. I had also noted the flashing signs  Luffany works 22/04 to 26/04 expect delays . How and ever, we found ourselves joining a 3km tail-back on the N25 Waterford Ring-Road. Of all the ways to approach Luffany at the N end of said Ring-Road, this is the worst because there is an unsurmountable median strip and no turn offs to winkly side-roads. We endured the stop-go car park in a fug of diesel for an hour but at least The Grape didn't boil over and it wasn't hosing rain. We're heading South again today . . . via Thomastown, Co Kilkenny, another Scenic Route. But not so Scenic as the back-road from New Ross to Waterford by Glenmore and Slieverue [R with more tractors].

Aristotle all dressed up

It's hard to credit that Raphael of Urbino has been dead for 500 years, because we can imagine meeting him swapping pigments with Michelangelo of Firenze and Leonardo of Vinci as they waited for the Pope to see them. The fact that Raphael died at the age of 37 from infection and bloodletting? Not so much.

One of Raphael's most notable and most copied works is his School of Athens which was commissioned by Pope Julius and executed on a wall in the Vatican between 1509 and 1511. It's BIG (5m x 7.7m) and detailed. The conceit was to represent the greatest thinkers of the Classical world as a reminder the papal court to do better. It was a massive cos-play for Raphael and his pals: discarding their doublets and cod-pieces and striking a pose wrapped in sheets or chitons. At the time, it would have been a hoot, because viewers could make facetious comments about their mate Michelangelo as . . . Heraclitus [bloborecent]. Those classically educated viewers would also have made a much better fist of recognising the iconography of the Ancients. My Mum got to be pretty good on the iconography of saints having spent her retirement years cruising between cathedrals and museums. Doing the who's who (both the philosophers and the models) on The School of Athens been an on-going puzzle for art-historians to wrestle over ever since. Here's one attempt - hint Geocentrist Ptolemy is holding the globe?

But, despite the skirts, they're all . . . men.

In our times there exists a self-appointed coven of crones Na Cailleacha who are venerable and arty and like to hang out together. I've mentioned cailleach as a slightly scary, respectful term for a generally undervalued segment of society. Tremble also at Sprakkar - an Icelandic equivalent. From Spring 2024, this collective decided that it would be grand jape to make a tableau vivant of The School of Athens with only women in the cos-play. Nice touches: replacing Euclid's chalk-board with a black laptop [above R]. Of course they strove to be consciously diverse and inclusive within the women space. Face it, they'd have been hard put to find 40 white Irish female philosophers, all available for a specific weekday morning in March, to populate their School of Hibernia.

And, contra Raphael and Julius II, an identification key has been included for posterity. They borrowed the Museum Building from TCD because of the steps and pilasters and put on a spiffy lunch so that everyone involved could mingle and network afterwards. Getting Mary Robinson, Ireland's first F Uachtarán, and Linda Doyle, TCD's first F Provost, to fill the robes of Plato and Aristotle was a coup. Some of the models have appeared in the Blob before. I haven't gotten round to writing up Dau.II's saxophone teacher / cailleach . . . yet. The fluffy white representations of Artemis/Diana/Medb and Athena/Minerva/Brigid/ standing on the newel posts at the rear are the work of Helen "Cailleach" Comerford who died suddenly a couple of weeks later
 
Here's a couple of minutes of RTE launching the project.

Kent KaBOOM!

 I was born in Dover in 1954; because my mother was born there in 1920 and went home to deliver her sproggs. I never had any sense that Dover was my home-place, not least because the family up-stakes 3 months later when my naval father was posted elsewhere. 

12 years later there was a window-rattling explosion 6 km off the coast of Folkstone, the town next door.  Marine salvers had been contracted to remove the wreck of Polish registered liberty ship SS Kielce [L]. The Kielce had been carrying a cargo of munitions from Southampton to Bremerhaven in March 1946 when, in crap weather, at night, she collided with the steamer Lombardy and sank without loss of life. Resting on the seabed in 30m of water, the wreck wasn't a hazard to shipping; although I bet there were pissed off trawlermen when their gear snagged on on the sticky-out metal bits. 

So the Folkestone Salvage Company thought it was be a good idea to carry out some controlled underwater explosions to reduce the wreck to smaller lumps to facilitate its removal. The third such detonation ignited part of the original cargo - still fizzy after 20 years in saltwater. What's left of the wreck is now 6m below grade in its very own crater. Ordnance experts afterwards estimated at a 2-kilotonne explosion. At least the Kielce had been carrying, like, bullets and incendiary bombs rather some fancy chemical weapons of mass destruction. Needless to say, nobody was in a gung-ho hurry to finish the salvage job; nor yet authorize a further attempt. Accordingly Kielce lies conveniently close to shore and ordinary folks go wreck-diving there on the reg'lar. Thus Callum Beveridge: dived this site a few years ago before being aware of its history. Must be the only wreck I've ever dived where the top of the wreck is deeper than the surrounding seabed. It sits in a 6m depression and the seabed is littered with bent and twisted munitions inc .50 cal browning rounds.

You may be sure that the Kielce experience informed the continuing decision to Do Nothing about the wreck of SS Richard Montgomery off the other side of the county. In 1966, folk were allowed to have a go without being completely fettered by authorizations, risk-asssessments and mighty insurance premiums. Having a go meant not warning people away from the windows of the seafront B&Bs and hotels. Having a go meant allowing Philip Kaye a cross-channel swimmer to be in the water 3km from the wreck site when the balloon went up. Shocked, shocked 'e woz: "I got a pain in my head and the sensation of being beaten with dozens of sticks, I never saw the explosion, but the tremors were terrific. I had a pins-and-needles effect for several minutes."

Aprille shouers

Mish-mash bish-bash

• Strange Meeting yest. GdauII was on the train to Waterford. Accordingly I got into a dhoti so that a ChaiWallah could meet the train at B.town, half way thru the trip. Kids don't want chai; they want a packet of crisps, a couple of flapjacks and money. Well maybe not, but that's what this one got.
  
• ♩ ♬ ♫ ♪
  
• Wayfaring à capella stranger
• Wild Mountain thyme time 
• Ēriks Ešenvalds - O Salutaris Hostia
  
• Glen Hansard Bird of Sorrow
  
• Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - neologisms a tad more profound than Liff or Sniglets 
• William Drake’s 17thC commonplace book rebound
  
• Rubber duck took 8 years to get from Dublin to Orkney 
• Letting the R. Nar flow unfettered
• UCL has an anechoic chamber - wha'? wha'? 
• Forward planning science teacher, Rochester NY Eclipse Division
• Herbert Fingarette philosopher on death and being 97
• Today. I'm a volunteer steward / marshal / provost / guide / sign-post for The Blackstairs Cycle Challenge. The Blob sez my last such session was 5 years ago. This time I'm bringing a pump, spanners, a HiViz jacket, string, duck-tape . . .