Down The Rocky Road – How Things Have Changed

Irish skies are epic

On Wednesday 27 August, Milda had her first day at school; Livia and Dainoris would follow the day after. Livia’s scholar history has been one of trial and abject failure time and time again. In the beginning, she went to a miserable school in Germany whose team leader, despite the qualifications, was about as suitable for the job as a leopard guarding a chicken coop. I even caught one of the teachers verbally berating a three-year-old in the corridor for wanting to go to the toilet while the class was reading. So that wasn’t really Livia’s fault, but it certainly made her determined not to speak a word of German.

After a happy period in a delightful crèche in Luxembourg, the rest of the time was miserable for her. All the private schools in Luxembourg and Spain were obsessed with “excellence” and to hell with special needs. I used to be a strong advocate for private schools, but having seen the transactional, Darwinian way they go about providing education, I have absolutely no sympathy fuel left in the tank for them. Every private school I have seen advertises that they have departments to handle children with special needs, but in reality this is usually an external semi-qualified self-employed child psychologist who couldn’t find a practice that would hire them. They come for a couple of hours a week and do a little round to check if the kids on the watch list are starting to behave like everyone else.

We therefore had a low bar, regarding expectations. On the morning of Livia’s first day at school, she did a lot of protesting, wailing, writhing and hiding. She was very nervous almost to the point of hyperventilation. This was to be expected, considering the way she had been misunderstood and mistreated in schools. One would have thought that, by now, the education world had understood that not every child learns at the same pace and some need a little extra help. The special needs methods and policies in many countries neither meet the requirements, nor do they reflect the realities in society.

First day of school

So it came as a complete surprise when Livia came hope with a smile on her face and a few words about her day. That hasn’t happened very often. In her last school in Spain, although the staff tried their best, Livia often came home a complete mess. Some days she would shout for minutes at a time about her teacher that she hated her and hated the kids.

But now, we were starting to see signs that she might actually settle down and get along. The head of the school, a woman with a mission and a heart as wide as the majestic River Shannon, has taken more steps in the past two months than all Livia’s other schools combined. She got in touch with the appropriate services, then called us in to fill in an application form for government assistance. Not only that, she made sure the process got sped up by putting in a few words with the right people. Livia still has many, many issues, but the first priority – providing the right learning environment for her – has been emphatically fulfilled. She comes home every evening with a smile on her face and she talks and talks and talks: things that, only six months ago, would have been inconceivable.

We are awaiting the full acceptance and onboarding process, but things are on the move, and that is an achievement in itself.

Dainoris is developing his own character now, too. He is an exceptional spatial designer – he will take everything in the house that isn’t nailed down and make some architectural masterpiece out of it: castles, especially, but also holiday houses with swimming pools and rooftop terraces. He can name a lot of dinosaurs and animals, and he can draw them incredibly well. He enjoys school and loves to give us some small mathematics exercises.

Milda is a charming young lady who loves a chat. For her age, she is an adventurous eater – give her salads, curries, vegetables, cheese varieties, and she will be your most enjoyable lunch partner. She is very helpful, as is her brother, but she can tire easily. She and Dainoris can play for hours in various roleplaying games, sometimes with Livia. At school in general, she is very advanced for her age, and her handwriting is incredibly neat.

Another important thing the school principal did was to give us the contact details of a very kind after-school childminder. Originally from Cork, living in a cottage 10 minutes away with a lovely shaded garden, two sheepdogs, a rabbit and a husband with very green fingers, Aoife looks after Dainoris and Milda four days a week. They finish school an hour earlier than Livia, meaning I would have to hang around in town or do a lot of driving in the middle of the afternoon.

Athlone Castle

I go to pick Livia up, and she has a quiet time each afternoon before we all jump in the car and go to get her siblings at just before 6pm. Aoife has a quiet, calming demeanour and is a really good communicator. There are several other children who come to her each day, and she has so many things to play with, that Livia has declared Aoife’s house is her favourite place.

At the back of Aoife’s cottage, there is a terrific glass-festooned extension made of SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) with a lot of light and nature right outside. It’s like having the garden as your wallpaper. I will be copying this once we get the main house in order.

Over the last few weeks, we have been gathering materials and booking builders, ready to get reconstruction started in the house over the coming weeks. The first thing we have accomplished is the hearth. It had a ridiculously heavy Stanley Range sitting in front of some hideous tiles that had covered a concrete mess over the original fireplace. I took full responsibility for the decision to unblock the whole thing and let the house breathe again.

Although I was aware anything was possible, what I didn’t expect was that it would be such a mess. I smashed the tiles off, and tried to clear the fireplace, but it wasn’t budging with the tools I had. So I called the chimney sweep. He arrived the next morning with the idea he’d be home by lunchtime. Nope. The entire chimney stack was filled in with all types of rock, creosote and soot. It took him two full days to empty the whole thing.

We removed a 120kg Stanley Range

All this fell out of the chimney - several barrowsful had already been taken out

Despite all the work, it was worth it, because we now have an extra metre and a half, plus a rather splendid stone fireplace. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone would think filling in a chimney in that way and bricking up a lovely noble-looking fireplace was a good idea. Not only is the brickwork of the hearth beautifully curved, it’s also got some delightful lettering on some of the stones. A lick of fireproof black gloss paint has given it new life, and we also placed four square flagstones in front, ready for the new stove to sit on. The item we bought is a 120-kilo leviathan with a glass-fronted door, an oven and a cooking top in case we have a post-storm power cut similar to the one last winter that lasted in some areas for three weeks.

After that is fitted, we hope by the end of November to be able to get a bathroom and utility room installed in the back of the house. Soon after, the plan is to cover the ceilings in the main house with a decent layer of insulation, and then we will save furiously for a kitchen to go in a beautifully bright room next to the bathroom, where the water supply is. I would also like to break the window down and add a double door to the kitchen, so that it becomes the main point of entry from what will be the garden.

I hope that part will be ready by the spring. While all this is going on, in our spare time, we hope to get the bedrooms ready so that we can move into the house proper. After two and a half years with our possessions in storage, we are becoming a little weary of not being in full control of our own lives right now. But hopefully, by the late spring, we can send for them and repopulate the house with all the familiar possessions we know and love: the artworks we hold dear, the books we read and then placed in the library we built back in Saarburg, the toys and scooters, the remainder of the clothes, the heirlooms, the cutlery, the porcelain, the familiar furniture, the trinkets, the pots and pans, and all the other household stuff we haven’t been able to use since June 2023.

The two things I will never get back are my lovely garden and my beautiful covered terrace. I have a lot more land now, and I intend to turn it into a haven for wildlife, just like I did in Saarburg, but this will take time. In the meantime, I have plans for a new covered terrace but this will need special materials to survive the Atlantic storms.

Drumcard, Co. Fermanagh

Lough Macnean, Fermanagh

The one thing I have managed to recoup is the car. When we arrived in Dublin on 30 June, the car hire company had reserved a modest medium-sized SUV for us. When the employee saw the luggage we had (3 huge suitcases and 9 sports bags), he uttered the most obvious statement: “that ain’t gonna fit in the car I reserved for you.” So he upgraded us for free to a huge VW Tayron. It was an absolute monster, but it took all our stuff. We kept it for about 4 weeks, and asked if we could keep it for another few weeks while we sorted out a car.

Not having a credit history in Ireland meant it was going to be rather difficult to get a new one. In Cavan, the car hire has an outlet, and having taken the VW back in August, swapping it for a Skoda Kamiq, we decided we needed to buy a car outright: it was costing us over a thousand a month to hire, as Ireland doesn’t have many long-term leasing companies. But just across the road from that outlet is a Toyota showroom. If anyone was going to sort us out, it was the good people at Toyota. Near the end of September, I drove into the forecourt and went in to see what they could do for us. I was greeted by a kind man who happened to be head of sales there, and after telling him the back story, he said a most significant thing, and every other search we had for cars went out the window – “next week, someone is bringing in a Toyota Prius from 2016.” My lovely German Prius Plus was also from 2016 and was the single dearest possession of mine. This was an ordinary Prius and it wasn’t black but blue. I didn’t care: it had driven almost 350,000 kilometres and hadn’t been taken in a single time for repairs. The previous and only owner was a doctor, and he had looked after it with great care.

A couple of weeks later, the car was brought in to the man at Toyota Cavan, and I went there to take possession of it. I paid in cash a lot less than the vast majority of other similar models on Ireland’s online market website, DoneDeal. That website is astonishing: you can pick up a cheap wardrobe, a ton of peat, some sandstone blocks that used to be a wall, a 1920s lamp, or a cocker spaniel from a reputed breeder. You can find everything except someone to sleep with you, basically. And here I was, circumventing it and buying directly from the horse’s mouth, so to say.

The man at the showroom came clean to me: he wasn’t after making money from this deal; he wanted me to return to him in a year or two to buy a new car off him. He was investing in the future, and he was absolutely right. I will be going there to buy any new car, as the service I have received from Toyota everywhere has been faultless. Funnily enough, I used to work for Toyota Motor Europe in Brussels back in the early 2000s, and the man in charge of the department was an Irishman. What’s more, this gentleman sitting opposite me in his office knew the guy. Small world.

I took the car with me; I felt like I was going on a date with it. I had to pick up a parcel in Northern Ireland, so I drove this beauty across the heathlands, hills and lakes of Cavan and the Cuilcagh Range feeling like Jeremy Clarkson on one of his reviews with the customary spectacular backdrop. This car has even more features than my previous Prius, and even some gadgets from before their time. One of my favourite things about the Prius is the gentle acceleration and braking system. My main criticism of the VW and the Skoda was the sensitive brakes – one little press and you risked smashing your shopping into the back of the passenger seats. Not so the Prius – it is the smoothest ride of any car I’ve ever driven. Oh, and it has the turning circle of a particularly agile cat. I seem to have gone full Clarkson, so let’s move on.

We see more than one rainbow per week

One of my biggest discoveries has been the abundance of facilities for the self-employed worker. There are what are known as digital hubs all over Ireland, even in the smallest of locations, giving freelancers and startups a really generous leg-up. The one in our local town even has a studio and recording facilities. I will be going in there to record a series of podcasts for my upcoming online documentary on the history of the English language. In Luxembourg, to use the studio in the coworking space was prohibitively expensive. In Valencia, I found the designated podcast room had very thin walls, was next to a frequently-occupied toilet, and you had to bring your own equipment. Here, there’s everything from a green screen to a top-of-the-range TV with built-in camera that follows you as you move. And it’s accessible to everyone for a small fee, as all of these things should be.

What has changed concerning the food? One thing I really enjoyed in Valencia was going to the covered mercados. Every town has one, and they are usually rammed full of produce from cured hams to fresh-the-day-before fruit and vegetables, from 18-month-old cheeses to fish straight off the boat that morning.

Beef Rendang, My Kitchen by Sham Hanifa, Carrick-On-Shannon

So it came as a lovely surprise to discover that Carrick-On-Shannon has a covered farmers’ market every Thursday. What’s more, there are even more varieties of cheese than in Spain, and a wider range of vegetables too. There is also an excellent bread and Danish pastry stall run by a French woman who really knows how to please. The woman on the cheese stall is from Germany and lived about 20 minutes from our old house in Saarburg. It’s a small world, after all.

In our local town there is an excellent butcher’s shop selling some of the best meats around. In Valencia, one of the unfortunate criticisms I had was that the meat in most supermarkets and butcher’s shops was not particularly inspiring. There were periods of the year where we would be eating a lot of repetitive dishes. In Ireland, I find myself in the enviable position of having my imagination fired up day after day. In Spain, I used to cook only at weekends as the children ate at school, and we were in our office so we ate at the cheap local restaurants during the week. In Ireland, I cook 6 days a week – and we rarely have the same thing in a two-week period.

Chapter Food 6 Living, Cavan Town:

There are also a great number of cafés and restaurants in Leitrim with very attractive menus, and their sweet treats reflect one of the things I missed the most about these isles when I departed at the beginning of the 21st century: sticky toffee pudding, apple crumble, bread and butter pudding, treacle tart, Bakewell pudding, cinnamon buns, Eton mess, strawberry flan, creamy cheesecake, chocolate fudge cake or brownie, jam tart, trifle, carrot cake, scones with clotted cream and jam, Victoria sponge, banoffee pie, treacle tart, and lemon drizzle cake. These are just the ones I could remember: the list goes on and on, and I have yet to find anywhere that beats these isles for their sweet fare.

Creegan's Pub, Cloone, Leitrim

To give you some idea of the ease of social integration in Ireland, let me tell you a little story: according to a recent study by the European Commission, Ireland was ranked the loneliest country in Europe. But here’s the important part: most people are ready to strike up a conversation with you. It’s not weird to talk to strangers. However, it’s not easy to make friends in Ireland, but this has been the case everywhere I have lived. What I noticed is that in countries considered cold, like Germany, the UK and Ireland, people are likely to give it time but you’re not frozen out. And once you’re in, it’s locked.

I would say, though, the UK is easier to make friends but Germans are the sincerest friends you can find. All three countries, though, are far easier than Belgium, Spain, Italy or southern France. But it is easy to see why Ireland is a lonely country – you need a car to get anywhere, and there are a great number of houses located in places where there are no street lamps or even asphalt on the roads.

But once you get to the urban areas, even small villages, there is an abundance of life. The local town to us, population under 1000, is bustling all day. Even in the evenings there is a sense there’s something going on.

Then there’s Carrick-On-Shannon, population under 5,000, and about 2,500 people smaller than Saarburg where we lived for 15 years. And yet, there is more going on in Carrick on a Tuesday afternoon in October than there was back in Saarburg. Irish people have done their level best to maintain life in their town centres, although they are under great pressure at the moment due to the proliferation of retail centres.

The River Shannon at Athlone

Looking down onto Sean's Bar (left of the square), the oldest pub in Ireland dated from 900 AD

And these places aren’t by any means stereotypical backwaters. Carrick does have a huge supermarket at the edge of town where you can pick up a jar of harissa, find a few slices of San Daniele and a host of Asian spicy sauces, but the town centre has a number of attractive restaurants, niche cafés, and cosy pubs serving food. You want pierogi? No problem, there’s a Polish supermarket on the riverside. You fancy a beef rendang? Head to Sham Hanifa’s My Kitchen just over the river. Feel like a few petits fours with your flat white coffee? Try Cake Me Away next to the former post office.

There’s a lot in this tiny market town – top-range Italian, cheap and nasty Italian, Tandoori, proper burgers, full Irish breakfasts, Sunday roasts, steaks and barbecued ribs, bao buns, bibimbap, and for those who like their food tasteless, there’s even one of those fast food joints with the two golden arches, although I’ve never seen anyone going in or out of them. Incidentally, Carrick-On-Shannon was awarded the accolade of Ireland’s Tidiest Town for 2025. When you see the picture-postcard centre and immaculate streets, perfectly planted flower beds and freshly mown public parks, it’s not hard to see why.

Then, out in the hinterland you can find some very special locations, such as Jinny’s Tea Rooms in Drumshanbo; Leitrim village (population about 500-600) with its four well-appointed restaurants and hotels; Ballinamore’s Main Street with its row of pubs selling top-quality local food; The Cottage restaurant in Drumsna, owned by the TV cook Sham Hanifa; the three popular restaurant-pubs in Dromod, and the list goes on. Go in any direction for up to an hour: to Mullingar, Sligo, Enniskillen, Athlone, Cavan, even Longford, and you won’t have any difficulty finding some place with appetising food, busy shops, pub concerts and the like.

Dressing up for the school Halloween party

One of my main complaints in Spain was that each time I went to an event, such as the Fallas in Valencia, I wasn’t really made to feel too comfortable. The Fallas is a very good example of how difficult it is to socially integrate in Spain – they are clubs that have lots and lots of events, and their own premises. They have the power to close the roads outside their HQs for events, causing mayhem for through-drivers, bus routes and even pedestrians. It is almost an admission of their superiority in Valencian local life that a lot of politicians can’t get on the ballot unless they have been a fallero or fallera.

In Ireland, there is the GAA: the Gaelic Athletics Association. It is a ubiquitous organisation, considering every parish in the country has one. But the difference is, they organise events for everyone, regardless of their affiliation. For example, there is a Halloween walk organised by Cloone GAA at Bóthar na Naomh. You pay a fee online, you show up at the allotted time to Cloone Community Centre, and a bus takes you to the starting point. I mentioned Bóthar na Naomh before: it’s a wooded area with bridle paths and walking trails, fishing posts, bird watchers’ lookouts, all surrounded by rolling hills, a lake and meadows. But at night it is a formidable place.

It was actually an extremely well-organised and entertaining time fit for a blustery October night the day the clocks went back – we arrived far too early and decided to hole ourselves up in Creegan’s Pub across the road. It was a cosy little place with a bar that ran right round the corners into the four parts of the building. As we were really far too early, I decided to ask in the Community Centre if there was anything we could do and the organiser said we could get the next bus in ten minutes.

So I ran back to the pub, we hurriedly finished our drinks and crossed the street to get the bus. It took us to one of the entrances and we had to follow a path through the woods. One of the shopkeepers in town had said it was properly scary and her kids had had a massive fright, but I didn’t believe her. However, when we left the bus, we could barely see anything, and the children didn’t stop screaming all the way round. It went on for a good 800 metres through the woods.

There were firepits everywhere making the place extra smoky, demons, ghouls and banshees stalking us, there were witches chasing us, zombies harassing us, vampire bats in a tunnel we had to walk through with a lot of people dressed in quite elaborate costumes clattering bells or cackling fiendishly, a corpse sitting up and screaming then pinching my behind as I walked on (I wonder how many bums got squeezed that night… great work if you can get it!). They had turned a car on its side and put people inside who opened the doors upwards and wailed, one of them was up a tree desperately yelling for help, there was a being with a chainsaw, and there were flashing lights and eerie sounds every step of the way. There were empty stretches where you felt something was going to happen at any moment, and there was even a man who appeared on a horse wearing a long cape, threatening to take us to the underworld.

All-in-all, it was worth its 10 euro fee. Considering there were buses taking 14 people to the drop-off point every few minutes, I am sure they raised a lot of money for their charity. And that’s the thing – nobody earned a penny that night. Except for our local butcher who had parked his burger van outside the hall. When we walked back to the village along the street, thinking the experience was behind us, there was a goblin that gave us an almighty fright springing out of the window of one of the houses on the street.

We bought some burgers and chips from the butcher’s van and took them to Creegan’s pub to devour. Milda was a little bit exasperated by it all, Livia was relieved, and Dainoris was already planning next year’s event. I put a euro on the pool table and waited our turn. Suddenly, the wall went up and the pub doubled in size. By the time we had finished our game, the place was heaving like a Ryanair departure lounge ten minutes before boarding. There was going to be live music later that evening and everyone wanted a good seat. We shall return there, that’s for sure.

So what I can confirm is that Ireland may be the gloomiest part of Europe, which is already a comparatively gloomy continent, but it is a really enjoyable place. It’s a land that has found peace with itself and has found its calling. People go to the Mediterranean for sun, but they go to the Isles of the North-East Atlantic to gain new experiences, have fun, and enjoy all what they have to offer. On balance, there are some things I regret leaving behind in Spain, but on the whole, our lives are so much richer and happier now.

SUPPLEMENTARY PHOTOS:

Dainoris and Milda go for a walk with Aoife along the lane to the farm

We are frequently visited by the neighbours' chickens

Livia, in Aoife's kitchen

Dainoris and Milda enjoy the outdoors, whatever the weather

Dainoris is fascinated by animals

Red sky in the morning, rising above the neighbours' house

A rainbow at Carrick station

Morning sunlight

Evening sunset

Long shadows

The Barge, Leitrim village

Down The Rocky Road – So That Was Summer

Aughris Beach

Mid-August. The sun was making a very good impression on us all, having been out for most of the month so far. According to several people we know, this has been the best summer weather for decades. We took the road out west to the beaches of County Sligo to make the most of the fading summer warmth. Around here, autumn doesn’t just creep up on you during September. Oh no no no. It comes up behind you and says “boo!” and before you’re ready to put away the shorts, you’re taking the thicker coat off the hanger and ironing a few long-sleeve shirts.

The kids were doing their best to sound intelligent by asking a lot of preposterous questions: “Do dinosaurs brush their teeth?” “Do unicorns eat breakfast?” “Do boats fly?” “Where does spaghetti come from?” I answered as well as I could: “Dinosaurs use children to climb in their mouths and pick pieces of rotting flesh out of the gaps in their teeth.” “Unicorns don’t eat breakfast. They have brunch because they’re American and they prefer to prepare a huge and wasteful meal later in the morning, then leave half of it.” “Have you ever seen a flying boat? Nope, neither have I. Oh look up there above that mountain, it’s a boat! You missed it, it sank inside that cloud. I hope the crew managed to fly to safety.” “Spaghetti comes from Swiss spaghetti farms where they grow on trees. Take a look at this BBC documentary on it.” For developing critical thinking, I believe I’ve taken an extreme route, but it is actually working. Nonetheless, it keeps us amused and allows me to flex my imagination every so often.

Anyhow, we headed out west for a final fling on the beach before the whole summer curtain came crashing down a few days later. I was going to return to the same location we had visited the previous week but I changed my mind as I discovered a lovely place called Dunmoran Beach, a little further this time, and not too far from what seemed like a decent seaside rural pub. The beach experience was fairly short-lived as the skies kept threatening to cloud over and ruin summer. The children seemed content enough to play in the sand, albeit with some extra clothing, but Livia braved the waves and ventured quite far into the sea. This meant I also had to go in: I would need to make sure she didn’t hazard a trip into waters where she couldn’t touch the floor. She is sensible in her own way, but the current can play some awful tricks.

Once she had had enough and the clouds were gathering, she went to wrap up and play on the sand instead, so I took myself for a walk along the beach. The sun, obscured and weak, was in a losing battle against the rampant forces of gloomy weather, but we were determined to enjoy our day at the coast. We packed up our stuff and made a move to the pub, called simply Beach Bar, in a hamlet known as Aughris. It was heaving with people, as well as cars, camper vans, motorhomes, cyclists, and coastal hikers. It was like one of those novels where you passed through a veil into another dimension. Most people were there to soak up the sun, which had mysteriously won its war against the clouds, albeit too late for us to have enjoyed it. I drove around the precariously narrow roadways and parked in a gap close to the pub.

Beach Bar

They had space for us near a window, and we sat down to wait for the menu. And what a beauty it was. Proper beef in Guinness pie, Irish stew, and other culinary masterpieces stood out on the page. Bonny Bee and I had those two, and the children had some crowd-pleasing shiny beige fare. But then came the desserts – I took a warm dark chocolate brownie, which was a most arduous decision because of the constant pressure from the hot sticky toffee pudding and the apple pie and custard. But I did not regret my decision for one second, as it was one of those desserts, that when you put a piece in your mouth, you can hear the nearby playing of cherubim and seraphim on their harps and the voices of ten thousand angels in twelve-tone harmony.

Choco-gasm

At the end of the meal, it was still only half past three. We went for a walk along the beach path to digest all the food. We had reached no more than about fifty metres when we came to a shallow stream discharging its clear water over some light-coloured rocks across the beach, and into the sea. Of course, the children wanted to stop at this point and play in the shallow waters. I was determined to get in some walking as after the substantial lunch, I felt like a wheelbarrow with a tyre-flattening load.

The sea front at Aughris is like a lot of Western Ireland’s coastline: just enough paved area not to disturb the landscape, and what’s there looks like it’s supposed to be there; it’s a good, honest compromise between human incursion and trying to keep nature unspoilt. The path led from the car park to a grassy campervan park, then having crossed a bridge over the stream, a boreen took us between a farm and the beach, before landing at some windswept farmhouses at the far end. It was quite lovely on this calm August day, but I am quite sure I would not want to be here in the winter when the Atlantic storms blow in.

Boreen by the beach

Seaside farm

We walked along the boreen for a while and greeted the cows in the paddock there before returning to the stream, sheltered by the surrounding buildings and campervans. The children played happily in that area for quite a long time.

Once everyone had run out of energy, I proposed we all head to the car and take a drive into Sligo, a place I knew nothing about, but was willing to get acquainted with. And it was a markedly surprising encounter: the sun was delightfully warm, and the city centre’s riverside bars were teeming with hedonistic and soon-to-be impoverished beer guzzlers, getting tanked on seven-euro pints and singing along to some famous Irish songs like The Fields of Athenry and Tell Me Ma. We could hear them on the other side of the river as we lingered near the main footbridge, a joyful and photogenic flower-festooned pedestrian crossing linking the two car-free halves of the city centre. This could have been Utrecht, Odense, Toruń or Lübeck, but it was north-western Ireland on a summer’s evening.

Sligo Riverside

Sligo road bridge in the background

We stopped at a café terrace right above the water and sat next to the bridge watching the people go by, some stopping for photos. The handsome road bridge, about 100 metres further up, has seven arches and is a very well-used background for selfies. After cake and coffee, we sauntered around the riverside square where there is a city logo in huge wooden lettering with seating and ladders for children to climb up. Sligo is a fun, young city with a lot going for it. I would recommend it on any road trip around the island.

Weekend revelry

On Sunday 17 August, we had our really last summer outing to Derrycassin Wood, sadly devastated in last winter’s Storm Darragh and Storm Eowyn, but still a haven of wildlife and a decent walk in the evening sun. The children have really taken to Ireland, and they have gladly accepted that there’s no going back. I don’t think they want to, in any case: they too had their issues with Spain.

Derrycassin Wood

The following week, I was to give my final course to the EU before the contract was handed over to an organisation with no loyalty to the long-term team members. They would be bringing in their own personnel, and we were too expensive for them. It was a two-week course for interpreters at the Commission. One very interesting feature of Ireland is how well connected it is: all over Ireland there are digital hubs or coworking spaces where you can book a desk or an office. I gave my course from the one in Mohill, and it was a good bookend to my time as a provider of language consultancy to the EU. I may be back, but for the moment, the rates the newly-installed provider proposed to me were not enough to warrant my continued participation. This type of company I call a WAMPIR: Wants A Master, Pays Intern Rates. If after nearly 25 years in the trade I am to earn less than when I started, that is a no-no. I replied with a very explanatory and far-too-courteous email why I felt insulted by their offer.

On the Wednesday of the second week of the course, the children’s school term was due to begin, making my days rather eventful. Nonetheless, the process pales into insignificance when compared to the average routine in Germany/Luxembourg a mere 30 months earlier. That was the purest definition of strain: the day would start a little before 6, which was its most harrowing in midwinter. We would get ready in the bathroom, eat breakfast, then jump in the car a little after half-past seven in order to go to another country to learn and work. The journey to Luxembourg took a little under 40 minutes when the traffic was clear, but could take well over an hour at peak times, especially if there was an accident. Their school started at 8.30, and was nearer Belgium than Germany, so I had to go round the ring of Luxembourg City and enter on the western side of town. I created several playlists on Spotify in order to pass the time in the car.

Now, though, we are getting up after 8am, as it takes a maximum of two songs to reach the school and the days pass so much more slowly than before. That means we can all get so much more done if we really want to. Bonny Bee can spend a lot more time translating, and I can get on with my writing as well as driving the children around, grocery shopping, cooking, gardening, preparing the house, going for walks, photographing the landscape, feeding my muesli to next-door’s lovely chickens, staring at sheep, and other essential activities. In a way, I am now a full-time author with a lot of side-duties.

School uniforms

On Saturday 23 August, we wanted to go to a museum commemorating the Battle of the Boyne in County Meath, a good hour and a half away. The drive there was, as usual, very scenic – this still hasn’t got boring. However, when we arrived there, the place was experiencing a water outage and they were closing up. This was especially tragic for them, as they had been advertising a battle reenactment on the magnificent grounds of the stately home where this was to take place. We decided to get back in the car and go to Dublin, a mere 45-minute drive away.

There were two things I wanted to do there: first and foremost, I wanted to view an art exhibition in Dublin Castle. The family of a friend of mine, someone dear and significant to me, had lent some works of art made by a Polish artist to the castle from their private collection and I wanted to learn more about it. Second, I wanted to see more of Dublin City, as each time we had gone there, we didn’t have enough time to enjoy anything.

Dublin Castle courtyard

Staircase at the entry

Dublin Castle is dripping with history. It’s a place with a dark past: the seat of oppressive rule for seven centuries, it has nowadays become the location of state visits, EU summits, and presidential inaugurations. The exhibition was in one section behind the presidential gallery in a couple of spacious rooms, but we couldn’t stay for any decent amount of time because the children flitted from room to room not really paying much attention to their surroundings.

A reception room in the castle

The city of Dublin itself is a mix of fun and business. Architecturally, it’s never going to rival cities in the same category like Prague, Kraków, Turin or Barcelona, and it doesn’t really have a famous building or landmark that represents it on the world stage, such as the Atomium in Brussels or the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. But it more than makes up for all that by being a playful and welcoming city, and the epicentre of joy. It flaunts shabby, swaggers in scruffy, and wallows in jumbled architecture where ornate terraced houses with colourful doors, stone steps and wrought iron railings are juxtaposed with former factories that have been converted into shopping centres, hostels, offices, more offices, fitness centres, car parks, offices. theatres and massive pubs with perpetual live music and endless sport on the TVs. Oh, and did I mention offices? If Dublin were a person, it would be a functioning alcoholic with a fabulous salary and a battered old Ford Focus parked in the street.

Dublin

I put our car in a crammed multi-storey car park near St Stephen’s Green and walked from the damp and soulless storage cupboard for vehicles into a many-layered atrium of light, glass, metal and marble that is St Stephen’s Shopping Centre. Taking the glass lift downwards, we were briefly reminded of Valencia and its Aqua retail centre but the atmosphere was cosier and less volatile.

The streets of Dublin were teeming with shoppers, daytime revellers over from the UK or the continent, and in some places traffic roared very close by, loud and menacing. The Dubliners have made the most of their city and its potential. It is chock full of monuments to its past, but the difference is this: whereas London has statues to its leaders both military and aristocratic, Dublin has two types. There are still a few monuments to its military connections, but they are more about revolutionaries than those of the time Dublin was the second city of the British Empire. There are such illustrious warriors as Bernardo O’Higgins, the Chilean freedom fighter with a Basque and Irish background; Theobald Wolfe Tone, a very important figure in Irish independence from the 18^th century, and Admiral William Brown, who served in the Argentine navy 200 years ago.

Molly Malone

But the vast majority of statues in Dublin are of prominent poets, musicians, philanthropists and fictional characters from Irish culture. Arthur Guinness, naturally, has a prominent place on the Green, but out on the streets and squares you can find Molly Malone, Constance Markiewicz, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce of course, Phil Lynott from Thin Lizzy, and two of Luke Kelly. If you don’t know who Luke Kelly is, then you have definitely heard him at some point without knowing it, I promise. He was a larger-than-life member of The Dubliners, arguably the greatest folk band of all time. Luke Kelly had a striking face with a prominent set of teeth peeking out from behind his golden beard, topped with his abundant curly ginger hair.

But it was his voice that identified him the most: his raspy, smoke-addled spoken tones gave him an air of gravitas. When he gave orations, crowds hushed, put down their drinks and listened. Search for his rendition of For What Died The Sons Of Róisin? Likewise, when he sang, he had the audience in thralls. Listen to his versions of famous songs like Dirty Old Town, The Wild Rover, and The Old Triangle, and then try The Black Velvet Band, Hand Me Down My Bible, and Raglan Road. Every performance of his was dispatched with the kind of gusto that made it obvious he was having the time of his life entertaining the crowds.

He also had that rare gift of being able to make you both laugh and cry. Try not to shed a tear as you listen to Peggy Gordon, a most heart-rending Canadian love song, follow that with the sweet anthem of The Nightingale, where the crowd sings the chorus, and then put on his saucy live delivery of Monto, about a notorious red-light district of eastern Dublin. His uproarious interpretations of bawdy or satirical songs would frequently bring the house down, and he could deliver punchlines in song too, such as the hilarious anti-war numbers The Button Pusher or Protect And Survive, or the raucous Maids When You’re Young Never Wed An Old Man, which was made doubly funny by the fact he was far younger than the other band members Ronnie Drew and Barney McKenna, who would be cringing comically behind him as he looked at them gleefully. It was his delivery of Phil Coulter’s Scorn Not His Simplicity, a song about the composer’s son who had Down Syndrome, that endeared him to the nation. The Night Visiting Song is the ballad that I think many will have heard before, and was one of the last songs he sang in November 1983, two months before he passed away.

One of the main roads by the River Liffey

River Liffey

He left us far too early – and a piece of Dublin went to the grave with him. A brain tumour, compounded by his busy touring schedule, hard partying, and love of the drink was a fatal and malevolent blend that caused him to have memory blackouts and episodes of fainting. Thousands attended his funeral in the north of the city, including politicians from all sides, a tribute to his raw talent, and confirmation of his importance in the hearts of many Irish people. Ronnie Drew, the leader of the Dubliners, said at his funeral that he was the best singer of the folk idiom in the world. That is why there are two statues dedicated to him in Dublin, and I will always regret that I never had the chance to listen to him live.

And this is the important point about Ireland: it is the epitome of what it means to be human. The nation’s priorities are clear – promote art and culture as an instrument of unity, stand up for the little guy, give a voice to those who have been silenced, encourage those in less fortunate situations, and let talent flourish. Luke Kelly is the personification of this philosophy: he left school early and had an extremely hard youth, but he had a very strong will, and could count plenty more achievements than most by the time he passed. One does not need diplomas if one has raw talent combined with the drive and passion needed to succeed: one needs exposure.

School life was about to start for the children in their new habitat – we were about to see whether we had made the right decision. If my description about Ireland is correct, I am sure they will be all right.

SUPPLEMENTARY PHOTOS:

Down The Rocky Road – Wholesome

 

The Sky over our house

The Irish weather can conjure up some of the most spectacular scenes and striking situations: angry skies with clouds that pass by at speeds usually reserved for planes; wispy white stratus clouds that glow orange underneath at sunset with a hint of grey on the darker side; rain at the front of your house and sun at the back; gusts of wind that blow so hard, you fear you may be used as a soft landing by a couple of rooftiles. The week before last featured all of the above; despite that, we managed to spend some time on tour. However, this past week was glorious: low-to-mid twenties, nearly no rain, and the fluffiest of clouds straddling the sky. For me, I have always liked my summers at just above room temperature. If we had remained in Spain, we would have witnessed its incineration first-hand.

On Saturday 9 August, we took a trip to Lough Allen, a fairly large body of water that separates southern from northern Leitrim. Fun fact: because of the long, thin shape of Leitrim, it is impossible to cross it without entering another county. The county mainly responsible for Leitrim’s two halves is Roscommon: a region spoken about in Ireland as if it were full of witches and ghouls. In the last two referenda, it was the county that voted most against the liberalisation of Ireland’s previously strict laws of childbirth and marriage, and that kind of sealed its reputation.

We would only pass through it for a few minutes, but we took some garlic and a bottle of holy water just in case.

The Scardan waterfall sits high above the steep hills of Lough Allen, surrounded by tall spruces, taller larches, willows and hawthorns alongside heather-clad open spaces with the feel of a subalpine climate. As you turn off the main road along the lough, and ascend the steep lane towards the waterfall, the first thing you notice is the sudden change in the light: it becomes softer but somehow there’s more of it.

Climbing higher, we reached a fork in the road and a few groups of hikers with their Nordic gear talking. There is a small car park beside the entrance to the steps down to the waterfall and we went to take a look. I must say it wasn’t exactly Niagara, but everything around it was truly beautiful.

Lough Allen from the track by Scardan waterfall

On Monday 11 August, we made it to the Ballinamore Family Festival, the highlight of the summer. Lasting a week and two weekends, it’s a cultural marvel and an experience that brings joy to everyone. It’s glorious fun in an imaginative, understated and happy sense: the week includes live music every day in the centre and an agricultural show, but there are other events, such as a makeshift water slide on the grassy banks of the park, mural painting, an adult-child race, kayaking on the river, a children’s fancy dress, an angling competition, a bonny baby contest, afternoon tea with the old folks, flower arranging, a women’s oasis at a local pub and a men’s shed open day (whatever that is). That’s about an eighth of all the events – it’s wholesome and it’s fun; but most of all there isn’t a single moment that you feel overwhelmed by the crowds.

View of the Ballinamore Family Festival children's fun event

We went to the children’s fun afternoon, which included the water slide, as well as a petting farm, bouncy castle, football skills contest, and a water gun fight. Needless to say everyone under the age of 18 was going to get wet. The queues for the water slides were at times quite long but the children waited patiently, except for a few, who found some mates in the line to let them sneak in. Our three did their first run with some apprehension, but after that they slid down with more and more gusto.

The children were soaking wet and we had forgotten to take a change of clothes with us. Luckily there is a Tesco supermarket a few minutes’ walk away. Hilariously enough, when we arrived there, a lot of other parents had had the same issue.

After a lot of complaining and having spent quite a lot on clothes, we walked into town where the BUGS (Ballinamore Ukulele Group of Singers) were performing, followed by the Wren Boys, a huge number of folk musicians accompanied by the town’s talented dancers and singers. Considering Ballinamore has a population of just over a thousand, it punches well above its weight in terms of what it has to offer, and here in this setting it was clearly on display. About 15 to 20 per cent of the town had come out to watch and about 5 per cent had appeared on the stage.

Now, you may be thinking that a group of ukulele players was going to be a rather naff and slightly absurd spectacle. But when about 12 of them get together, accompanied by a drummer and a guitarist, using different harmonies, and directed by a terrific lead singer, the results are exceptional. Banging out some anthemic numbers, they had terrific stage presence.After them came the Wren Boys and a host of accoutrements, accompaniments and adornments. They arrived being led by a goat, some music, and some flames lofted high above them on poles. Sitting around the outside of the stage with their respective instruments, they filled the entire periphery, and didn’t hold back. One of the maxims is absurdity, especially ugliness. Three dancers were dressed in thick blond wigs and grandmothers’ clothes, one with a beard, one with awful false teeth, and one with a hairy chest.

Ballinamore in concert

After a short announcement concerning a recently departed and well-liked member, they hit the ground running with a series of well-known folk songs, such as The Mason’s Apron and Drowsy Maggie. Accompanying them, the McCartin School of Irish Dancing proffered a number of their different age groups for various songs, followed by a recital by a local story teller. A rendition of Fisherman’s Blues rounded it all off and sent us home smiling.

The children had a ball. In fact, Milda has turned into quite a performer; she also has a feeling for rhythm and style. She keeps asking to go to dance school, and watching her skipping to some of the songs put a light on in my head. I think I’ll take a little look into enrolling her in a group this September.

Strandhill Beach, County Sligo

Tuesday was another eventful day. The plan was to go to Gleniff Horseshoe in northern Sligo to see this geological phenomenon, but it was such a beautiful day, I thought we should go to the seaside first. I didn’t tell the children until the sea was in sight, as that would have caused general mayhem in the back of the car. It’s only an hour away and it’s a lovely ride: we drove past some spectacular scenery and arrived at Strandhill Beach, County Sligo, with a group of very jumpy young people behind the front seats. I found a parking place, the last one on the strip, and we walked to the area where people were conglomerating around a cluster of restaurants and cafés. Most of them were offering the usual seaside trash food, so we settled on one place that made toasted sandwiches. It was not cheap – in fact it would end up costing about half the price of our evening meal with desserts, coffees and drinks.

After shedding a bucket load of cash, we decided to hit the beach. The girls in the café warned us the sea wasn’t too safe for swimming in and we should go round to the next beach, which was protected by a land promontory. However, we took the chance as I could see other families on the beach.

Memories of last year’s epic road trip around the Iberian peninsula came streaming back on this wide-open Atlantic beach with extraordinary views of the surrounding landscape. I also remember the sea in Portugal on the wide beaches: that was cold. This was slightly better, but only just. I think it’s all about the ambient temperature of your location: Ireland would have been 10 to 15 degrees colder than Portugal, so getting in the water would have been easier to handle than down south.

But let us just say we didn’t go in far because there seemed to be a lot of undercurrents. The children played happily on the beach for quite a long time, which allowed us to have a rest: it’s been a long summer. We started in mid-June with the end of their school year in Valencia. They have been with us the whole time since we packed up and cleared out the apartment, and I have to say I am particularly looking forward to their return to school on 25 August.

We passed Gleniff Horseshoe Mountain on the way home

As the school holidays are nearly over, we want to do as much exploring as possible. On Wednesday 13 August, we took the children to ninja school and afterwards we went on a trip to the highlands of County Fermanagh over the border. We had travelled through the area just south of Enniskillen, and an Irish friend of mine told me a little about what places of interest there are in that region, but actually going there and seeing it for ourselves reinforced it.

View over Lough Macnean

In the mountainous area that straddles the border, there is a place known as the Stairway to Heaven. Its real name, Cuilcagh Boardwalk Trail, suggests it’s a good day’s hike, but it was already approaching six in the evening, so we drove on the loop that goes high up above Lough Macnean, delivering more stunning views. The children wanted to stop and take a good look at the panorama below, so I found a parking space and we all alighted for fresh air and photos. We decided to take a stop in Belcoo for a drink and a little walk. That meant crossing back into the Republic of Ireland and then once more into the United Kingdom.

The border between the two sovereign entities throws up some astonishing ironies, including a highway that alternates between Irish and British territory four times within 10 kilometres. I think that fact combined with Brexit is the Karma the UK was due for dividing up so much of the world along such random and arbitrary lines. The final cherry on the top of the cake of fortune is now Ireland is a far more progressive and fairer country to live in than its nearest neighbour.

Belcoo, in County Fermanagh, is reached after a minute’s ride back into the Republic, then across the bridge into Northern Ireland. I stopped to ask a lady walking from the north with a bagful of shopping whether there were any pubs with decent gardens for the children. I didn’t realise I’d caused a ten-car traffic jam until I moved off, but she told us to put the car in a spot just opposite the park, where there was a decent pub. I have to say she was right: the pub was run by a lovely man, and he seemed to be incredibly busy, but we all got drinks.

There was horse racing on the TV above the bar and Milda was fascinated by it. Dainoris also had his attention pricked by the action, and they both sat there happily a row behind the bar watching it. Livia oscillated between us outside on a table and her siblings, but in the end sat watching the TV. Not for long: she managed to knock her drink over and decided to come out to us.

Belcoo Park

Dainoris is not the most observant of people: I can ask him to pick up a red shirt on a grey floor right in front of him and he will completely miss it. But when it comes to food, drink, toys and playgrounds, he has the eyes of a hawk. We decided to go for a walk in the large park opposite the pub as it has a selection of truly majestic mature trees, but Dainoris spotted in the very far distance, and through a tiny gap between the shrubbery, a playground. He made a few gestures of desperation while I tried to explain to him the utter magnificence of finding a tree with an evening shadow of half an acre, but he wasn’t going to let a remarkable spectacle like that get in the way of yet another playground, especially one with a zipline.

I would go as far as saying that the success of a daytrip is dependent on the quality of the playground Dainoris manages to locate. I have recently tried to go to places without one to get the children into other activities with a small degree of success, but for as long as I can remember, the playground remains a staple of our journeys.

As I mentioned, the park had some incredible trees in it. It reminded me of the park in Mersch in Luxembourg, which had a terrific number of important trees. In both places, the landscaper had used sightlines and the position of the sun at different seasons and times of day to make a truly stunningly arranged arboretum and a real magnet for locals and tourists. I highly recommend a walk around this park in any weather. We drove home satisfied that we had made the most of the day while we wait for the work on our house to start.

We are reaching the business end of the summer holidays when we have to start thinking about the upcoming school term, and also for the beginning of the renovation works. Bonny Bee is spending more time working and earning a small fortune to pay for a bathroom for us. We sat down one evening a couple of weeks ago and chose the bathroom we wanted – there is something therapeutic about choosing something important for the house.

ADDENDUM:

Second anniversary: a frank observation 

Just a couple of days ago would have been two years since we left our lovely house in Germany. For a long time it seemed likely that we would stay and buy a house in Spain, but there is more to living in Spain than just that big orange ball in the sky. Shiny Object Syndrome is what tends to draw people to the Mediterranean, but peel back the façade and it’s no different to anywhere else. In other words, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and I say that without a single iota of irony.

When northern Europeans, known as guiris in coastal Spain (mainly Brits but it’s extended to include any pasty-coloured northerner), head south for a holiday, they may see the turquoise sea inviting them to take a running jump; they may hear upbeat music in a minor key; they may want to help themselves to a bowl of paella with a cool caña on a sweltering restaurant terrace at 9 or 10 in the evening, they may go to an outdoor salsa or bachata dance class, or indeed find themselves being whisked off to a beach party that goes on until the sun comes up. But even those who live there might only do one or two of those activities a couple of times a year, if that.

Because remember this: when you live anywhere as an ordinary resident, including at the coast in the south of Europe, you are a resident too. This means you do all the humdrum things everyone else does: go shopping, fill in forms, pay bills, go to work, cook, wash up, and plan some home improvements. The tourists might be sitting in a café next door or lounging on the beach nearby, but that’s their bubble; we see them from near or far but neither world actually intersects very much. They may speak the same language as you do, maybe even have the same regional dialect as you, but you don’t consider yourself one of them anymore.

The irony is, that although you yourself start to see things from the point of view of a local in your adopted city, the locals don’t treat you like one of them. In fact, in Valencia and probably in Spain in general, most people would throw us in the same basket as the guiris, even if some of us try so very hard to integrate. And this is the issue here – we found it a great deal easier to be ourselves and integrate in the north than in Spain.

I believe the reason lies in the fact that southern European cultures are what I would call dominant, while those of the north are what I would call complementary. Dominant cultures tend to suffocate, impede and in some cases disparage the practices of what one would call allochthonous cultures to the extent that incomers feel constrained or even apologetic for not being exactly like the long-term residents. The incomers will find themselves the target of a torrent of criticism for hanging around with their own type and not integrating. My reply was always “well firstly, you have to let me integrate.”

In the south, the media, with the clear and blatant compliance of successive obsequious governments, have managed to persuade the residents that removing hundreds of Airbnb residences from accreditation will be the panacea to the housing crisis, even though we all know it will probably just lead to a drop in income. However, let us also note that the number of second residences Spanish people own (and leave empty for eight to ten months of the year) is a much more likely cause of the lack of housing for Spanish citizens. The fact that some of these owners are also holding on to two properties and yet it’s the foreigners that get blamed and slapped with extra bills and taxes is an outrageous act of sanctimonious hypocrisy and self-unawareness only matched by the government’s acquiescing to this national state of victimhood. Oh, and maybe by the hilarious fact that some British people are moving to Benidorm because back home there are too many foreigners.

For the sake of balance, in the north, the situation is framed another way: the media is always banging on about “not enough room” and invasions of immigrants from countries further afield eroding their advanced civilisation. They also spread lies about the alleged terrible state of public services, the overcrowded public transport and congested roads, the saturation of the job market, the steep rise in house prices and rents, and blame immigrants for this. But the truth is that they, along with successive compliant governments, have intentionally neglected to force those who bought cheap building land and take no affirmative action to actually use it for the purpose it was sold to them.

The secret to governments deflecting the blame for their lack of action and landowners earning a great deal of wealth in the housing market is this: don’t do anything. Let more and more people come and live there until the place is so overcrowded that there is an outcry for more housing. Then you can charge the earth, and immigration can be blamed on the shortage of affordable housing and crumbling public services. For totally different reasons, but by both intentionally failing (or rather refusing) to act, landowners and politicians can make a lot of capital out of scapegoating people that don’t look, dress or talk like you. But at the end of everything, that fact can be way too unappealing for the casual racists and their enablers in the media.