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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Athlone Castle |
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.
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| We removed a 120kg Stanley Range |
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| 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.
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| Drumcard, Co. Fermanagh |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| The River Shannon at Athlone |
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| 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.
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| 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:
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| Dainoris and Milda go for a walk with Aoife along the lane to the farm |
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| We are frequently visited by the neighbours' chickens |
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| Livia, in Aoife's kitchen |
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| Dainoris and Milda enjoy the outdoors, whatever the weather |
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| Dainoris is fascinated by animals |
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| Red sky in the morning, rising above the neighbours' house |
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| A rainbow at Carrick station |
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| Morning sunlight |
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| Evening sunset |
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| Long shadows |
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| The Barge, Leitrim village |
