06.20.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 9:36 pm by Sarah
I’m following the instructions of the ever helpful Gavin and am going to attempt, as someone requested to put photos for the first time into the blog! Quite a breakthrough for me..I guess I won’t stop now! If this works I can do some of my spinach cos some of the leaves are yellow and there are holes in them so somethings up. And the shallots don’t look great either.
ANYWAY meadow shots first and those who were suggesting I leave my nettles and thistles alone will see the problem for themselves. I think I am going to have them strimmed and then cover with black plastic for a year or so. Then sow new grass.
So here goes..first a shot of GOOD meadow
and another..
NOW wretched thistles
AND docks…grr…
and nettles (and you can see where we put cut grass on top to see if it would work as a mulch but I dunno..it just looks mucky and where we tried it before yucky scutch type grass grew up through it.
HOWEVER, not to end on a bad note, here’s a poor shot (just snapped while I did the meadow) of the kitchen garden. You can see the fruit bushes, the new apple trees and two raised beds. I’ll do better shots another day.
So, it’s a work in progress. I’m looking forward to sorting it all out. But, the more work you put in, the less likely you are to sell! Is this my house for the rest of my life??????
Permalink
06.17.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 5:10 pm by Sarah
Note: one of the ones that I had to let a few days pass before I could post it as I didn’t really like parts of it – especially the end – it seemed twee. Jet lag is the excuse. Still, already a couple of people said they enjoyed and emailed me. So for the record..here it goes…
I have a secret life. You may know me as a domesticated, rural housewife and while this is true, for the past year I have also tasted the life of an international software executive.
Last summer an old friend from college rang me from Palo Alto in California. He was starting a software company and wanted me to do some work for him. I tried refusing but he wasn’t going to be put off. “How long does it take to write a column?” he demanded. “Er, a day,” I replied. “And what you are doing the rest of the time? The boys are in a crèche aren’t they?”
“Well, only part time,” I defended, “and I have the house to manage. And the garden. I’m really very busy.” “Yes, very busy Sarah.”
A contract arrived which informed me I had just been appointed as a “Strategist to the CEO” of a fledgling company. That means I help him plot stuff, as he says himself. Fortunately, this plotting requires my presence in sunny California from time to time and on each trip I am amazed at the number of other Irish technology people I meet on their way to “the Valley”.
Silicon Valley is the name given to the southern suburbs of San Francisco that run about 150 miles down to the quiet town of Almaden where IBM has its research centre. At its heart lies Stanford University in Palo Alto, surrounded by the offices of many of the world’s greatest technology companies. It’s the undisputed global capital of high-tech. How did this happen?
Everyone’s got a theory. Some say that the DNA of Californians is embedded with the adventurous spirit of the first settlers here – the ones who followed the Gold Rush. John Markoff, a New York Times journalist, has argued in his book What the Dormouse Said that the mind-expanding virtues of drugs helped too. In California in the 1960s, hippies + acid = flower power. PhD graduate hippies from Stanford + acid = modern-day computing. Stanford graduates such as Messrs Hewlett and Packard set up here in the 1950s and within twenty years Xerox were inventing many of the technologies we use in every day computing.
Throw in the Venture Capital industry and soon the Valley filled with enormously rich geeks.
Irish people pop up everywhere in this unlikely environment. On the flight out, engineers and middle-ranking executives sit at the back of the plane while up the front there are the likes of Niall O’Connor from Limerick, the chief information Officer of Apple.
Other leading lights are John Harnett, also from Limerick,at Palm; Tony Redmond the chief technology officer at Intel, Brian FitzGerald at Intuit and Conrad Burke of Innovalight, a solar-energy start-up. The Irish have a history of emigration but from the mid-1980′s we started to churn computer engineers instead of civil engineers out of our universities. That’s when we stopped building skyscrapers and tunnels and started building semi-conductors and cutting edge software.
With all those stock options, Silicon Valley is a rich place. I stay in a hotel in Palo Alto and walk around to the office each morning, slowly adjusting to the fact that I am supposed to smile and greet fellow pedestrians and joggers. The tree-lined streets are perfumed with flowers and weirdly quiet. They have so much space here that buildings are low rise, mostly only two-storey and the noise of their huge cars is lost into the atmosphere.
The serenity is catching : I become conscious of my foot fall. People speak quietly, even the children. It’s beautiful, but surreal. You can’t help wondering if all the loud, crazy people have been rounded up and shipped into San Francisco.
The signs of an ailing economy are evident though. When I pop over to the Stanford Shopping Centre, there’s hardly anyone there. Hardly any staff either.
Hilary Keane works for Enterprise Ireland in their Palo Alto office, helping Irish software start-ups work on their pitches to the venture capitalists. She lives in the city and commutes to the Valley each morning. She pays $75 a week now to fill her 2 litre car, the smallest she could buy when she moved out here. Before you didn’t notice the price and now you do.
The result is that like in Ireland people are getting cautious though due to the software billions, this part of the US is suffering least.
In our little company there are about 25 staff, over a dozen of whom have PhDs. Attracted to Stanford from all over the world, these are some of the smartest people on the planet. Lunch is ordered in every single day. Huge fridges burst with snacks and drinks. Bowls of strawberries and muffins lie around the rest area.
The company pays for a personal trainer and gym membership for everyone. A doctor calls round each Friday, after the weekly barbeque, to see if everyone’s in good health. Employees drift in an out at times that suit themselves.
When I observed this behaviour first I was appalled and took my CEO friend aside. This was disastrous! His company would never succeed if he wasted money like this and didn’t crack the whip. He laughed. This is the way it works out here. You have to be nice to people.
Well if that was the case, he could be nice to me. I wasn’t going to fly home in the back of the plane. I summoned up the audacity to ask for business class travel and was granted it without hesitation. Knowing the cost of the ticket was over €2000, which is about $5 million given the current exchange rate, I had to walk around for 15 minutes afterwards chanting “I’m worth it. I’m worth it. I’m worth it”.
But am I worth it? What on earth was I expected to do amongst these doctorates and luminaries. Within minutes of my arrival it all becomes clear. They may know something about computers, but I know a thing or two about people. All the fancy programming in the world won’t convince people to use their product and they need me to figure out how to tell people what they do. I am a devotee of the Internet and email but nothing can replace coming out here and looking them in the eye. When you’re in the same room as someone, one look can explain far more than a phone call or email.
Officially then my job is to develop a communications strategy which simply means working out how to talk to people.
I’ve got a PhD in talking alright, and I appear to have talked my way into the American Dream. For the moment it is still a dream though. Then I tap my shoes and wake up back in Enfield. I have the best of both worlds. Theirs is good, but I confess, I’m glad I live in this one.
Permalink
06.05.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 12:08 pm by Sarah
Note: this is last week’s column and the unedited version. But I did hear Karen Coleman quote from it on The Wide Angle on Newstalk on Sunday and it sounded intact.
It’s always hard trying to figure people out from newspaper reports. Brid Murphy, wife of the spectacularly indebted runaway solicitor Michael Lynn, is either hard as nails or soft as rotting fruit. Last week she argued in court she was entitled to some of the proceeds of the sale of their trophy house, Glenlion, because she had no idea he was taking out multiple mortgages on their home. According to her she was an innocent, drawn into a fraud that made her not only homeless but possibly liable for some of their heroically enormous debts. He asked her to sign documents, which she did obediently, trusting him because he was her husband and a solicitor. According to her, he forged her signature on other documents. Her defence was a mixture of Nuremberg (“I was only following orders”) to Victimology (“I had a breast cancer scare and wasn’t paying attention”).
The only problem was she also testified that her marriage is intact and she spent the previous weekend with him in Bulgaria. He even picked her up from the airport. What are we to make of that?
If most women woke up one morning to find themselves homeless, facing multi-million euro debts and the realisation that their husband was a lying, thieving cad, you’d assume they’d be first in the queue after him. As she has taken the road less travelled we have to decide that she’s either telling porkies to the court and was fully aware of the frauds, or she has forgiven him. In this case I choose to believe the latter if only because I don’t want to turn into a bitter, wizened old witch who sees nothing but the worst in people. If she loves her husband her chief concern is for his welfare. Keeping in touch with him maybe her only hope of saving him from himself. Such compassion is commendable and the world would be a better place were her behaviour the exception rather than the rule.
But here comes the “but”. She made one monumental error, one that many other women have made and continue to make. Before marrying Murphy was a nurse, a job she promptly abandoned after her wedding so she could “devote herself to her marriage”. There were no children to care for so I really have no idea what “devoting oneself to a marriage” means. Perhaps its means getting lots of beauty treatments and wearing nice clothes so he won’t leave you. Does it entail constantly redecorating your house to encourage him to stay in it? Maybe it allows you to pick him up from the airport when he comes home from a hard week robbing people’s money. Maybe that’s what it takes to preserve a marriage. But in the process she allowed herself to become financially dependent on a man. Big mistake.
When my mother got married her mother gave her a heifer and a piece of advice: always have your own money and never tell him what you do with it. The heifer produced a calf and formed the basis of her independent income. As my parents bought land over the years, one field was put into my mother’s name and is referred to as “Betty’s field”. It’s hers to do with as she pleases.
On the other side of my family, my great-grandfather ensured that his daughters, of which he had 7, were all properly educated and trained. It might have been the early 1900′s but he wanted them to have an independent means of income.
My grand-aunt Edith was one of the first women students in Trinity College winning a gold medal in Spanish. My grandmother, Sally, earned a degree in Music from the Royal Academy in London and became a piano teacher. It was a good job she did because life didn’t turn out as lucratively as it began. Granny married a farmer and bore her children in the 1930′s just when De Valera’s Economic War was destroying Irish agriculture. What he began, the Land Commission and my grandfather’s wild entrepreneurial schemes and love affair with drink finished. He died relatively young and she supported herself for the following forty years. Till she was well into her eighties, Granny’s piano teaching fed her.
This is my feminist heritage. No matter what, preserve your own source of income, and like my mother’s mother said, never let him know what you do with it. My husband and I have just one joint account into which we put money given to us as wedding presents. I have my own current account, my own credit card and my own savings account. When I see something I want and think I can afford it, I buy it. As a matter of course, I knock about one third of the price when the purchase appears in the house and my husband still grumbles that I overspend. If I had to ask for the price of the item, be it a new dress, linen or a piece of art I’d consider myself humiliated. I don’t check his credit card bill; he doesn’t check mine. I don’t think we’ve ever argued about money. This is equality.
When my children were babies and I wasn’t working I still had the children’s allowance. Though its fashionable for men to complain that this payment is made to mothers and not fathers, there are sound reasons why that system has been preserved. Too many men were gamblers, drinkers and thieving solicitors. Women could be trusted to use that money for the right reasons and it was often the only way they could get money without asking for it. This was true decades ago and for many women, it’s still the case. My male friends call working wives the “laying hens”, no coincidence that it refers to the practice of rural women preserving the “egg money” for themselves.
Money is power and any woman who thinks that’s not important should think about this. Let’s say your husband was made redundant tomorrow and you got a job that kept everyone. How do you think your husband would feel if he had to ask you for some money to buy new clothes? If he felt like a weekend away with the lads? If he thought the car needed upgrading. Does that bring a little smirk to your face? A little table-turning would be fun wouldn’t it? “What? €250 on a new suit? Why don’t you go to Dunnes? What do you need it for anyway? Honestly, men!” There’s just been a huge power shift in that relationship and I can guarantee he wouldn’t like it. People need their own money. It demands respect from their partner and creates self-respect.
Brid Murphy kept her name when she got married. If she’d kept her job she’d be considerably better off today.
Permalink
05.29.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 1:56 pm by Sarah
As this blog is fast turning into The Country Diary of a Post-Modern Lady, I should advertise this Teagasc event in Athenry on June 20th. A demonstration of best practice. A delegation must be sent, surely?
Permalink
05.27.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 9:41 pm by Sarah
Flavin FINALLY resigns. I can’t wait to read Shane Ross on Sunday.
In other news I have now finished Series 1 of BSG. Smashing stuff. I could’ve gone straight into Series 2 but its such a pleasure, why binge? I will extend the thrill……
Also, who would’ve thought we’d be so glad to see some rain? The weather has been RIDICULOUSLY cold. That north-east wind has had me fretting for the survival of my seedlings. So far though, I should report that the transplanted lettuces appear perky. I might try the spinach at the weekend.
The nettle/thistle situation is creating a severe crisis of conscience. Surely one HAS to spray? IF we defeat them then we restore the other plants in a couple of years when we are nettle free? Betty says the trick is targetting the spray. Close to the ground, only in affected areas and when there is no wind. I can’t help admiring the ditch that she spent at least 5 years spraying and finally defeated the wretched weeds. Now there is lovely long grass and the buttercups are bountiful. I think I’ll ring some expert. I refuse to believe we are required to indulge thistles in the name of the environment. Advice welcome.
Permalink
05.25.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 10:39 am by Sarah
I am reading Isabelle Allende’s Memoir. What a life this woman has had. It’s great reading, though she is a little whacky – lots of new age, and old age, spiritual stuff. Thanks to F who gave me the signed copy as a present. I am very proud of it. I think its strictly women’s reading though. Too much earth mothery stuff for the lads. It makes me want to read her other books. So that’s good, as I’m parched for books. It’s hard finding non-violent, non-trivial, moving but uplifting material.
In other news I transplanted the lettuce seedlings from the tray into the bed yesterday. I’m not sure I’ll go the tray route again. It seems like a high risk procedure. Will they survive? I dug up more thistles too, though this is an activity riven with self doubt. If you leave one teeny tiny root, it’ll grow back. But one must try. Can’t be spraying everywhere. Confession: we do spray nettles, but with a selective weed killer, none of your Meath County Council Agent Orange style operation.
n compensation, we found a bank of cowslips that survived over-grazing in one of the fields so the Uncle dug up 3 or 4 for us and I planted them in what we are hoping will be a proper old fashioned meadow. It, like everything else in our 1 acre one-off site, is a 5 year project. It’s a slow battle. We want the nettles and thistles out, but the flowers in. Our wild-flower spotters send reports and we rob a sample and hope they’ll flourish. Its a constant bargaining process – we steal and destroy in the hope of creating or restoring. Fingers crossed.
Permalink
05.23.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 4:53 pm by Sarah
It was my birthday on Monday. At my request M bought me a facial at the local spa. I’ve been wincing as I’ve looked in the mirror recently. Sure enough, Eva, the Polish facialist, confirmed my worst suspicions. In clipped authoritative tones and clutching her clipboard she diagnosed me with dry VERY sensitive skin.
“37 Sarah. You are 37. You are no longer a teenager. See here where the wrinkles are forming around your eyes? This is because you are losing collagen. You need lots of collagen. What cosmetics are using? You must go home and throw out everything that is not for sensitive skin. No more tea. No more spicy food. Just tell yourself “I do not like spicy food” and then you will not eat any more spicy food. Now, you need these three creams. Just three no more. This is the eye cream, I will show you how to apply it. This is your day cream and this is your night. They are expensive. Very expensive, but there is so much damage here, you must do something about it. We can fix this, but you must be committed. I can give you a facial here today and it will give you a temporary lift, but this is no good. You must change your routine. Every morning, every evening, cleanse, tone, eye cream and face cream. Just do it and soon you will not think about it. You don’t think about going to the toilet? You just do it. Right?”
[I did want to say at this point that actually going to the toilet is not straightforward at all with the kids banging on the door and frankly involves a deepening commitment to my persecution complex but anyway]
Instead I say “Ok, ok, ok, ok, yes, new routine. Definitely. Time for drastic action. Commitment. For sure. Should I get another facial soon? Three weeks. Good. Ok. I will be a good girl. New skin on the way. How much? [EEEEEEEEK!] ok. No problem. See you soon.
I think they are working already.
And yes I KNOW I read all the surveys that said cheap creams are just as good as expensive ones. Too late. I am a compliant client.
Permalink
05.20.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 8:57 pm by Sarah
Note: Sunday’s column. Thanks to all the commenters on my earlier posts for different perspectives…
The accounts of Nuala O’Faolain’s funeral were very moving, in particular the eulogy by Marian Finucane. Though we knew a lot about O’Faolain through her writing, we’ve learned even more in the short few weeks since Finucane conducted that final interview with such great skill. The writer’s many friends have told us about her sense of humour and her compassion. The same friends readily admitted, as the author herself did, that Nuala could be a difficult woman : her relentless honesty about herself and others was both inconvenient and painful.
I couldn’t help wondering then why, this difficult, honest, woman had a catholic funeral. In that last interview she made perfectly clear though she had a spiritual life she did not believe in God. She said that were she to cave in to faith as her death approached, it would be proof that her brain tumours had affected her sanity. But still the prayers were said and the last rites performed. Going with the flow and having the funeral mass is the easy thing to do : it reassures the living and the rites are so familiar to us they are themselves a comfort to the bereaved. But listening to her friends speak about her, it struck me that the last thing Nuala O’Faolain did in her life was take the path of least resistance.
On the other hand it was just these inconsistencies that told us so much about her and ourselves. Don’t we all struggle between ideals and doubts? We share her confusion between what we’ve been taught, what we questioned, what we feel and what ultimately we accept we’ll never really know. We each end up trying to get through the day and our lives as best we can. Some people can do it easily enough by simply knuckling down and getting on with it. Others, like Nuala struggle all their lives in an effort to bridge the gap between what’s expected of us and what’d we secretly like to say or do.
They’re the ones who change things either directly or simply by keeping us company in our private struggles. There’s nothing worse than feeling miserable or angry and worrying that you are alone. There’s nothing like the huge relief of discovering that other people feel just like you. That’s the gift that writers like O’Faolain give to us. They are willing to take huge risks, and get it wrong. But every now and then they’ll get it right and lift a burden from our shoulders.
We loved her writing, and that last interview, because it was honest if unnerving. She raged against death and the drink that consumed too much of her life. She raged on behalf of women. I always feel like slapping hard the face of bleached, tanned, successful women who simper that they aren’t feminists. Have they no idea what was done for them by women like O’Faolain, Nell McCafferty and Finucane?
Women who instead of keeping quiet and getting on with it, through their writing, their broadcasting and their campaigning, won us so much. Not just equal rights through legislation, but the right to simply express ourselves without being considered insane and rebellious.
Your Sunday papers will be littered today with female columnists like me who can casually complain about the oppressiveness of religion, children, marriage and housework. Forty years ago a woman making those complaints would have been considered insane and prescribed valium.
O’Faolain never flinched from telling uncomfortable truths about her family, herself or Irish society. In so doing, she educated us about humanity and encouraged us in our compassion. Her rage did much for us.
Of course, sadly, it seems like it didn’t do her much good. She confessed she found relationships difficult and experienced great despair and loneliness. That’s the problem with being difficult. A difficult person might be hard on those around them, but principally they are hardest on themselves. Others benefited from the anger of say, Noel Browne, a notorious crank who did so much for our health system. Goal’s John O’Shea is forever ranting on the airwaves. Politicians like Patricia McKenna or Michael D. Higgins are so passionate that they really look perfectly miserable. Truth be told, we don’t take angry people all that seriously. Anyone that emotional can’t be in control. We reserve our admiration for the cool heads; the compromisers; the deal makers. If you lose it, you’ve lost it.
Personally, I love difficult people because they are so compulsively honest. Difficult women are especially rare. The ideal woman is submissive, selfless and gives up herself for others. The truly feminine woman will smile sweetly, smooth over disagreements and never put a foot wrong. What a bore. I’d rather stick forks in my thighs under the table than preserve that rictus grin on my face as I sweetly absorb the hypocritical nonsense of others.
The interesting woman won’t hold back. She’ll tell inappropriate intimate details to people she just met. She’ll curse, disagree, force others to tell the truth and call it like it is. I’m fortunate, and unfortunate to know women like this. They can be the best in the world and the worst. That energy and ruthless honesty can be fabulous but tiring and occasionally hysterical. But you’ll feel alive in their presence instead of sitting around with a pain in your face from the effort of not causing offence.
But the pressure to do just that is immense. I’m forever torn between wanting the easy life and wanting to scream my head off. But screaming hurts my head before it hurts anyone else’s and I go through phases of deciding to keep quiet. That works for a while but eventually it starts to hurt too. Do you ever read something, hear a voice or see a painting and loudly exhale? And you realise you haven’t been breathing? You haven’t been able to open your mouth properly for fear of what might escape. People like O’Faolain opened their mouths and screamed so the rest of us could breathe.
Of course, I’m identifying with her which is a bit self-obsessive but also an inspiration. Women like her beat back the bushes and made a path for women like me to walk down. Thinking about her last week, I remembered a day when I came home from work after a row with some over-testosteroned boss. I wept to my boyfriend, now husband, wishing that I hadn’t caused the row by speaking up about some corporate injustice. “I should just stay quiet” I resolved. “No you shouldn’t” he said, “because then you become a blip. And you are not a blip”. This cheered me up no end. I would not be a blip.
O’Faolain was no blip. She was a force of nature: stormy, cyclonic, changeable, blowing from different directions, powerful, sunny and miserable too. I wish we had more like her.
Permalink
05.16.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 10:01 am by Sarah
“Mammy! Mammy! I found a baby worm!!”
Mammy braces herself.
“Look Mammy!” and offers an outstreched hand holding a..
SLUG.
uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. puke.
Permalink
05.14.08
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 11:31 am by Sarah
Just watched the Mini Series. Woah – those Cylons sure hate humanity!
Does anyone know if in the original, they actually found earth?
Onto series 1….
In other news, I found myself, well alright, I voluntarily went to Atlantic Homecare the other day. I am sure I needed something terribly important. Can’t remember what it was now BUT I came across these cool plastic drawer dividers – they clip together in a grid and you put them in your sock/knicker drawer. No more rooting for knickers and socks! Everything is now neatly in a little square. As I was tidying I decided to throw out baggy knickers and too small knickers. I have to stop buying “small” smalls. I am 36, going on 37, my arse is now medium.
Permalink
« Previous Page — « Previous entries « Previous Page · Next Page » Next entries » — Next Page »