Lily's Blog

Is the title of a book by Susan Jeffers.

On this kayaking trip, I felt the fear and did it anyway … twice.

Years ago I did a sailing course with Glennans down in Bere island in Cork. The first thing we did on our first morning was capsize the boat and deal with it.

I was conscious that I’d never capsized in a kayak. Okay I wouldn’t dream of going kayaking on my own. I wouldn’t dream of going out unless with another very experienced kayaker. I wouldn’t dream of going out in bad weather conditions. Yet for safety, I felt I should make sure that I could comfortably deal with a capsize on my own … just in case.

I hate being under water. Whilst I’m a strong swimmer, I won’t/can’t dive into water! I also hate deep water. The water is murky, when we’re kayaking so that I can’t see how deep it is. Just as well!

After work one evening I went out to the activities centre on Lough Derg to get a lesson. I have to say it’s a horrible feeling, sitting in a kayak and then have to actively lean out to one side and go under. Horrible. I tried to convince myself that I was going for a swim!

Even I’m not that convincing!

When kayaking one wears a spraydeck – a covering that prevents water coming in. This in effect is a ’skirt’ one wears which is then tightly attached to the boat. In addition, ones knees are out to the edges of the kayak. When you capsize, while upside-down under water, you have to disengage the spraydeck and get your knees together and then out of the boat. Fast. The first night I took a lesson, I didn’t manage to get out without being helped.

I was really disappointed. Because I hadn’t managed to get out unaided, I wasn’t happy to go kayaking again until I had mastered this. Next day I went for another lesson. Basically I spent an afternoon practising capsizing and getting out on my own. Stubborn unreal!

- Lean over, capsize
- As one is going under, immediately lean forward, hands on sides of spraydeck, working forward to the front where the loop of the spraydeck is
- Pull on loop of spraydeck, get knees together
- Hands on side of boat behind you, climb out
- Get to surface and then swim to end of boat and hold on

I practised it a few times and was so happy when I was able to do it un-aided.

To get back into boat requires the other person’s help.

- Other person takes my boat and puts it sideways and upside-down over their boat and tips to to get rid of water
- Get my boat lined up in opposite direction to other boat
- Swim between two boats, lie back and gingerly climb back into my boat, legs first.
By comparison with getting out of the capsized boat, getting back in was easy.

I took the capsizing lessons between parts 1 and 2 of our kayaking trip.

My second ‘feel the fear’ moment was going through one of the locks.

I’d been through a few locks when we went through the lock at Battles Bridge on the Upper Shannon near Leitrim. At this lock we were going from water at a lower level to water at a higher level. We had to rise nine feet.

Our two kayaks went in, gate shut and then the water … thundered in. Imagine sitting in a large jacuzzi in a small boat – that’s what it was like. I stayed calm in my little boat, in the big noisy ‘jacuzzi’, talking calm talk to myself. There are chains hanging down to hold onto. I could hear Noel behind me saying to me not to hold on to the chain too hard. I held on as gently as fear would allow me. I focussed on the water level slowly rising along the wall. I rationalised with myself, the lock-keeper/Noel would never have let kayaks in unless it was really safe.

That’s at least what I hoped.

The whatever number of minutes of feeling the fear was over and we exited the lock onto a glassy canal. I was so relieved. It took kayaking the next 8km of glassy canal to feel normal again.

We still have one day left to do to complete the river. Wind last weekend prevented us from completing it. Sons home from the US/visitors next weekend will prevent me …

The champagne will wait. Tiocfaidh ár lá.

Companies send employees on courses involving physical pursuits for team building. I’ve learnt a lot of self-management skills while kayaking the Shannon. After this, I’m ready for anything!

I thought I would keep a diary while doing this trip. What I hadn’t realised was how exhausting it would be! Suffice it to say, I’ve had no problems sleeping!

Noel and I are doing this trip together but in truth we are really doing two separate trips! Noel, as he says himself, is mooching up the river in one direction. I’m working very hard kayaking! At the same time, we’re both having a great time!

The first week we did South of Athlone using Limerick as a base and last week for north of Athlone, we used Sligo, where Noel lives, as a base.

The surprising thing about this trip is that though this being August, wind has been a problem. The wind has meant that we have had to leave the lakes out as the weather neither weekend allowed us to safely go on the lakes. I am not competent enough to kayak with wind. I’ve worked out that my limit on the rivers is roughly 20km/hour. To kayak against the wind is hard work. But with a strong wind behind us, I found it difficult to control the kayak in the swell.

Give me water like a mirror any day!

Whilst the general direction of the river is south, it isn’t in a hurry – it meanders south, sometimes heading west, sometimes heading east, you get the drift!

Noel mooching. The river meandering. God they’re all laid back!

Anyway I’ll count last Friday as Day 5 where we started out from Lanesborough but had to abandon after 6km, due to wind.

Day 6, Saturday, we picked up where we left off on Friday and kayaked to Dromod. Again we had to give up there because of wind.

Day 7, Sunday yet again because of wind, we started out at Carrick on Shannon and finished at Drumshanbo.

We have one more day to go to finish the river. We’ve two stretches to do, Dromod to Carrick on Shannon and then north of Lough Allen to Dowra. That will be the whole river done. Hopefully we get Day 8 done this coming weekend. Due to other commitments we will now leave the lakes until next year.

The trip has been very sociable – kayaking by day and relaxing over dinner at night with Noel and Denis and with Tommy or Margaret, Noel’s wife. Sometimes we also met up with friends. Thanks to Margaret who looked after us so well in Sligo last week. This catering manager for the trip, got off very lightly with her catering duties last week!

Photographs are few enough as cameras and water don’t mix. Denis has taken some for us.

Calm waters!

Self-portrait!

I’ll write further on having to conquer fear twice on this trip! And hopefully of our last day. I’ll also include a map of the section north of Athlone in my next post.

Summertime and the living kayaking is easy.

Well not easy but very enjoyable.

Two friends of ours kayaked the whole of the Shannon, lakes included nine years ago. While doing the lower part, they came to stay with us. That challenge really appealed to me … and I said to Noel, ’some day I’d love to do that trip with you’!

Fast forward nine years and you know where this is leading.

I’m not sure why I thought I could really do it. I had done some kayaking over the years in France. I’m reasonably fit and have done endurance events like marathons/triathlons. Neither of our two friends were true ‘canoeists’ so to speak so I thought if they could easily do it, maybe I could attempt the challenge.

We set a date in July but then I got that tooth/mouth infection so had to abandon ship. Last Sunday I rang Noel and asked him if he was free this Thursday to Sunday, I was game to go. That suited Noel perfectly.

Wednesday evening, Noel arrived and we had dinner and started planning our trip. Noel was Planning Manager, I was Sandwich etc Manager and Denis was Logistics Manager i.e., he dropped us at one spot and collected at another spot, all going well hopefully a good distance away from the earlier spot.

On his previous trip, Noel had kayaked North to South. Give that the prevailing winds are South-West, he was very interested in doing this trip South to North, anticipating that the benefit of the wind would out-weigh that of going with the flow of the river.

What do you know – Thursday as we set out the wind was coming from the north. Suffice it to say, Thursday was a bad day. We kayaked some but didn’t make much progress. We did some of Lough Derg that day.

Change of plan. Given that a northerly wind was still forecasted for Friday and Saturday …

We decided to make it as easy as possible and go with the wind. We had earlier decided that we would do it in sections that suited us, rather than necessarily in order. By the end of trip we would though hopefully have every kilometre covered. Fingers crossed.

Day 2 to 4 were great days.

Day 2 Athlone to Shannonbridge

Arriving at Shannonbridge

Day 3 Shannonbridge to almost Portumna

Setting off from Shannonbridge

Two boys waiting on the bank near Portumna. Was I glad to see them!

Day 4 Killaloe to Limerick.

Day 5 Back to the day job.

Noel is a great leader on a trip like this, endlessly patient and helpful. He also has a wonderful knowledge of plantlife, birds, insects, you name it. This week I was concentrating on keeping the boat moving in a straight line. Next week hopefully I’ll be able to take more in of the amazing natural life we are seeing from the water.

Tommy’s map is below showing where we’re at -

We will try to get rivers and lakes North of Athlone done over an extra long weekend next weekend, weather permitting. After that we just have to finish off Lough Derg.

They say madness is hereditary … another thing I’ve inherited from my children!

with coffee at 11 … and gorgeous scones, served with homemade jam and clotted cream … and linen napkins … and excellent service.

The little extras. Plenty of papers and free wifi.

The price. Only €4.95 for coffee and scones per person.

The venue. The Savoy Hotel, a 5 star hotel in the centre of the city. Upstairs in the lounge area, food is served all day.

A little gem in the heart of Limerick.

‘The Poisonwood Bible’ is a wonderful portrayal of an American family, the Prices, who in 1959 move from Georgia to the village of Kilanga in the Belgian Congo. It is told through the voices of the wife, Orleanna and four daughters; Rachel, Leah, Adah, and Ruth May. These five family members who accompany their husband/father, Nathan Price, a crazed evangelical Baptist who is on a mission to save the world African souls.

The book alternates with chapters narrated by each of the five females. Rachel the eldest is fifteen, Leah and Adah, are twins of fourteen and Ruth May is five when they embark on their odyssey. The challenges for the family were many; the harsh jungle, with its toxic trees – the poisonwood of the title, the political turmoil in the Congo in the 1960’s, Nathan, the father’s religious fundamentalism and his inability to even try to tune into Kilanga culture. After a series of misfortunes, culminating in the death of one of the daughters, the women eventually leave Nathan. Much too late in my humble opinion.

The remainder of the book tells their subsequent story up to the 1990s.

It’s long book at over 600 pages and is not the sort of book that’s easily taken up and put down as happens frequently when I’m reading. I was really glad I read this book while on holidays. I enjoyed the story for the sheer tale of how the family struggled to cope with the challenges they faced. The family dynamics were very interesting. I found all the female characters likeable and credible. One couldn’t but like even selfish, self-obsessed Rachel. Whilst being brought to the Congo by fundamentalist Nathan Price is beyond the likely experiences of your average family, one could still relate to/emapthise with much of the book.

I very much enjoyed this book and would thoroughly recommend it. I had actually bought it when it was first published in 1999 on the recommendation of the the boys’ violin teacher at primary school. Book was started and lay unread and yellowing over the (eleven) intervening years. I was delighted when Cathy proposed it for the bookclub. Now I could get to start it again but this time finish it.

I was very interested that Adah had Cerbral Palsy, specifically Hemiplegia. No consideration of her condition was mentioned when they family was embarking on their journey, though this was 1959. I was also very interested in how as an adult her condition greatly improved. Barbara Kingsolver is noted for the meticulous research she puts into her writing, one of the reasons why she is not a prolific writer. I would liked a little more detail here, but that’s just me.

Another interesting book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; A Year of Food Life by this author, (together with her husband and daughter), was published in 2007. It describes their challenge to live for a year on locally grown food. Interestingly Amazon note that ‘frequently bought with’ this Kingsolver book were two books by Michael Pollan, whom I wrote about before here.

Finally I’m currently slowly reading Kingsolver’s latest book ‘The Lacuna’.

Having re-read this review I realise it’s almost as much about Barbara Kingsolver as ‘The Poisonwood Bible’.

With reference to my recent post showing the wonderful refurbished Limerick Milk Market, do you know the following nursery rhyme?

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog

Look carefully at label on the box. We spotted these while buying a bag of dog food.

Better half thought he’d buy a treat unmentionables for Barack and Charlie.

I refused to have anything to do with this purchase … wouldn’t hold the bag … pretended they weren’t there.

Barack and Charlie … well they don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘refuse’

This is a long rambling story of Windows 2006, Windows 2010 and sleeping teenagers!

We built our current house in 2006. This being our fourth house since we were married, we had accumulated ideas of what we liked and didn’t like in houses.

When building this house, better half had strong ideas on windows. We looked at various types eventually settling on Marvin Windows whose headquarters in Ireland are in Wicklow. These windows come from the US, so choosing them caused a delay in house construction by a number of weeks. Natural wood on the inside, aluminium clad on the outside, these windows are beautiful. Originally we had planned on a different design, but were shocked at the price. On further research we found that sash windows which are very common in the US, were one of the more affordable windows with Marvin. Thus we settled on sash windows.

(At this stage you could give out to me about carbon footprint. You would be well justified).

Months later the windows arrived. From start to finish we were very impressed by this company. The standard of craftmanship of the windows was very high. The wood is chosen such that no piece has a knot. I felt guilty that Marvin had people checking each piece of wood for knots and here we were putting window boards with knots beside them. Anyway the windows became the feature of the house.

Four years passed.

We noticed that one strip of wood in one of the windows in our bedroom had blackened. A patio door handle was also causing problems. I called Marvin, they said they would send someone to look. (The windows/doors come with a ten year warranty). Denis met the person, he looked and said yes that window and door needed changing. What surprised us was that he then went and looked at all the remaining windows and said he wasn’t happy with some others and wanted to replace those he regarded as not up to standard now i.e., after four years. Because these doors/windows come in from the States, obviously that would take time. That wasn’t an issue.

Fast forward a few months. I got a call from Marvin head office to say that the replacements were in, and they wanted to come to fit them this Wednesday. No problem. Better half would be away, I would be at work but middle son was home from US, so he would be at home to let them in. Great.

Wednesday morning I was in CompuB in Limerick with my laptop whose hard drive was caput. I run a dual system, Apple at home, Windows at work. Unfortunately it had been a while since I’d run backup. Because of ongoing problems with my old laptop, I decided to buy a new laptop. Kieran at CompuB was checking could he wake up a dead hard drive and transfer all my unbacked up work to the new machine. Fingers crossed, prayers said.

While in CompuB, I got a call from the other Windows guy, the Marvin windows guy, to say they are near the house. they had directions, I said fine, John’s there and he’ll let you in. I gave them John’s mobile number.

Half an hour later, I got a call again, John’s not answering his phone, they’re at the gate and can’t get in, no matter how hard they pressed the bell. I said I should have given you the gate code earlier, here it is, John’s room is the one on the right and do what you like to wake him up. Ring the door bell, hoot the horn, throw stones at his window. (Thought this was a safe one, given who they were!) Confidently I said, he’ll hear you.

Half an hour later I get another call. No matter what they tried, no one appeared. At this stage I was on way back to the office so swung around by home to let two, in my mind, very patient Windows people into the house. They walked around with me looking at the various windows/doors they were to change. I brought them into John’s room saying I wanted to prove to them that there was a body in there. In we go and John sits up cheerily in the bed and says ‘Hi’!

I apologised for my sleeping teenager, they said no problem. I offered them coffee and something to eat but they declined. I wondered would I have been as patient if I were in their shoes and thought definitely not.

Maybe though I’m not too old to learn some niceness from the Windows people.

On Tuesday the Windows in our house were fixed. By Thursday all the information from the faulty hard drive had been transferred to the Windows and Mac systems on my new laptop. By Sunday John tells me he will have a as he says a proper backup system working for me. All problems fixed, thankfully.

You spend the first decade trying to get your children to sleep. You spend the second decade trying to get your teenagers to wake up. In a few days, John will no longer be a teenager. Maybe the Marvin guys came just a few days too early with the windows!

Our July BBC book is ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ by Barbara Kingsolver as suggested by Cathy and myself. Our books after that are:

‘Like Water For Chocolate’ by Laura Esquivel, suggested by Jenny for August
‘Under the Rainbow’ by Mary O’Sullivan, suggested by Susan for September.
‘Small Island’ by Andrea Levy, suggested by Val for October.

Just looking over the books we have read in the BBC:
‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’, by Khaled Hosseini, suggested by Marian, March
‘Brooklyn‘ by Colm Tóibín, suggested by Marie, April
‘Let the Great World Spin’ by Colum Mc Cann, suggested by Treasa, May
‘The Children’s Book’ by A.S. Byatt, suggested by Cathy/Lorna, June

Re BBC Membership: Treasa has left our ranks as she has just taken up a new job, hope it is going well. Steph will keep an eye on the BBC but won’t be reading with us as such. And we have a new member, welcome Susan.

Our current members are thus: Marian, Cathy, Marie, Lorna, Val, Jenn, Edie, Catherine, Jenny, Kirsty, Una, SusanC, Winifred, Ann, lastofthemojitos, Paysan, and Susan. More new members are welcome to join at at any stage.

Best of luck to Marian on her big day next Friday. Wishing you both health, happiness and a long life together.

Photo owned by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com (cc)

I wrote last year about Limerick Milk Market. Closed for the past few months for major refurbishment, the market has just re-opened.

Here’s a quick tour of the new-look …

It is now an all-weather market with a fantastic new roof.

Country Choice from Nenagh run by Peter and Mary Ward have a great new stall at the market, as have Ponaire Coffee, Sallymills Artisan Cakes & Desserts and Fleur de Sel Crêperie.

Better half buys the fish

Later a stop for coffee and to listen to some music at Mari’s Cheese Shop

Back to work

Later these new potatoes with salt, pepper and butter … nyom nyom

Here is a full list of shops and stalls and opening times.

I’m trying to move as much as possible from food shopping in the supermarket to food shopping in the super market.

Well worth a regular visit.

June’s book was -

I have to admit, I have no review as I didn’t manage to finish reading it, even with our one week extension. In fact this past week I have spent overwhelmed by … a tooth.

A molar with an infection, the pain of which reminded me of childbirth!!! It had been giving me problems these past few weeks but took on a life of its own this past week.

Three visits to the dentist, two antibiotics, one painkiller, zero moaning (that’s a lie – a lot of moaning) and I’m on the mend. Dentist will now excise offending tooth as soon as the infection settles down. In fairness to him, he tried everything to save the tooth.

That’s my excuse why I’ve no June book review.

But I have next month’s ready

Don’t forget to visit the other members’ blogs:
Marian, Cathy, Marie, Lorna, Val, Jenn, Edie, Catherine, Jenny, Kirsty, Una, Susan, Winifred, Ann, lastofthemojitos and Paysan.