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!

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’

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!

Naturally I asked; What’s that? He replied; “It’s for debugging while coding”.

I was sceptical.

I asked him if he remembered the little yellow duck in the Osborne book ‘First Hundred Words’.

We spent so much time spotting the little yellow duck on each page that the book was worn out before it could be passed on to Middle son. I actually ended up buying a new copy of the book for him.

(Yellow duck up on the shelf, the dad being a tad … clumsy )

(Yellow duck beside Mum’s! toolbox)

(Behind umbrella stand)

(Top left shelf)

(Behind the loo)

Because I was so sceptical about the little yellow duck and coding, Patrick said he would email me a link to show how it works.

So quoting Andrew Errington from the University of Canterbury Linux Users Group:

There is an entire development methodology … the Rubber Duck method of debugging. It goes like this:
1) Beg, borrow, steal, buy, fabricate or otherwise obtain a rubber duck
(bathtub variety)
2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over
some code with it, if that’s all right.
3) Explain to the duck what your code is supposed to do, and then go into
detail and explain things line by line
4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then
realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck
will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you
on your way.

Works every time. Actually, if you don’t have a rubber duck you could at
a pinch ask a fellow programmer or engineer to sit in.

Who said the choice of children’s reading material isn’t important!

PS I did keep a copy of the book and it’s in one of my million nostalgia boxes up in the attic. Took these photographs in a bookshop, (with permission!)

Early Sunday morning, 6th June, husband, youngest son and myself, Limerick to Cork as dawn breaks over Ireland. Uneventful Ryanair flight to Carcasonne. Having been travelling to South of France for many years, we never check a weather forecast. Sure the sun always shines in the South of France in summer. If it rains, it does so properly, quickly, it’s over and back to doing what it does well, sunny and hot.

I should have had my card marked for this holiday so to speak. We arrived in Carcassone. No sunny blanket enveloped us. We were drenched before we even got into the airport building.

Not rain, a deluge.

I couldn’t believe it. We got our rented car and drove the hour and a half east to Serignan expecting the sun to start dazzling … soon.

We drove and drove.

The rain poured and poured.

We arrived in Serignan, dropped bags at the house where we were staying and checked out the town.

Had lunch in town square … in the rain.

And so it continued for a week. Eldest son arrived to join us for the second week.

Sun still had not arrived. It was mainly overcast, raining by times but also cold.

We looked up the weather forecast for the second week … mixed. Believing from many years experience, that ‘it never rains in Maussane’, we set off on Monday morning to chase the sun, driving from Serignan (A on map below) to Maussane (B). We had a most beautiful sunny Monday afternoon cycling in sunshine in Les Alpilles, a small mountain range close by. We hoped/planned to do further cycling over the next few days.

We woke up to torrential rain on Tuesday morning, plans for cycling were quickly abandoned. Seemed like the bad weather was following us!

What we were unaware of until much later was of the devastation nearby. I wondered at texts from home checking were we okay. I was thinking how thoughtful people were just because we were having bad weather. It’s only as I read now of what actually happened, I can understand people being concerned. Quoting Friday’s Irish Times:

Torrential rain on Tuesday afternoon caused the worst floods in the region (French Riviera) in almost 200 years, with trees and cars being swept away and huge craters opening in village streets … Up to 40cm (16in) of rain fell since Tuesday, causing the worst floods in the region since 1827. “We have never seen so much rain in the month of June,” Patrick Galois of Meteo France said … Many of those who died were trapped in their cars as waters surged through streets in the worst hit area, around the town of Draguignan (C on map) … hundreds of holiday-makers were forced to leave flooded campsites and took refuge in makeshift shelters provided by local authorities.

Reading this certainly puts ‘bad’ weather in context. We experienced nothing like this so have absolutely nothing to complain about.

We’re off home tomorrow. Whilst it was lovely catching up with eldest son, we never really caught up with other sun!

As you can see, I’m back blogging.

We met a number of pairs of swans along the river. Interestingly swans form pairs that last for many years, and can last for life. However genetic techniques are starting to show that ‘divorces’ are more common than previously thought among swans!

Another pair

And another

The importance of not having a stiff neck.

The dogs curious at first, bravely approached the swans but after lots of hissing … reconsidered, and retreated well back.

Other wildlife

There are some lovely fisherman’s huts along the riverside, in various states of repair. Here are some of the nicer examples.

Bridges along the way, old and not so old

Night began to fall

Plassey house, known as the ‘White House’ because because it’s … white and/or contains the offices of the President of the University. Originally the estate was owned by Robert Clive who renamed it Plassey after his victory in India. He later became Lord Clive of Plassey.

The house is three stories high, the third floor being cleverly hidden in the roof level.

Plassey House was the only building on the campus when Denis was part of the first intake of students to UL, (then NIHE) in 1972. That first year five courses were on offer; two in engineering, two in business and one in European studies.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

W.B. Yeats

All above is correct chez Collison other than atheist Papa says no prayers, daily or otherwise.

Friday pizza making chez Collison has a number of origins.

First about thirteen years ago Denis and I stayed for a few days at the Arbutus Lodge in Cork. At some stage over our stay, I commented on the great breads. The person serving us was the owner. We had a good chat about bread baking and she said that her husband, Declan, gets up early every morning to bake. She recognised that I was interested and asked if I wanted to get up the following morning to watch him. That night we were meeting friends. I excused myself early as I had to be up with the birds … and the baker.

At 5am the following morning, leaving sleeping beauty in bed, I quietly crept down to the kitchen. There things weren’t so quiet. Declan was already up and the ovens were going. For a few hours he made different breads, sourdough, yeast, soda, ciabatta, focaccia and finally ending with pizza. Much of what he made that morning was for sale at the English Market. I helped, learned a lot and thoroughly enjoyed my lesson with a master.

A number of years later I read in the paper that the Ryans sold the Arbutus Lodge and Declan set up a multi-award winning bakery, Arbutus Bread Ltd.

Here’s what the Bridgestone Guide said

Declan Ryan’s pioneering bakery is one of the most important artisan businesses in Ireland …

Another source of our inspiration into making pizza from scratch at home was a fantastic restaurant in Sligo called Truffles, run by Bernadette O’Shea. Alas this restaurant is no more. Here’s a review of this restaurant from the New York Times in 1994. I love Bernadette O’Shea’s book Pizza Defined.

I can’t really remember how ’sleeping beauty’ rather than ‘keen pupil’ became chez Collison’s chief pizza maker. But he did. And I’m so glad he did. I do most of the cooking at home so love when it comes to pizza night. It’s part of the ‘Thank God it’s Friday’ feeling.

Over the years various mice helped with pizza making. I remember middle-mouse entering chez Collison’s pizza recipe in a children’s cookery competition.

Here’s a pizza making picture essay.

First up getting the tomato sauce on, basically lots of garlic and tomato

Pizza Chef at work

Chat is important

I was away for the early dough stages and just arrived home for kneading the dough

Pizza shovel needed

Table ready

Nyom nyom

The Papa, the Papa! Tradition.
The Papa, the Papa! Tradition.

St Bridget’s day on the first of February was an important day in our growing up. St Bridget was the patron saint of Kildare and I was from that county. I remember trying to make St Bridget’s crosses from rushes at school. The crosses were then hung at home and their purpose was to get the help of St Briget in warding off sickness.

The tradition of making St Bridget’s crosses was the inspiration for a great sculpture on the M7 near Kildare.

It brings to mind the words of the Irish poet Ó Raifteirí which we learned at school

Anois teacht an Earraigh
beidh an lá dúl chun shíneadh,
Is tar eis na féil Bríde
ardóigh mé mo sheol.
Go Coillte Mach rachad
ní stopfaidh me choíche
Go seasfaidh mé síos
i lár Chondae Mhaigh Eo.

Translated as

Now with the springtime
The days will grow longer
And after St. Bride’s day’
My sail I’ll let go
I put my mind to it,
And I never will linger
Till I find myself back
In the County Mayo

Maybe Patrick had thoughts like Ó Raifteirí who lived from 1784 to 1835. He put his mind to it and didn’t linger to fly a small plane from Vancouver to San Francisco this weekend. Like me, Antaine Ó Raifteirí’s mother was probably also worrying about her son’s journey back then too.

Though she didn’t have twitter then to keep up with his progress back then. Twitter told me that Patrick touched down in Palo Alto 7 hours ago.

So on this St Bridget’s day, wishing everyone good health and safe journeys for the year ahead.

Well ‘my family and other animals’ are odd.

I like the ambient temperature cool. Patrick likes it freezing. Well it appears the animals like it sub-zero.

Our dogs are strange creatures. They have a bed in the garage. They choose to sleep in their kennel outside. (I’m feeling so sorry for them, I’m heating all their food!)

Here they are like in the Queen song, Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

I can’t capture it on camera, but one of them is wagging his tail.

My snow babes!

Yesterday, (New Year’s Day), the said buchailly bó left from Dublin airport. I love the arrivals. I hate the departures.

It appears that the East of the country has had worse weather than the Mid-West since Christmas. Below are some photographs of yesterday on the M7. I was really surprised to see that this motorway had not been gritted.

Near Kildare town

A little further on

Near Kill (my home village )

It didn’t appear to me that we were at all prepared for this cold weather if primary routes weren’t kept clear.

Paul Cullen reported in today’s Irish Times:
Transport companies and local authorities have defended their preparedness for the extended spell of cold weather after snow and ice caused widespread disruption to services on New Year’s Day … Dublin airport was closed for up to four hours, at least 14 flights were cancelled … and thousands of air passengers endured lengthy delays yesterday after snow disrupted services.

The boys got away with just a few hours delay. I was envious of them going to sunnier climes.

The weather was so bad that in order to visit various family, we decided to stay over rather than risk the N7 after dark. My sister, an A&E nurse told us they are inundated with fractures. This concurs with a report in last Tuesday’s Irish Times:
Emergency departments are trying to cope with between five and 10 times the usual demand for treatment of broken bones as the cold weather continues into another week.

This fella is also feeling the cold

Happy New Year everybody.