Lily’s Blog

Denis and I took the dogs for a walk ‘down by the riverside’, the river in question being the Shannon. There’s a great riverside walk which can be accessed through the UL campus. Here’s some photographs from the evening.

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

Hearts made by a certain mouse a number of years ago

Quoting the lines from the song …

What the world needs now,
Is love, sweet love,
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
What the world needs now,
Is love, sweet love,
No, not just for some but for everyone.

And I’d add the line …

‘No, not just today but for every day’

Dionne Warwick sang this song beautifully on the Late Late on Friday night. At 70, this lady can still sing. Here is an old recording …

Happy Valentine’s for today and for everyday

First day of Spring
The first day of February
St Bridget’s day

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.

Roly’s Bistro in Ballsbridge has been on the go since 1992. In 1996 they added a bakery at the back of the building. It’s a great restaurant and one of the restaurants contributing to Zest cookbook, of which I recently wrote.

This year while at the Young Scientist, I discovered that the downstairs of Roly’s has now been converted to a café. It’s a great addition. They are open from early in the morning serving great food. Here are their menus for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and brunch at the weekend.

The food is gorgeous and fairly priced. They also do take-out food. My only very slight quibble was that service was a bit slow for take-out food, when youngest mouse ordered it to go.

Roly’s has a good website. I’m interested to see that it includes a blog but they haven’t got that off the ground yet.

They have recently published a cookbook, Roly’s Cafe and Bakery. I bought a copy, because I liked what they had included.

I’m not a Young Scientist
I’m a Middle-aged Scientist
A Middle-aged Scientist and Parent who has huge admiration for the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.

This competition is a great example of ‘walking the walk’ when it comes to Ireland’s knowledge-based economy.

For students, this is a great week. The hard work is largely done by the time they arrive at the door of the exhibition and whilst concentration is very much needed to articulate their project with the judges, there’s still a lot of time for fun. Many friendships are formed at the YS.

The main sponsor of the exhibition is BT.

However BT don’t just write a cheque to fund this event. BT run this competition with great professionalism and efficiency and with the enormous volunteer effort of their staff. Dressed in red uniforms, BT staff man and woman every aspect of the competition in a friendly and fun manner. Coming here over the years, many faces are familiar, as many staff volunteer, year on year for this event.

An important aspect of a competition such as this is the judging. Each project is individually judged by three judges from a large panel of judges, 15 in Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences, 10 in Technology, 29 in Social & Behavioural Sciences and 21 in Biological & Ecological Sciences. In all there are 75 judges who take on the mammoth task of judging the 520 projects, on a purely volunteer basis. Again most of the judges return year on year. There is a great sense of fairness and consistency in the very important task of judging the projects.

Even in the heady days of the Celtic Tiger, largesse in spending never fully penetrated the classroom. Now shortage of funding is very much back on the education agenda. The Young Scientist competition brings a different feel. At this competition students are competing for the most generous of prizes. There are 36 prizes for individuals and 36 prizes for Group projects. These consist of awards, rosettes and cheques, (€300 for first, €225 for second and €150 for third). In addition the overall winners and runners-up in the individual and group competition get very generous prizes. There are a further 25 prizes approximately, sponsored by various companies and organisations including three travel awards for educational trips to the US for students and teachers sponsored by Analog Devices and Intel.

The Awards ceremony on the Friday evening is an amazing experience. It’s like what a nuclear reactor must feel like with all the particles colliding except here all the generations are colliding. Students, parents, judges, sponsors are all in attendance at this energy-filled, noisy and very exciting evening.

This is one week where students get a clear message that science and technology is important. The message comes across loud and clear in many ways; the sheer size and organisation of the competition, the generosity of the prizes for their efforts, the many politicians visiting, the extensive media coverage of the event.

As a parent I’m hugely appreciative to Dr. Dr. Tony Scott and the late Fr. Tom Burke for themselves being true innovators. True innovators back in 1964, in devising a Science competition for students in Ireland. This competiton is now recognised as ‘one of the world’s finest showcases of science, technology, engineering and mathematics and a platform for fostering home-grown innovation and entrepreneurship.’

My awareness of this competition goes back to that first year, 1964, when a neighbour of ours at home, Francis Monaghan because the first Irish Young Scientist.

This is the tenth year of BT’s sponsorship of the competition. I sincerely hope they continue to do so. It’s not just about the money, it’s about the great heart and soul their people put into running this competition. At this stage, I’m not sure it would be the same without them.

My only request … maybe arm chairs in the centre of the exhibition hall for us middle-aged … The exhibition is exhausting ☺

No, whatever about me technically being middle-aged, I still feel young. Forget about those arm-chairs!

Blogging has been haphazard over Christmas owing to the buachailly bó being home, and lots of family and friends visiting. Recipes and saucepans have been well-used, all great fun.

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.

So I count out the twelve days of Christmas and look up the lyrics to make sure I’ve got today’s correct.

Today is ‘Four colly birds’.

I always (badly) sang ‘four calling birds’.

So then I go to look up what a colly bird actually is. Seems I’m okay singing ‘calling bird’, because that’s what it’s also known as. In truth what it really is, is a plain old blackbird.

Colly bird sounds better though.

I’m not sure what one would do with four blackbirds today but then none of the presents in that song were particularly useful.

‘My true love’ is much more sensible.

Anyway this post was where I was going to tumble in my Christmas reflections not debate the merits/demerits of the presents for the twelve days of Christmas.

Blogging has been scarce over the past few days owing to plenty of family (and extended), friends and food. A lot of cooking of food for the previous two. A lot done and more to do.

It really has been a great few days and there’s still more to come. Eldest and middle mice are here until Friday so Christmas festivities will certainly continue until then.

I feel Christmas is such a mixture of extremes, really good for some people but not so good for others. One never can afford an ounce of smugness if Christmas is good, because one never knows what the next year will bring. I’m thinking of a number of people I know, who have had the death of a spouse to deal with. I’m thinking of a close friend who has just had major surgery in the week leading up to Christmas. She is putting up a great fight. Her husband is keeping an online diary updated which allows us to get daily updates. I’m thinking of an online friend who got bad news on Christmas day. That family’s turkey remained uncooked in the fridge on Christmas day.

So when Christmas is good, I think one should really appreciate it … as well as enjoy it.

Our house is going twenty four hours these days. The elder lemons are keeping reasonable hours but eldest and middle mouse are still on US time. No need to lock any doors – there’s always someone up.

I’m celebrating my first blogging anniversary at this time. My first post was here.

Now a year later, I’m getting afraid of myself again. Over the last year, I’ve got interested in learning to program. In fact Patrick’s present is to teach me for a full day this week. I know me. Once I start something …

Maybe after all, four colly birds would have been a better present.

to all …

Star anise left over after a certain salads experiment!

This post is somewhat related to a previous post I wrote here about an unusual restaurant in San Francisco.

Atilla, one of our Hungarian friends is very interested in music. He introduced me to the song ‘Freedom Cry’ on the album ‘Boheme’ by Deep Forest.

Deep Forest consists of two French musicians, Michel Sanchez and Eric Mouquet. The song ‘Freedom Cry’ was sung by Károly “Huttyán” Rostás who was a Hungarian prisoner and the song was recorded in a Hungarian jail. Deep Forest’s website states: ‘A song from a man singing in a jail, which (sic) would liked to be free again. You can hear him sobbing while singing.’

The album became Deep Forest’s most successful album, selling over 4 million copies and receiving a number of Diamond, Platinum and Gold awards in 15 countries.

However the story doesn’t have a happy ending. According to wikipedia, though Deep Forest made money from this album, Károly never received any money from the song, and neither did his family after he died in 1986.

Here is the song

The words of the song are here on Deep Forest’s website.

Your Shannon waters tears of joy that flow’

Not sure how much joy there was in Shannon waters recently …

Tears yes.

Denis Allen may have to re-write the lyrics of this Limerick song to reflect climate change.

The water level has almost reached the level of the black bridge.

The water was close to this building which is sand bagged. Interestingly this is a recent-build.

As are these

Denis has got me back running recently. This was the path we ran on beside the river. The stile on the path almost submerged.

That’s a life buoy stand submerged.

No shortage of water for the flower beds.

A view across the river at the Living bridge. The width of the river + flood is huge. The submerged trees give an idea.

The roundabout beside our office. The UL campus is between us and the Shannon.

The level of maintenance activity yesterday (Sunday) on the UL campus was really noticeable . Numerous tankers were there pumping water (to relieve pressure on drains I assume).

When I took these photographs yesterday, some of the flooding had already subsided! I’m listening to the weather forecast while I’m up-loading them. More rain is forecast this week. The land can’t really take any more water.

We’re fine and will be fine because thankfully we are far enough away from the river. But my heart really goes out to the people living in the areas of flooding. People’s homes and possessions being ruined. The plight of some farmers in the West.