living in ireland, local history research

Kiltoohig

July 3, 2017 admin 1 Comment

Ellen OLeary was only 17 when she got married to a man 14 years older than her. She bore him 11 children and according to the 1911 census, 9 of them were still surviving at the time of that census. Only 7 of them are listed as living in her household in the 1911 census.

We know this because in both 1901, and 1911, she and her husband Thomas were living in House 4 in Kiltoohig, Charleville, Co Cork. In 1911, the census took information relating to length of marriage and number of children and number of surviving children born in the family.

The townland of Kiltoohig was then, and still is now to a great extent, primarily farmland. In both 1901 and 1911, there were just five houses located within it. You can see these on the OSI Historic 25 Inch Map.

Four of them also appear on the Cassini 6 Inch which I think dates from around the 1830s or so. Of the houses on the map above, I am fairly certain that at least 3 are still in place. It is difficult to get a decent zoom of the entire townland on a wide screen because the top right hand corner of the townland sticks out like a leg. A regular shaped townland it is not.

According to the logainm website, Kiltoohig is derived from An Choill Tuaidh which translates to the North Wood. I found this surprising as I always understood it to come from Cill Thuathaigh which translates as Chapel in the Country. Kiltoohig crops up in the Schools Collection as well. The Schools Collection was a collection of folklore and local knowledge carried out by school teachers in the 1930s to try and retain local knowledge, myths, superstitions and the like before the older generation died out. In Shandrum, Nancy Saluin collected knowledge relating to Kiltoohig – she uses one of the variant spellings – Kiltwohig – and it seems to support the story of the chapel rather than the story of the wood.

There is an old ancient graveyard where people were buried about 100 years ago in John Houghran farm of Killtwohig and headstones can be seen there today.

There was a church in Cill tú igh on Hourigan’s farm about 150 years ago. Remains are levelled – Nancy Saluin

Seán Clápeire and Andrias Mac Craith held a [unclear[ Filíochta [again unclear] in Kiltoohig twice a year – Nancy Saluin, Shandrum

To be honest, the writing isn’t very clear to me and I suspect that the first poet listed above should be Seán Clárach Mac Domhaill who wrote Mo Ghile Mear, or the other possibility is Seán Ó Tuama. But we do know that Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill lived and taught in Kiltoohig and is basically the biggest star to come out of the place.

Those poetry gatherings took place around the 1700s, however, and 200 years before the people we are interested in turned up in Kiltoohig.

Three of the houses remained within the same families between 1901 and 1911, the aforementioned Leary family who were in House Number 4, the Finn family in House Number 2 and the McCarthy family. However, the McCarthy family were listed as being in House 5 in 1901 and House 3 in 1911. At this point in time, I am unable to map the houses as listed in the census to the houses which appear on the 25 inch historic map.

House number 1 changed occupants between 1901 and 1911. Unlike Houses 2-5, it was not a farmer family occupied house in 1901 and it contained 2 households. According to the map above, one of the houses was closer to the town of Charleville than the others so I suspect if a house was spit into two dwelling places, it may most likely be that one.

But I am not sure. What is interesting, however, are the occupants. One flat consisted of a farm labourer aged 50, living on his own. Farm labourers feature across the houses in Kiltoohig as do domestic servants. Because of the way census are drawn up, we cannot be certain that the farm labourers lived with their masters although many are listed as being present with their masters on the night of the census. In Kiltoohig, William Daly is an exception. He is in his own dwelling on the night of the census.

The other family consists of Mrs Mary Cahill and her son Denis. Denis is 30 and unmarried. His mother is listed as 70 which suggests she was 40 when he was born, which, even by modern standards, is quite late. If there are other children, they do not live in this household. Mrs Cahill is a widow. She lives off an annuity and her son lives off interest money. In many respects, this is interesting. They have enough to pay a flat and not work, but they are in what is, at that point a two family house. Mary Cahill is listed in a document relating to the return of advances under the Purchase of Land(Ireland) Act, 1891, Section 33, in 1902-03. This seems to imply that she had acquired land from the Earl of Shannon and had received an advance to do so sometime around 1891.

By the time 1911 rolls around, House 1, if it is still the same house, is no longer a two family house, or if it is, only one of the units within it is occupied. Both the Cahills and William Daly are gone. It is possible that William Daly has moved to work for a farmer elsewhere in Cork – there is one candidate in the 1911 census that fits – but it cannot be deemed to be certain. As for the Cahills, a Denis Cahill in the right age bracket turns up married around 1908 in another part of Cork, a publican farmer. Maybe it was him; maybe it was not.

In 1911, the house was occupied by Edmond Hunter and his wife Jane. Edmond lists his occupation as dairy farmer – a little more detail than other farmers give. He and Jane married quite late in life, in around 1908. They are aged 50 and 45 when we meet them. It seems to me to be quite fascinating that they are late married. It is worth noting that the land around Kiltoohig, and the townlands around it, are still mainly used for dairy farming.

In the 1901 census, there is only one possible candidate for Mr Hunter and his name is spelled Edmund rather than Edmond. In 1901, Edmund Hunter is the 3rd of six adult children ranging in age between 30 and 45, all living with their mother Julia in Annikisha, a townland between Mallow and Mitchelstown.

House Number 2 was occupied by the Finn family. The head of the household was Catherine, and in 1901, she was 70, and a widow. Two sons were living in the household, neither listed as married, aged 39 and 35, Martin and Michael. They only spoke English. Also in the house on the occasion was a Maurice Finn, listed as a farm servant, and, unlike the others in the household, listed as illiterate, but, however, spoke both Irish and English. It is possible that he was a relative, but I cannot be sure of this. He is 55 years old at this point.

By the time 1911 rolls around the Finn family are still living in House Number 2. Catherine Finn is still the head of the household although her age is given as 82 which suggests there were counting problems either in 1901 or 1911, and Martin and Michael are listed as 42 and 38 which makes the grand total of no sense at all given they were listed as 39 and 35 10 years earlier. Per the census, they were all able to read and write so illiteracy cannot be seen as a reason for the age discrepancy.

House Number 3, in 1901 is lived in by three siblings bearing the surname Flaherty. The head of the household is Edmond, and he appears to have been the middle child, aged 45, and in between his two sisters Jane (48) and Anne (43). Both the women have profession listed as “farmer’s daughter”.

In the company of the family on the night the census was taken was a 46 year old farm servant called John O’Brien. No one in the house is married, and all of them are literate and monolingual English speakers.

In 1911, House Number 3 is listed as being occupied by the McCarthy family, listed below under House number 5. The records are unclear on whether the McCarthy family moved house or the house numbers are inconsistent. Assuming the houses went with farms of land, I’m going to assume that it is the house numbers are inconsistent and describe the family listed as being in house number 5 in 1911. They are new arrivals.

The O’Connell family is headed up by Maurice O’Connell a 65 year old widower. According to his census record, his family had 8 children and 7 of those survived. Four of them are living with him in the house in 1911, namely Ellen, Norah, Michael and Patrick.

I think this family came from Limerick, from a house in Meadagh, Uregare, Limerick which according to the map is between Bruff and Banogue, about 8-10 miles from the house in Kiltoohig. (there’s a really impressively looking castle ruin there too – Ballygrennan).

There is a 1901 census record which matches several of the family names, although Maurice’s age does not line up by about 5 years. However, we already know that age was a bit of a movable value in some of the households for this area and this age group so I think it may be safe to assume they are the same family. In 1901, in Meadagh, Maurice’s wife is listed and she is apparently 2 years older than him. Her name is Eliza. 6 children are living with the family in 1901, along with a boarder and a servant. The boarder shares an unusual name with one of the children, namely Hanoria (Norah in the later census) which leads me to suspect that with an age of 75, she may have been Eliza’s mother.

It is unclear what caused the household change in this house; which house became free first and why the families might have moved between 1901 and 1911. We know that two of the children appear to have left the family home in that time, and in any case, even in 1901, 2 of the children are not listed. The 1911 census states 8 children were alive but we have a record of 6 in 1901 before the family came to Kiltoohig and 4 in 1911 when they were in Kiltoohig.

In addition to the family, in 1911, there was a servant by the name of Michael Dinan in the household. He was given as aged 30.

House Number 4 is Ellen Leary and her family. The head of the household is her husband Thomas, and ten children are listed. Children between the age of 4 and 13 are listed as scholars, and the children aged 15, 17 and 19 are listed as farmer’s children. From this we can probably infer that at some stage between the age of 13 and 15 at least, the children ceased to go to school.

House number 5 is occupied by the McCarthy family. and similar to the Flaherty household, it consists mainly of siblings. On the night of the census, 8 people are resident; 6 siblings, a niece, and a servant. Aside from Josie Kelly, the niece who is 9 years old, and Maggie O’Sullivan, the domestic servant, the family present consists of 5 males, namely Daniel (38), Charles (36), David (37), Thomas (34), James (35) and Catherine (39). All, with the exception of James, can read and write and are listed as English speakers. Daniel is the head of the household. It is interesting to note that in the McCarthy and Flaherty households, head of the household was not the oldest child of the family, but the oldest male child of the family. No one in the McCarthy household was married, and James was listed as deaf and illiterate.

According to the 1911 Census, the McCarthy family were living in House number 3, and again, 3 brothers and a sister are listed, in addition, a niece, and a domestic servant. Three of the family have moved out, or are not present on the night of the 1911 census, namely Catherine, David and Thomas. In addition to the occupants in 1901, Mary Kelly is present and she is the mother of the young child, Josie. Mary Kelly has been married for 20 years, is 43 years old and has had one child, who has survived. Daniel is still the head of the household, and apparently he is 50, James and Charlie are still living with him, aged 47 and 45. There are two servants in the house, an 18 year old girl named Katie McMahon and a 32 year old man called Denis Murphy. In 1911 apparently all members of the house hold can read and write. This is interesting because in 1901, Charles was listed as being unable to read and write.

Mary Kelly crops up in another document after 1911 however. She made a claim in respect of damages during the Civil War of the early 1920s.

(National Archives of Ireland – run search on Kiltoohig)

Other references to Kiltoohig after 1911 reveal that a Mr Jonathan Naylor died in Kiltoohig on 13 July 1935. We do not know what age he was then, but we do know he outlived his wife, Charlotte Louisa who died in 1912 while they were living in Kilfinane. This information comes from the family headstone which can be seen here. The grave stone, and name implies that they were Church of Ireland and this is confirmed by their census record which can be seen here.

According to the 1911 census, Mrs Naylor bore 7 children, all of whom survived. At the time of the 1911 census, the oldest child still living in the household was 15 years old and attending school. Only one child is listed on the family headstone and she is not listed in the 1911, or does not have an obvious name variant. The other 6 are not listed. There is some evidence to suggest they were living in a different house in Kilfinnane in 1901 and more children are listed there, the eldest of which is 8. In 1901, Charlotte Louisa was 35 years old. She die in 1912 which suggests she was around 46 when she died. That’s quite young.

We have some information regarding landholders for 1921 from Guy’s Almanac. Amongst the principal landholders then were

Martin Finn (whom we know to be house number 2)

Mrs Hunter – probably Jane Hunter, House number 1. This suggests Edmond had died by now as he had been listed as the head of the household in 1911)

Thomas Leary – house number 4

In 1925, we have the same listed.

In 1930, we have

Martin Finn

Mrs Fitzgerald

Thomas Leary

This may imply that Mrs Hunter remarried. Or that she sold up.

The 1940 issue of Guys does not give us the same information and it is not obvious whether the families have moved and changed again by then. However, we do have a gravestone for Martin Finn dating from 1932, having died at the age of 58. He appears to have married at some point between 1911 and 1932; his wife is also listed on the gravestone and it suggests she was a dozen years younger than him.

Historically, we have some records for the area going back to the 1870s. In 1876 according to Guys Cork Almanac, for example, we know that principle landholders in Kiltoohig included Denis Leary and Margaret Leary – listed separately, also John McCarthy, Potentially they are parental to the families listed above.

Kiltoohig is listed in the list of Monuments in County Cork as being the location of an enclosure and a moated site. A one story vernacular house is also listed and it seems reasonable to suggest that this is one of the houses listed above.

There are quite a few Almanacs for Cork lying around so there is some scope for more research into society in Kiltoohig from around the 1700s onwards (when we know that Sean Clarach was knocking around) but more specifically, into the social history of the town of Charleville.

References and Research Material

Cassini 6 Inch – 1830s

OSI Historic 25 Inch

Kiltoohig in the Schools Survey

1875 Guys Almanac

1893 Post Directory

1897 Post Directory

1901 Purchase of Land Act (Ireland) advance repaid by or to Mary Cahill (House no 1, 1901) – land belonged to the Earl of Shannon

Statistical Survey of Co Cork

being me, ideas for the house, life in general, piano

A Library, A Library, My Kingdom for a Library

July 3, 2017 admin

Very few things make me terribly, terribly envious of other people, but home libraries, grand pianos and home swimming pools are on that short list.

I’ve always wanted a home library. A room with floor to ceiling shelves full of books. They don’t all have to be “worthy” books – although I have a collection of dictionaries which probably exceeds most normal people’s need for reference books.

Of course, I own a kindle, and carry around 300 books with me at all times. I can probably fit more books on the kindle than I could in shelves in my current living room.

But.

Actual, real books are special. Of course they are. They have a user interface which kindles really can’t touch. You know by looking at a book just how far through it you are, or are not. The average pocket book is more comfortable to read in bed than a kindle is.

Books have a special smell. Eau de Parfum de Brand New Book which slowly, over a long time period, moves to Eau de Parfum de Musty Dusty Book.

I love new books. I love leafing through them. I especially love the 2017 Edition of the Illustrated Grand Larousse. Did I mention I liked dictionaries?

I love casting an eye over a bookshelf and thinking “Today I will read (or reread) this book or that book”. It’s not the same as doing it through a kindle.

I don’t really care what my house looks like out on the outside. I care that it has a library, with floor to ceiling bookshelves, slowly filling up, in a chaotic but very personal mode. Not for me this utterly ridiculous idea of sorting books by colour to make a Statement. This is not about interior decor. This is about exploring the world.

In the room a comfy armchair with a table and a lamp so that I can see the words and have somewhere to leave a cup of tea as I vanish into a world that only exists in the imagination of a random stranger somewhere.

If the room is big enough, you know, I’ll put the grand piano in there too. Maybe a beanbag too for those days when the armchair is just too formal. Days when, outside it is raining but on the pages of a book in my hand, the world is full of possibilities, and no risk of getting wet, only of travelling a world currently unseen.

I’ve always felt that lots of money was wasted on socialites. I’d spend it on books if I had it.

being me, Europe, life in general, Luxembourg

Feierdag

June 23, 2017 admin

Luxembourg rather sensibly has its national big party event in the middle of summer. I was thinking of this as I considered the absolute novelty of standing outside in the warmth of 30 degrees to watch a fireworks display rather than standing out in the freezing cold waiting for the rain in March.

23 June is Bonfire Night in Cork. When the Independent Republic of Cork is declared, make that the Independence Day festival. Trust me. You’ll wonder how you tolerated marching bands in March. There is no comparison.

In Luxembourg, the whole national celebration thing starts the day before the National Day. This includes turning the place into a giant street party. It is unbelievable.

This is from the Ville Haute near the main expensive shopping district. Just around from this the party starts.

Bar after bar after bar has DJs playing sets on the street.

including dry ice machines

and like 20 metres away from all these club on a streets you have gigs on a street.

These were the headliners on Place d’Armes. Around the corner in front of the Hotel de Ville there was this lot.

That gives just a bit of a taste of the atmosphere there was in that square last night. This was their audience by the way.

This here was the main stage where the Military Band were lined up to accompany the fireworks.

They were brilliant. You can here them in the following videos.

Jupiter Bringer of Joy

Bolero

Here are some stills of the fireworks.

This was me at one of the gigs.

I have to say last night was great fun. There were food stalls everywhere. In the Knuedelplatz, where the guy with the fiddle and the girl on the accordion were rocking out, you went and exchanged cash for tokens. There were stalls over the place selling light sabres and light up hairbands. The buses were rerouted for the evening and free – seriously, they are dead serious about getting people to get buses. Three routes were added to support park and ride. Bunch more photos and weirdly aligned videos (don’t look at me – this happened automatically) to be found here.

being me, Europe, life in general, living in ireland, things of beauty

If I were to come back to Ireland…

June 23, 2017 admin

…I would live in Cork.

being me, life in general, living in ireland

Shop boys

June 23, 2017 admin

There’s a Neil Gaiman book called Stardust the film adaptation of which is, in my opinion, one of the best film adaptations of a fantasy story going. The sort that leaves you feeling uplifted and happy rather than relieved, that is. It probably isn’t as epic as The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The chief male character pops up at the outset working in a shop. He has a crush on the local lord’s daughter, who dismisses his interest because well he’s just a shop boy. Later the non-bitch love interest points out that there are shop boys, and there are boys who happen to work in a shop for a while. This is shortly before he becomes local king. In many respect, it’s a fairly simple rags to riches story where the poor boy with no power at the beginning turns out to have rather a lot of it. It is a wonderfully filmed piece of cinema, the music is lovely, the costume is lovely, but there is still this idea that you are only worth something if you wind up rich and successful at the end

That being said. I was at a family occasion lately, and time past were being discussed. The times past being discussed were dances. I grew up in the disco era so all of this was completely alien to me. We had to deal with “the slow set”

Dances in times further back than that – a lot further back – were the stuff of legends. The boys did all sit along one wall, and the girls did all sit along the opposite wall and the ritual was basic enough: the boys asked the girls to dance and the girls, except under extreme circumstances, could not say no. A typical extreme circumstance involved too much alcohol which sometimes leads me to wonder how often in fact, women got to say no at dances down the country. How much was too much? If you said no, you got a scathing review o DanceAdvisor which operated on the bush telegraph anyway. And it was as durable as the internet appears to be. Memories were sharp on this matter.

Society being what it was at the time, there were social “clues” which mattered a great deal. The one which was new to me was the one where a man had 3 pens in his shirt pocket. I dare say the number was variable, but what mattered was if he had pens at all, usually fountain pens, because this meant he was a Shop Boy. The girls liked and aspired to hook up with shop boys.

Because dancing was an essential tool on the road to getting married and being provided for – I hardly need tell you that in the grand scheme of things, economically women were not the strongest in Ireland at the time – things like this mattered. The farm boys did not like the shop boys because typically the shop boys got all the girls. They weren’t thinking in terms of “there are boys who are shop boys, and there are boys who worked in shops for a while”. The life you might lead as a woman who married a shop boy was likely to be very different to the life you would lead if you married a farm boy.

I found this fascinating because most of my life, a townie, listening to people talking about mating rituals down the country, what mattered was road frontage. That you had land and it fronted onto a main road. That sort of land was wealth. But farming brought with it a lifestyle which many a young girl did not aspire to. A shop boy was a boy with a prospect of a better and easier lifestyle.

A boy who was a shop boy just for a while might never cut it in a dance hall in rural Ireland.

being me, Luxembourg, running

Natural Born Stragglers

May 27, 2017 admin

The great mass of runners participating in the ING Luxembourg Night Marathon started passing my front door at around twenty to eight this evening. My apartment was just shy of the 12 kilometer mark, so well over half way if you were doing the half marathon, but a good bit short of half way if you had signed up for the full lot.

I don’t know how many people signed up to do this; but this I do know: they are all better people than me.

Luxembourg City had a weather warning in force for both today, and also for tomorrow, for high temperatures. When the runners set off at 7pm this evening, it was 29 degrees. It was still 29 degrees when they passed my door at 7.40 and now, at 20 past 9, it has fallen all the way to 28 degrees.

It will be a warm evening.

I stood outside when the first runners passed, and I watched them. And I stayed until the last runners passed and I cheered them. It is the great mass of people who do stuff that is hard, that they know they may fail to complete and who still do it anyway, who are heroes in my book. As I write, some of them will still be working their way around the route to get them to the finish line, be it 30 km away, be it 9 km away.

Not many people do this, I noticed. By the time the last five or six runners passed, the last of the stragglers, followed only by the police and a pick up bus, there was near no one left cheering them on. No one still shaking the cheap tambourines that ING appear to have handed out along with their orange straw hats. The only blue giant balloons to be seen were being dragged along by a runner wearing Luxair team gear.

By the time the main body of runners has passed, there are still a few groups, here and there 5 and 6 runners, or 3 or 4 having a conversation, trying to calculate how far they have left to go.

I “did” the Women’s Mini Marathon in Dublin once. I didn’t run it. I wound up middle of the walking field which is a fairly big field in that race. I don’t know if there are stragglers catching up in it. But I never ran it and my own personal interest in running is for solo trail stuff. I will almost certainly never sign up for the Night Marathon in Luxembourg.

There’s a pin floating around pinterest along the lines of “no matter how slow you are going, you’re still people the people on their sofas.

annoyances, being me, on the web

All Successful People have smoothies for breakfast

May 21, 2017 admin

I am sometimes inclined to wonder how many successful people actually read books or watched videos which amounted to “How to be Successful”.

I mean, you just know that the bosses of a bunch of high value tech start ups get up every morning and tune into the latest “How to be a Boss” vlogs on youtube. And yet there are loads of them. And by the vagaries of Youtube’s near totally useless recommender system which has decided that because I like bullet journaling videos, I am probably interested in other videos by organisational experts who are telling you how to live your life. This morning tossed up an assortment of 20 year old law students with perfect lives selling you their lifestyle. One of them went through a morning routine.

My morning routine is fairly simple.

Get up
Make my bed
Have a shower
Dress
Get breakfast
Pick up bag
Walk out the door.

This is it. In fact, I attach a lot of importance to the bed making bit because back when I was a student in student accommodation, my bed was my sofa. The place looked a lot tidier and was a bit more useful if the sofa was usable.

Also – and for me now this is the single most important feature of making my bed first thing – I won’t have to make it 14 hours later when I am falling into bed wrecked. No one sane likes having to do their bed clothes when they are shattered after a hard day at the coal face of sitting in front of a computer and listening to colleagues moaning.

I digress. A common feature of morning routines involves breakfast and the perfect breakfast. This morning, I was informed that smoothie bowls were great. I was a bit bemused by this because I wasn’t familiar with the concept of smoothie bowls. I made smoothies for breakfast for years but recent comments about it being better to eat fruit rather than liquidise it first means I’m less inclined to do them. Smoothie bowls are actually smoothies in a bowl with a pile of fruit plonked on them. I suppose the good point is you get the pleasure of the smoothie with some food chomping. What I’m not so sure about is the assertion that because smoothies were so go for you, probably lots of really successful people must be making them because they are, like, really successful, and smoothies probably contribute to that because they are looking after themselves.

Right.

Gotcha.

Think you are talking nonsense, but anyway.

I’ve watched an awful lot of How to be success in Life type lifestyle videos on Youtube. It is a veritable little industry between telling people how to organise, how to live, how to eat, when to sleep, how to apply make up how much to stuff into life, staring meaningfully into the distance while “studying” . It’s not because I don’t know how to organise mornings. I used to get up at 10 past 7 when I was in university and had a regular little routine going. It never occurred to me that 20 years later people like me would be flogging these routines on Youtube videos. The comment on my grave will be “She was very organised”. It’s just, I like art journals and youtube’s recommender system pulls me down continuingly awful rabbit holes (try looking at one small cat video and you’ll be fighting off recommendations about kitten rescues for months).

I don’t try to monetise this but really, if you want to be successful, following someone else’s morning routine isn’t going to help. There is no moral/financial pay off ratio that makes having a smoothie a tool of success. I was bitterly unhappy for the months I was having smoothie breakfasts; not because of the smoothies (oh they were nice) but because I wasn’t knee deep in the key thing “Find out what you want to do, and what you have to do to achieve it, and do it”. When I figured that out, it really didn’t matter what I had for breakfast.

being me, Europe, vaguely related to languages

Spotlight on Spotlight

May 21, 2017 admin

One of the things I discovered in Luxembourg since I got here are the Spotlight Verlag language learning magazines. I cannot think of a single corresponding example in the English media market but most of the newsagents have some if not all of these.

Spotlight Verlag produce regular publications in French, German, English, Spanish and Italian for learners of those languages. For English, they have two – a regular English one, and a business English one. In addition to Spotlight, another company called Colour Media, I think, produce a couple in English, also regular and business level. I’ve picked up some of the English stuff purely on the back of how interesting – despite being targeted at beginners – the Spanish ones are. I have the French and German ones but I haven’t been finding time.

ECOS is the Spanish one. It is very obviously directed at Germans as its tagline is Einfach Besser Spanisch and the glossaries are Spanish German. My Spanish is limited and goes back 30 years and I am planning to bring it right up to scratch in the next two years. If you were to ask me what is the best language resource I have found to date, it would be this. The articles are colour coded and there are idiomatic pieces each month for Easy and Intermediate levels. There is plenty of content in advanced Spanish as well , along with puzzles and games.

I cannot think of corresponding equivalents in English which is, I suspect, damning to say the least. I suppose it is not helped by the fact that English magazine market seems to be dying a slow painful death. I have had a look at some of the resources available for maintaining foreign language skills – I’m mildly disappointed with them (which means I should write one myself). Mostly the issue is that I find the creators of content guiding people in how to maintain their foreign language skills are more of a Look At MEEE I’m trying to maintain 13 languages…

I suppose for Spanish I had expected something helpful like “Here’s a list of Spanish news sites and magazines online” and “Follow this link for 100 Spanish radio stations.” Instead I get “Sign up for my product here” and “Here’s a mini essay about how the only people I speak Italian to are my parents”.

In summary every time I look at online language learning resources I feel cheated and hard done by. But magazines which give you interesting content and which are about give you steps forward, that’s great. It is a pity that the availability is a bit limited.

annoyances, being me, life in general, living in ireland

People who get up early in the morning

May 21, 2017 admin

Enda Kenny announced during the week that he was stepping down as leader of the party currently in minority government, and this, needless to mention, caused a leadership battle. The two front runners included Leo Varadkar. It was reported during the week that he wanted to lead the party “for people who get up early in the morning”. (Irish Times report)

This is generous of him but it hides something. Many people in Ireland who get up early do so not because they are spectacularly productive but because they have no choice. Leo Varadker wants to lead a party for people who spend 3 to 4 hours a day commuting to jobs in Ireland’s urban centres. Some of these people are not that far from work as the crow flies, it is just they need to negotiate the M50 in Dublin or the N20 and Dunkettle Roundabout in Cork. Leo Varadker was Minister of Transport who shelved the M20 from Cork to Limerick and also, who applied the first delay to Metro North in Dublin. He cut PSO subsidies too.

I used to live in Dublin, and I used to get up early in the morning. Much of that was to ensure I got across the city without spending one hour in traffic. There was a time it was to get stuff done in the mornings, like study, self education and the like. But that stopped when I stopped working somewhere that didn’t involve city centre traffic, for example. When I hear Leo Varadkar talking about being a leader for a party for people who get up early in the morning, he is probably trying to make you think he wants to be a leader for a party for the movers and shakers in the country. Watch any two bit productivity how to be successful video on youtube and many of them will talk about getting up early. Set your alarm 30 minutes earlier. None of them then say “and go to bed 30 minutes earlier”.

But the vast majority of people getting up early in the morning are losing hours of their lives daily to commuting. They are trying to exist as best they can in a country which does nothing if its back is not up against a wall pushing bricks out behind them over a cliff.

We are not talking about armies of Steve Jobs here. We are talking about the kind of people that Theresa May in the UK described as JAMS. Just About Managing.

I’d like to see someone have a vision for Ireland. Radically improved public transport in Dublin and its hinterlands is something which should be built not grudgingly and as little as possible, but with a lot more forward thinking and reality. Stop talking about Metro North and build it. Stop talking about the M20 and build it. Rethink how Ireland approaches public transport. Desire for people to have better lives. Not to be spending hours trying to commute to and from work or school. Desire for more people to be able to live close to work and work on that. This means rethinking how we approach accommodation. Talk about building a better lifestyle for Ireland. Which feeds into better mental health and better physical health. People who are spending 3 to 4 hours commuting daily are shattered. They are not getting enough exercise, they are probably not eating healthily. They are not spending enough time with their families.

Be the leader for a party fighting for these people, Leo. And drop the pity slogans about “people who get up early”.

music, piano, things of beauty

Pianos and love

May 20, 2017 admin

I fell in love with a few pianos today. It is hard to say how you can be in love with a few pianos simultaneously but…it happens. Today I went to the Marcus Hübner Pianohaus in Trier.

This is a veritable jewel of a piano shop. It has a large selection of grand and upright pianos. I must confess I skipped the digital section because I play a digital piano at home and this is to remind me that a digital piano, while it allows me to play, is still not the same as a real piano.

Hübner Pianos are a Steinway dealer. I have to confess that while I recognise the workmanship that goes in to them, I have never felt a grá for them in the way I have felt a love of 19th century Bechstein grand pianos for example. And the reason I went to Hübner anyway is because they also sell a piano I had never actually seen before – they have their own in-house piano models.

Most people who know me are aware that for most of the last 20 years I have been saying I want a grand piano. So it might come as a surprise to know that the piano I truly gave my heart to today was an upright piano. It is a Jubilaumsklavier and it has a beautiful rich sound, the like of which I have never gotten out of another upright piano. I’ve played a few of the newer Bechstein designed uprights like the Hoffmans and I’ve played a couple of Yamahas and one or two Kawais. They really never made me feel the way a beautiful grand made me feel. This didn’t just come close; it bypassed the feeling that I get from some of the smaller grands like the smaller new Kawai grands.

Hübner make grand pianos as well a few of which I played. In particular I played – and loved – a B212 Artist. For the longest tie I assumed that my grand piano, if and when it eventually came, would be a Kawai but to be honest, I don’t think this will be true any more. I preferred the B212 to the B187 – the B187 is a smaller piano and in truth, I tend to prefer the pianos that are at least 1.5m – there is something more aesthetically pleasing about them – the proportions are more balanced, even when the difference in the length of the piano is only around 3cm.

What I loved about the Hübner pianos – both the uprights and grands – is the responsiveness of the keys. The keys seemed just perfectly weighted – and this really brings into stark contrast why a real piano is still a far greater instrument than a digital – and the tone of the piano was far easier to control. The pianos resonate perfectly – and I should mention I was in the shop on a Saturday morning when they had a few people testing pianos – and the sound balances perfectly around you as a player. In practical terms, I cannot actually get one of these pianos just yet but when the time comes I may lock myself away with a Hübner piano and emerge only for breakfast.

In addition to those pianos, I also played one of the smaller Steinways – I didn’t note the model but if I remember rightly it was a secondhand piano – and I liked it a lot more than I like Steinways. It is possible that part of it is that someone else has broken the piano in but based on other things I noticed about the shop, I suspect it may be because Hübner have outstanding piano technicians looking after their pianos. This piano was far more responsive to what I wanted to do, and its dynamic range was broader than I have met on most pianos.

The other piano which I met and loved, again somewhat unexpectedly, was a Yamaha C3. I think the year of manufacture was noted as 1976 but I may be mixing it up with another one. This makes it one of the older Yamahas I have played.

I have a love-hate relationship with Yamahas in general, but especially with their grands. In my experience, their pianos are very hard to play; their key action requires quite a lot of force to get a sound out of the piano and for someone who has a soft touch, it just seems like too much hard work. At some point a few years ago I had a conversation about this with a piano dealership in Ireland and the salesman recommended I try just one particular Yamaha which was second hand and which their technician had done some work on. I’ve concluded since then that Yamaha probably build beautiful pianos, but I will never buy one new and I would definitely want a good technician to have at it. I have played I don’t know how many Yamahas over my life but I’ve really only liked two of them. Both of them were C3s and both of them were second hands and not exactly recently built. This probably doesn’t prove anything. Anyway, the C3 compared well with my expected grand piano budget but will have to compete with either a Hübner upright or, if I save up extra specially hard, with a Hübner grand and neither is going to happen yet.

It would be very easy for me to stop here and say, yes, Hübner is a lovely piano shop, and they have a selection of absolutely beautiful pianos that fill your heart with joy to play. But I won’t. One of the things which marked out Hübner as much, if not more, than their pianos, were their staff. I met three of them, including Mr Hübner himself, I believe. They were unfailingly friendly and helpful and more than willing to help in any way or answer any questions I might have. I found it to be a welcoming piano shop.

I come from a very different piano tradition to most people in Germany. I grew up playing the music of Ireland with some classical thrown in. I never play classical in public and what I used to test the pianos were variations on music from the folk traditions of Ireland, Scotland and Brittany. I was made to feel utterly at home in front of their pianos.