mary epithets

We were huddled in the car with cups of scalding tea and coffee, that must surely be the only way to start a real holiday in Ireland. The soft spoken southerner will describe their landscape as “Mystical”, mystical being a euphemism for “fog limiting visibility to six foot ahead”. While their homes are described as “Cosy”, the implication being that the outside is wet and cold. Whilst the weather may have drenched most of Counties Clare and Limerick during the three days I spent there, but it certainly didn’t dampen spirits. Winding down the window, I held my cup of coffee out for the rain water to cool it down.

This tree was the opposite direction from the ancient stone tomb that we were meant to be photographing, so it looked as though we had missed the whole point of the location.

Leaving aside the scenic journeys for a minute, the Irish road experience itself is a compilation of all my worst driving nightmares. The roads were narrow and bumpy with sharp bends, perhaps to ensure the longest possible route between any two locations. This worked out well though, as viewing the Irish scenary whizz (or bump) past while being inside a warm car was probably the most pleasant way to see it.

Navigation was not always the easiest thing. Even our dedicated "Sally Satnav" was confused by the lack of postcodes, expressing her dismay through frequent voice changes. Sally’s wandering accent, from British to American English did not make finding our way around Ireland any easier. At one point on the SatNav a small bay was labelled as the "Atlantic Ocean" – giving the amusing impression that in 30mins we had driven around the ocean.

The Irish Postal Address system (or lack thereof) combined with the SatNav and roads were still only minor contributors to our transport difficulties. Some of the time, we just didn’t really know where we were going. One such example was when we had guesstimated the location of "SAP Business Park". As we followed Sally’s directions we found ourselves on an increasingly narrow road, eventually it began to go through the middle of farms and we got stuck behind a moving herd of cows. By the time grass verges had begun to appear in the middle of the road I was really struggling to visualise an HGV making any deliveries this way. Either this was a very Irish sort of business park, or it was not a business park at all. After nearly driving off the end of the peninsula into the ocean, we accepted the latter.

Other amusing sites we passed on our travels included a church with a car parking area outside. This church was in the middle of nowhere and the car park was completely unsheltered but still carried numerous "maximum height" warning signs and barriers. But whatever for? Of course, the answer should have been fairly obvious – it was to stop farmers bringing their tractors along to mass.

On the topic of the church, we came across at least a dozen "Mary" schools and colleges. I should be careful what I say in a country were blasphemy is still constitutionally illegal and punishable by a maximum fine of €25,000! However, ‘hypothetically’, I may have spent some time on the holiday pondering why schools and churches would be so uninventive in their naming. Any string of adoring adjectives could be attached to Mary to create an institution, it’s like a bizarre liturgical form of MadLibs, "Holy Lady Mary of the Children", "Mary Immaculate College", "Mary Cause of our Joy and Mercy" "Mary Fairy Contrary" any sort of ‘Mary Epithet’ you could dream of.

With so many of these pious place names, Sally SatNav could undergo a conversion. Though normally a secular GPS device who offers ‘direction temporal’, Sally SatNav seemed to be offering ‘direction spiritual’ for a change "Follow the road to Damascus for 5.6 miles and arrive at destination". Maps are the same, being about as geographically useful as a contoured printing of the Hail Mary, which, now that I imagine what that would look like, is exactly what they were.

I’m exaggerating of course, there are actually many signs of changing attitudes to religion in Ireland. Walking past a small village pub I saw that it was "Match Making Night", naturally I took a peek in, not to check out my prospects or anything, just because I can be nosy like that. Given that the attendance seemed to be made up of 3 men and two women, I can only conclude that Ireland, or County Clare at least, has adopted a much more liberal view of what a ‘match’ can be. That, or I’m expecting too much of rural Wednesday night life and giving too much credit to the brogue allure.
I may even have been staying in a bastion of tolerance and liberal attitudes myself, the delightful hostel we stayed in, complete with peat stove fire, was named "Rainbow Hostel" which I thought (quietly to myself…) sounded rather like some sort of LGBT spa. Rainbow Hostel was host to an impressive number of tourists from Europe and even as far afield as Newfoundland. This was the case in Galway and Limerick too, all around were accents and languages from abroad, I’m sure this is unremarkable in other places, but its quite unusual to see tourists in Belfast, so I always find myself strangely impressed and enthused by it.

The modernisation of Ireland was visible in the architecture too, with exceptionally nice buildings, especially schools and higher education buildings.

Despite what the last few paragraphs might have implied, I do have a respect for many aspects of Ireland’s spirituality.

<performs mime staircase into ancient tomb> Yes, that much respect.

We’re pretty lucky we managed to spot the turnoff for this portal. The rocks were sourced locally and were of pretty standard size for the area, as I said at the time, “it’s not exactly stonehenge” but it had far more of the authenticity and atmosphere.

I think the above photo was taken just as Alice stumbled into a “coke holder” in the ground. These were soft drink can shaped and sized holes in the rocks underfoot that functioned as cup holders for neolithic men and women when they were having their barbecues, under the convenient wind shelter. We had to move off pretty soon after this, about a dozen tourists who wanted more serious photos had started giving us ‘looks’.

One of the most interesting things about the Burren and also about Doolin Harbour area was the strange ‘scifi’ looking rocks underfoot. In Doolin harbour this was most obvious, with large areas that looked very chiselled.

Dejavu – junior boys basement lockers

Geography squee – wave cut platforms

We managed to arrange our visit to the cliffs of Moher for a day where we could at least see the cliffs themselves, if not far onto the ocean. Stunning sites, though we did think that they were less entitled to be one of the ‘7 natural wonders of the world’ than the giants causeway. I remembered reading Eoin Colfer’s book “The Wish List” in which one of the characters life time ambitions is to spit over the edge of the cliffs of Moher. Despite facing a strong inland wind, I managed to spit over the edge and not have it blown back into my own or anyone elses face. However a google for “spit over the cliffs of moher” seems to show that this was not as common a tradition as I thought, so, I may have looked a bit strange. I’m proud of myself anyway.

Here’s something I’ve been listening to this week, thanks to Eavan Prenter for the recommendation.

Does anyone here ever use “SUPER video converter”? It’s a very good piece of software, or, it’s a useful front end anyway. But the website melts the mind. For some strange reason the developer has created a maze of links and inane comments on the software’s abilities. Such is the direness of the website that even after about 4 years using the software I’m not entirely convinced it doesn’t contain some sort of spyware.

It’s not that the website developer is unaware of what he has done, in fact, s/he’s even created a "how to download” page. Yes, a website explaining how to use the other dysfunctional website. Why not just spend that time fixing the other website? He could probably be making money from it if he got the site fixed.