By Aine

Some time ago on this website I wrote about my dearly departed little puppy Buddy. Well I also have another pet. A cat. A big huge ginger tom cat. His name is Monty.    

the culprit

My daughter brought him home as a straggly stray some 19 years ago and he has resided happily in our home since. I have a love –hate relationship with him, a relationship that was tested even further last week.

I was entrusted with the care of baby Sam, a 14-month little bundle of joy, and, as I knew I would be in for a very busy day I decided to organise myself early and cook the dinner. I had cooked a beautiful joint of ham with cabbage, but I had taken out the ham from the cabbage and left it to cool on a plate on top of the saucepan. I was busily tending to my little charge, and then I had to pop out to the garden briefly. When I returned Sam had thrown all his toys around the room and couldn’t reach some of them. I bent down to pick them up when I spotted Monty under the coffee table with the joint of meat!

Now this was no mean feat on his behalf. He had to jump up on the counter-top, grab the meat, – sizeable piece that it was – (and the plate was roasting) – then jump back down; drag it across the kitchen, around the hall and into the small back sitting room!

I was furious! I opened the back door and threw him out on his ear, then I fired the lump of meat after him (I must admit here, I did examine it first to see if I could salvage any of it but it was too badly chewed!). He sat in the garden all evening chewing on the lump of meat, looking extraordinary pleased with himself, while we had to contend ourselves with a vegetarian meal!

Monty is guilty of at least five of the deadly sins. He’s lazy, has no morals whatsoever and is gluttonous. He will doze all day long on the back of the armchair in the bay window in the sun, eat and drink when he chooses, then at a certain time each night he will preen and clean himself and go to the front door to be let out to trawl the neighbourhood for some girl action. He’s not very fussy in his choices either, any colour, tabby, ginger, or black will do; likewise age is not an issue. I have seen him cavort with a beautiful pure-bred white cat from number 22, or a wild cat from nearby fields. I’ve seen him sidle up to cats half his age and indeed old age has not slowed him down. A couple of nights ago I couldn’t sleep and got up around 3am to open a window when I spotted him slinking across the neighbour’s garden where a particularly nice Persian cat resides. Punching above his weight, – most definitely!

Another day I came out of the house and he was sprawled across the garden with two other cats, one on either side of him, it was funny the way he was lying with them as if he had an arm around each!!!!! Hey there………………meet my lovers!! Meow!!

Monty has moved house with us now on three separate occasions. Supposedly you have to keep cats in for three weeks when you move house because they get disoriented and try to go back to the old house. Not a bit of it with our feline fox. Undeterred he was out trawling the new neighbourhood every night for the new talent and it didn’t take him too long to get acquainted with the local mistresses.

He has no regard for me whatsoever and views me merely as a meal ticket, and meows for food every time he sees me, (I suppose he has to keep up his stamina). I reckon if I fed him twenty times a day, he would still beg for more!

Indeed I had just fed him before the ham-robbing incident!

When he was younger he used to catch little birds that came into the garden until I bought a bell for his collar to alert the poor little creatures. Now he’s too old and too well fed to be bothered with the birds, and just lies in the garden watching them out of the corner of his eye – he’s probably thinking “I could have you if I wanted”.

He follows me to the shops, and when I’m out walking, much to the amusement of neighbours and small children. My son made him a little house. Fully detached with an A-roof complete with furry interior, but it doesn’t get much use, he prefers instead to roam free doing his thing (he is neutered by the way though it hasn’t in any way curtailed his prodigious libido!) and is always back sitting on the door-step each morning, even if he is looking a little haggard after his night on the tiles.

If there is reincarnation, I want to come back as a cat!

By Aine

It’s that time of year again ladies – races and summer weddings. Two (I think you will agree) occasions when we can all push the boat out a little and really dress up! But no outfit would be complete without some fancy head attire!

Hats as big as the Himalayas, feathers as floaty and delicate as butterflies, and fascinators to defy gravity dominate!! Well where else can you wear ‘em?

Time was when such fripperies were prohibitively expensive, but now there is no excuse for a bare head. Unadorned domes are so passé, everyone is getting in on the act. Let’s wear and share I say!

Penneys are, at the moment, doing a dazzlingly array of flowers, (some as cheap as €1.50) which would look good in an ‘upstyle’ hair-do for a wedding. They are also stocking hair bands with all sorts of accoutrements attached, and soooo easy to wear…. you’d forget you had it on!

Marks and Spencer have fabulous fascinators at present, more expensive to be sure but fab if you want to make a statement and stand out from the crowd!

Debenham’s have long been the market leader in head-wear for the special occasion, and they have feathers, and hats, fascinators and bows of every description, every size and colour. If you couldn’t find what you wanted there …then you sure are hard to please!     

Monsoon too do a good range of hair-wear but are quite pricey and why pay more when you can get just as good a selection in Penneys or Dunnes for quarter the cost? Because hat/fascinator/feather wearing has become so popular Debenhams’s have introduced some guidelines for wearers who must greet their friends (that’s assuming you are not just an air-kisser!) Aptly called ‘skirting the brim’ and designed to prevent smudging lipstick or just poking someone’s eye out -the guidelines have been compiled by Debenhams along with Debretts, the etiquette experts. This is what they have come up with:

H      Hat on the left hand side

A      Approach with right cheek

T      Tilt the head at 45 degrees away from the target and kiss!

S      Stay in position until clear!

So there you have it ladies! No more knocking off each other’s hats, gouging out eyes, smacking your friend in the lip, or knocking them sideways as you turn around…. Abide by these simple rules and you can’t go wrong!

Apparently hats should be worn tilted to the left and fascinators should be worn on the left side of the head.

See ya all at the Galway (or the Derby in the Curragh) races and hope you’re looking swish, swanky sexy and sophisticated!!

By Aine

Two articles in the Sunday papers at the weekend grabbed my attention. The first one concerned 16-year-old Abby Sunderland who was attempting to sail around the world single-handledly, the second about a young chap, called Tom Ballard, aged 21 who is proposing to scale K2, the world’s second highest peak.

Abbey set out in her boat, Wild Eyes, from LA on 23^rd of January this year to try and become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe solo and non-stop.

But she ran into equipment difficulties soon after leaving and had to stop for repairs. In April she had to give up the goal of setting the record but she still had hopes to complete the journey.

Unfortunately she came a cropper in the Indian ocean last week and had to be rescued from her stricken vessel by a French fishing boat some 3,200km from the western Australian coast, and two days after she lost communication with her team and family.

Many people have described Abbey’s quest for the record as ‘foolhardy’ and I would agree with that sentiment. A young girl of 16, despite her determination and spirit of adventure, is hardly equipped with the skills to survive a trip of this magnitude. The isolation, the sheer hard work, the ability to live on your wits and to anticipate storms, not to mention all the other perils of the sea, would be daunting for anyone, never mind a 16 year old girl.

Yes, she had satellite phone connection and indeed she was able to blog regularly on her progress, but did her spirit of adventure outweigh the physical challenges she faced? I wonder.

Doing a little research on her I found that her father is owner of a yacht management and shipwright company in Thousand Oaks in California, and Abbey, one of seven children, has learned to sail from an early age. Team Abbey is led by her father Laurence. Her older brother Zac made worldwide headlines in 2009 when, at 17, he became the youngest person to solo circumnavigate the world. He travelled 27,500 nautical miles in thirteen months. (His record was broken one month later by an English chap.)

So given that Abbey comes from such a fanatical sailing family (and a family of high achievers by all accounts) I suppose its understandable why she would made her attempt to break records, but I can’t help but wonder – were her parents even a teeny-weeny bit concerned and afraid as she left port on that day back in January??

I do think the world would be a very boring place if nobody had a sense of adventure. World records are constantly being challenged be it in sailing, running, swimming, boxing and all other sports and other diverse endeavours, but what age is it sensible to undertake risky challenges?

Who am I to say that this girl is anything other than wonderful?

I just feel, as a mother, this trip for Abbey was hugely risky.

Tom Ballard, is 21 and will attempt to climb K2 without support or oxygen this coming winter.

The mountain sits at the heart of the Karakoram range on the western edge of the Himalayas. It is just 237 metres shorter than Everest but is a more testing technical climb. At, 7,800 metres the area is known as the ‘Death Zone’ because the oxygen is so scare the body begins to shut down. Base camp is a week’s trek from the nearest road.

So savage is this mountain that it had claimed 77 lives by the end of 2009. One in four climbers perish on the decent as Tom’s own mother did. Only three expeditions have attempted the climb in winter, all have failed.

   Tom Ballard was only six years old when his Mother was swept away on her decent from K2 in 1995. Alison Hargreaves was only 33 years old but had gained a reputation for her achievements in climbing. She was the first woman to climb Everest without support or oxygen. She was the first woman to solo climb the north face of the Matterhorn. Before she died she was only the fifth British climber of either sex to reach the summit of K2.

Tom, on the other hand, has no experience of climbing in the Himalayas. So why attempt then to climb K2 in winter, with no oxygen and no support?

In an interview in the Sunday times he said that he feels closer to his mother in the mountains. “I always feel she is looking down on me in spirit.  I feel that she guides my path,” he said. That may be so, but I would still feel anxious for this young man and his seeming compulsion to scale this dangerous peak. I do wish him well in his attempt, but the loss of his mother to the mountain is surely enough for his family to forfeit, why risk another?

By Aine  

I was brushing my teeth recently with the tap running (I know, I know, very wasteful of me, tut tut). I started thinking about the proposal of John Gormley the Minister of the Environment to introduce water charges.

Let me say at the outset that I would be vehemently opposed to such a move.

I even belong to a group on Facebook, called “I live in the wettest country in the world…. I will not pay for water”, so my stand is crystal clear (pardon the pun).

The recent speculation about the water charges in the media has given me grave cause for concern, because if it does happen I will just have to severely curtail my usage and monitor every drop of the precious commodity.

No more ten minute showers and letting the water run even when I’m shaving my legs.

As for baths, well that particular luxury will be rendered redundant straightaway – maybe I could go back to the days when family members left the bath water in for others to use after them! Yuck! – Nah don’t think so! Or better still go back to the tin bath in front of the fire on a Saturday night when there was just enough water to cover the bum!

The aforementioned teeth cleaning would be cut down to maybe only once a day and twice a day at week-ends or special occasions.

I would have to cease watering my garden and watch my beautiful roses as they wilt after some brief summer sunshine.

I would have to drive around in a dirty car, couldn’t possibly waste water on such a frivolous thing as cleaning a motor!

My windows would be so grimy that Kim and Aggie would probably pay me a visit.

I would have to restrict the flushing of toilets to once a day (and just open the dirty windows more to allow the offending aroma to waft away.)

Clothes washing… now there is a predicament. I think maybe I would resort to buying cheaper clothes and discarding them when they became too dirty to continue wearing as I couldn’t possibly have the washing machine on three times per day as I do now.

I would have to wash the dishes, including pots, once a day in two cupfuls of water or better still buy disposable plates and cutlery and discard afterwards. Not terribly environmentally friendly though, is it Minister Gormley?

I can however see some advantages to cutting down on water consumption.

I would no longer buy cabbage as I could not justify the water to rinse it in! Let’s face it, who out there likes cleaning bloody cabbage? Likewise lettuce or potatoes.

Washing the floor….now there’s a chore I could happily live without!

On a more serious note though, how can the Mr. Gormley expect to collect the water charges from already cash-strapped householders?

The Government hope to raise one billion from metered water charges, according to a report in the Irish Times, but you have got to love that optimistic projection.

Then there is the huge debacle of the quality of the water in many counties, where frustrated householders frequently have to resort to shop-bought water as their mains supply is contaminated. Fancy some e-coli with your water? That will cost you extra. ! How would you feel about having to pay for the privilege of being infected with Cryptosporidium? No laughing matter.

As I write this the Government is in a bit of flux with a motion of ‘no confidence’ in our Taoiseach, so who knows what the future holds, but one thing is for sure, I personally, hope it doesn’t include paying for my water.

By Aine

If there was a competition for tea drinking I do confidently believe that I’d win it hands down. I have been an avid tea-drinker since I was a child, a habit I believe I inherited from my late father who was a passionate tea drinker. My mother would sometimes dabble with coffee, drinking chocolate, cocoa etc., but my Dad would have none of it!  It had to be Lyon’s green label for him. Good and strong, two spoons of sugar and a good drop of real milk! None of your Earl Grey, camomile, lemon-infused or herbal teas for him, oh no, just the strong ‘real’ stuff. I am definitely my father’s daughter on this one.

      I think there is nothing, absolutely nothing that can beat the taste of the first cup of tea in the morning. Now I usually go on to have a second, maybe third, but the promise of the taste of that first cup of tea of the day is why I don’t mind getting up early every morning.

Over the years I too have been inveigled to try other teas, and have discarded them in lieu of my particular favourite; Barry’s red box. If I were to leave the house twenty times a day I would ALWAYS have to have a cup of tea on my return. Anybody calls to my house…. they get tea! (I’m in danger of turning into Mrs Doyle – you’ll have a cup, go on, go on, go on!) Bad news on the phone…cue pot of tea! Good news on the phone cue pot of tea! Argument…….at least two cups of tea! Worry…………….at least two pots of tea!

I think you get my drift.

My tea drinking can be ruined sometimes by the cup or mug it’s presented in. I have my favourites you see. Sometimes my beloved would bring me a cup of tea in bed (major brownie points!) but I would have to disguise my disappointment with the cup it was presented in! Likewise my son still hasn’t realised that I have two favourite mugs in the cupboard that will only do, and while I would still drink the tea proffered, my enjoyment is lessened by the choice of mug!

My Dad liked his tea so strong that he used to leave the tea bag in the cup, which I remember thinking was a disgusting thing to do. Last week my daughter told me I was disgusting for doing the same thing! Oh dear! It seems I just slipped into that particular bad habit without even noticing!

My husband loves his coffee, and I have tried lattes, mochachinos, espressos and just about every variation of coffee but could never take to it. Give me a tea-bag, some scalding water, skimmed milk (always has to be skimmed) and my favourite mug and I’m a happy camper.

I used to take sugar but gave up for Lent about twelve years back and I believe the taste of the tea is actually enhanced by the absence of sugar. Its 8.10 a.m. as I write this, and I have my mug of tea in front of me and (whisper here – it’s my third one of the day!) I’ve tried to cut down on my tea intake (apparently drinking tea and coffee contributes to night sweats for menopausal women) but even that threat has failed to make me limit my intake.

 In Spain recently I made the grievous error of forgetting to pack my tea-bags and spent the week sourcing decent tea, after two or three horrendous experiences I finally got some decent brew (Typhoo or Lipton – not bad)! Unfortunately they serve their tea abroad in dinky little cups and it needed at least six of those to bring me up to my morning caffeine level.

Anyway have to go now, I have to sthick on the kittle and make a cup a tae!!

Cheers!

By Aine

If you’re a dog lover….. read on. If you’re one of those people who do get the strong bond between a person and their dog then you might identify with what I am about to disclose.

I had a little Shiztzu puppy, Buddy, who was a mere six months old.  Last Friday evening he was lying under the (parked) wheel of my husband’s jeep and my husband inadvertently ran over him. Unfortunately x-rays at the vet’s showed his injuries were too severe to be put right and we had to take the humane decision to put Buddy down. We were heartbroken.  I rang the rest of the family and they were equally heartbroken.

You see even though Buddy had only been a part of our family for six months, in that time he endeared himself to us all. Every morning without fail he would greet us, one by one, at the bottom of the stairs, tail wagging. No matter how grumpy we were, no matter how hard we tried to ignore him and his playful ways, he still was happy to see us. If we were in a bad mood Buddy could cheer us up.  His loyalty was complete, no matter if we forgot to feed him, admonished him for chasing the cat or peeing on the floor, he still came to greet us each and every time.

It was my son who gave him the name ‘Buddy’ (after Mario Rosenstock’s take on Keith Duffy – “Howya Buddy!)  and he was indeed a great little buddy. He would travel everywhere with me in the car, and if I went out without him he would always bound out to greet me on my return, as though I had been away for ever.

When I went to Spain recently I left him with a friend in Tipperary, where he had a whale of a time and made friends with Sue’s little terrier ‘Nasty’. In fact when he came back from Tipperary he sulked for a whole week, I think he really missed the other dog!

This is not the first Shiztzu dog I have owned.  A couple of years ago we had Dax, who was a fantastic little companion, but unfortunately he got the Parvo virus – even though he had had all of his injections he still managed to contract the deadly bug. I nursed him for four days willing him to survive but he finally succumbed despite the best efforts of the vet and my ministrations. We were truly heartbroken then and we swore another dog would never enter our house.

Then one day about six months ago I was down town. I went into my local garden shop/pet shop and there he was. Just a ball of fluff really. I was in love but left the shop empty handed. Told my husband that night and he said to buy him if I really wanted him. Next day I drove by the shop and had a look in to see if I could see him and sure enough there he was in a pen out the front playing with a little ball. I took him home and yes, of course, being a puppy he peed and poohed for Ireland, (he particularly liked my cream carpet, it must have felt like the softest grass to him!) I forgave him all his misdemeanours, but I did get used to having the bucket with Dettol and the mop handy at all times.

I tried to train him to walk on the lead too but he hated it and lay down crying like a little baby. And then, last Friday, in a couple of seconds his little life hung in the balance, a battle that, regretfully, was subsequently lost.

Yesterday I bought a beautiful yellow rose bush to plant on the spot where Buddy is buried. Pets become such a part of the family but we don’t realise how much until they are gone. Our little Buddy will be sorely missed.