Survival Food Or Luxury?

We went to Iceland yesterday.  Not the country, the frozen food store!  They also sell tinned food like my favourite: Heinz BEANZ: Baked beans with Pork sausages in a rich tomato sauce.  We bought twelve tins of them!  I think I could live off them, if I had too.

What food could you survive on?  Some of us would like in a flat over a pub or a kebab house.  Imagine living in a pub with Real Ale?  But say you got snowed in this week, what would you survive on?  Have you filled your fridge?  Not with just beer!  

Remember this advert?

My Shoes Have Gone To Bed!

Trust me to over do it walking.  The sun is cracking the flags, to use one my late dear mum's sayings.  Well not quite.  But at least it's not raining.  My heel is still killing me and I am hopping around like Long John Silvers parrot.  I am like a dog.  I want to go a walk!

Last night we watched the footity ball on TV.  I put my socks and shoes under the coffee table and got up for a can of beer from our fridge.  I forgot that I had taken my tuber grip bandage off my foot when I removed my socks and shoes.  I put the full weight of my body on Mr poorly foot and screamed and said a naughty word like flipping heck.  Well it began with the letter F any way.

My wife asked me if I had took my bandage off?

"Yes of course!"

"Why?"

"You told me to take it off when I go to bed"!

"Why have you gone to bed yet?'

"No.  But my shoes have!"

It Wasn't Me Mate. Honest".

The weather here is pretty tickity boo at the moment.  I can't go walking though.  I have a badly bruised heel from walking with shoes that have very worn heels.  The wife bought me some new ones from Lidl last week and said I am a tight wad and should throw my old ones away.  Hmm..  They only cost her 22 Euros from Lidl.  The last pair I bought cost me 44 Euros from a 'proper' walking shoe shop! 

I haven't been able to think what to blog about.  Then I looked at my daffodils (see photo) today and thought about visiting Irish gardens that are open to the public. 

This reminded me of once when we went to visit a garden open to the public here in Ireland.  Any road.  It was around Easter and this garden had just opened for the summer.  I don't think they had remembered to do every important thing, like turn the water on and put toilet paper in the lavatory facilities.  Eh?  Don't worry dear reader, all will be revealed.

We duly paid our money in the 'honesty' box at the posh gardens.  Then we did saunter around the gardens and marvelled at the Rhododendrons and Azaleas..  They love the Irish acid soil.

Then we sat eating our sandwiches in the picnic area and we observed a few other people arrive in cars.  There was a family of Germans (Deutschland reg) who parked their car and sat near us eating their already prepared homemade ("Ere is von I prepared earlier") sandwiches. 

Mr German gets up and goes to the toilets, I presume.  My missus decides she wants to go for a wee.  So I wait at the picnic bench until she gets back.  She comes back and asks me if I would like to go for a number one or number 2?  

Off I goes to the toilet.  I place my hand on the toilet door handle and Mr German from the picnic area opens it from his side.  I nod and he sheepishly smiles.  Then I notice the toilet bowl is full of number two's.  There is no toilet paper.  I attempt to flush the toilet.  It does not work.  I go to the sink and the there is no water.  There is no water to wash my HANDS!!  

I turn round and open the door and a man nods and I smile sheepishly.  He goes into the toilet with no water and full lavatory bowl.  Then I hurry down the garden path.  I think to myself:

"It wasn't me mate.  Honest!"

Walking Over The Peninsula.

How are you OK? 


I got absolutely saturated walking today.  Did you see Walks With My Dog last night?  Dogs aren't allowed to walk on our peninsula, the Sheeps Head Way.  There are sheep grazing a long with cows and even BULLS! 

That's another tale! When I walked up and down mountains and glens and met a herd of Limousin cows, calves and a great big bull who was not happy to see me and I decided to walk (almost run) five miles back over the hills and faraway.


I have been walking the roads and looking at the bays and shaking my head at cars whizzing by whilst I walk on the tarmac.  The pictures are of my walk over the peninsula and through to Durrus.  

I stopped talking to a farmer on the way.  Our conversation went from it being the wettest year ever last year to the price of Polish coal and did I have any livestock and how we had just been to Portugal for my jollies in JANUARY.  Eh?

 Dunmanus Bay in the distance

 Lonely boreens.

A Georgian ruin.  I wonder if Jane Austen use to stay here on her holidays?

A Metal Bench Made By Our Smallholding Blacksmith.

Number One son did weld and make and paint this garden bench for us the other week.

 We even managed to paint some of the shed floor.

It cost me over one hundred Euros in steel and paint.  But it should last a long time.  Unlike the last metal garden furniture I bought.  It lasted two years.  Why is that everything you buy doesn't last?  Perhaps they should come with the label: 'Made to rust and break'?

A Strange Dream,.

I have walked thirty seven miles this week along the roads of the peninsula and this morning I walked to town,  I am eating like an horse and sleeping like a log.  

Talking of sleeping: I had a strange dream the other night.  I walked into the front room (lounge) and there was my my mum and dad sat on the couch.  

They looked a lot younger than I remember them.  I would say they were in their sixties.   My dad was wearing a check jacket and he had his hair cut.  My mum had longer dyed blonde hair and she was wearing her red jumper and a gold necklace.  It wasn't really gold.  But it looked gold and our two lads use to play with it when they were toddlers.  

I asked them what it was like living in Heaven these days?

They said it was OK and my mother said:

"It's not like what you think Heaven is like."

I looked at them with a bemused expression.

My dad said:  

"It's not all singing hymns and supping cups of tea.  It's just like Earth but the sun always shines and nobody worries and everybody is happy.."  He was starting to sound like Alf Garnett when he said God is C of E.

Then I woke up.  It was nice to hear from my late parents.  Even if it was only a dream!

A Face At The Kitchen Window.

Rachel wrote about ghostly happenings at her house in Norfolk  yesterday.  I thought I would share one experience of a ghostly apparition I had a few years a go.  The photograph is of our kitchen and its windows.

It was late Autumn and just going dark.  I went to the sink and I could see a woman looking through  the window at me. She was dressed like the woman in the Scottish Widow advert, complete with a black hooded gown.  She was an old woman with greyish white hair and had a bony pointy nose.

I shouted to my wife:

"Look."

She looked out of the window on the left and saw the woman's cloak swoop past.

We had both witnessed a ghost.  

My late mother use to tell me there was no reason to be afraid of ghosts.  She believed that it was ancestors coming back to see if we are OK.

That night we looked at the death certificates we have collected since we have lived here.  My wife  noticed my great grandmothers death anniversary occurred the day before our ghostly apparition.  Could it have been her looking in the window?

Thomas Hardy once saw a ghost in Stinsford grave yard.  It's  good to know that you don't have to be a famous author to see a ghost.  I have seen three ghosts and often smelt tobacco and hear hob nailed boots and creaking farm gates that no longer exist next the farmhouse.

Have you seen a ghost?

Another One Of My Walks.

I went on another of my walks yesterday.  This was eight miles long and I passed two people walking a dog and one car.

New lambs were walking along the roads with their mothers and there was no wind and no rain.  It's a good job I never took no notice of the weather forecast.  They said there was a seventy percent chance of rain.  I think they look out of the window in Dublin or London if you live in Blighty.  Then they tell us the whole of the countries forecast.

Did you see Britain's one hundred best walks last week on the old John Logie Baird machine?  It was great wasn't it?

Rambling On The Peninsula.

Bantry Bay yesterday (Saturday) on the North side (that sounds like a good title for a blog) of the Sheeps Head Peninsula in Cork, Ireland.   

It's still too wet to even think of doing any gardening work at the moment.  We have had some nice -ish days though and I walked thirty Miles this week.   I can't do Kilometres can you?  All the signs in the South of Ireland are in Metric and its Miles in the North and Blighty still?  I wonder when or if Brexit happens will everything go back to Imperial?  

I walked four Miles each day from Sunday to Thursday.  Then I had a day off from walking on Friday.   Friday was a day of  tidying out buildings and under beds and filling black bags with shoes and clothes for the clothes banks.  Why are there no book banks?  They are going into the garage with lots of other eitems and we will arrange for an homeless charity to send their van round to collect all our unwanted household items.  Anybody de-cluttering at the moment?

 Yesterday I walked the twelve Miles to my brother's house.  Then the good wife did pick me up and drove us back over the Goats Path in a Bantry direction to our house.   I opened a can of Budweizer and tucked into a bowl of homemade stew.  I haven't felt so good for years!