From the New Yorker

Síle has been singing with the choir Madrigallery for their entire life, about 20 years now.
They have become much more than just a choir to us as all the members have now become both of our friends.

With our impending move to France she has decided to throw in the towel.

The choir has responded with a most graceful gesture.

Rather like a Football Testimonial, they decided to give a concert in which Síle was allowed pick her favourite pieces which she had sung with the choir over the years.

Anyone living in Waterford will have the opportunity to hear this on Saturday as Síle’s choice concert will be on at Garter Lane Gallery here on O’Connell Street in Waterford at lunchtime (1. 00 ) on this Saturday, May 30th.

Admission will be free.

It should be fun.

I celebrated my final sixtieth birthday party in the bosom of my siblings on Saturday.
I am now so broken down by age and alcohol that I can no longer remember if this is the sixth or seventh celebration of same.

Thanks to all my brothers and sisters for attending, it was a real treat to have all seven of us at the one table together, reminded me of Tree Tops!
Special thanks to M. Fifi Lauhoff for the catering, especially for the Meringues and the Brandy Snaps, and to Val for the cake and to D, George, Val, Fifi David, and Teddy for being yourselves.

(and to Milo, Esme,Demmy,Jim, Mary and Mary (and indeed Sile) for keeping us that way)
Ted and Mary gave me this extremely appropiate card.

I have travelled to France a lot with Irish Ferries over the past year.
Irish Ferries do provide a very good service, the prices are very reasonable, especially in the winter, the staff are kind and helpful and if one draws a veil over the food the whole experience is pleasant.
In fact as I made my most recent booking I did a little mental sum and discovered that this was the seventh booking on Irish Ferries that I had made this year.
I began to wonder whether there was any form of discount I could get, some loyalty reduction or upgrade.
I trawled through their site and there I found it, a frequent traveller reduction for which one could apply .

I immediately filled out the on line form and sent it in, quoting my various trips on the last year.
I got the usual computer generated reply saying I would shortly hear from them and suggesting that I might look at the Frequent Traveller terms and conditions.

I did and there to my disappointment discovered that the discounts only applied to the Britain/Ireland sailings.
I thought that would be it but was pleasantly surprised by a mail I got from a David O Connor from Irish Ferries.
He explained that , unfortunatly, the frequent traveller bonus did not apply to French crossings but, because I had travelled so frequently with the company he was prepared to give me a reduction of 10% on my last fare and upgrade my cabin from 2 star to 3 star.
This he has just done.
I call that mighty civil of Irish Ferries, I’ll certainly travel with them again.
Now if only I could do something about the food………….

Yesterday morning in the garden I noticed that the first rose of our Siobhán Ní
Fhoghlú bush was in flower.
I also noticed that a white petal ( I thought) had landed in its heart, this I carelessly flicked away.
An hour later and in the garden again I saw the petal was back, but then as I looked closer at this strangely tenacious petal it moved in a very unpetal like fashion.
It was a pure white spider.
I havn’t ever noticed one like it before.
I went in to get the camera and went closer for a picture.
The spider immediatly got up on its hind legs and waved its front claw like legs at me.
Faced by this agressive albino Shilob I retired.

Yesterday morning my day was made by this dropping into my comment box under a translation I had done in 2005 of Jacques Brel’s Chanson des Vieux Amants:

“I cannot thank you enough for your interpretation of this song. My mother was obsessed with Judy Collins in the sixties and last week we were listening to her albums (courtesy of her new I-Pod). This song came on and I was immediately enamoured. Until I found your site I did not see a translation that I felt satisfied with. I hope you read this…maybe it will inspire you to translate the rest.”

I reckon if this person enjoyed this translation (my very first by the way) it could do with a second airing.

La Chanson des vieux amants

Bien sûr, nous eûmes des orages
Vingt ans d’amour, c’est l’amour fol

Mille fois tu pris ton bagage
Mille fois je pris mon envol

Et chaque meuble se souvient
Dans cette chambre sans berceau
Des éclats des vieilles tempêtes

Plus rien ne ressemblait à rien
Tu avais perdu le goût de l’eau
Et moi celui de la conquête

Mais mon amour
Mon doux mon tendre mon merveilleux amour
De l’aube claire jusqu’à la fin du jour
Je t’aime encore tu sais je t’aime

The Song Of Old Lovers

Of course we’ve lived through stormy weather
With foolish love for twenty years

We’ve packed to go yet stayed together
And battled on through all the tears

Yet all the trappings of our past
That lie within our childless room
Bear scars of wars long finished

The winner now is often last
And simple things don’t lift our gloom
But if we loose we’re not diminished

And Oh My Love
My soft and tender sweet amazing love
From break of day until stars shine above
I love you still, you know I love you

Over the last week or so I have been doing a lot of driving through Ireland and have become fascinated by the thousands of election posters which now decorate almost everything that stands upright in this country.
What I am enthralled by is the way that people desire to project themselves in the photographs that they choose for these posters.
They come in all shapes and sizes of expression and often their choice of dress can be very revealing.

There are candidates pictured with their heads thrown back in mirth, they are clearly saying that they laugh in the face of recession, there are candidates with grim expressions which indicate their realsation of the seriousness of it all.
The most common expression I have noted though is a sort of Mona Lisa enigmatic smile, this is the expression of someone saying “We know how serious it is but will weather through ” and as such is obviously the most popular.
Then there is the clothes worn.
Too smart and they could be accused of being right wing, too casual and be thought scruffy.

The most interesting resolution of this dilemma was given by one Frank Gallagher in the Drogheda Area which I have passed through several times recently.
The same Frank has resolved the problem in a most original way.
He has produced two quite different posters ,so different in fact that I was convinced at first that there were two candidates of the same name running there.

In one picture Frank is pictured in a suit, hair oiled back, an careful smile on his face.He looks for all the world like a participant in “The Ballroom of Romance.”
In the second Frank is all “Man of The People”, open shirt, tousled hair, enigmatic manly smile.

He represents the Socialist Party of Ireland, it seems to me that this dual approach to image should make him an ideal council member.

I see that Bear Grylls, the survival expert, has been appointed Chief Scout.
This is an obvious attempt to improve the image of scouts and to make it more relevant to today’s youth, as such I applaud it.
Not, I hasten to tell you, that I was ever a scout , but , to my shame I must confess that I probably came as close as any boy to becoming a Girl Guide.

When my older brothers had gone to boarding school my mother decided that she would go back into the Girl Guides which she had enjoyed very much in her youth.
She quickly rose through the ranks and actually ended up being Chief Guide for Ireland and actually moving in very exalted Guiding circles- but more of that later.
As a humble captain my mother was responsible for her troop in Cork and had to make sure they passed all their tests, to become full blown guides.
I was of course commandeered by her to help and so spent much of my early years laying trails through our garden for the tenderfoot guides to follow, picking sticks for them to light their camp fires and even helping to mark the exams for Stargazer, or Homemaker’s badge.

But then my mother rose up through the ranks and as Chief Commissioner
(she would have been delighted that I received the same title in Eurotoques many years later) she spent a fair amount of time going to international conferences and generally being a bit of a jet setter.

She made great friends with Lady Olive Baden-Powell, the founder of the guides
who had actually come to Cork to visit her sometime in the fifties when I was about six.
She had come to lunch, which was a moment of extreme excitement in the Dwyer household and I was brought in to be introduced after the meal.

That was the moment when I sort of let the side down.
Lady BP turned to me graciously and said ” Are you a Cub? (Cubs were junior scouts as Brownies were junior guides)
“No! ” I said indignantly to her “I’m a little boy

As I have already confessed I was indoctrinated by my mother to salute single magpies.
I would no more pass one unsaluted than walk into busy traffic without looking right and left.

Consequently, I have developed the ability to spot a magpie by its flight at some distance and then to prime the saluting arm ready to salute at the appropiate moment and thereby avoid the dread consequences of the impending “One for sorrow “.

I have been driving around France a lot for the last months and I keep missing these moments.

Now fear not, Im not missing the Pies (as they call them there) altogether, I am just catching them much later.
It began to dawn on me that this was because their flight in France is entirely different to that of their Irish cousins.
In France they swoop and glide barely moving their wings.
In Ireland they have a staccato fluttering flight.

It wasn’t until I came back to Ireland this week that I was able to put this theory to the test.
On Sunday while driving back from Thomastown I spotted my first Magpie,
I caught the glimpse as before of the fluttering flight out of the corner of my eye and my arm, all of its own, got ready to salute.
It passed just in front of the car so I was able to see cleary that it was doing this in anything but a graceful parabolic glide.

So please can a twitcher out there tell me could this be true ?
And do Irish Magpies have to attend gliding classes before they can become Pies?

As I have already confessed I was indoctrinated by my mother to salute single magpies.
I would no more pass one unsaluted than walk into busy traffic without looking right and left.

Consequently, I have developed the ability to spot a magpie by its flight at some distance and then to prime the saluting arm ready to salute at the appropiate moment and thereby avoid the dread consequences of the impending “One for sorrow “.

I have been driving around France a lot for the last months and I keep missing these moments.

Now fear not, Im not missing the Pies (as they call them there) altogether, I am just catching them much later.
It began to dawn on me that this was because their flight in France is entirely different to that of their Irish cousins.
In France they swoop and glide barely moving their wings.
In Ireland they have a staccato fluttering flight.

It wasn’t until I came back to Ireland this week that I was able to put this theory to the test.
On Sunday while driving back from Thomastown I spotted my first Magpie,
I caught the glimpse as before of the fluttering flight out of the corner of my eye and my arm, all of its own, got ready to salute.
It passed just in front of the car so I was able to see cleary that it was doing this in anything but a graceful parabolic glide.

So please can a twitcher out there tell me could this be true ?
And do Irish Magpies have to attend gliding classes before they can become Pies?