Knowing my fascination for words one of the daughters subscribed me to the Oxford University Press Word of the Day

This would not, you would think, be a strongly political source.
I don’t know though.

Today’s mailing makes me think that someone in the OUD is expressing a political preference.

It cannot surely be an accident that on election day in the USA their word for the day certainly reflects back to the last election.

chad,
(A piece of) the waste material removed from punched cards or tape during punching.

Okay some people have been asking me about progress in the presbytery in Thezan and yes, I was out there last week and yes, I did take my usual superfluity of photographs, but I have been slow to blog them because they just don’t look that great.

The builder is now virtually finished, the plumber has only a couple of small jobs to do the electrician still has a bit to go but frankly the place is still a mess and not yet at its most photogenic.

The following shots then are for those who have had the builders in and understand that when they leave there is still a mighty lot of work to do.
They record that moment of house undress before the decoration starts.

Where the old nuns loo was, at the end of the hall on the ground floor, we put a French window out to the terrace. As the stairs bends over this part of the hall most able bodied people will have to stoop to find their way but it does brighten up the whole hall and (most importantly) it was like this in the house originally.

This is the same French door on the terrace side.

The other place we got work done was in the attic.
As well as a completely new roof, and feet deep of thick insulation (more against summer heat than cold) we created a much larger bedroom by taking a chunk out of the corridor and adding it to the second bedroom.

In the first attic bedroom (Sile and mine) we fitted this new window, its peculiar shape is because it sits in the original wall of the town and something wide would have been inappropiate.

There was a little room in the corridor which had no given function. As the builders were plastering the walls of this room started to crumble and we discovered it was just a fairly useless addition so we tore it down.
It immediatly revealed that this was the original open landing
Unfortunately we had already used this room to hide one of our boilers so now we will have to do something with this. However as this is in the private part of the house it’ll wait for stage two of the improvements. (the stage which rests on an ever lengthening finger)

This is my bath, my huge long wide bath, which we have put into our bathroom in the attic.
This is going to give me the luxury of (close to) total immersion for the first time in decades. I cant wait for the first one!

This is the picture of my Great Uncle Billy marrying my Great Aunt Agnes in 1913 that started us all on the route towards the Dwyer book which will be launched this month.

My cousin Margot, we have just found out, has some more family photographs in her possession, including the one which follows of the bridal couple, her grandparents, honeymooning in Venice.

It really give the most amazing sense of continuation to the wedding photograph.

There is an American/Irish band called Legacy which specialises in Irish Traditional music.
With my old friend Jim Flanagan, they have issued a CD called An Irish Christmas, Music and Songs from West Cork.
I am intrigued to have just discovered that that on the sleeve notes for the song Steampai
I actually get a royal mention!

Voila:

15. Amhrán an Steampaí [Song] (Song of the Steampaí). Having failed to find any reference to this, obviously wonderful, dish in either Theodora Fitzgibbon’s Traditional Foods of Ireland or Darina Allen’s Traditional Irish cooking, Jim turned to his friend from college days at U.C.C., former owner and chef at Dwyer’s of Mary Street, Waterford, and now consultant chef Martin Dwyer. Martin rejected Jim’s initial possibility that ‘steampaí’ might be related to the British Naval/Jamaican dish called Stamp and Go, and went ploughing through his collection of Irish/English and English/Irish dictionaries and his vast gastronomic library to establish a connection to Boxty and to Sweet Potato Bread. The entire story, and a recipe for Steampaí Uí Fhlannagáin (Flanagan’s Steampaí) can be found on Martin’s Blog of November 5, 2007 (www.martindwyer.com) and on Jim’s website (www.flanagansongs.com)

Pretty cool eh!

For either three or four years now, inspired I think by my daughter’s similar action, I have decided to go on the dry for the month of November.
The strange thing is that this decision to give my liver an annual holiday is so (almost) completely painless.
Aha! I hear you say, November, but we all know nothing happens in November.
I would have thought so too but this year the Dwyer social calander for November is doing well, all drinking occasions too and thereby hangs a huge advantage-no worries about designated drivers, taxis or car pool for any of these (you need to grab and nurture all advantages of being on the dry)

Facing into the prospect of a dry month on the 3rd of the month is I must confess a bit daunting. The great thing is that as the month progresses it certainly gets easier.

As to whether I would consider giving up the stuff altogether, I’m not so sure.
I do know that I could but I also would prefer not to.
Now if I could manage to cut down…………

I am certainly part obsessive, as soon as I get my teeth into something I cannot rest until I have it well chewed, masticated and swallowed.

So I came across Thomas Fersen’s song Croque and just loved it.
I immediately ordered one of his CD’s from Amazon –Piece Montee des Grands Jours -mainly because it has Croque on it but also because it has on a song called Le Chat Botee which I had found on YouTube and liked.

Nothing to it then you might say except wait for the arrival of same.

Mais Non.

I immediatly set about translating his song into English-and I promise there is nothing like translating a song into rhyming schemes to get you to realise how well it has been made originally.
Thomas is, I discovered, recognised more as a poet than a singer.

Here is his Croque and there follows my translation which I have called Gravedigger’s Relish.

(If you feel like singing along YouTube have him singing the song here)

Croque

Quand je rentre à la maison,elle me dit souvent
Que j’ai une tête d’enterrement et elle a raison,
Je travaille au cimetière,c’est incontestable,
Je laisse ma tête au vestiaire et je me mets à table.
Faut pas se laisser abattre,j’ai une faim de loup,
Moi je mange comme quatre et je bois comme un trou
Puis je retourne au cimetière travailler d’mon mieux,
Digérer mon pot de bière et mon croque-monsieur.

Pendant l’oraison du prêtre j’ai un petit creux,
Moi je pense à ma côtelette, à mon pot-au-feu.
Aux premières couronnes de fleurs j’ai déjà la dent,
C’est mon estomac qui pleure à chaque enterrement.

Comme un côté du cimetière est inhabité,
J’ai planté des pommes de terre dans l’intimité.
Et dans ma jaquette noire,entre deux services,
Je donne un coup d’arrosoir et je cours à l’office.
Je gratte, je bine et je bêche,quelle heureuse surprise
Quand je trouve un ver pour la pêche,je range ma prise
Dans une boîte en fer blanc le temps est superbe,
Voilà un coin épatant pour déjeuner sur l’herbe.

À présent qu’a sonné l’heure l’heure du goupillon,
Je pense à mes pommes vapeur, à mon court-bouillon
Et quand tombent les premières gouttes sur mon haut-de-forme,
C’est mon ventre qui glougloute,mon ventre qui grogne.

Parfois je croque un oignon,parfois une gousse d’ail,
Parfois même un champignon est une victuaille,
Il faut faire avec,ce n’est pas copieux
Car ces oraisons du prêtre on en voit pas la queue.
Le vent chasse les nuages,c’est providentiel,
Un grand disque de fromage tourne dans le ciel,
La faim me monte à la tête, j’avale mon chapeau,
Un bouton de ma jaquette et un pauvre mulot.

Je n’me sens pas dans mon assiette, je vais rendre l’âme,
Quand je pense à mes paupiettes, à mon croque-madame.
Ça fait trop longtemps qu’ça dure,je m’allonge un peu
Sur le tapis de verdure et je ferme les yeux.

Gravedigger’s Relish

Oh when I come home she often says to me
That I’m like an old tombstone and she’s right you see
For I work among the graves this is fact not fable
But I leave it all behind when I sit down at table
And that keeps my spirits high I’m a hungry horse
And I feel that I might die if I missed just one course
Then I go back to my dead,and I can do my best
To digest my Croque Monsieur and lay them down to rest

While the priest drones on
My thoughts turn to stew
And I dream about rognons
And my Pot au Feu
By the time the wreaths appear
I’m with hunger racked
And my stomach cries for beer
As in the earth they’re packed

By the graveyard wall, no-one’s buried yet
So I’ve planted down potatoes and a few courgette
And in my mourning coat between each dispatch
I spray down a little water on my vegetable patch.
As I scrape and weed sometimes to my surprise
I find a little maggot which the fishies prize
These I put into a box just to keep them fresh
For the fishes couldn’t care that they have fed on flesh

And when the old Curé
Gets the sprinkler out
I will be thinking of the way
To cook my speckled Trout
And when the holy drops
Rain down on my hair
You will hear my tummy growling
Like a grizzly bear.

Sometimes I chomp down hard on an onion green
Or some garlic flavoured lard or on a wild French bean
For I must stand my ground if it takes all day
For the priest to finish up so I can get away
Then the wind comes up blows the clouds apart
And the sun comes shining through just like an Onion Tart.
Then the hunger mounts right up to my throat
And I start to eat the buttons of my Mourning Coat

Then the hunger starts to swell
It bursts through the dam
And its pangs I cannot quell
Without a Croque Madame
But its all gone on too long
And I feel like hell
So I close my eyes and listen
For the funeral bell

This is a sister picture to my last entry, taken at the same time,this time the camera was pointed south instead of west and the line of mountains behind the church are, I know, the Pyrenees, just 150 klms away.

I took this shot of the mountains to the west of Thezan from the cimetière last Thursday as night was falling.

I am still not sure which mountains are which, these could be Les Espinouse as I said, or the Montagnes Noirs, or the begining of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Cevennes or (most likely) a bit of all three.

With the first grandchild on the way we are, of course, a little besotted.
As the father of three girls I wonder if this is the moment when the balance of nature will produce The Boy.
In France last week with friend Isabel in the back of the car she suddenly announced that she knew the sex of the child and pointed out to us four magpies grazing in the middle of a roundabout we were passing.
This , according to the version of Magpie counting we were taught in Cork , means :”Four for a Boy” (After one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl.)

She had no sooner said this when the clincher arriver in the form of a text message from the mother of the child.

“Was just looking out the window and saw four magpies on the lawn, it has just struck me what this means”

I think someone is trying to tell us something.