In praise of Irish buses

Life moves at a meandering sort of pace out here on the western cusp of the United Kingdom, leaning on the Here Be Dragons signs and wondering what unseasonable weather events the glories of climate change will bring us next.  So when I realised that our eldest son, Gawain and his fiancée Sue would be in Ennis on Thursday evening for a pre-tournament simul, I was struck by something of an inspiration. I should probably explain a couple of things first of all.

A ‘simul’ is a chess-players’ abbreviation for a simultaneous demonstration, one of those exhibitions in which an expert player takes on a roomful of opponents at the same time, strolling from board to board and trusting that his (or her, occasionally) instinct and experience will outweigh the numerical odds.  As a grandmaster and professional chess player, Gawain does quite a lot of these, and since Ennis is, as he puts it, ‘one of his home towns’, his adolescence having coincided with a particularly nomadic tendency  on our part, he was happy to combine the event with a degree of social reunion.  And since the simul was being held in a pub, the two birds were very neatly stoned.

The second thing to explain is that, despite the passing similarity of their names, Ennis and Enniskillen are, in Irish terms, a very long way away from one another.  This is not another Ballymena-Ballymoney tale.  Ennis, or Inis, is simply the Irish for ‘island’, Enniskillen being, more or less, an island in the middle of Lough Erne, while Ennis, in its Franciscan infancy, was surrounded by the River Fergus.  According to the road atlas, Ennis and Enniskillen are 153 miles apart, or 245 kilometres (Northern Ireland uses one and the Republic the other) as marked on the map here with tasteful red blobs.  Owing to the paradoxical nature of County Donegal, Northern Ireland is not always north of the South, but in this case it is, the top blob being Enniskillen and the bottom one Ennis.

150-odd (and sometimes, as you’ll see, very odd) miles doesn’t sound much, but as another glance at the map will suggest, despite the Celtic Tiger, peace dividend and frankly scary facility in winning Eurovision, the west of Ireland is still, thanks be to her holy saints, fundamentally a mid-1950s rural backwater.  Neither Ennis nor Enniskillen, according to the map legend (that’s a nice etymological oddity in itself) is even a Town, and only Cork in the entire left-hand half of the island counts as a Large Town. So it wasn’t a great surprise when, checking the Journey Planner on the Bus Eireann website, I found that it would take nearly seven hours to travel from one to the other by bus.  Fourteen hours return, on six buses, with a bit of hanging about in the middle.  Or, as I preferred to think of it, only fourteen  hours.  After all, seeing Gawain and Sue, who are currently based in London, usually involves a minimum, each way,  of a bus, a taxi, another bus, a ferry, another bus and several trains.  And before that they were in New Zealand…

So I did what you’re supposed to do with inspiration,  and by half-past eleven next morning was settling myself on the first bus, due westward from Enniskillen to Sligo.  This humble little route passes through some of the most beautiful countryside I’ve ever seen (and I’m counting the Alps, Tuscany and the Scottish Highlands) and I wanted to be sure of enjoying it to the utmost.  Accordingly, I selected a place on the left hand side of the bus, with a minimum of chewing gum stuck on to the seat back in front of me and a seat pre-reclined (I can never get the hang of adjusting them) for optimum comfort.  The secret of successful bus travel is to make yourself as much at home as is compatible with the comfort of your fellow-passengers, so it’s kind, if the bus is fairly empty, to choose a seat neither immediately in front of nor behind anyone else, and if that’s not possible, to avoid twanging the elasticated net behind their seat, kicking the fold-down foot rest or playing your iPod at high volume through leaky earphones.  We’re a tolerant lot, on the whole though, and if you insist on talking on your mobile phone, munching noisy crisps or slurping from suspicious cans (alcohol is forbidden on Irish buses), no one will make much of a fuss.

For one thing, there’s so much else to think about.  I’m almost sure that Bus Eireann windows aren’t actually enchanted.  It must just be something about being a bit higher up than usual, and having such a wide expanse of glass to look through, and not having to do anything but look (I had a book with me, but most of the Enniskillen-Sligo route is too bumpy for non-nauseous reading).  Whatever it was, we’d only travelled a couple of hundred yards when the first vignette of quintessential Irish life manifested itself in the form of three men in a boat.  Three men being neither Edwardian Londoners nor portly comedians but locals out for a morning’s fishing, and the boat being of the wooden rowing variety rather than the petrol-guzzling cruisers which generally dominate the lough.  Over the next few miles we passed donkeys, an elderly couple grappling with a very small tractor, caramel-brown cows and meadows starred with wildflowers.  We also, to be strictly accurate, passed quite a few half-built houses and wildly inappropriate apartment blocks, testaments to the property bubble that grew, and burst, on both sides of the border.

As we travelled westward, things, as is their wont, grew slightly more bizarre, not least as we reached the Rainbow Ballroom in Glenfarne.  It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that the Ballroom is in fact quite famous, having hosted the great names of the showbands era and insprired a story by William Trevor which was subsequently filmed by the BBC.  I’d never before seen it other than entirely deserted (Glenfarne has a population of three farmers and a elderly hen) but this time we were treated to the exhilarating experience of a real live Garda checkpoint.  (This was the week of the Queen’s historic visit to Ireland and the discovery of a bomb on a bus from Kildare so Bus Eireann customers were clearly prime terrorism suspects.)  A genial man in one of those shapeless cotton hats worn on 1970s camping trips ambled onto the bus and viewed the assembled passengers, by now consisting of a man in his seventies, a woman of around sixty and me.  His interrogation was swift and merciless. “All right, folks?”

We crumbled under the pressure, nodding shamelessly.  At least one of us even smiled.  The Fenians must have gyrated in their graves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Approaching Sligo, the landscape changed, grew starker and more dramatic as we passed by Glencar Lough, looking towards the Dartry Mountains.    There’s nothing to do here but gasp at the wonder of it.  Still, though, the little domestic details: a white cow paddling in a small stream.

 

Then, ahead, the first glimpse of the Atlantic, past the King’s Mountain to Drumcliff Bay.

In Sligo I had an hour between buses so dashed, in a sudden downpour, around a few charity shops, collecting books and, almost, a vibrant but sadly oversized green raincoat. There’s a café here where they make some of the best sandwiches in Ireland but I’d brought my own this time.  Anyway, I couldn’t risk missing the next bus, south down to Galway.  There’s always a tiny batsqueak of excitement about Sligo bus station; there’s surfing at Strandhill and sometimes the cosmopolitan whiff of an Australian accent.  The next bus was, in keeping, busier and slgihtly grander, with vinyl trim to the seats and, yes, an overweight man in a Star Wars T-shirt. We were in mainstream bus culture now. A long section of the journey, this one, and not nearly so photogenic, though smoother, so I could read – Peter Singer’s How Are We To Live? – I always seem to be reading Peter Singer around Sligo – last time it was his stunning The Life You Can Save – and only glance desultorily at the abandoned train track, sudden jubliation of lupins and the dreary 1950s religious theme park that is Knock and its crazy airport.

Galway bus station, cramped and chaotic, was busy at five o’clock but the final bus was close at hand.  The driver inspected my ticket with amusement.  “Enniskillen to Ennis?  Bit long, like, isn’t it?”  Galway has some new cycle lanes since I was here last, with provocative signs: Burn Fat Not Oil.  Past the stretched-out suburbs with their giant roundabouts and greying hotels, we were back in rural Ireland, with rabbits, lambs and, this time, shire horses ankle deep in the streams.  Through Gort,that quiet little town suddenly rejuvenated by its new Brazilian population and I was back in the Banner County, Daniel O’Connell’s County Clare.  Not much had changed in the five years since we moved away, and the street map I’d brought in case of a sudden mindblank stayed unfolded.

I’d booked a bed at the Rowan Tree Hostel, which has just won Hostelworld’s Best Irish Hostel award (voted for by customers) for the second year running, and I could see why.  It’s a fantastic place, perfectly located on the river at the edge of the town centre, with welcoming staff, bright, clean rooms, copious facilities and state-of-the-art security.  I’d paid for the cheapest option, a place in a 14-bed dorm and was upgraded to a 10-bed, which I shared with only three, silent and considerate, fellow guests.  I just had time to find my bunk (pre-allocated, avoiding awkwardness) dump the two bulging bags of books I’d bought in Sligo, have a quick wash and slip out again.  The pub where the simul was being held was, by one of those coincidences  by which we suspect that Providence smiles upon the slow traveller, only a few yards down the road, past the bridge from which we once, memorably, watched a family of baby otters, and the school where I taught English (TEFL variety) when we lived in Ennis.

The simul, in the comfortable surroundings of Tom Steele’s, more accustomed to the fiddle and flute than the fork and fianchetto, was a success, with the usual mix of local enthusiasts, wandering eccentrics and small boys with hovering mothers.  It finished rather earlier than these things generally do, probably because there were, unusually,  two grandmasters, Gawain and the excitingly named Vlad Jianu, making alternate moves.  This made the whole thing more tricky, as they had not only to evaluate the position on each board they came to, but also to work out what, and why, their colleague had previously played.  Despite their differing styles, however, they won every game and honour was thus satisfied.

 

 

Not quite so my hunger – I’d got the impression that either Tom Steele’s or its sister pub next door did food, and when this turned out not to be the case had to make do with a couple of pints.  Sure, but isn’t Guinness a meal in itself? And seeing sixty-four pieces on the board was a good excuse for my incompetence at the chess variants we played until the early hours of the morning.

A few, a very few, hours later I was briefly awoken, tucked up in the Rowan’s Tree’s excellent duvet, by a couple of quarrelling geese on the riverbank, not quite so silent or courteous as my room-mates.  I slept again, though, getting up in time for the breakfast included in the hostel rate, simple but copious: coffee, orange juice, cereal and toast, the kind of food you actually want when not befuddled by fancy hotels with their kippers and pomegranate juice.

After breakfast I had a wander round Ennis in the sporadic rain (sporadic rain being pretty standard this far west), discovering that not much had changed in five years except for the closure/relocation of a few estate agents (presumably owing to the resounding  property crash), construction of a pleasant pedestrian bridge (just visible behind the hostel in the last picture but two), closure of an electrical goods shop (see resounding p.c. above), opening of several small businesses with Brazilian, Central European and Afro-Caribbean themes (hurrah – showing where, and thanks to whom, any Irish recovery is likely to come) closure of the big toyshop (a possible decline in sacrament-related conspicuous consumption?) and, inevitably, a feckin’ Starbucks.

Thus updated, I met up with Gawain and Sue (here pictured on the aforementioned p.p. bridge) and we enjoyed a gentle stroll around the farmers’ market (bread, cheese, meat, jam, veg etc.) and browse about the excellent Scéal Eile Books, also new since we left Ennis, and just about exactly what a second-hand bookshop ought to be.

Alas, the time passed with its customary alacrity, and by lunchtime I was back on the bus to Galway, leaving G & S to triumph in the Ennis Open tournament over the coming weekend.  I finished the Singer, duly convinced that we ought to act ethically, though not necessarily for the reasons he gives, and moved onto lighter fare in the form of Rupert Christiansen’s admirable Complete Book of Aunts, certainly a Dahlia rather than an Agatha among books*.  At Galway I deviated, as the chess players (quite innocently) put it, and instead of going up to Sligo took a cross-country bus that runs from Galway to Belfast on Fridays and Sundays only, presumably for the benefit of students.  This was fairly crowded but pleasant enough, though the route, through Roscommon and Longford, showed Ireland rather at its most dismal, with boarded-up houses sprouting gardens of dock, sprawling suburbs of retail warehouses, a sad machinery auction and a half-shorn sheep in a front garden.   Longford, incredibly, has a hairdressing salon called The Hair Trapp, which I’m sure is delightful, stylish and professional, but does seem to illustrate the fact, as yet undiscovered by Apprentice candidates, than not every pun is a good idea.

Deposited in the familiar surroundings of Cavan bus station, the last leg of the journey was on the Dublin-Donegal route, bringing me into Enniskillen in time for a glass of wine and plate of noodles with M at the Linen Hall.  Where would we inpecunious travellers be without Wetherspoons?  So,

The Moral of the Tale: Even in countries with pretty useless public transport systems like Ireland, even in the rural, underpopulated areas of those countries, even with little time at your disposal, it’s still possible to travel considerable distances reliably, cheaply (€42 euro return, and it would have been less if I’d not been coming back on a Friday) and enjoyably by bus.  Viva Bus Eireann!

 

*Oh dear, don’t you?  Wodehouse, Jeeves, Bertie’s aged relatives – what a treat you have in store.

My new book

My latest novel, Summer 17, is now available from Amazon on Kindle format. I originally started writing it around thirteen years ago, after finishing Trotter’s Bottom, the third in the Ophelia O. trilogy. Then I went back to work as a solicitor, went to Italy, taught English, wrote Survival Guide for Chess Parents and Girotondo, came to Ireland, set up Crystal Bard Books and generally forgot about it until a couple of months ago when M discovered the draft on an old computer. So, it’s been revised, rewritten and brought to slightly belated birth in the brave new ebook era. Click here to find out more, download a sample or buy it for Kindle or Kindle for PC.

How Green Were My Ballies

A few weeks ago I read on my friend Gladys’ blog that the informal, inter-faith Northern Ireland Thomas Merton Society was holding a one day retreat in Knockayd, a centre in the Glens of Antrim run by the Corrymeela Community.  Since I have, for more or less as long as I can remember, been reading and cherishing the works of Merton, and knew very little about Corrymeela except that it was a Good Thing, I resolved to try to attend.  This proved slightly more tricky in the execution than the intention, as although participants were travelling from across the north of Ireland, none were coming from our particular south-west corner of the north and Ulsterbus can’t envisage the possibility of anyone wanting to get to Belfast before eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning.   The expedition seemed entirely stymied until M, cutting through the Gordian knot with his customary panache, suggested that I stay in a nearby B&B on the Friday evening.

Eureka!  The B&B (in Ballycastle) was booked, Translink (Northern Ireland’s integrated (pause for slightly hollow laugh)public transport network)’s website extensively consulted and a fellow Mertonite delegated to ferry me the few miles to Knockayd.  As the trip to Ballycastle appeared to involve at least three buses and/or trains, I decided to make a few book-hunting stops en route.  This was faciliated by a form of bus ticket which used to be called, rather grandly, the Freedom of Northern Ireland, which sounds more like the kind of thing Mo Mowlam might have been awarded than a small blue piece of flimsy paper permitting one to travel, at no extra cost, all the way from Belleek to Bangor.  It turned out, however, that the FONI (probably best not pronounced aloud) has been replaced by a natty little smartcard called the iLink which, once purchased, is rechargeable for a day’s travel at less than the usual day return fare to Belfast. Jolly well done, Translink.

The operation of the iLink is most exciting. You merely place it on a piece of plastic nothingness on the bus, the sort of grey panel that, on a car dashboard, indicates that this is the economy model, without the integral DVD player-cum-chopstick holder, and miraculously a ticket splurges out from the machine beneath it.  The drivers seem pretty thrilled about it, too.  ‘For my next trick…’ said one, which, for Dungannon on a grey February morning, is pretty much Perrier award stuff. So, the journey:

Fit the First: Enniskillen to Dungannon.

Having taken an extraordinary leap of technological faith and brought no printed books whatsoever with me (rather akin to a Swedish alcoholic setting off on a Sunday without an emergency stash of vodka) I started reading some of the free sample chapters downloaded onto my Kindle.  The first was a book called Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark, which has been repeatedly recommended by one of the more conservative commentators on Gladys’ blog.  I might have been warned by the subtitle, which is How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success or by the fact that another of this gentleman’s voluminous outpourings is entitled God’s Battalions: The Case for the Crusades.  Undeterred (or, to be honest, slightly deterred but feeling that I should give the thing a fair hearing) I read that China had no science, Islam no theologians, and (obviously) that unfettered capitalism was Good for Everyone before reaching the end of the sample and declining Amazon’s kind invitation to download the rest. Janet Street-Porter’s memoirs, Why My Parents Were Awful and Why I Dumped My Friends (or words to that effect) were similarly sampled and despatched to whatever a Kindle has in place of a wastepaper basket.

Dungannon

There isn’t much to say about Dungannon except that the main street, which runs from the bus station up to the library, is steep. I marched up it, bought a vintage Hardy Boys mystery and copy of Frost At Christmas (which I’d recently listened to on my iPod without managing to turn off the Shuffle feature and in consequence knew most of what happened but not, as Eric Morecambe so cogently put it, necessarily in the right order) and marched down again. At this point I imagined that I had time to pop into Tesco to buy a packet of biscuits and can of wine (I know) for my supper.  What I hadn’t factored in was the number of elderly ladies before me at the checkouts who had just received money-off vouchers for a range of precisely delineated grocery items.  On the positive side, it was encouraging to discover that I can still run, albeit a matter of yards, and succeeded in boarding the next bus.

Fit the Second: Dungannon to Belfast

If there was very little to say about Dungannon, there is even less to note about the journey from thence to Belfast, most of which took place on a grey motorway under a sky of a slightly paler grey.  But I now know in what order Inspector Frost’s bodies were found.

Belfast

My standard dash from the bus station (behind the Europa hotel, famed for being the most bombed in the world shortly before we spent part of our honeymoon there) down Botanic Avenue (please feel free to adapt the Eddy Grant song and sing along at this point), honed over the past five years, was dramatically arrested by the appearance of a large new charity bookshop on Victoria Street.  Once I’d perused the well-stocked, if less than meticulously classified, shelves,  I only had time for a quick sprint (well, shuffle) to the War on Want shop and an apologetic nod towards Oxfam before getting back to the Europa for Bus Number Three.

Fit the Third: Belfast to Ballymena

This was uncharted territory, but sadly all I can recall of the journey is the very large lady who sat next to me as far as Antrim and seemed under the impression that my nose and shoulder were Ulsterbus-supplied armrests, and the hyperactive bus driver who, when he wasn’t engaged in criticising the driving of his fellow road-users, or in drumming complex rhythms on his dashboard, whistled, slightly sharp, Lord of All Hopefulness, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, All Things Bright and Beautiful and Daisy, Daisy.  The Battle Hymn of the Republic seemed to be his favourite; I suppose he imagined himself trampling the driver of the small blue car who had the temerity to try reversing into a parking space within fifty yards of us.

Ballymena

Ballymena has trains, upon which I could have used my iLink card if I’d known in advance.  As it was, this transport of delight must await another occasion.  It also has charity shops with a large proportion of comedy books in them.  I shall take the optimistic view that the residents of Ballymena are merry, light-hearted folk who enjoy laughing and enjoy providing their fellows with matter for laughter rather than that they take one look at their unwrapped Christmas presents, say, “Bah humbug, bloody Welsh/American* comedians” and order their underpaid clerks to dispatch the same immediately to Oxfam.  No, no.  Ballymena was a nice place, with a particularly fine, furniture-themed Red Cross shop and doubtless a very good reason for flying the Union flag from the shopping centre.

(*as they were, as shall be seen)

Before leaving the bus-and-train station, which is some distance from the town centre, I had double-checked the time of Bus Number Four, to Ballycastle and confirmed that it would leave at 3.45. This would give me plenty of time to mooch about the shops until half-past three before wandering back.  Foolish woman.  As the mother of two current teenagers, I really should have known better.  As I approached the bus station at twenty to four, the previously empty, echoing shelters were teeming with hundreds of multicoloured blazers (I mean, obviously, many different colours of blazer, not that the secondary schools of Ballymena have adopted a Joseph and his Dreamcoat theme for their uniforms).  By the time I had squeezed my way through these to the approximate location of the Ballycastle stop, the bus had long departed.  There was another one scheduled for a quarter to six, but having surveyed the range of leisure activities offered within the vicinity (sitting on a  metal chair, sitting on a different metal chair, buying a Mars bar, buying a packet of crisps) I decided to enquire further.

The enquiry office, conveniently located round a hidden corner and halfway down a darkened alley, had, oddly enough, few enquirers.  Me, in fact, outnumbered two-to-one by enquirees.  These, a friendly man and woman, obviously appreciative of human contact after many decades of isolation, kindly consulted a range of timetables on my behalf before concluding that I could recover one of my lost hours by catching the bus to Ballymoney and thence to Ballycastle.  For those of you less than familiar with Northern Ireland placenames, whose minds may be spinning slightly at this stage, I’ll briefly recap.  Having missed the bus from Ballymena to Ballycastle, I was now going to catch a bus from Ballymena to Ballymoney and thence to Ballycastle.  I’m sure that, to a native, it’s no more confusing than Newcastle, Newport and Newhaven in England and Wales, though it’s probably unlikely that anyone without a serious alphabetic compulsion would try to travel between those three by bus on a Friday afternoon. There was a danger, I was warned, that the tricky change at Ballymoney Town Hall might come unstuck, only five minutes being allowed for the passing of the baton, but it was a risk I was prepared to take, fortified by my iLink card, which meant that I wouldn’t have to pay any more, and the fact that there was another, albeit final, Ballymoney-Ballycastle bus an hour later.

Fit the Fourth: Ballymena to Ballymoney

We were on the country buses now, the ones that say Ulsterbus instead of Goldline on the side and where you have to take your luggage with you rather than stowing it in the special compartment.  Connoisseurs of Irish bus travel, by the way, will be aware that in the North you have to open the luggage compartment yourself, with much consequent hand engrimement, whereas in the Republic Bus Eireann coaches have an automatic mechanism accompanied by a disembodied voice, no doubt one of the supporting cast from Father Ted, who intones ‘Stand clear, luggage doors operate’ throughout the entire process.  There are those who claim to be able to hear a final ‘ing’ at the end of the ‘operate’, thus rendering the statement intelligible and almost grammatical, though I’ve never managed to discern it myself.  Just one of the ways in which the tragedy of a divided Ireland manifests itself even in these peaceful times.  During the wait at Ballymena station I’d started reading Keith Barret’s Making Divorce Work: In 9 Easy Steps ,Keith Barret, being, for those who get out too much, Rob Brydon, and the book a slightly padded-out version of his very funny stage show.


Ballymoney

Grown older and wiser during the day’s earlier time-scrambles (as we chess players call them) I resisted the temptation to employ my six minutes (yes, the bus arrived early) in Ballymoney in any extensive exploration of the metropolis, contenting myself instead with photographing the Town Hall and shivering.  Several teenagers used me as a windbreak (memo: should perhaps have resisted the chocolate bar at Ballymena) providing further anecdotal evidence of the negative magnetism between persons of 12-24 years and the molecules comprising a coat.


Fit the Fifth: Ballymoney to Ballycastle

A real country bus now, heading through real countryside towards the sea.  Hooray!  I was slightly disconcerted when the remaining other passengers all got off before Ballycastle, leaving me and the driver alone as the bus plunged and rose, apparently at random, along seaside streets. I hoped that he wasn’t expecting me to ring the bell before the final stop, Marine Corner, as I had no idea when we were likely to be there.  I imagined him absent-mindedly taking me, along with the bus, home with him for tea, and my having my usual problems understanding when Ulster people ask whether I want butter on my sandwiches.  Fortunately, however, we stopped at last, at the sort of concrete turning circle on the seafront that I remembered from long-ago bus trips to Scarborough, and the convenient confirmation of the Marine Hotel beside us.

Ballycastle

By some fluke of Fate, or Google, if the two entities are still functionally separate, I had chosen a B&B only few yards uphill from the Marine Hotel.  Up, however, was certainly the apposite adjective, and I was a little out of breath by the time the landlord opened the door to me.  The Ardaghmore is, I’m virtually certain, the nicest B&B I’ve ever stayed in, even better than the excellent one in Pitlochry whose name I’ve forgotten, and certainly than the slightly odd one with the cross-examining landlady ‘Where have you been?  Where did you eat?  Which fish and chip shop?’ we stayed in last time we visited the Antrim coast and the name of which I wouldn’t tell you even if I could remember it.  The Ardaghmore, however was lovely: spacious room with interesting but not tricksy furniture, stunning view of the sea and the ferry to Rathlin Island,  delightful owners, friendly and very helpful without being in the slightest intrusive and lots of thoughtful bits and pieces like fresh milk, a powerful hairdryer and binoculars on the windowsill.  Not that I availed myself of the latter: the sky, grey all day, was growing steadily darker and mistier, and the biting little breeze I’d encountered in Bally -er- money was working its way up into something distinctly galeish.  I abandoned any thoughts of further exploration and hunkered down with my hard-won cheesy biscuits, discounted fruit salad and a Dilbert cartoon book.  Later in the evening the Dilbert, completed, was exchanged for Mark Watson’s excellent Crap at the Environment(see what I mean about the Welsh thing?) and, gratefully, sleep.

Incidentally, according to the AA, the most direct route from Enniskillen to Ballycastle is 104 miles.  Going via Dungannon, Belfast, Ballymena and Ballymoney the journey is 146 miles.  I calculate, therefore, that travelling by bus and using my magic iLink card granted me a free 42 miles, coincidentally, of course, the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.  If that’s not a clinching argument for not having a car . . .

Next morning looked optimistic from the start, with a narrow sliver of blue in the white sky which gradually widened to allow an extravagant and unseasonable outpouring of sunshine.  After an excellent vegetarian breakfast, complete with scones and an interesting chat with a birdwatching couple from Southampton, I made a brief survey of the Irish Sea before being collected by Una, a fellow retreat attendee and associate member of the Corrymeela Community.  My vague idea of walking to Knocklayd if a lift had not been easily forthcoming was revealed not to have the brightest I’ve ever had, especially accompanied by a suitcase of books, not least because Knocklayd is a mountain.  Well, a mountain in Irish terms; it’s 514m, which, I appreciate, is barely a pimple to a Himalayan.  It’s an extremely pretty small mountain (all right, hill) though, and the Knocklayd centre is fetchingly perched halfway up, surrounded by grazing sheep and interesting bumps in the ground which I’m sure would mean all sorts of exciting things to a geologist.

There were twelve of us at the retreat, including Scott Peddie, the organiser, who is a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian minister (which means, I gather, that they don’t have to sign up to certain doctrinal statements rather than that they don’t put anything in the collection plate), monks of the Cistercian and Buddhist varieties and an eclectic and interesting group of lay people.  After coffee and more scones (the residents of Ballycastle must have wills of iron not to end up like barrage balloons) we watched, if watched is exactly the word, maybe experienced, a meditative presentation prepared by Scott using Cistercian chant, photographs of the natural world and quotations from Merton’s works.  It was a perfect opening.  Afterwards came an open discussion, on contemplation, prayer, meditation, surrender, the life and works of Merton and the necessity of feeding cattle.  I think everyone contributed, and each with humility, honesty and humour – I’ve rarely received so much richness and depth from a group conversation.

As the weather was by now unseasonably stunning, we went outside, walking alone or in small groups, talking, listening, looking and simply being.  The transparency of the world, and God shining through, about which Merton wrote, could not have been better illustrated.  The rest of the day continued in the same way, a balance of talk and prayer, ending with a meditation led by the Buddhist monk, wishing good and freedom from suffering for all our brothers and sisters and the sentient creatures of the earth.  I thought of Robbie, our border terrier and promised to be less impatient with him (a resolution, by the way, that I have already broken, as he dripped milk across the floor this morning).

At the close of the retreat two of the members kindly gave me lifts down to Belfast and I caught the bus (with sad lack of enterprise just one bus this time) back home to Enniskillen.  I finished the Mark Watson on the way and began the last of my Ballymena comedy hoard, A. J. Jacobs’  The Year of Living Biblically.  I wouldn’t go quite that far, but it was a good two days.

Slow journey

(Beginning bit, written in August 2010)

Last week I made a brief trip over to England to see the Youth Music Theatre production of David Almond’s The Savage, in which Rory, our middle son, was taking part, and to travel back home with him.  There wasn’t any terrific hurry, so I decided to take the overnight Belfast-Birkenhead ferry and have a mooch around Liverpool on the way.

The journey started in the familiar low-key manner, with a walk to Enniskillen bus station.  I’d left it a bit late as usual, having turned back from the front door once to water the tomato plants (v. leafy and fragrant albeit no actually signs of incipient tomatoes) and once to attempt, unsuccessfully, to update my Amazon orders.  I had the dual excitement,  therefore, of wondering whether I was going to get to the bus station on time, and, having done so, of wondering whether the bus upon which I’d rushed so impulsively was really going anywhere near Belfast.  Clutching at straws, really: it’s not exactly Victoria coach station; unlikely that I would find myself accidently en route to Minsk or Barcelona.   My usual setting-out-on-a-journey unease wasn’t going to be as easily mollified as that.

Even my foreboding murmurings, however, had to admit that things were going pretty smoothly.  Neither Dungannon nor Ballgawley, not to mention Clogher, Augher, and all the other stopping points that don’t so much have names as alternative ways to clear one’s throat, offered anything in the way of rush hours, slow-moving tractors or even bomb alerts, so we actually arrived in Belfast a few minutes early.  Then the taxi driver took me to the right terminal without either digressing from the optimal route, overcharging, or giving me the benefit of his views upon the ethnic mix of contemporary Manchester.   I was so stunned by this sudden whim of the universe to cosset me that, checking in for the ferry, I unthinkingly told the truth in answer to the security lady’s question as to whether I had any alcohol in my suitcase.

She surveyed me for a moment with solicitious shock; this had obviously never happened before in all her years (she was a mature woman) of ship securing.

‘Just a miniature bottle of wine.’ I back-pedalled rapidly.

She considered.  Did her duties require her to fling my infintessimal few fluid ounces of Lidl Merlot into the Belfast Lough?  But she hadn’t really the heart of a jobsworth.

‘You mustn’t drink it on board.’ she warned, waving me through.  I had no intention of doing so; one of the advantages of the Norfolk Line being their stunning cheap booze. This small piece of contraband was merely intended to act as a pleasant aperitif while whiling away the hours in the departure lounge  before the ten o’clock sailing.

But Fate was to give yet another lurch in my direction; and I didn’t even pause in the departure lounge.  Despite it being barely eight o’clock, the minibus was already quietly shuddering in the car park ready to take the foot passengers onto the ship.  We few, we happy few (I think there were six of us altogether) were accordingly

(continued, January 2011, having broken off mid-sentence for some reason now unfathomable but probably involving toast or Only Connect …)

escorted into the bus.  It would be wrong of me to suggest that this was in any way a sybaritic mode of transport, groaning with the weight of sumptuous down-filled cushions, redolent of Spanish leather and gleaming with freshly-polished brass fittings.  No,  this was a former NYCC school bus, and as anyone who has brought up children in rural North Yorkshire will attest, both comfort and warmth are considered as dangerously effete southern concepts to which it would be most unwise to expose our impressionable young.  It’s hard to tell what level of delapidation would make a bus unfit to carry li’l tykes to school, but presumably decades of wheezing up Sutton Bank had left it no longer able to cope with gradients steeper than the ramp onto the ferry.  Which it did, just about,  giving us plebian pedestrians the opportunity to ensconce ourselves comfortably in the bar and take advantage of the generous wine carafe offers before the alpha motorists arrived.  Viz attractively alcohol-tinged view of sunset over Belfast Docks.

If I’d finished writing this blog when I should have done, I could have told you all about the book that I read over dinner (special vegetarian order sweet & sour vegetable noodles – more than satisfactory) and in my padded banquette nest (family finances not running to the extravagence of a cabin) but I didn’t, so I can’t.  I know that it was something satisfyingly light without any unpleasant junk-reading aftertaste, so probably a classic detective story, but really can’t remember any more. I know that John Dickson Carr hit the spot admirably on a previous over the Irish Sea adventure, if that’s any help.

I woke up (yes, all this and sleep too) at some ridiculous pre-six o’clock time to Tannoy announcements about breakfast and a view of Liverpool.  As both were included in the ticket price (not sure that they are now – meals, that is, short of issuing compulsory blindfolds, don’t know how they’d preclude the latter) I took advantage, rediscovering, after around thirty years, the soggy delights of tinned tomatoes on toast with really serious quantities of pepper.

Upon disembarkation (satisfyingly precise term for getting off a boat) I scorned the waiting taxis and took my suitcase for a walk into Birkenhead.  Hamilton Square, to be exact, a handsome set of Georgian terraces which apparently has more Grade 1 listed buildings than any other square in Britain but Trafalgar.  I’d been to the station on previous trips but this time explored a little further, with the same kind of mild astonishment with which I’ve encountered similar architecture on ambles around the city of Limerick.  (waiting for Yuh-Gi-Oh! games to finish, if you really need to know) .

At this point,  over-excited by early morning sightseeing, I conceived the notion of, rather than travelling into Liverpool through the bowels of the underground system, taking what was so imaginatively described by Gerry & the Pacemakers as a FCTM.  (Here your mental soundtrack, to echo mine, should reluctantly switch from the brilliant Thea Gilmore song which gives this post its title, and instead constantly replay the couple of lines which are all I know of the Pacemaker’s hit. Got it? Sorry about that.)  So the suitcase and I wandered down to the Woodside ferry terminal to discover more about the epic voyage.

Unfortunately, it still being barely seven o’clock, the terminal was deserted, with no indication of when the first ferry might arrive.  After a few chilly minutes communing with the souls of the Benedictine monks who  founded the ferry in the twelfth century (here is your opportunity to eject Gerry from your mental jukebox and replace him with a nice bit of plainsong) and with that of David Lawley who is movingly commemorated on a bench looking out across the river, I reluctantly left the surface world for the Mines of Merseyrail.

There’s not a great deal to say after this, really.  Liverpool proved to be moderately moochable, the highlights being Chinatown where I stocked up on plastic chopsticks (our previous wooden ones having proved irresistable to small boys seeking arrows) and the second-hand bookshop with a nice stock of Italian textbooks.

But by the afternoon (after a pleasant pizza at an authetically Italian restaurant) I was weary and ready to spend the last hour under the Lime Street station clock waiting for the train up to the Lake District.   The plan was to meet up with various other family members en route and arrive together. The train was extraordinarily crowded, having apparently replaced two which had been cancelled and lost a carriage in the process, and though I managed to wedge myself in with my son and his fianceé, we never found out, until we reached Oxenholme, what had become of Grandma.  (We need not have feared; she had charmed the ticket collector into upgrading her to first class and was relaxing in comfort while we enjoyed having delicate parts of our anatomies deformed by giant rucksacks.)

From Oxenholme we took a taxi to the delightful Pheasant Inn in Casterton and, after a quick slurp of the Lidl Merlot (see above, Belfast)  walked up to Casterton School where we revelled in veggie burgers and the YMT’s spirited production.

Our journey home, completing the circle, was by the surprisingly straightforward and economical Rail & Sail (let’s see how long that lasts); a gentle train ride, reminiscent of childhood holidays, along the coast of North Wales to Holyhead, followed by the ferry across to Dublin.

No doubt there was much more I was intending to say back in August when I began this post,  analyses to be meticulously constructed, metaphors to be finely balanced and timely conclusions to be reached, but many brain cells have perished in the months since then and I’m lucky even to have remembered my password.  Let this be a warning to you all of the perils of procrastination.  Happy New Year.

Playing the game

I’ve been looking at Dawn Foster‘s brilliant blogs, including the excellent A Hundred and One Wankers in which she chronicles, with the help of a Google map, the precise abuse which she receives as she cycles around London.  Or did, until the ‘greatest wanker of them all’ pinched her bike outside the Beckton Asda. ( I remember the Asda when we lived there twenty-five years ago, before Beckton had an infrastructure and we walked down to Custom House to go to Mass and get the train to work.)

Anyway,  though I don’t get as much specifically sexist abuse as Dawn (probably because I look like the abusers’ mums), M and I both get our share of close shaves and moronic motorists.  On Sunday afternoon, as I was cycling to The Graan, a young boy racer overtook me, threw a glass bottle out of his window (fortunately he didn’t have a passenger who might have had a better aim) and, as it smashed on the road beside me, stuck his arm out of the window with fist clenched in triumph.

Then there was this peculiar piece in the usually emollient Irish Times, bemoaning the fact that, while drivers suffer the indignity of  ‘inappropriate speed checks on dual carriageways’, cyclists are permitted to ride about helmetless with impunity.  (Bike helmets are, by the way, thankfully not yet compulsory in Ireland.)

What is it about cyclists that inspires such disproportionate ire?  True, some are annoying, but surely not so much as white van drivers or those elderly men in hats who hog the fast motorway lanes?  Dawn Foster’s other blog (see above) and Oliver James’s book The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza
which I’m currently reading, gave some possible clues.  Foster writes about the extraordinarily virulent ‘anti-scrounger’ hysteria whipped up by our nice new government with its cuddly Lib Dem accessories while James analyses the emotional distress which accompanies relative materialism (as distinct from the logical materialism that results from not having enough money to buy your next meal).  It occurs to me that it’s basically about ensuring that everyone is playing the game: clambering up the career ladder, ditto the  property one (isn’t it odd how the housing benefit screeches were directed towards the powerless tenants rather than the landlords who actually profit from extortionate rents?) and surrounding oneself with shiny bits and pieces.  And cars, owned and driven, are perfect playing pieces, being so homogenous and easily confused (it’s as hard to recognize which silver hatchback is yours in the car park as to remember whether you chose yellow or blue for the current round of Ludo).

And so anyone who doesn’t play properly (good job, owned house, new car) is consquently suspect,  however otherwise dull or unexceptional.  And that explains why, other than the token grumble, no one really minds that the bankers have conned us out of more money than we can even imagine and are continuing to do so; at least they played the game, even if they cheated.  Or, since no one is quite sure of the rules once the banker is allowed to use the whole cash supply plus whatever he invents  (imagine Monopoly with that variation) perhaps they haven’t cheated at all, just played the game really, really well.

And then I cheered myself up entirely by watching The Story Of The Weeping Camel [DVD] which reminded me that the world is full of people who have no idea about the game and for whom even my bike would be an object of fascinated humour.  Watch it, and be filled with joy (though you might weep even more than the camel).

frivolous but slightly interesting

A few weeks ago it occurred to me, as I leaned desperately on the wardrobe doors in an attempt to make them shut, that I probably had enough clothes, and that it might be a good idea not to buy any more for the next twelve months or so.  I’d been justifying the heaps of stuff to myself by pointing out that almost all were either from charity shops or from the fair trade suppliers Traidcraft and People Tree and that accordingly every indulgence was in fact an act of benevolence and global justice.   Unfortunately Myself  replied, with what I considered rather pompous alacrity,  that, however recycled, organic, ethical and inexpensive the garments, such a quantity of cotton still required inordinate amounts of water to be produced and that my T-shirt drawer was, by any rational standards, in danger of being seriously over-resourced.

So I made the Marie Curie wellies (pictured above) my last purchase (for Glastonbury,  ironically, in the Year of No Mud, but no doubt they’ll come in handy next time) and prepared to augment my sustainable sackcloth with nothing but a little ash.   Oddly, however, far from feeling discontented, I’m happier with the stuff I’ve got than ever before.  I seem to have more choice every morning of what to wear, more things that go with other things, often unexpectedly, and less angst about what shape appears in the bedroom mirror.   An odd sense of liberation overcomes me as I glide through M&S on the way to the walnut loaves with no temptation to rifle through the sale rack or see if there’s any BOGOF on the opaque tights.  It’s irrelevant that what I really need to go with that skirt is a purple cardigan – I’ve got three grey, two blue and a brown one, and one of those will simply have to cosy its way into the breach.  As I say, it’s only been a few weeks, and no doubt more insidious challenges will creep in with the autumn leaves, but it’s a reassuring start…

Cycling to church…

A few weeks ago a programme on BBC television called ‘How to Live a Simple Life’, followed the attempts of vicar Peter Owen Jones to do so, specifically by trying to live without using money for a certain period of time.  I didn’t see the beginning, but watched the second episode, in which our old college friend the Franciscan Philippe Yates explained that Christian poverty is not about self-sufficiency but about vulnerability.  (How this vulnerability is demonstrated by religious orders who have, if not legal ownership, control of very substantial resources is of course another question…)  Owen Jones then made a ‘Franciscan’ pilgrimage (walk-cum-hitchhike) across Southern England, begging for food and accommodation with the assistance of his camera crew and, occasionally, the Anglican clergy network.  However, during the third episode, during which he was back home, receiving generously filled casserole dishes from his lady parishioners,  the whole doing-without-money thing collapsed suddenly and ignominously.  The cause of the crisis was sadly and predictably banal; nothing more than the due date of his car’s insurance and MOT.

As vicar of a rural parish, it was of course understandable that Owen Jones would need to visit members of his flock living in far-flung locations at times incompatible with rural bus timetables and inconvenient to walk to.  But there was no discussion whatsoever about the feasibility of his doing without his own car for a period; it was simply stated as being essential and the experiment was immediately over.  Would it have been impossible for the wealthy neighbours who had been so lavish with the well-hung game and elaborate puddings to have offered their services in an emergency driving rota?  And for a man who had walked at least part of the way to Devon, could a bicycle not conceivably have satisfied his more local transport needs?

After commuting to work, doing the school run and big supermarket shop, driving to church must be one of the most regular journeys made by drivers in Britain and Ireland.  What is more, my husband (hereafter MJ), who goes out running on Sunday mornings, or used to, until he decided that he’d really prefer not to spend the rest of the day in A&E or on the mortuary slab, finds that they are often  the most inconsiderate and dangerous motorists he ever encounters.  Whether this is because their heads are filled with spiritual musings, they are still jubilant from Saturday evening celebrations, they are confident of going to heaven and don’t mind who they take with them, or because the roads are relatively empty and so they’re not taking much care to look, we don’t know, but it’s certainly not an ideal witness.

The question ‘What would Jesus drive?’ has, since it was first asked ten years or so ago, spread out to encompass the entire irony spectrum, from an indie rock band to the website of the UK Christian Car Club (‘cars provide an ideal means from which to share our faith’ – bumper stickers, presumably?).  The answers range from 4x4s through hybrids of questionable efficiency to ‘Nothing, he’d walk’ via some really quite execrable puns (easy to Google if you feel like a cringe) but oddly, bikes don’t seem to get a mention anywhere.

To make up a little of the deficiency, I thought I’d describe for you my own journey to church and back this morning.  Of course not everyone can do it, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Jesus will manifest his second coming in Lycra and cleated shoes, but it’s easier than you might think.  For a few weeks now I’ve been going to Mass more regularly at The Graan, a Passionist monastery a few miles outside Enniskillen.  The most well-known member of the community there is Brian D’Arcy, presenter of the Radio 2 Sunday Half Hour, who is a persistent thorn in the flesh of the Catholic hierarchy and regularly demonstrates the kind of honest and courageous vulnerability that characterizes the true spirit of Saint Francis.

I’d visited The Graan occasionally over the four years that we’ve lived in Enniskillen, especially when we lived on the west side of the town, when it was a fairly feasible, if dodgy walk.  Unfortunately, being in the countryside,  and attracting a largely rural congregation, it has almost no other non-motoring worshippers (I’ve never seen another), and walking up the busy access road with people carriers and 4x4s constantly swooshing past, induces rather too much vulnerability and too little tranquillity of spirit.  Once in the grounds, the cars are corralled into a series of one-way parking lanes to ensure a speedy and efficient exodus at the end of Mass.  All very sensible, I’m sure, but it does give the place,  externally, at least, something of the feel of a theme park or drive-in burger bar. A couple of months ago, though, I discovered a back way which gave, in all senses, an alternative perspective…

This morning when I woke up the sky looked fairly optimistic, so I put on a long summer dress and sandals, planning to add a cardigan if the few clouds decided to consolidate.  It was the sort of dress that used to be impossible to wear while riding a bike, as the skirt would inevitably get bunched up between the wheel and brake blocks, bringing me to an ignominous stop and leaving the dress oil-stained and holey in a way that wasn’t even good on a Sunday.  A couple of years ago, however, MJ constructed a brilliant skirt guard, of the Continental variety, out of garden trellis, and since then I can be as flowing as I like.  It has the added advantage of making the bike, which is actually quite a good one, appear even less attractive to potential thieves.   Anyway, the point turned to be moot, as the clouds formed a substantial majority, and a dark grey one at that, and I changed into tights and a shortish skirt (quicker to dry).  I very rarely cycle in trousers, except for waterproof ones when it’s really pouring and I don’t wear special shoes, either, unless I’m going for a long ride on my little red Moulton which has cleated pedals.  These are the shoes I wore today

which are perfect for either cycling or walking, and a bit girlie all the same.

Here’s the rest of the stuff I took with me (clockwise, from the left):

1. Waterproof poncho that folds into its own pocket (from Millets, doesn’t have to be so garish, but I bought it for Glastonbury, and anyway it has its advantages as you’ll see later)

2. Spare linen bag for shopping on the way home (as Tim Minchin says, ‘Take your canvas bags…’)  Actually I ended up getting a carrier bag too (see below)

3. Camera case with velcro strap that attaches very conveniently to the handebars (and I put the camera strap over the handebar too, for extra security).  I don’t usually take a camera to church with me, obviously, even if we do have a celebrity priest…

4. Spare earphones (I’ve been caught that way too often).

5. Guardian linen backpack from Glastonbury last year – extremely convenient for carrying just a few things plus a reminder that this year’s is only ten days or so away…

6.iPod.  I usually take my other one, with classical music on it (nothing like a bit of baroque for the long slope) but as mentioned above, I’m in pre-Glastonbury mode now, and listening to stuff by this year’s line-up.

7. Phone.  If I was a more serious or less pampered cyclist this would be a puncture repair kit – instead I could use this to call MJ in an emergency.

8. Purse containing small change for collection mite (as in widow’s, not dust) and Sunday paper.

9. Tissues. I’ve been caught that way as well. One thing you can be sure of if you cycle anywhere, regardless of the weather and your state of health; your nose will be starting to run when you arrive.  And blowing it on your skirt isn’t nice, especially when you’ve jettisoned the long flowing one.

10. Deodorant.  Not generally necessary but on this particular trip, as you’ll see, I do tend to glow slightly by the end and it makes me feel a bit more nice to know, especially when the pews are crowded.

It takes around half a hour to cycle from here to The Graan but I like to allow an extra fifteen minutes or so to get my breath back and avoid the last-minute cars, so as the  service starts at 10.30, and I will be stopping to take photos, I plan to leave by 9.45 at the latest.  Putting animals inside and outside, and doling out their milk, takes a few extra minutes, but I am out by ten to ten.  Freewheeling down to the bottom of the road I meet our next-door-but-one  neighbour who, having failed by four votes on the third recount to become our M.P. is instead embracing his retirement with good-natured gusto and a brand new bicycle.

The road is fairly empty but I take my usual route towards town along the grandly-named Great Northern Way, an old railway path parallel with the road and mainly used by teenagers walking to and from school.  It’s a reasonable surface for cycling, without too much broken glass in comparison with the rest of the town, and fringed with trees and banks of wildflowers.

The song on my iPod is Jackson Browne’s Thunder and I wonder whether it is a bad omen – the sky is getting very dark. Half way along, the path crosses a road (with a couple of dog-legs to slow us cyclists down – very thoughtful, but wouldn’t it be safer for everyone to slow the cars?) and here a plump man with fluffy yellow hair and a pink T-shirt stares in amazement at me out of his BMW V5 window,  a giant toddler in a giant toy car.At the end of the GNW I cross the main road, and take a little dog-legged back road around the back of a terraced row (motorists use it as a short-cut too, so it’s a bit hazardous at school run time) onto Factory Road, past its long-derelict namesake

and the G.A.A. (Gaelic Athletic Association) ground, home to Fermanagh Gaelic football team (which won an unxpected victory against neighbouring Cavan yesterday, to local jubilation – far more important than that soccer thing in South Africa.)

After this the route comes off the road again, along a wooded path which skirts the edge of the hospital and health centre grounds, along the edge of Lough Erne.

The Erne Hospital is a pleasant little place, smelling of toast and mild disinfectant, beautifully situated next to the lake and in easy walking distance from the town centre and many of the larger housing estates.  So of course it is being replaced by a giant private finance initiative monstrosity several miles out, where everyone will no doubt have to drive (at great car parking profit to the developers) and toast smells are most unlikely.  The shell of the new hospital is virtually complete, after months of thick mud across the roads and local residents’ houses, and the workers (mostly Spanish, as the consortium is Spanish-owned) are preparing for the next two years of interior construction.  Presumably the site of the present hospital will then be flogged off for yet more luxury waterside apartments or chain-store shopping centres.  I don’t hold out much hope for this mellow old stone wall or the mature trees once that happens…

At the end of this path, under the road bridge, is a small island.  When we first moved here, four years ago, it was full of ducklings and cygnets.  Now there are none.  It’s the same story across the lough, at least in the Enniskillen area; fewer and fewer wildfowl every year.  We’ve only seen two cygnets this year, both on the small lough opposite our house.  No one official seems to be very concerned or even to have noticed the change.  We suppose it is due to a combination of factors; the massive amount of building during the so-called property boom when huge speculative blocks of flats were built which now stand empty, many unfinished, the enormous new premises of Waterways Ireland, ironically built on the marshlands it might have been expected to protect, the motorized cruisers with their powerful wakes, washing away delicate habitats and nests, the quantities of salt poured on the roads during the cold winter, now washed into the lough and increasingly chemical agricultural methods such as the intensive pig-farming which the WWF says is causing the eutrophication of Lough Erne.

Then I’m back on the road again, past the library and fortified police station and over the old bridge.  The rowers from Portora Royal School are out practising, which is great; a pity they’re usually accompanied by coaches in fast motor boats –  the wake from these often looks worse than the big cruisers.

The people round here are, on the whole, well-meaning and generous; they’ve gone through immensely difficult times with courage and compassion and are working to create a better society for the future.  But the lakes are so big and the population so small that they just don’t realize the fragility of the natural environment around them.

A few yards further on is the Round ‘O’, a park and jetty, and another example of destruction for the best of motives.  We used to stop here every morning on the way to school and feed the ducks and swans; often thirty or forty at a time.  But then, two years ago, the jetties were upgraded, the grassy banks replaced with tarmac and the muddy edge where the wildfowl wandered replaced with an access road so that boat-owners could drive right up to the lough.  Maybe it improved the amenity of the site for them, but the birds, and the tiny children who used  to toddle along the quiet paths have almost all gone.

After the Round O I pass the gates of Portora, where Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett were educated, and the other week Simon Callow gave a brilliant pre-premiere of his new Shakespeare one-man show.  From time to time we get these odd little treats here, and this, combined with the stunning countryside and genuine friendships, more than make up for the political oddities and the weather.

After Portora I’m on the Donegal Road, coming out of Enniskillen and soon turn onto the Derrygonnelly road, and the hard bit of the ride.  It’s not very hard, really, just a long shallow rise past the recycling centre, the oil depot (most houses are heated with oil around here) and the quarry.  I use my usual technique of looking into the verge, at the masses of wild flowers, which takes my mind off my calf muscles.

The song on my iPod is Turin Brakes’ Long Distance, though, and it’s starting to feel like it. But The Graan comes visible quite soon and just when I’m feeling that I’ve really been riding for long enough (it’s been raining for some time now, but not hard enough to make it worth unpacking my poncho and is windier than usual), I reach the little side turning and the final road up to the monastery.

I usually stop halfway up the hill here to lock my bike  and make myself respectable, but the farmer (presumably) who owns the cows has parked his Landrover there and is leaning thoughtfully over the fence.

“A good way to be travelling.” he says, by way of greeting, nodding at my bike, and I grin and pant past.  This bit is steep, that’s why I’m usually walking it, and I’m down to first gear now and feeling distinctly rosy.  I stop around the next corner, lock my bike to the fence, comb my hair, blow my nose and bung on a bit more deodorant.   Then I walk up the rest of the hill, past the main part of the monastery, which is now a nursing home

and into the church.  At first when I did this I felt a bit awkward about being damp and red-faced amongst the soignée attendees strolling in from their cars, but I don’t think there was really any need.  I’m still glowing a bit  through the first readings, but by the time we stand for the Gospel I’m back into equilibrium.  No one is moving away from me, anyway, and at the sign of the peace my neighbours are all happy to shake my hand.  Anyway, not everyone here is a middle-aged motorist; there are quite a few residents of the nursing home sitting in their wheechairs teaching us more acutely than a mere cyclist about vulnerability and patience.

During the sermon I can hear the rain pattering hard on the roof, but during the Creed the stained glass windows light up optimistically.  I’m hoping for a bit of sunshine when we go out, but it is still raining, and harder, so I put my poncho on before unlocking the bike.  It should have the extra advantage of making me extremely visible, but I switch on my dynamo lights as well, just in case. The view from here is still marvellous,  anyway, despite the raindrops on the lens.

The obverse of the tedious ride up to The Graan is the easy sail down again; I can do almost the whole of the stretch to the Donegal Road without turning the pedals.  I note the state of decay of the fox that was run over a few weeks ago, but decide that you’d probably prefer not to have a picture.  The visibility of the poncho certainly works; a Mercedes driver signals and pulls out a good ten feet despite the fact that I’m tucked well into a layby, taking pictures of the view.  Talking of which…

At the junction I stop at the petrol station shop for the Observer. They’re good for local produce too, so I get some potatoes and blackcurrant jam.  I now realise the deficiencies in Tim Minchin’s lyric writing.  What he should have written was, ‘Take your canvas bags to the supermarket, but if it looks like rain and you’re planning to get a Sunday paper, don’t forget to bring along a reused plastic one as well, so that you don’t end up with a soggy wedge of dirty sludge.’  But since he didn’t, and I didn’t, I had to take a new one. When I come out, the rain has stopped, or almost (making my carrier bag even more reprehensible) , so I take off my poncho and enjoy a refreshing and uneventful ride back home.   Unfortunately there are more cars on the road now, and I’m overtaken with inches to spare by three black 4x4s in a row, followed by a courteous Daimler who gives me plenty of room.   The drivers of vintage cars are generally the most thoughtful, and the giant new monstrosities the least, forgetting that a cyclist is both alive and moving, and therefore appreciates a little more leeway than you would give a traffic cone.   On the Great Northern Way a group of birds fly across the path in front of me; at least one a big rosy-breasted bullfinch.  They flew into this tree, if you’d like to look for them.

The whole trip, including the service itself, shopping and stopping to take photographs, has taken about two hours and twenty minutes; maybe an hour more than it would have taken by car (if I’d had one.) But I’d have had to go on the main roads, and would have missed all the most enjoyable bits of the journey, as well as the scents of the flowers, the close-up birds, the smell of the cleansed air after the rain, the feel of the air on my face  (and, to be quite honest,  the sight of the dead fox).  I’d also still have my recommended mild exercise to do, for which I might even have driven to the gym, at the cost of yet more time, money and oil.  I’d have missed the friendly farmer, and might have had a more definitive encounter with the pink T-shirted toddler-man, and I wouldn’t have that pleasant almost-ache in my knees that tells me that I’ve done the right thing with them, and can enjoy a substantial dinner without any nagging twinges of nutritional conscience.  Talking of which…

Why live without your car? 1 – for the er….

[note: This post was first written around a year ago, pre-Copenhagen, when the mechanics of climate change weren’t quite so generally well-known as they are now and when a 2 degree rise didn’t seem quite so inevitable.  I spent some time thinking about how best to tinker with it, but decided in the end, especially in the light of the East Anglian hysteria, to keep it as it is for the time being.  Apologies, therefore, if it appears to be stating the obvious. ]

…Planet is the usual word.  It’s a pity it’s so misleading.  Whatever we are likely to destroy with our oil-glugging lifestyle, it isn’t the chunk of rock rotating around the sun.  Earth sounds a bit cuddlier, but isn’t much more helpful, while the environment sounds like something only a geography teacher would get excited about.  The trouble with all these words is that they sound like slightly geeky minority interests.  You know; Charlotte collects stamps, Oliver plays chess and Duncan saves the planet. Yawn.

 What we really mean is us, the earth’s inhabitants; we humans together with the other creatures, animal and plants, with whom we share this little space, everything that provides us with food and shelter and most of everything that gives us inspiration and comfort.   Not the human race in centuries to come but our fellow men and women in the world now, certainly our children, and probably ourselves, unless we’re planning to pop our clogs within the next few months. 

 Yes, it’s all the things you’ve been feeling a bit awkward about as long as you can remember, the rainforests and pandas, but now it’s oak trees and polar bears as well, in fact most plants and animals except for cacti and mosquitoes, and most people who aren’t  billionaire survivalists (and even they are likely to have a pretty dull time, with no one else but cacti, mosquitoes and other billionaire survivalists to talk to). 

 So this is about global warming, right?  I know about that, it’s er….

 …  Um.  It’s a bit like girls and the offside rule, we know we’ve had it explained a few times, but the actual mechanics of the thing still seem to slide around to the dark bit at the back of our brains.  Briefly, global warming is the rise in the earth’s temperature which happens as a result of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the air.  These gases, most importantly carbon dioxide and methane, are called ‘greenhouse’ because they let the short-wave heat from the sun through to the earth, but trap the long-wave heat rays that are reflected back again. So, just like the little glass hut  your Grandad grew his prize tomatoes in, the earth gets hotter and hotter. 

  Of course, we need some greenhouse gases, otherwise too much of the heat that reached the earth would bounce off again and the global temperature would be around -18 degrees.  Not exactly bikini weather.  The problem now is that, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of these gases, which were just right to sustain life as we knew it, have gone up dramatically.  Carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by around a third and  those of methane have doubled.  So far we haven’t seen too much impact on temperatures, as most of the heat has been absorbed by the sea, but we’ve already seen global increases of 0.8 degrees, and are set for far more to come.

 A short digression for those who, like me, weren’t paying attention during geography lessons at school.  When we read about global temperature rises of a few degrees and wonder what all the fuss is about, we are probably confusing weather and climate.  As the NASA website puts it, “climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms”. 

 It’s a bit like taking a pack of shuffled cards and turning them over one by one.  You might get an ace first time, but then have to turn over another twenty or thirty cards until you find another one.  That’s like weather, and the wide variation between one day and the next.  But if you were to keep drawing cards from the deck and reshuffling it for long enough, you’d find that an ace turned up on average once in every thirteen cards.  That’s more like climate; the long-term trend. If you found, over thousands of deals, that you were getting aces more or less often than that, you’d know that there was something dodgy about that pack of cards.  In the same way, increases in the average global temperature, though they may sound small, represent real and important changes in our lives. 

 For example, the terribly hot European summer of 2003, when up to 35,000 may have died from the heat, forest fires raged, crops failed and there were widespread water shortages, was only 2.3 degrees  higher than the average.  And in the other direction, during the deepest freeze of the last Ice Age, when New York was under a mile of solid ice, average global temperatures were around six degrees lower than they are now.

 But so far it’s less than a degree hotter than…?

 Than before the Industrial Revolution, yes.  But there’s enough greenhouse gases already in the system to make another half or degree of warming inevitable.  There’s nothing we can do about that; it’s already there, just hasn’t shown through in the actual temperatures  yet. So we’re talking about a 1.4 degree rise, even if everyone immediately stops doing everything.  What really matters is how much hotter than that it’s going to get.  As I write this the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) are estimating a rise of between the minimum of 1.4 and 5.8 degrees.

 That’s nearly six degrees.  

 It is, yes. The earth was six degrees hotter once before, 251 million years ago, during an episode called the Permian Crisis.  It sounds like something your granny might have at the hairdressers, but it led to the extinction of at least 90% of all plant and animal species.  If we got anywhere near that level of global warming then the prospects for any sort of life would be pretty slim. Actually, as we’ll see soon, the rise could be even more than six degrees.

 There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about these figures.  Can’t these scientists be any more exact than that?

 Not until we are.  There is a lot of uncertainty, but it’s mainly about what the actual greenhouse gas emissions are going to be over the next few years.  And that, of course, depends on what we do.  If we continue as we are, ‘business as usual’ then we will definitely be looking at the upper end of the range and at widespread disaster.  If we act immediately to cut our emissions and to help others to do the same then hopefully we can keep the rise to a manageable level.  

 Which would be?

 Probably under two degrees.  That’s because of the direct effects of a higher rise but also because of something called ‘positive feedbacks’.  (No, not the kind you get for buying stuff on eBay.)  These are effects of global warming which themselves also speed up the warming process.  In the European heatwave of 2003, one of the scariest things that happened was that plants, severely stressed by the heat and drought, shut down their photosynthesis mechanisms.  Now instead of absorbing carbon dioxide they were producing it.  The same kind of thing is already happening in the soil, which normally stores carbon but at higher temperatures, where bacteria work faster, releases it as carbon dioxide.  Meanwhile layers of permafrost are melting in the Arctic, Alaska and Siberia, exposing ancient peat bogs which give out carbon dioxide and methane.  As one ecologist put it,

‘We are unplugging the refrigerator in the far north.  Everything that is preserved there is going to rot.’

Another type of feedback happens at the poles, where traditionally white snow and ice have reflected back a large part of the sun’s rays.  Now that they are melting, more heat is absorbed, and more snow and ice melt, in a vicious warming spiral.  

Two degrees of warming is generally considered to be the point at which these kinds of feedback would become unstoppable, pulling us into faster and fiercer temperature rises.  And these feedback effects aren’t included in the IPCC estimates, which is why, once they really take hold, a rise of over six degrees could easily happen.  We have been warned….

Plastic bag

I’m sure all the buffs will have seen it long ago (after all, it’s Werner Herzog in the title role) but here’s a film that I expected to be worthy and found also to be romantic, sad, epic and funny.   Not bad for eighteen minutes.  Enjoy…

changing the world…

I’ve recently been reading Stop Global Warming, Change the World by Jonathan Neale and was surprised, impressed and heartened.

The rather naff title led me to expect the usual guff about appliances on standby, celebrity recipes and encouraging your neighbours (it’s always your neighbours, I notice) to use their cars less.  If I’d known anything about Jonathan Neale, I’d have realised that it would have none of this nonsense.

Actually, he could have got away with stretching his material into several books, and is to be commended for fitting it all into one.  The book is made up of five parts, most of which I’ve read twice already, so densely packed are they with good stuff.

Part One, The Scale of the Problem has three chapters: Abrupt Climate Change (a vital adjective), Poor People are not the Problem and Sacrifice is not the Answer.  From the titles alone, Neale’s argument, that social justice and climate change action are complementary and symbiotic, is evident, but the detail is well worth investigating.

Part Two, Solutions That Could Work Now is especially useful for the campaigner, setting out viable goals in areas of electricity, buildings, transport etc.  A chapter called Solutions that Won’t Work Now (carbon capture, nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, biofuels) is particularly helpful.

In Part Three, Why the Rich and Powerful Won’t Act, Neale analyses neoliberalism, corporate power and the myth of unlimited growth.  Part Four, Climate Politics, gives a potted history of the climate change campaign and explains why personal and market solutions won’t bring about the changes that are necessary.

Finally, in Part Five, he analyses ‘Capitalist Disasters’, notably Darfur and New Orleans and ends with an inspiring chapter entitled ‘Another World is Possible’.  It is, and this book shows us how.