Frawley's

The last night we were in Ireland, we stopped into this pub, one of the last of its kind. Our proprietor (pictured above) who is 90 years old, poured us a whiskey the old fashioned way. We'd come in at 9 p.m. and we were interrupting his evening news. He took very little notice of us aside from pouring us a drink. We sat and drank in silence, all of us watching the little TV hanging in the corner.  When it was over, we stood up to leave and he held a hand up to stay us. "The weather," he said. And we sat back down. Sure enough the weather report came on. It wasn't good news.

Then he wanted to chat a bit, about Obama and the state of our economy, both of which are favorite topics in Ireland. Or maybe that's as much about America as they care to discuss. Then we said our goodbyes and left and he turned back to the TV. He lives in apartment in the back. At dinnertime, a neighbor brings him food and sits with him. In the photo you can see the rows of bottles. These aren't for serving to customers. They're for sale. It's almost like a pharmacy, but with booze. You can buy aspirin, some over the counter remedies, bottles of soda, and whiskey. But this is a truly old style pub. You can sit at his bar and drink and you don't have to say a word. He might even doze a little while during your stay. 

My New Boyfriend Sings a Song

This is the scene we walked in on at O'Neil's in Newmarket on Fergus after our visit to Ballycastle. This guy brings down the house. Wait until you see him play the accordion. I'm in love. (I've since heard that there was a video glitch on this. I think it works now.)

Whiskey and Song

I can only get intermittent service here, so the postings are few.

Yesterday we saw Bunratty Castle, which is basically Ireland's version of Plymouth Plantation. Pictures to follow. We didn't want to eat in any of the pubs around there, so we went up the road, wandered into this place in, well, I forget the name.

Pub's name is O'Neils. Tiny place. We thought we could get lunch. Instead we wandered into a storytelling session. One of the historians from Bunratty was singing and telling stories in this old accent, which may have been a Kerry accent. And these oldsters were sitting all around heckling him and the like. It was amazing. It was a bit of a private party for the local senior group, called the Going Strong Club. We heard amazing music. We laughed while this guy told terribly dirty stories. It was great fun. And then Tighe (pictured above, center), who is 90 years old, got out his accordion and began to play. Oh, they whooped and danced in their seats. And then he sang. Beautiful love songs. He played the Highland Reel and the crowd, small as it was, could barely be contained. The shots of whiskey kept coming and we've never been happier. We walked in at 2 and didn't get out of there until 5. 

I went to kiss my new boyfriend Tighe (I'm truly in love here) on the cheek, but here's the thing about Irish men. It's right on the lips or none at all. 

So that's how it ended. They fed us, and we left a donation for the club. It was the least we could do. And we bought a round or two for the folks who were staying on. It was lovely.

Cliffs of Moher, etc.

This, on the left, is my mother-in-law sleeping in the back seat of the car on the way from the Cliffs of Moher (which are beautiful by the way) and back to Lahinch, where we're staying. Jet lag is a bitch when you're on the far side of 70, but she's a good sport about it all.

This is Julie and Ellen at the cliffs. I do have pictures of the cliffs, but won't post them here. Suffice to say that they're big, breathtaking and scary when you walk past the sign that says, "Don't go past here," and then look down over the edge. As Julie says, "Chargies!"

The West Coast

We're here. It's beautiful. We've already been teased multiple times about the weakness of the dollar and one helpful shopkeeper asked of the US economy, Have you hit bottom yet? It's actually good to talk to people who refuse to pull their punches. More soon, when my camera is working and when I find a wifi hotspot. No promises.

Reading on the Go

I leave for Ireland tonight, after many hectic days of tying up work details. I spent marathon sessions on the phone last week with my co-author to approve copy edit changes. Apparently, this publisher likes each copy edit suggestion to be addressed separately. We were expected to either "stet" each one (write and circle the word STET in the margin to alert the editor to restore the original copy, which we rarely did) or write okay in the margin in blue pencil. Three hundred pages worth. And I was gratified to find five typos and two grammatical mistakes that had been edited in by mistake. My co-author was really good at finding typos. Grammar geeks!

I have another short story ready to send out when I get back. We hosted a birthday party for S's fifth birthday. Very exciting. The work on the house was completed with just one grudge match between us and the contractor. Not bad. Bills, laundry, tidying up. The usual.

All that's left to do is pack. Many people obsess about clothing on trips. I obsess about books. Which books to bring? How many? Yes, they're heavy. Yes, they take up space. But the idea of having nothing to read is too horrible to contemplate. I'm halfway through this book right now. It's wonderful and worth all the praise heaped on it. But it's such a page-turner that it likely won't survive the plane trip. 

I want to read The Gathering by Anne Enright. In fact, having read the first page of this book, I now want to read all of her books. So that's in the suitcase already. I briefly toyed with the idea of bringing December Bride by Sam Hannah Bell. It could be an all Ireland theme. Or, I could be practical. I'm supposed to be reading this book for a class I'm taking in the spring, but do I want to carry it across an ocean? And of course, Ann Patchett will be speaking at the Muse in April, and I was able to snatch up her Bel Canto at a used book store. Possibility? I also have been meaning to read In the Heart of the Sea by Nthaniel Philbrick, which is the true story of the whaleship Essex, the inspiration for Melville's Moby Dick. And on the off chance that the jet lag is overwhelming I could bring this little truffle of a murder mystery. I'm too embarrassed to type the title, but it's set in Istanbul and the main character is a drag queen who looks like Audrey Hepburn.

Bad Hair Day

In four days I go to Ireland, and I'm already having nightmares about being apart from the kids for several nights in a row. Not much time to worry about that, though, because the copyedited book manuscript has to be approved before then, one change at a time for 300 pages. I have student papers to read, a story to write, a birthday party to host (S turns 5 in two days! Alert the media!) and a large check to write to the nice guys who are finishing the roof that replaces the blue tarp of doom. They are pounding away on the shingles right now.

Not much time left over to freak out, but wait...

I came into the kitchen yesterday afternoon to find a pair of scissors sitting between the kids. They were at work on the kitchen table, each of them drawing away. G was writing a picture book about Spongebob. He does dialog and story lines. He draws the pictures. The story had this huge plot full of desires, obstacles, misdirection, puns. He writes better than anyone in the family. S was busy drawing detailed pictures of pirates leaping from a clipper ship. The details are incredible. The pirates have shoelaces, they have ears, they have buttons, they have sleeves. She has put multiple sails on each mast. I try not to show my shock. 

As to the scissors: these were not ordinary scissors. These are the scissors that the mommy person keeps hidden in the upstairs bathroom, because they are used for cutting hair. Back when G would let me cut his hair, back when S was too little to preen, I used these on the kids. What are they doing in the kitchen? I'm afraid I asked that question with a little more force than intended. They both looked up, startled, and said in unison, "Nothing." (They both lie now. Gone forever are the days when S will flip her hair and say "Well, of course" to the question, "Did you just pee yourself?")

I used my mommy psychic powers and zoomed in on S. "Were you cutting your hair?" No, she said. "Are you sure?" Why do mothers ask this? This question never yields a confession. Never. Not even in a four-year-old. I'm afraid I asked it twice. No, she said again and again. Then she did this thing that she does when she wants to impress on me how stupid my questions really are. She flipped her palms into the air and shook them at me, bouncing them for emphasis on each word. "We're just using them to cut paper," she said. Every syllable betrayed her frustration. And then she shook her head sadly, as though mommies this dumb should not be allowed out of the house. The only trouble is that huge hunks of hair were missing from her scalp. "Honey," I said. "Look at this. What did you do?" And that's when S screwed her shoulders up to her ears and said, "Well, my hair was stuck together." As though this explains everything.

I started in on the lecture, the one about how we don't cut our hair and how if you want long hair, as she does, then hacking at it with scissors is not a good strategy, but Larry intervened. Let it go, he said. Maybe a few days away isn't such a bad thing.