Hamburg, 15.12.99: Weihnachtsmarkts and Bhami Goreng

Already wearying of keeping this journal, as with my everyday journal, in which I’ve not written in ages. I seem to have nothing interesting to say. I think nothing of interest. My life just runs by, faster than I’d like or can control….

And have I really ever even begun to understand another culture? Those travel journals I’ve kept so confidently in the past, with all their oh-so-assured observations about the “natives”: what do I understand. I don’t even speak the language, at least, well enough to understand as much as I think I do.

So, the little notes: no wonder Christmas in Germany means something, or used to do so. It’s so dark here, as the shortest day of the year approaches. Christmas as a feast of lights (like Channukah): that has to appeal to a people who are so light-deprived for much of the year, and above all in December. We awake in the dark and it’s dark again long before nightfall, that is, clock-nightfall. A good time of year to eat, party, gather, be with family and friends.

We went with Wolfram and Karin to an Indian restaurant last night. It was okay, but the food seemed to lack flavor. Garlic is hardly a whisper anywhere here, or fried onion. All the dishes were sauced in cream sauces; just can’t get away from cream, butter (cheese) in north Germany.

Today, after I slept in till 11, we drove to Altona intending to do a Weihnachtsmarkt at the Altona museum, a handicraft market.

But I had misread the tourism brochure in our room. It’s a Saturday market. So on to another handicraft market at Gerhart-Hauptmann-Platz off Mönckebergstraße. It wasn’t much, to be honest.

After that, we piddled around the regular Weihnachtsmarkt that winds all through the streets and plaza, and ate sausage (Thüringer and Krakauer) at a booth. Bought a very appealing little milk pitcher, spongeware, with pastel colors on a blue and white base.

Now home, and a supper of salad and bahmi goreng from a can, to be followed by gift-wrapping.

Glasgow-Atlanta, 3.8.01: Scottish Smiles and Egg Custard

In Atlanta airport, after the long purgatorial flight from London. Our flight to Little Rock is in two hours. Purgatory increased by magno homine loquente pleno voce beside me, into a cell phone. I’m always absolutely amazed by people who do this, so casually extending themselves and their own space out, out, to consume the space of others. As if we’re not there, or are intently interested in their conversation, or what?

Disparate impressions of Scotland: I noticed more than once a strange habit people have, of smiling full and then suddenly suppressing the smile. Kate at the b and b did this—smiled big, then when I returned the smile, snapped her mouth shut, looking suspicious. This also happened to me with some other folks.

The Irish don’t seem to be afraid to smile and to return a smile. With the Scots, I get the impression that smiles come naturally (and can also be put on quickly in a commercial situation), but they’re also afraid of what might enter through the smile, if it’s not closely guarded.

Perhaps that split personality of which the novel I’m reading—James Robertson’s The Fanatic­—speaks. Hospitality and suspicion, friendliness and caution, intermingled. The Celtic soul overlaid with British strictures, imprisoned by formalities alien to it.

The impression one has assaulted someone by returning his or her smile is made even stronger by the fact that a certain type of Scot has a foxy face: the mouth drops open in a grin that seems predatory, even when it may not be.

Probably not a profound insight, but seems to be one essential difference between the Irish and the Scottish character, is that the latter have been more successfully colonialized—to the very marrow—by the English. Though the former still suffer immensely from what centuries of colonization have done to them, they’re self-consciously aware of their need to fight and continue fighting the oppression.

For the Scots, not so. Their identity is distinct, and they know this, but it’s everywhere encumbered by English laws, English polity, the English rubric through which they read their identity and access their cultural uniqueness. This has to chafe and tire and wear tremendously, after centuries of it.

It also has to produce a hopelessness that the Irish appear to have, but don’t, essentially. They did, after all, free themselves from the yoke. And even under it, they seem to have remained aware of who they were, apart from the English. Even their ability to laugh and excuse asserts their distinctiveness, and I think they know it.

I certainly don’t say all this lightly or with a lack of awareness of the inferiority complex against which the Irish continue to struggle, as they compare themselves to the English. But even when that sense of self-scrutiny is bitterest and most caustic, there’s still a sense of self being scrutinized. I believe the Scots have lost that sense of essential self, and suffer from the crippling malaise that such a loss brings with it.

10.8.01

I keep thinking of various turns of phrase I read or heard in Scotland. In a store, I saw egg custard tarts for sale—so labeled. Exactly the usage of the American South. I’ve always wondered why egg custard. Isn’t the egg implied in the custard?

In the Scottish novel I’ve just read, Robertson’s The Fanatic, the verb “stay” is used for “live, dwell”: i.e., I stay at 519 Ridgeway. Do African Americans get this usage from Scotland? Or is it an earlier English usage now generally gone?

13. 8.01

And that novel also uses the phrase “the spitting image” of. Doesn’t Shakespeare say “the very spit and image of”?

Edinburgh, 31.7.01: Bidet Battles and Highlanders

Another clear and pretty morning, though the forecast on t.v. last night said the weather will become unsettled today and rainy the next two days, especially in the Highlands, where we’re headed.

Thinking about the Highlanders: I read somewhere that, if you want to find people who see themselves as Scots in a fierce way, you go to the Borders, where Scottish people accentuate their difference from England.

The Highlanders, according to this book, are not so. Their English is less accented, in the stage Scottish way, than that of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow.

That makes me wonder: is part of the explanation that the Celtic people retain another outlook on life that’s difficult to understand or appreciate in the modern context? True, they remember voraciously, and refuse to forget. True, when stirred to battle, they fight with a vengeance.

But they’re also known for their open-handed hospitality, even to the foe. Despite what the English have done to them, the Irish take the English in, along with a plethora of other races and nationalities. They have a genius for cultural absorption, John Ryan says, a genius the English lack.

I wonder about the spiritual roots of that genius. In everyday life, the Irish forgive freely (despite their penchant for holding incredible grudges). Their everyday discourse is full of little sayings to let the offending party off the hook: Ah, well, he does have that little fondness for the drink; ah, well, the poor darlin’s not herself today.

A different outlook on life, a non-modern one: forgive, because you and yourself may end up in the same boat one day. It’s as if Celtic people have retained the ability to see something of a hidden spiritual order we modern folk don’t see. We calculate according to an empirical calculus.

Perhaps they calculate, too, but using a spiritual calculus: forgive, because in the spiritual world, what goes ‘round comes ‘round. You yourself will need forgiveness one day, and every act of unforgiveneness now diminishes your ability to prepare for your time of trial.

The evening light in Edinburgh: we’ve just driven from Tolcross to Stockbridge, where we’re staying, past the National Portrait Gallery—gorgeous light, the sinking sun hitting the turrets of the Gallery, bringing the brown stone to rosy flame. It’s only twilight now, almost 10 P.M. Weather remained clear, fair, beautiful all day, and the evening is cool.

In this northerly clime, far fewer flowers than in Ireland, which, also northerly, is made temperate by the Gulf Stream. I do see buddleias, though not in such profusion as in Ireland. And the hedge (Ligustrum vulgare) is in bloom, making the parks sweet. In Ireland on the coastal roads in Co. Waterford, the wax-leaf ligustrum was in bloom, yielding a heavy fragrance to the air.

Odiferous things are fewer here than in more tropical climates, but seem to have an uncommon sweetness—i.e., those that are sweet. In Lennoxlove House, huge bouquets of lilies from a wedding in the house, with a gorgeous fragrance. I noticed the same in Ireland.

One almost never smells cooking on the streets in Scotland and Ireland. The occasional waft of old grease around a chip shop, but otherwise, nothing. New Orleans by contrast…. It’s partly climate, of course, and then there’s the garlic used nowhere in Scotland or Ireland.

Day spent shopping in St. Stephen’s St., NW Circus, Prince St. Then drove to South Leith church to pick up papers from John A. Pastor was there, a nice-seeming young man. How typical of the church structures to send a young man to this grungy urban parish, and to give him a female assistant pastor and female elders (well, the latter not appointed by the church). Like novice pastors, women are always assigned to what are considered grunt-work parishes. Tea again there, jangling my nerves, since we’d just had tea at Jeffers Dept. Store, and tea and coffee for breakfast a few hours earlier.

Then more shopping….

Bill’s Bidet Battle: the b and b in Haddington had a bidet. No one has ever taught me how to use one. (Is this a skill taught anywhere?) Whenever I see one, I’m fatally fascinated. I want to try it, but feel it’s a slightly naughty thing to do, so I try it shamefully, doors locked, ready to jump at any sound.

I sat on this one several times, contorting my body to twist knobs behind me, trying to regulate the hot-cold (and always shocking myself with a jolt of cold water or scalding myself with hot), and fearing that the stream of water would go flying out of the bidet.

I finally decided one’s meant to sit on the contraption “backwards”—i.e., facing the knobs. Did so, got the water regulated, and found the stream didn’t even go out of the toilet. I bideted myself with total enjoyment.

Next day, another try at it. Alas, I was over-confident. In the first place, with my pants around my ankles, I couldn’t face “backwards,” so I faced front. Jiggled, turned, and to my horror, got myself scalded in a part too delicate to describe.

Off I leapt, followed by a jet of scalding water that drenched the wall, a decorative towel hanging on it, and the carpet around the infernal machine. I’m no nearer to deciphering the mysteries of bidet than I was a week ago.

Sea-birds swirling and crying as I write. I saw them inland in Dumfries, too. No place in Scotland is far from the sea, and the birds remind one of that constantly.

Edinburgh, 30.7.01: Headless Celts and Lemon Meringue Roulade

Dinner last night wonderful. We went to the Maitlandfield Brasserie just down the road from our b and b in Haddington. It’s a glass-roofed room outside a hotel of the same name.

There was a 3-course special for ₤ 9.50: leg of lamb with new potatoes and vegetables, preceded by vegetable soup and followed by a wonderful lemon meringue roulade. The latter was very light, almost like a mousse in texture, topped by whipped cream and served with a fruit sauce made of small cherries and some other fruit (red currants?) in a raspberry syrup. This was on one side. On the other, a rich lemon sauce. A ground cherry with its husk and a slice of orange were garnishes.

Another very clear and pretty day to see Edinburgh. I’m in an elegant drawing room of the b and b, which looks through ceiling-to-floor windows into a garden of green lawn surrounded by flowers and shrubs. The shrubs are waving in the breeze.

Lindsay monument, South Leith church: “In affectionate remembrance of Captain James Lindsay, ship owner, a native of Leith, who died 26^th March 1839, and of Helen Allen, his wife, a native of Alloa, who died 10^th April 1849, aged 63, both interred in this churchyard. Erected by their son William Lindsay, Esq., F.R.S.C., Hermitage Hill, Leith, 1875. Also the said William Lindsay, Ex Provost of Leith, who died 20^th February 1884, aged 64. So He bringeth them unto the Haven, where they would be. Psalm CVII, 30.”

Before coming here, we went to St. Mary’s church in Haddington and saw the Lauderdale aisle. Very moving. It’s a small chapel, locked off from the church itself by an iron gate and glass doors, with elaborate monuments to the Lauderdales. One shows the family line back into the 13^th century, as well as I recall, indicating which of those in the line of descent is buried in the church.

On the wall adjoining the church, a bright statue of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child, with the three kings—hence the name of the chapel: Three Kings. Before this, several rows of electric candles.

I lit one of those and prayed, very moved to be in the chapel. I felt somehow a great sense of peace and belonging, as if at home.

On to the South Leith church. The odd thing is that I directed us there without having any idea where it was.

Kate, our b and b owner, told us how to get to Leith, but didn’t know where the church was. She directed us to the Haddington library, but their local history expert turned out to be out till 2, so we took a chance that we could find the church on our own and drove in right to it.

It’s back from Constitution St. in Leith, with an old graveyard outside. When we walked in, loud soft rock music being played by the beadle, a nice man who called John A., a local historian, for us.

A. talked and talked and talked, and tried to bully us into spending more time there (almost 2 P.M. when we left!), telling us it takes 5 hours to see the old church thoroughly. He did tell me what he knew of David Lindsay, and shared bits of historical arcana.

The most interesting was that the Celts removed the heads of enemies, trepanned them, and buried them around springs…which became holy wells. The origin of holy wells in the British Isles….

We met one of the pastors, a nice woman who invited us to have coffee, and an assortment of church workers. The pastor invited us to the 1 P.M. prayer service, led by a (female) elder. It was very wordy—we read together all of Hosea 2, accompanied by readings from an Israeli poet.

Interesting to see a parish dating to 1443, now in a decayed industrial area of the city, still vital. The pastor talked of the church’s need to move from the condemnatory attitude of Knox to an accepting, inclusive, welcoming posture. And Mr. A. talked of the Victorian church’s presumption in assuming the church can be exclusively middle class.

Somehow, I felt less “connection” here than in the Lauderdale aisle. Perhaps I used up all my connective energies in the St. Mary church? Or was I simply overwhelmed by Mr. A.?

A few desultory hours afterward in Edinburgh on the Royal Mile. The tawdry tourist shops were repulsive, and the crowds of polyglot tourists tiresome. We did find a nice little shop in a lawyer’s close, where we bought a glass hedgehog for M. Russell. Also had leek and potato soup and shared prawn mayonnaise sandwich at a pub off the Mile.

Then home to Haddington, shopping at an Alda supermarket on the way, where we got several scotches to bring home, and some goodies for dinner: a burgundy, a bit of ham and chicken pie, a wonderful Highland cheddar, some oatcakes, raw vegetables and a dressing, and chocolate. All of which we’ve eaten, and now watching t.v. as it rains softly outside.

Dumfries, Scotland: 29.7.01: Bagpipes and Coronation Chicken

Two rather hard days in Scotland. Very tired yesterday, after an almost completely sleepless night followed by the 5 A.M. rising time, a harrowing trip to Dun Laoghaire for the ferry to Holy Head, and then a long drive up through the industrial north of England to Dumfries. I went to bed very early, before 8, and slept till 8:30.

Dumfries a rather grimy market town on the River Nith. We went to the tourist bureau to ask about Annatland. Never heard of it. Sent hither and yon by a helpful, friendly lady in the bureau—first to a family-history store that turned out to be closed, then to the library, where a wondrously helpful woman found Annatland—a little piece of land belonging to New Abbey. She photocopied the Ordinance Survey map of the area for me.

A meal at a passable Indian place—lamb biryani—which I was too tired to enjoy, and then to bed at a b and b that was a bit dirty-seeming, with one terrible mattress, and a bizarre polyester-covered duvet with misspelt theological sayings on it—e.g., Solea Grace. So much for Dumfries.

Today difficult because of those rows Steve and I inevitably have on vacations. We drove through breathtakingly beautiful landscape arguing all the way.

First to Langholm to see the Armstrong clan museum, which turned out to open at 2. Since it was 11:30 and we wanted to see Thirlestane Castle at Lauder and Lennoxlove House at Haddington, both open 2-5, we drove on.

The Borders scenery on the way to Langholm was especially beautiful—high hills, steep valleys. I stopped on a very narrow country road and picked a blue flower—bluebells?—pressed in the back of this journal. The road had signs to drive slowly and mind the lambs. No fences, and, indeed, there were sheep on it. An elderly man who reminded me of my grandfather Lindsey, in a tweed cap with a beautiful smile.

Thirlestane Castle a beautiful place. The first thing one notices as one gets out of the car—at least in July—is the powerful fragrance of the row of limes on the side of the castle with the car park.

Then upstairs and downstairs…. At the end, we had tea and coronation chicken sandwiches, which turned out to be a chicken salad made with curried mayonnaise.

As we left the castle, a high wind blowing. Not a drop of rain all day, though at times the sky was heavily overcast. As I write this now on a bench outside St. Mary’s church in Haddington, an utterly clear sky and strong sunlight.

But as we left the castle, despite the high wind, the sound of bagpipes so strong and clear I thought the pipers were out in a field in front of the castle.

Not so: turned out they were in Lauder, quite a distance through trees. We drove into the town and after a search, found a group of young pipers practicing in a kind of close with stone walls all around. The sound stirred me deeply, even more so when it seemed to come from the trees and wind, with no humans involved.

On to Haddington, where we toured Lennoxlove House, and have found a comfy b and b, the Schiehallion on Church St. Wanted to see the Lauderdale aisle in the church, and was told there was evensong at 6, but not so. Hence writing on this bench….

Do people live with great pain because they can’t change it and whatever causes it?

Dublin, 28.7.01: Madness, Mayhem, Maps

Two days gone, fast, and I’m behind with journal-keeping. Thursday a blur now. John and Maura drove us to Waterford, where (as Maura went to the doctor), we did a quick tour of the Anglican (Church of Ireland) cathedral, and then had lunch at Reginald’s pub.

The cathedral pretty, with beautiful Georgian plasterwork on the ceiling, and the panels painted in bright pastel yellow. Two rather sullen young men staffed the information desk. One looked Mexican-American and had a close-shaven head. I imagined he was a seminarian. He became overly solicitous after awhile, alarmingly so: perhaps he believed I wanted to steal some religious gewgaws from the gewgaw booth.

The pub built around and using for its own walls the ancient city walls. We had a pureed soup, a mix of undistinguishable vegetables, potatoes, carrot, broccoli.

Then on for a drive along the Waterford coast to Dungarvan. The places we saw now a blur—Dunmore (or was it Lismore?), the copper coast, the gold coast, Dungarvan itself. John told us the copper coast was so-named because copper was mined there, perhaps from the Celtic era. During the Famine—or was it a later famine?—the mine owner kept the men on, even when it cost him. Eventually, they moved en masse to Butte, Montana.

Maura interjected that other people from the area had gone to Newfoundland, to work in its fisheries. The Sweetman family of Waterford hired people from up the Suir Valley down to Waterford to fish off Newfoundland, so that today one can find a Waterford accent in Newfoundland.

The coast beautiful, though I was anxious as the day went on, since we wanted to be in Dublin before dark. St. John’s wort growing as a shrub, glowing yellow flowers, thrift just past its bloom.

At one point, we passed an area John said had been inhabited by Huguenots brought over by the landlords. They proved a poor investment, since they fomented revolution.

To Dublin by late evening, after an uneasy departure from John and Maura: had we thanked them enough? How to thank them? Did we appear too anxious to leave? Did they feel used? Should we have accepted Maura’s offer of a cup of tea? Should we have insisted on their having dessert at the hotel in Carrick on Suir (Carriag na Suir, rock of the Suir), where we ate an undistinguished supper?

The Mont Clare hotel on Merrion Square in Dublin a welcome oasis, with its air-conditioning and assertive shower flow.

Friday a vexatious day. The rigamarole at the National Library unbelievable: put it there; don’t put that here; get this ticket; get that ticket. After getting a general-admit ticket—they wouldn’t allow us one to view manuscripts until we were ready to see one—at 1 P.M., we want to see a map. Sorry, the man who issues manuscript ticket is gone till two. Frantic shopping, back at two.

There’s a line, of course. He punches computer buttons one by one, with index finger and agonizing slowness.

We finally get to his desk. Oh, sorry, I need two passport photos. I show him my passport, and say I have other id’s, and he says, as if I ought to have known, No, passport photos from the booth downstairs.

Down I run, since he’s holding the line for me (but he will take the time punch punch punching those buttons). Another line. Snap, snap, hefty fee. Back up the stairs.

I get the ticket and go up to request the map (and the other ticket one needs for a map), clock ticking: will the Valuation Office, which has the map of Inchacarran townland that I desperately need to deciper Griffith’s, be closed?

To the desk to request the map, and more rigamarole. A pretty, but cold, red-haired young woman assists us. Well, this map may no longer be available. I believe it’s off for preservation. Shall I just go and check?

Yes, please do. Back she comes. She’s sent someone else. He comes back. It is available.

But we do prefer you to see the Griffith’s maps rather than this one, to preserve it. But I was told this morning you don’t have Griffith’s maps. Yes, we do, the six-inch ones. Will you please consult it? If it has the same information, then that’ll be the end of it, will it? But the map I want to see is 1823, and Griffith’s is 1850. Tick tick tick of the clock towards 5, when the Valuation Office closes.

In despair, I look at the dratted Griffith’s maps, which arrive after another long search. They show only large owners of tracts.

I go back and let Madame know I need the other map. Grudgingly, she issues yet another ticket. And, oh, by the way, do you know our manuscript room is in a building up Kildare Street? Hell no, how would I have known: run run run!

I present all my chits and vouchers. Bleary-eyed man looks at me incredulous. I could have walked in from the street and requested the map.

He calls down. The map is brought up. I look. No Ryans in Buckstown in 1823, no Tobins.

Run run run to Valuation Office. It’s way across town. The afternoon is sunny, muggy, and warm. Dubliners walk any old where on the sidewalks, cluster in knots across the way, creep at maddening snails’ pace. Some are drunk. Others are sprawled over the sidewalk begging. A tiny little boy is shrieking out songs in Irish, a tattered cardboard box in front of him.

Finally find the building that houses—or is supposed to do, an important qualification—the Valuation Office. Sign on door says next building over. We run into that building. Two chatting office girls look blank. Ah, down the street.

In we run, 4:15. Sit, please, and I’ll be with you soon. Wait, wait. Sweat, sweat. How can you be hot? Isn’t it hotter where you’re from?

But I ran over here, afraid you’d close. Ah, yes, we close at 4:30. (All preceding sources had told me 5.)

And what do you need? County, townland, parish in rapid-fire fashion. All printed out. Now I’ll take you to another office. And, by the way, there’ll be a charge.

Into the inner sanctum. Please wait. I’ll be with you soon. Wait wait wait. Chat with nice lady from Minneapolis whom I encountered at National Library.

Finally I’m served, a map is brought up on computer and printed. It shows the little house beside Watt Costello in which Val Ryan lived in 1850, up to 1852. An 1865 map the man showed me has the house gone, pulled down or fallen down in 12 years after Bridget and the children left in 1853.

A bit more shopping—a Beleek vase, a little china harp for Billie, a Jerpoint glass paper weight for Mary—and on to dinner at the Mont Clare. I had tagliatelle carbonara, which turned out to be an inexplicable pasta in an inexplicable cream sauce. Steve had lamb medallions. My side salad was just what you’d find in a pub—a dollop of very gloppy coleslaw beside a pile of lettuce topped by tomato and cucumber, no dressing.

John calls Maura bird affectionately—What did ye say, bird? Birds themselves are always little birdies, ducks are duckies, especially to Maura. All the preceding written aboard the ferry from Dun Laoghaire to Holy Head.

Piltown, 26.7.01: The Callan Condom and Thalictrum

A drive yesterday to Callan to see the burial place of Am Liobh (Humphrey) O’Sullivan, as well as the house of Edmund Rice. Land around Callan seemed not so lush as in southern Co. Kilkenny—more of an open, barren feel to it. This especially true when it’s contrasted with the area around the slate quarry on the Kilkenny-Tipperary border.

John drove us to the latter on the way. Gorgeous countryside, those sweeping vistas of fields rising up hillsides on all sides.

The quarry is in a valley area, just on the border. As one drives to and from it, one goes along narrow lanes choked with fern, bracken, meadowsweet, yarrow, horsetail (a noxious weed, John says), brambles, and thousands of other plants.

Driving away from the quarries, we passed a ramshackle farmplace John and Maura described as belonging to some couple who live hand to mouth, cultivating bits of vegetables and living on the dole. We also passed a very neat place on a stream that they said belonged to a Dutchman, who sometimes comes to stay in it. A very appealing area—I could see having a retirement or vacation place in it.

(The Irish seem to have a strong interest in “others”—the Dutch who vacation here, the French van we saw in Kilkenny, bicycles affixed to it, the Spanish students clustered in the city. There’s that self-conscious sense of being part of Europe, aided and abetted by shared Catholicism. There’s the need to be unlike England, with its insularity and xenophobia. Hence John and Maura’s interest in the fact that this place was bought by a Dutchman. And everybody does seem to know everybody else’s business here.

In fact, John and Maura knew and told stories about almost every place we passed. E.g., a little roadside pub whose name in Irish spoke of its musical offerings: John and Maura told us the family living there had been extraordinarily musical. In a back room were a piano with a violin and mandolin on it. As the family members worked, they’d pass by and stop to play whatever instrument took their fancy. None ever married, and all have gone off except for one man, who now lives alone there, a rather forlorn existence.)

On to the high crosses at Ahenny, which were beautiful, but…. I seem to drink in the landscape, the fresh breezes, those sunlit fields, the wagtail atop one of the crosses. With any touring, the first time one sees an extraordinary monument, it’s fascinating. But the next and next time….

From Ahenny to Callan, an unprepossessing, gray-seeming town. Perhaps it didn’t help that the skies had darkened by the time we got there, making it gray and the air very close. It’s also always a shock to go from the fresh pristine beauty of the Irish countryside to the grimy tawdriness of one of its towns, litter everywhere. English villages aren’t so. Perhaps the Irish are too individualistic or anarchic to have the gift of living together.

In Callan, a pub meal. Steve had beef stew, which was quite good, a slight undertaste of allspice, with sliced carrots in it. Around it, julienned carrots and rutabagas. Why more carrots? Why nothing green? We might have had lasagna with potatoes, another menu offering.

I had chicken sandwich and lemon squash, ordered it toasted and as a chicken salad sandwich, but the waitress told me it wouldn’t be nice (i.e., the toast-salad combination). That seemed to make perfect sense to John and Maura, but the logic of it escapes me. It arrived salad on the side, with one meretricious little pink glop of a very fussed-with cole slaw added.

At Callan, we decided we didn’t have time for Edmund Rice. We did walk on to see the Norman church, with its interesting carving of a late-medieval woman over one door. Steve remarked that her headdress looked not unlike the hairstyle of the little Piltown Madonna, and he’s right. The two are separated by less than a century, apparently.

We also saw the Augustinian church, a dreary affair, all green paint, mildewed and flaked, inside.

We then decided to drive on to Kilkenny, where we wanted to book-shop. Visited several bookshops. None had MacLysaght’s surnames book, or the diary of Am Liobh O’Sullivan. But I did buy at Rothe House a brief history of Templeorum parish—a not very good one—and a history of Rosbercon parish.

Back to the grave of Am Liobh O’Sullivan, in Callan cemetery, a pretty place outside town. But, again, I was more impressed by the beautiful countryside than the monuments. Callan—at least, the Callan countryside—has a more yellow color to it than the lush green of the south Tipperary-Kilkenny border. Home to pork steak and onions, with potatoes, cauliflower, and broccoli—with Maura’s brother Gerald, who lives outside London in Kent and is quite the world traveler.

John’s garden is absolutely a work of art. I can’t describe it, it’s so simply beautiful, a vestige of the monastery garden, with its herbs, fruit, and bee-drawing flowers. Vegetables intermingle with ornamental shrubs, not in a confused or riotous way, but with perfect decency. The apples are espaliered (some of them, at least) over a woodrail fence. There’s a gingko tree John grew from seed—about ten years old—which is a shrub rather than a tree, beautiful beside a dark purple buddleia. The buddleias grow tall as trees here, where the winter climate doesn’t bite them back.

Fuchsia grows as a hedge, six feet tall, as I have seen it in west Cork. There’s a glorious flower called Thalictrum, a lavender mist above maidenhair-fern foliage.

Buddleias big as trees also along the coastal road south of Waterford today, and again along the road north of Mullinavat. And fuchsia six and eight feet high.

The Callan condom: in the restroom of the pub in Callan, a sleek black condom on the floor. Never having seen one, I wasn’t sure what it was, though I had my suspicions. I poked it with my toes. It left a slimy trail. Why a used condom on the bathroom floor? Come to think of it, did I see condom machines on my previous visits? I don’t believe so. Now they’re in every restroom. Oh Ireland, how you have fallen from the grace bestowed by our gracious bishops and cardinals on the righteous.