Grannymar

I wrapped her in a tablecloth and took her out to play

Not quite to play but rather, to put her on display!

There are days that mark our life and this one was her first,

The family all gathered as we took her into church.

We called her for her grannies, with a little variation

And so it was that she was known until her own abbreviation!

The tablecloth it was not plain and made with loving care

By a granny that she never knew, no longer round to share.

The tablecloth was crocheted in cotton years before

It spent near half a life time, lying in a drawer.

Now freshly washed and smelling sweet it was a perfect square

And it looked just right, on our wee mite, as we took her through the door.

A bright June morning the sun was high with singing in the choir

Our hearts near burst with happiness, with our darling hearts desire.

Then she grew up!

This is the tablecloth that I used as a shawl.

Once I decided to use the tablecloth for a shawl I set about finding a pattern to crochet a dress for my little bundle of joy.  I did not want a dress a mile longer than my 18inch baby so adapted a pattern for a woolen dress.

Elly just four weeks old in the only photo I have of her taken on the day.

Our photographer for the day didn’t make it - his car broke down and it was before the days of digital cameras.  I came across the outfit while clearing a drawer last week and gave it a wash.  It is amazingly white even after all this time.  To show it off properly I went in search of a baby sized doll.  Not a difficult task you would think.

The first doll I borrowed was from a school pal of Elly’s and was the correct size and vintage.  There was only one problem… the eyes were damaged and the young ladies father had replaced them with marbles.  All the photos I took made them look like cats eyes!  No way could I use a full face so I cropped the photos accordingly.

The pattern I worked from also had a pair of pants:

The pants may look bulky but not with a nappy on under them.

One day while out I saw a new baby goods shop and called in to see if they had a doll for display puropses.  No they didn’t but the assistant promised to bring her daughters doll in the following day.  It was a little smaller than the original one but I managed to take a photo.

I took this photo on the floor in the shop!

So to the girls in Rock-a-Baby who were so helpful I say thank you.

On Tuesday I was recalling the work of Ada Lovelace a pioneer in the world of Technology.  Today I recall other ladies who in days gone by were forging ahead to break other boundaries.

Last night I was reading about the Playing Rules for the game of Camogie.  As far as I could see they were all about the referee, umpires and the uniform.  There was little or no mention of the players.  It was a far cry from the original game that took place in 1904. I wrote a post back in March 2007 about that first game here.

Camogie may come under the banner of the GAA - the Gaelic Athletic Association, but it is still listed under ‘Other Activities’ on their website.  Mind you when the game is in full flow it is difficult to know whether it is a game of Men’s hurling or a game of Camogie.  The uniforms are similar and the players all wear headgear nowadays.

Modern day uniform

Compare it with the original

On Sunday 17 July 1904 at the Showgrounds at An Umaimh

In the picture above, the player 1st left in the front row in my Maternal grandmother and she seems to have a bloody nose.  Tut! Tut! Rough game.

Granny aged 20

The house is quiet, the young folk are away to their good warm work.  I am sitting up in bed with Tobias.

Henry seems to have completed his mornings work and all I need to do is make the pancake batter for this evening.  Yesterday passed in a hazy blur.  I spent the day recovering from a very full and busy few days,I re-lived in my mind all the conversations from the weekend and lost count of the number of new friends I made.  If I am quiet, worry not I might be exploring new blogs.

I also need to develop my relationship with Tobias, he needs to know that I will be in charge….!  We are getting to know each other slowly.  A tender touch is all he needs!  Like all toyboys he has many little quirks and we need to iron them out to suit me if he is to be my constant companion.

So who is Tobias?

Why, Tobias is my new laptop.

When George adds all my information and programmes from my PC there will be no holding me back. At the moment I am finding my way with Chrome (is that what you call it?) and it is a little different to Firefox.  I don’t miss the mouse so far and I enjoy the warmth for my hovering cold hands.  A new barstool for my kitchen is now top of my list and in the winter months I may never leave the kitchen!

When the summer comes I am looking forward to sitting outside in the garden and working away with Tobias.

Do you think I can teach him to cut the grass?

Hails at Coffee Helps tagged me for a Photo-story.

The idea is to rummage around in your photo folders in the computer, dust them down and tidy up the shelf ready for inspection.  Then open folder number four and select the fourth photo. Insert said photo  here and tell the story behind it.

Since Today is not the fourth but the sixth of February, I cheated and chose the sixth folder.  It was still up there in the ‘B’ section.

Sixth folder… sixth photo… Voila!

I know some of you have seen it before.  It was taken post Irish Blog Awards in March of last year.  That is me - didn’t I look young?  The camera never lies! ;)  Now no rotten tomatoes please, you are supposed to be nice to old ladies!

On the table beside me are my computer hard-drive that George my Son-in-Law had updated for me, The Champagne I won at the Irish Blog Awards 2008 and some beautiful flowers that arrived the following morning - Mother’s Day.

Towards the end of February last year I wrote the post Flower Power, it was inspired by Eamonn of Flowers Made Easy who was hosting a bloggers competition with a prize for ‘the best blog post about your mum‘.  Since my mother was dead, I told the story of another mother’s great love.  My post was not a winner but I was!  Elly wrote a post about me and told dreadful lies said nice nice things about me.  Honest, I didn’t bribe her… I didn’t know she had written it.

Well you can imagine my surprise when on Wednesday last I had a new comment on Flower Power.  It was from Eamonn telling me about another competition, this time for St Valentine’s Day.  All the details are below.

So, on with the thinking caps, and out with the pencils… if you are not in then you can’t win!  Stop and think for a moment ,about when you first realised that you were truly madly deeply in love with the light of your life; then sit and write about it.  Wouldn’t it be worth it to win the 12 Red Roses, a Bottle of Bubbly and a box of Chocs!

Now if only I had a Truelove… well I might have had a go myself!

Yesterday I read a Blog Post that brought tears to my eyes, joy to my heart and hope for humanity.  A journey where amazing diverse people from different nations and persuasions joined together in hope, all because of three little words: YES WE CAN!

To be American, last week, was a privilage.  To be alive to witness the dawn of a new beginning, tough though the journey may be to begin with, but by pulling together and working hand in hand Americans can show the world once more that it is a great nation.  YES YOU CAN!

My hope for the future is that the ripples of positivity will reach these shores.  Ireland is a beautiful place in all corners of the island.  If all the effort spent wasted in gurning (boy can people in Ireland gurn) and blaming the  Governments for all our faults & ills, was put into working for and improving our lot we too could have a country to be proud of.  YES WE CAN!

Who will be our new Obama?  YES YOU CAN!

Now go read A Journey of Hope!

Nancy, you will need two boxes of tissues!

I knew it would be momentous.

I hadn’t allowed for the fact that I would spend most of it in a fog.  Elusive sleep last night was no help.  At 5.00am I gave in and made a pot of green tea and toast.  Taking it back to bed with me I listened to the Shipping Forcast on BBC Radio 4.  I suddenly realised that it was the third forecast that I heard in 24 hours without a wink of sleep.

It was much too cold and early to get up so I snuggled down once more in the hope that sleep might overtake me.  Toast in bed was a bad idea, crumbs manage to get everywhere no matter how much I try to keep them on a plate.

I struggled through the morning planning to relax and follow the Inaugeration of President Barak H Obama late on this afternoon.  I gave in eventually and went back to bed, this time sleep took over and I woke just in time to hear the swearing in of both The Vice President and President Barak H Obama.

What a wonderful speech!  I felt it hit the right note and had I been an American my chest would have burst with pride!  Now please stop comparing him to his predecessors and mentioning his skin colour, and allow him to be his own man and get on with the job in hand.

Does it matter the colour of the cat, so long as it catches the mice!

~+~+~+~

At lunchtime the Nominations for most of the categories in the the Irish Blog awards 2009 were announced.  With so many new and talented blogs out there I was surprised and delighted to see my name on the list for Best Personal Blog.  There are about 80 blogs listed in this category with some amazing talent, and yes, I feel humbled to be there among them.  To those who took time to nominate me I say a BIG thank you!

May the best Blog win.

The Logo is thanks to Eolai

Today we open the book.

A book of blank pages!

Each day will begin a new chapter.

The book of life and opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.

Vow to do some of the things you’ve always wanted to do.

Drop an old grudge, and replace it with some pleasant memories.

Try not to make a promise you don’t think you can keep.

Call up a forgotten friend.

Walk tall, and smile more. You’ll look ten years younger.

Don’t be afraid to say, ‘I love you’. Say it again. They are the sweetest words in the world.

Make the year special

Years ago my father told me that it was a sign you were getting old when the policemen looked like school boys! Alas, the police have looked like schoolboys and schoolgirls to me for many a year now.

Sigh!

When I began this blogging lark most of my early contacts were Elly’s age group, yes I saw them as children. Well they were for the most part half my age. Over time the age groups widened. There were 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and a few 60s and now they go way up to the 80s.

It was the ageing downward that took me by surprise….

At Podcamp Ireland in Kilkenny 2007, I met Ian Healy a fine young school going lad who was very interested in all that went on. Alas, computer access with Dial-up internet prevents him from blogging and joining in the fun as much as he would like. He was back with us once more for Podcamp Kilkenny 2008. As soon as he saw me he shook hands and we picked up the conversation from the previous year.

Again at Podcamp this year, I met and spoke to Cian MacMahon a fifth year student who podcasts as a hobby and so far has succeeded in finding two sponsors to cover his hosting expenses. Cian is a handsome young man with a crystal clear voice and excellent diction and I predict he will go places in the not to distant future.

I first became aware of him at a talk led by Darragh Doyle, and like Darragh he is not afraid to approach and engage with people. Our paths crossed again later in the day when he attended my conversation about blogging and podcasting for the elderly. He stayed chatting long after the talk ended and kindly asked if I would consent to being interviewed for one of his podcasts. Email addresses were exchanged arrangements made and the recording took place some weeks ago via Skype, with Cian in Dublin and me with my feet up in Co Antrim! I think that episode will be available this weekend and there are plenty more examples of Cian’s work at View from the Quad.

The third young man I want to bring to your attention is Tommy Collison, a 14 year old student from Castletroy College in Limerick. His blogging home is to be found at Trust Tommy.com and once homework is out of the road Tommy joins the conversation on Twitter, where his short bio of 160 characters describes him as “Irish drummer, blogger, student, mischief-maker and maker of killer pancakes”.

So this keen drummer, and his work can be found on YouTube. Among his favourite bands are Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Dresden Dolls, Coldplay, Muse and Jamie Cullum. An avid reader he enjoys the words of Authors like Philip Pullman, Ian Fleming, Robert Muchamore and Stephen King.

Now I wonder what I have to do to get one of Tommy’s pancakes?

I hear the birds in the South of Ireland are chattering Post Codes once more. Let their music not fade into oblivion like a one hit wonder, but rise with a great crescendo to completion of the task. Postcodes are very handy. I know because I have one. Way up here in the cold and often forgotten part of the UK, are many towns and villages with a prefix of ‘Bally’. I live in one of them. Back in the days before we had post codes our mail took the tourist and scenic route via Ballycastle. Now with a Post code such detours are avoided.

Nowadays all my outgoing mail has a return address of my last name, house number and post code. I have in fact received Christmas Cards from the United States of America addressed to that return address. If for any reason I need to phone my bank or any utility company they ask first for my postcode and then the house number and finally ask me to verify my name. When travelling my luggage tags have only this return address.

Northern Ireland was the last part of the UK to be postcoded with all postcodes here beginning BT, a mnemonic of the capital city’s name. While Belfast was already divided into postal districts, rural areas known as townlands posed an additional problem, as (at the time) many roads were not named, and houses were not numbered. Consequently, many people living in such areas shared the same postal address, which is still the custom in the Republic of Ireland. Today the majority of roads in Northern Ireland are named with the odd exceptions in Co Fermanagh and most houses (even in rural areas) are allocated a number. Those that are not allocated numbers can be uniquely identified by a house name. An example is Bushmills, which begins with BT57.

The format of UK postcodes is generally:

A9 9AA

A99 9AA

A9A 9AA

AA9 9AA

AA99 9AA

AA9A 9AA

where A signifies a letter and 9 a digit. It is a hierarchical system, working from left to right — the first letter or pair of letters represents the area, the following digit or digits represent the district within that area, and so on. Each postcode generally represents a street, part of a street, or a single premises. This feature makes the postcode useful to route planning software.

The part of the code before the space is the outward code or out code used to direct mail from one sorting office to the destination sorting office, while the part after the space is the inward code or in code used to sort the mail into individual delivery rounds. The outward code can be split further into the area part (letters identifying one of 124 postal areas) and the district part (usually numbers); similarly, the inward code is split into the sector part (number) and the unit part (letters). Each postcode identifies the address to within 100 properties (with an average of 15 properties per postcode), although a large business may have a single code

wikipedia.org.

The population in the Republic of Ireland are well prepared for this type of system since vehicle registration has worked on a similar vein for several years. Surely incorporating the latter system would make the providing of Postal areas and districts an easier task.

What do you think?

We all know the phrase ‘Walking off into the sunset’. Mostly it brings to mind the idea of walking off into the never, never land of eternity, or as I like to think of it, walking into a new life, a new beginning. I was reminded of it last night while watching the sun set.

The sky at night on several occasions this month reminded me of another new beginning thirty years ago. Elly arrived in our lives in the early days of May and with her the beginning of a glorious summer. She was outdoors from 7.30am until it was time to bed her down for the night. The good weather lasted until October that year. Many a night Jack and I sat until well after the sun went down, I can still hear his remark ‘I suppose we better go in!’

May was a beginning for Elly and now it is also a time of endings. Last year it saw the official end of her single status as she prepared to marry her true love, George. This year May marks the ending of the time they spent is their temporary home and the new beginning of the move to their first step on the property ladder. Making a move like that is not easy nowadays. The current climate in the financial world has not made it any easier. They are to be admired for sticking in there and seeing it through.

I wish them well in their new home and look forward to sharing many visits. I hear ‘Mammy’s bed’ is on order so it won’t be very long before I have an excuse to travel south more often.

I only hope my visits are not like this: