We Went Up a Hill

Yesterday the sun came out for a bit and so we went to look at one of the Loughcrew passage tombs, built around 3000 BC. We climbed to the top of Carnbane East, where this one stands. Beneath the mound of stones, there is a cross-shaped chamber. At dawn each year on 21st March and 21st September the sun's rays fall through the cairn's entrance, illuminating puzzling carvings on the stones in the wall opposite the entrance. 

The whole landscape around Carnbane East is very beautiful and it is not difficult to imagine a time when people roamed these hills, spending most of their energy simply keeping warm, dry and fed, but also somehow managing to create structures like this one. 

The weather and wild cloud added to the sense of wonder I felt:

 

Home Thoughts from Abroad

When I say “abroad” in the heading to this post, I mean Ireland in this instance. I suppose I’m always abroad, as a person born with two passports - (for the literal-minded reader, I should point out that I wasn't actually clutching the documents, one in each hand, as I emerged into this strange place called reality; at that stage I merely possessed the right to them) - especially lately, while the country I normally call home - Australia - has been rather hurtfully unwilling to allow the return to their own shores of members of its citizenry who were unpatriotic enough to be caught abroad when a virus turned up.

Thought No. 1: 

Given this thing called Irish Mist, which is rarely not absent when you go out of the door in Ireland, is there a solution available for those among us driven by advancing years to the wearing of spectacles all the time - something that might combat the problem of being unable to see after five minutes chugging along through said mist on a bicycle? Tiny versions of windscreen wipers, I’m thinking, easily fixed on and taken off the glasses, complete with an even tinier energy source.

Thought No. 2: 

Is the good natured friendliness encountered in rural Ireland matched by the inhabitants of any other European country? I’m not fool enough to imagine that it has any great depth to it, but, like manners, the apparent goodwill people who aren't actually acquainted show to each other in the countryside in Ireland definitely smooths the business of daily life.

Thought No. 3: 

Am I the only person in the world who never again wants to read or hear the pronouncements of -

(a) Neil Ferguson of Imperial College;

(b) Stanley Johnson of the Institute of Bluster and Bombast, who I used to think was only afflicted by one of the most serious cases of attention-seeking so far seen in the 21st century (and that is saying something, even though we are less than a quarter the way in) but I now fear may also harbour a fondness for the current regime in China, the causes of which I would not care to speculate on, libel laws being what they are;

(c) Rachel Johnson, who has inherited a case of attention-seeking from somewhere or someone and, the more she is rewarded, the more she reveals herself as an unoriginal bore.

(Please submit suggestions for figures to occupy the positions at (d) to (z) and beyond.

Thought No. 4: 

By now I should be moving on to the weighty issues I believe that I may have intended to rave on about when I began this post. However, I've just seen some pictures and have instantly forgotten anything serious. The pictures in question are those that have been chosen to be sent out on Christmas cards from members of the Royal Family. 

First there is Prince William's:

Does anyone else wish Prince William hadn’t chosen a Christmas card photograph in which he is shown wearing shorts with his legs wide open? I am not making some sort of lewd aspersion; I just looked at the picture and immediately felt the central focal point of that picture is dominated by leg and beige chino material and that is not a focal point I would choose. There are an awful lot of legs in fact in that picture. Only the Duchess of Cambridge appears to be legless, for which I don't blame her - I wouldn't be able to deal with the life she has married into in any other way.

Mind you, the Royal standard in Christmas card photographs has this year been plumbed by William’s father. Here's the one he has chosen; it makes the Cambridges look like design geniuses by comparison:

Prince Charles seems to have decided to give his card a message - and not the message of Christmas. Charles has decided that a mixed message of 'wear masks' and 'hey blokes, boss your wives about' is instead the sensible way to go this year.  If this is the kind of brilliant idea the ageing prince comes up with now, lord help the United Kingdom when he succeeds his mother, (and no, his sons are no better - and yes, there is only one solution).  Or, to put it another way, despite her slightly testy comment about green issues the other day, which was a lapse, Charles's mother is, on the whole, pretty sensitive to the importance of not being trendy or political, and for that reason I still say, "God save the Queen". 

Things I Miss About Belgium - an Occasional Series

The title of this post is slightly misleading, since I don't particularly miss the flea market in Brussels. However, this article about it is charming. On the day after we were burgled, while living in Brussels, I went down to the flea market, hoping my favourite painting might be being sold by the burglars down there. It wasn't, so far as I could see, but I did find myself beguiled and distracted by the place and started taking pictures to try to capture the scene. They may serve as companion illustrations for the article I've linked to. 

As you can see the writer isn't quite right when she says there is no order. Some stallholders go to huge trouble to lay out their wares nicely:

It has to be admitted though that most don't:

But who knows what treasures you might find amidst the chaos:

And, as the article's author notes, there are always the poignant photographs of people who, presumably, no longer exist: