Sonja Landweer made this. It's called Relationships: Community. It sits on the very top level of the Ulster Museum, just waiting for you. Basking in the bright, white, atrium light of that floor. Admittedly you do first have to prise yourself away from the display with the Venice Throne.

Just the very thing to find on the first morning of a new term when you've raced across town to pick up a birthday present from the museum shop (and therein lies another story!) and think maybe you just might have time to rise up through the levels of history, nature and dinosaurs to the section you never get to stand still in at all, ever!

Even better when you realise that there is definitely time for tea and a cupcake and a view of the park before you return! All this on the day when Ireland starts to vote on which of its paintings it loves the most...

According to the Sage Fred, Celtic Christianity knows thin places. It feels to me like fissure lines where the closeness of Heaven touches, actually touches, the stones and the ground and the skies breathing into the places where souls have chanted glory for long. My favourites are Jerpoint Abbey, Co. Kilkenny and especially Devenish Island, Co. Fermanagh. Today I'm thinking of Lent as one of my favourite thin times.

In the Library just now we're starting to go through the annual Appraisal Process. Jokingly late one night we flicked through a Professional Develoment book from the Business School trolley. When I paraphrase this quote I still start to cry so hilarious was it at the time- you'll have to remember that it was late! The advice therein was that in work you should let your light shine because by doing so you subconsciously give others the right to let theirs shine too. (Mags stops typing to wipe her eyes...)

But today our special preacher finished his thoughts with much the same idea. That we should walk our faith every step. Live our faith every step. Because only then would we give others the right to step out into theirs too. So I'm going into this Lenten week with the thought that as I walk with Christ towards Passion, I might walk openly and hopefully encouragingly. In the thin place, at a thin time!

Street

Ken and Tina are Tumble Circus. You'll have to take my word for it that we watched them with Kilkenny Castle in the high background with the river Nore on our left. Camera's still in the car and it's dark out there. Spectacular acrobatics with some daringly rude banter!

It's been dark out there since just before nine o'clock tonight. Ominous. Must be time to start sewing name tags on again...

But without further ado the winners of the cafes of Kilkenny competition! Tricky to mark, folks! Dore's Nostalgia cafe is where we go in the evenings to get cereal for the boys and Irish coffees for us! The Design Centre was where we had non-tea leaves in pots and lovely bread. The cafe over Kilkenny Book Centre is actually called Pennefeather's and we love the little alcove seat over the stairs where this year I had carrot cake with my Earl Grey. And Nicholas Mosse is where you can sit in the huge windows and drink from Nicholas Mosse cups, pour from Nicholas Mosse jugs and eat from Nicholas Mosse plates.

In short- 1d, 2a, 3c, 4b. And the "loquacious loo" was in the Design Centre. That was nice!

So. Catherine and Fred got the cafes completely right and I will be dropping notes into them soon- I know they didn't leave comments but you'll be hearing all about them tomorrow, so I beg forgiveness! Crafting Catherine also got them all right, as did Queen Niqi who guessed the Design Centre's voice as well. The other winner of the voice was Simone, and you got Dore's right too- well done all!

Another well done to Angela who didn't get the voice but did get Dore's Irish Coffee, and to Elizabethd and Pom Pom. Pom Pom got the voice!

I will be writing lovely cards for all of you tomorrow, and putting a little extra thing in as well. Thank you for playing with us here at fraise lachrymose- we like you very much!

The Music Strand

Carrickfergus is fifteen minutes down the road from our little suburb. I drove there a while ago to meet a colleague for coffee. We had coffee. I drove home. On the way HOME I realised with some disgust that I was listening to Jolly Phonics/Veggie Tales/Children's Carols (which we listen to all year round). I switched off the CD player. Only when I got home did it strike me that I must have been listening to Jolly Phonics/Veggie Tales/Children's Carols all the way TO Carrickfergus in the first place.

I mention this to illustrate my complete and utter disinterest in, talent for, knowledge of music.

It was obviously Prince Charming who went to hear Fidil (pleasingly pronounced vigil) last week, but I thought that I could mention them here at fraise lachrymose since we've all been listening to them non-stop ever since. The difference being that this time I don't turn off the CD player!

PC says that if you squeeze through Cleere's bar, you come to a tiny room at the back where they in turn squeeze in as many seats as possible, and then a few more. Which is a shame because if there had been some room he might have been tempted to get up and move!

Aidan O'Donnell has recently won Young Musician of the Year in Ireland, and you can hear them below. My favourite so far is The Hunt of the Hound and the Hare. I love the story, you see! It's like Danse Macabre and Peter and the Wolf. The music's lovely, but I still need a good story!

The Literary Strand

St Canice's Cathedral is old and grey. It has that air of being on the edge of crumbling, which makes you wonder, before you notice the solid wood carvings on the entrance door of anglican nature or proceed inside to see the Mother's Union display, if this isn't a little church of Ireland church that was long ago made to be grand. And when you sit down on your narrow pew with its anciently faded velvet, you never want to leave! It might be the pretty lengths of pink ribbon that fasten "seat" numbers at your back. It might be the brightness that defies the gathering dusk and sails through the stained glass that has white-now-off-white background panes. It will certainly be the unhewn stones that build the walls, without any need of the slick fine arches that pepper the sides.

Last year I booked to hear Colm Toibin and Peter Murphy. They were dazzling. The setting was too. But once they took the stage your mind was on nothing else. Toibin was the outgoing curator of the literary strand and his introduction was already erudite, yet then came Brooklyn, then came John the Revelator, then came the authors discussing their themes between them, and only finally did the questions come and the answers too, and it was good.

Hugo Hamilton writes from a perspective that is one of my favourite themes in contemporary novels- immigration. His style is journalistic, you can hear him below, and the insightfulness of his prose comes laterally. The bemusement of Vid, the narrator in Hand in the Fire, is the vehicle for the telling of Concannon Family's tale and colours then the illustration of Irish society. Hamilton seemed jolly, and pleased to be there in St Canice's, which pleased me as I was so charmed!

With no further ado the formidable John Banville presided. Reading not at all from The Infirmities but from a work in progress. Oh we all felt very imporatant. He criticised the lighting and the flowers. And he read a scene- you can hear it below. And his prose was mighty. The style with which that man can write filled that place with the authority of an accomplished and established figure. But he was not jolly, and evidently not pleased to be there. He was contrary, and I think he despised us all!

And I wished so much that I had read both books before the event. I'm falling into the habit of buying the books when we arrive in town. But I so wanted to ask both of them if they felt Hand and Infirmities were linked by the eye they both cast on the internal workings of family, if Vid the Observer is like Banville's mischievous gods. I strongly wanted to know if Banville's descent into bawdiness was a conscious path after The Sea. But I didn't, despite the fact that the questions asked were actually so poor that I despised us all too!

Thankfully St Canice's didn't seem to care. She welcomed Hamilton and Banville alike. And when I could finally bear to leave her, I still had the imprint of light that had filled me up during the long minutes of standing staring before they started to usher in the next event.




(Competition winners coming soon- still time to enter!)

Competition: Cafes of Kilkenny

To mark the opening of Kilkenny Week here at fraise lachrymose a little quiz. Just match four cafes...

1

2

3

4 ...to the four lovely snacks that we had there. A bit worrying when your suns can describe with as much passion as you their favourite watering holes in and around the town!

a

bcdThere will be a little card for every winner and a bonus prize for anyone who can say which cafe has a lavatory where a mysterious voice from the wall will tell you that your accent is melodious! (Immediate family of fraise lachrymose need not apply!)

Unfinished

I wanted to do a book heavy post on summer reading today, but I've been too busy being a lady who lunches, after she coffees, and before she takes children to stories and crafts at the library, feeds everyone pizza and then goes on to family branches to discuss the pater familias and his impending 70th birthday, BUT

I did manage to deliver Crafting Catherine's giveaway on our way over the hill. I now feel like a real bloggiste! That said it's Kilkenny time again, so we're heading down there next week after a brief chilly dip at the North Coast over the weekend, so another holiday break from the Land of the Tearful Strawberries!

I have a ticket for John Banville at the Cathedral, PC will listening to music in a bar, and there will be acrobats for the suns. This is possibly one of the best times in my year!

This winter's mad excursion

Last Christmas holidays after all the excitement of indoor festivities we got up early and mounted the carriage pre-packed with provisions and appropriate clothing. Less than two hours later we were in Phoenix Park and heading for the Zoo. "And you didn't stay over?" everyone asked. "No, we just drove home." After coffee in Starbuck's on Grafton Street, and pizza beside Trinity College.


Yesterday, the roads being clear of snow and the skies calmed of storms, we decided to go to Kilkenny to meet a baby. Wise men, after all, recently travelled further for much the same purpose and in considerably less comfort. Three hours exactly from Belfast to Kilkenny it took, so the roars of the Celtic Tiger are still audible of you listen well. They were certainly heard on RTE radio in the interview with Bill Cullen. He might actually have been the Celtic Tiger...

The stern grey castle is no longer softened by all this ivy, and the Nore was high and brown and fast. But there is no other town in Ireland that makes me smile quite so much! Even though the book shop had flooded.

And the baby is lovely!

Observations II

Where to start? The weekend was fabulous: relaxing, sunny, fun. Kilkenny was characteristically genteel, interesting, full of people and stories and spirit. The camping was easy and life thus simple; even C & W caught the bug. (Observing only that airbeds would be preferable to Thermarests for women of a certain age!)

Toibin and Murphy read from their books, took questions from the floor (of the newly opened and jewel-box beautiful Set Theatre), asked questions of each other, signed copies outside in the sun. They explored the link between the Irish prose and the Irish Music traditions. Toibin ventured that the musicality of Irish prose was what separated it from English prose. Apparently even John Banville started as a singer.

I sat with a fascinating woman who had come to live in Kilkenny from her native wee North via ten years in France. But I couldn't agree with her query to Murphy that the italicised dream scenes between his chapters were a distraction. I am finding them to be like the history sections in A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian. Deeply rooted in the events of the story as it unfolds, and intrinsic to the whole tone of the book.

It was particularly obvious that women in the audience hugely outnumbered the men. Do men not read? Do they not read fiction? The authors still appear to be in a male majority? Are the readers not?

The street theatre was good. Futter's Child was visually striking and clever, but didn't quite carry through from that effect with physical comedy or even much wit? Edmund Tahl was, however, brilliant. How he manipulated his sound system in such complete accord with his manipulation of the surroundings and audience, I don't get. But Mattman did disappear without a backward glance into the crowd of children who pursued this Pied Piper all over the castle grounds and into the castle itself! Hilarious!

And Jerpoint Abbey was impressive but still humane and if you stopped in the cloisters you could hear the whisper of chants. The suns certainly looked hard enough for St Christopher and Knight Butler, and were more than generously rewarded by the nicest custodians we've passed through this summer!

Obviously, coffee shops were much visited. N. L. Dore's remains the only place for supper- cereal for two and Irish coffees for two... - and cuckoo clocks. Pennefeather's Over The Bookshop is best for the Booth Over The Balcony for people watching, according to Jojo. And you can't really go home without a quick stop in Nicholas Mosse, to drink out of cups that you leave on the table.

Four nights of no suncream, no need for shade, and less than 3000 miles on the clock. We are surely folk of Northern climes! Same again next summer, methinks!

Observations

Toibin minus three days. C'est tres passionant. There will be no more strawberries until our return. A friend today emailed to ask where my wisdom was. I told him he'd have to wait until I'd had my annual shot of Irish culture. Even the suns have the good grace to be excited. They should be. Street theatre and a playground in the castle grounds. What more could they want? (Real sun would be good, but we'll settle for dry spells!) So observations might abound from all next week.

Dry spells will be needed for C and W who are coming too. They have been to Outdoor Store tonight to purshase specialist equipment. It feels an enormous responsibility to invite folk on their first camping trip. No doubt they will have many observations of their own.

But what of today's observations? According to Saint J, whom I had to contact today for panic advice on turning corners of my alarmingly expanding crocheted square, it takes thirty rounds to produce a pram blanket. So I must be one third of the way there. Observing along said way that so far:

1. Crochet is more mathematical than knitting in its cyclical threes but less so in that you don't have to count very many stitches at all.


2. Crochet is kinder to the inefficient than knitting because you know that stitch four warns of a wrong thing. The inefficient should be finishing a chain of three upward instead of attempting to begin a new chain of three through the next gap. And it doesn't matter at all if you drop a stitch or need to rip out. A*.


3. Crochet is nonetheless more monotonous than knitting especially when you really cannot fathom how it could be turned into a rectangle instead of a square.


4. Crochet must be fabulous for the creative soul who can't abide patterns, preferring instead to juxtapose fabulous combinations of thrilling colours in all sorts of fluid inventions.


5. Crochet will be yet another tool of my ultimate humiliation in wool, displaying neither thrilling combinations nor even consistent tension.

I will however take my blossoming blanket to the tent and it will keep my knees warm as I mull over the creativity, nay genius, of others. Maybe I'll find some wisdom too!