Ting Ting......

I put this up with some trepidation because we will shortly be receiving a visit from Martin and Sile before they return to Thezan and some of you will know that M. Dwyer has a somewhat ambivalent, even hostile, attitude towards cats...

But I thought he might prefer to be forewarned?......

In order to spare the blushes of those involved or responsible, I can only say that the first of these was that on Christmas morning we found ourselves in need of a turkey.
I will go just so far as to say that the matter of the responsibility for this circumstance became a hotly disputed matter.

But anyway, here we were late Christmas morning with no turkey and half the family en route from Galway to Ballyduff in full anticipation of the seasonal feast.

Re-calibration time!

I figured that the stuffings - which had been prepared the previous evening - could be used to stuff peppers instead of turkeys and they could accompany the traditional ham and, with a few more 'tweaks' we would still achieve a 'festive table'.

But more modern heads went to work and our predicament was 'tweeted'.
And an early response suggested that hotels would likely be in possession of surplus turkey.
And, indeed, a few phone calls later, a turkey crown had been located at a local hotel and it was collected by the family en route from Galway.

Thus we are all be deeply indebted and very grateful to Pius Phelan, proprietor of The Kilford Arms on John Street in Kilkenny, not just because he solved our problem but he also it gave it to us as a gift. - Thank you, Pius, you were truly our saviour!

On its arrival I was confronted - I was the designated chef this year - with six kilograms of boneless turkey breast!
This lead to much discussion and some wondered whether, on account of its size, it was not, perhaps, ostrich or even dodo rather than turkey.

But, anyway, its flesh was fresh, sweet and plentiful!

I decided to separate the breasts and 'butterfly' one to enable me to stuff and roll it - as one would a lamb's leg - and this we did. The other, I simply bound tight and, with no more than a sprinkling of thyme, pepper and salt, cooked it alongside its 'stuffed' companion.

It worked-out well and the day was saved.

But, along the way, there were other discoveries, events and dramas that made-up our Christmas pageant.

And, now I come to think about it, they may all have been caused by the unseasonable warmth.

First, Sue discovered a bat hanging on the back of a door.
Its entry point could only have been via the roof window in the upstairs bathroom which is always kept open a chink and may thus have reminded it of an eave - but, the point is, that the creature plainly felt a wakeful urge when its species is usually dormant.

And then there were loud noises from the same upstairs, bathroom when Hannah was stung by a semi-comatose wasp that was lurking in the cloth she lifted to clean the bathroom for the visitors.

And finally, as I cooked, I was kept company by a butterfly - who fluttered about in the hot kitchen as though it was August - having, I presume, been awakened by temperatures that reminded it of April not December.

But, sadly, it did not survive the night.

And I've been absent again during November and December but this time I make no apology because, not only have I been busy, very busy, which in these times is a cause for celebration rather than apology but also, as I mentioned in... The next outing... of 01.11.11... the very nature of this site has been under scrutiny, examination and, as a consequence, reconstruction.

Following my decision to 'come out from under my stone' by mounting the exhibitions I decided that I should continue to 'put myself about a bit' with the aim of capturing my share of any work that is out there. And to this end I was offered and, unusually I fear, I decided to accept some advice as how best to set about this goal.

It was Naoise's great friend Sinead Ryan of Presence Marketing who offered to hold my hand and lead me along the path to greater and finely focused exposure.
And this is ongoing work - interrupted first by the busy spell before Christmas and then by the holiday itself.

But this effort will resume, with purpose and vigour, as soon as normal life resumes in the new year.

First, the new website will go live and then, later in January or early February, there will be a 'launch' of the new website and brochure.
The date and location will be well heralded here once they are set.

And, my good news is that I go into the new year with a small order book - a rare and valuable commodity - but I will try not to neglect these pages as a consequence..........

Now, I'm sure you will agree that, unless you are in search for unnecessary artefacts with which to clutter the house, Lidel is not a store which induces you to linger and browse.
So, I'm sure I wasn't in there for more ten minutes and I'm equally sure that when I entered I left a drab evening with a dark sky outside.

So imagine my astonishment when I came out to this...........

But I succumb from time to time and, their pointlessness proven, they take up valuable space in cupboards and drawers.

I don't remember how we came by it but, one such item has been knocking about for years and I was on the point of throwing it out when I realised that I could not remember having ever used it. So I resolved to try it out before consigning it to the bin.

Most mornings I make Sue a packed-lunch which, harking back in the years, we refer to as her 'school lunch'.
One morning recently, I decided to make her a gourmet egg-and-tomatoe sandwich.
Now, as part of her birthday feast, Ousmane made exquisite Scotch eggs.
Unlike the usual Scotch egg, with its solid and sulphurous yolk, the yolks in Ousmane's were just barely set.

I resolved that this should be a feature of Sue's sandwich.
Contrary to my declaration above, I have always found it impossible to slice a hard-boiled egg without each slice sticking to the knife and the yolk falling away from its ring of white.

And this is where 'the gadget' came into play.
And I have to declare that it was brilliantly up to its task and enabled the best constructed egg-and-tomatoe sandwich in the entire history of egg-and-tomatoe sandwiches.....

...I'm off to the utensil isle............

I got to only one gig which was truly, fun, funny, thought provoking and informative.

I was sat (as we would say locally) beside somebody drinking 'a pint'. Having just been refused 'a pint', I enquired of him how he had come into possession of his.

It transpired that he had made the trip from the USA to Kilkenny specifically for 'Klikenomics' and that he had, furthermore, grasped the principle of 'boozenomics' in Ireland on the instant: drink the sponsor's product and you will get it in the quantity of your choice, fast, cheap and in plenty!

Anyway, as he supped his 'pint' and I sipped my, costly, 'bottle' we both engaged with the event.

And this was, without naming names, a discourse between an infant former minister for economic affairs from Argentina, a dizzy, tattooed, Italianate economics prize- fighter from London; an wholly improbable hedge-fund manager from the sub-continent and an ubiquitous and inimitable contributor to the endless debate on Ireland's economic prospects who was described in the Kilkenomics programme notes, as ...'the Adjunct Lecturer in Finance with Trinity College Dublin............ (capitals his - or theirs - but not mine)

Now, I've always assumed that I knew the meaning of the word 'adjunct'.
But during the Q&A session at the end of their presentation, this contributor was asked '...what is an adjunct professor?' I thought he hesitated slightly before he replied '...a visiting professor...'
That was not what I, nor my dictionary (in this instance, Collins), thought the meaning to be.

But it was a clever response worthy of a trader in the art of sophistry........

And, while I was missing, I entertained many a thought - or, perhaps, a thought many a time - that the blog (this blog) is little more than a foolish vanity.

But then, when I made my way back, I found that I had missed a comment on, Libya..... of 23.02.11 , posted on 27 September.

And, to anyone with sufficient interest or observation to do the sums, it would be apparent that the commenter, was making contact after a separation of fifty years!

So maybe, after all, the blog is vindicated - and sod the vanity!

As I mentioned in 'Out from Under My Stone......' 21.08.11 I was invited to re-mount my exhibition - Clive Nunn - My Journey alongside Irish Furniture 1971 - 2011 - as a fringe event, during Wexford Festival Opera, at the Irish Agricultural Museum at Johnstown Castle Estate and it is now more than half way through this outing.

And, as you can see from the poster, I gave a talk on my experiences with vernacular Irish furniture back in the 1970's and 80's.
It went really well and I thoroughly enjoyed giving it. - It is amazing how much good my Ignite experience did me in this regard: the discipline of the fifteen second showing of twenty images afforded me a perfect template from which to expand and create a full, hour long, lecture.

I don't think I have achieved my declared intention of giving this Wexford showing of the exhibition a more commercial focus but, in truth, it wasn't really feasible to transform a relatively, and deliberately, soft-focus retrospective into a major selling opportunity.

But I have been, and am, working towards this commercial goal: not least by having been made to struggle harder and harder - (by my old friend Terry Bannon - he who, as has been mentioned here many a time and has done all the artwork and graphics for every show, exhibition, poster, sign and brochure that I have produced over the past thirty years) - to provide him fewer words and better images for the new brochure that is , when I come to think of it, giving the Wexford exhibition something of a commercial lift!

And now we are working on the website so that visitors who may be seeking information regarding furniture commissions are not confronted, first, by my witterings on hens!

And, inter alia, there has been another 'show' but, as you know, I don't choose to reveal private details here - and certainly not those of others.
I'll go just so far as to say that there was cause to create an event of celebration that brought together twenty-three, out of a possible twenty-six, members of the family.

And it's just over and we are now in recovery - more so from excesses of emotion than from any Bacchanalian aspects of such an occasion.

And so, if I have any followers left, I hope they will forgive me for having failed to put up even one post during October - it was just such a busy month.

But I'm back and, shortly, I hope you will see and approve of changes to this site that will not eclipse the blog but will allow visitors with furniture in mind or, better still, the intent of placing a commission, to get the information they are seeking with greater ease.

I won't bore you with too many details but, as I have mentioned here many a time, our house is small so, by inference, you may rightly assume that our box room is small too.

However, by the time we had divested it of its contents, almost every surface in every room of the house had a part of its contents spread across it.

And, by the time we had made the endless decisions that such an activity demands (and causes one to defer), we now have not only a clear and functional box room (and thus a successful outcome to our endeavour) but also a van half full of rubbish and the other half filled with items for next Saturday's flea market in Thomastown, as well as half-car-load of things belonging to Alice that Sue will deliver to her tomorrow.

Also unearthed, and this, if the truth is told, is what prompted me to make such a personal revelation, were two boxes of glass and glasses.

The most of their contents were small, pedestrian, not very old, pub, shorts-glasses for which, I have to confess, I hold an inexplicable fondness.
Something to do with 'in praise of ordinary, rather than exceptional' things maybe?

And I have found them space in our glasses cupboard - where they will, no doubt, rest as unused as they were when wrapped up in newspaper in their box in the box room!

But at he bottom of the second box I found...............

...............this glass vessel.

It was the only item of significant age and quality that I rediscovered and something tells me that I did once know its purpose - but I can't recall it.

And something else tells me that it will not be long before the answer will be supplied or, perhaps my memory refreshed, by a man from Herault.

.......including this bowl of beautiful crab apples.

I must revert at once to M. Dwyer of Thezan to discover how best to convert them to crab apple jelly.

During the course of the day the canine members of the party experimented with gay sex - on their first meeting I should say......

........before relaxing into a companionable exhaustion.

And I, too, found love but....

........although the reciprocation of my adoration was transparent - I was forbidden from slipping her into my pocket.....my little 'Crab Apple'.

I failed to find the object of my search but, as I hunted, I came across a copy of The Observer newspaper, dated Sunday, May 13 1945.

The date jumped out at me for a series of reasons.

13 May 1945 was just five days after V-E day, four days after my mother's forty-second birthday and seven days before my birth.

I was bemused as to how this paper could have found its way into the mill and that I had not previously noticed it.

It could not have come down the route of my family because on 13 May 1945 we were either on our way to, or had just arrived in, Jamaica where I was born.

Sue considers it highly unlikely that it could have arrived via her family. She did not think it likely that their parents would have been Observer readers and, frankly, the likelihood of the The Observer having been available in Bagenalstown in 1945 - for that is where her parents lived at the time - is remote.

It is even less likely that it will have been here since I purchased the mill in 1972/3. Neither John Gaffney, off whom I bought the mill, nor Gerry Meegan, the miller, would, by any stretch of the imagination, have been Observer readers.

There is another means by which old newspapers found their way into my possession over the years.
Newspapers were regularly used as drawer-liners and, as a dealer in old furniture, I have come across many a page with an interesting date or notable content in the drawers of furniture that I acquired.
But I do not think this is the means by which this paper found its way here because it is intact, all eight pages of it, still folded in their original collation.

So it remains a mystery.

As you can imagine, the entire issue is given over to war-end issues and there are some remarkable headlines and stories within it.

For instance:

London Crowds Stranded
The hottest day of the year - the temperature reached 85 deg - yesterday brought great crowds to London to celebrate the first weekend of peace.............

Allies Must Send Food To Germany
An authoritative statement on the food Europe may expect from democracy's larder in the first year of victory disclosed yesterday that the German people in the British and American zones of occupied Germany will receive a substantial portion of the 12,000,000 tons of food which the U.S. is planning to ship to Europe.
Officials describe this as "an unpleasant necessity"..............

Himler Reported Captured............

700,000 Surrender
More than 700,000 Germans surrendered to the Russians between Wednesday and yesterday, said last night's Soviet communique.

I could go on and on but I will end with the front page advertisement which has a certain pertinent charm don't you think?

First it was Irma, the black one, and then (now) it is Prudence, the brown one.
In our ignorance of what should be done in these matters, we we try to divert her by dragging her from the nesting box in the hope that she will eat, drink and, ultimately, forget about her phantom pregnancy.

As a result she has become the most handled of the girls, and this she clearly likes, so much so that I began to refer to her as 'the hawk', because once I released my grip on her, instead of flying off, she would stand on my arm, as would a tamed hawk or kestrel.

I described this to Sue who listened - apparently courteously but probably distractedly - to my my anthropomorphic ramblings, until she dragged Prudence (Brownie, in Sue's parlance) out herself yesterday.

And Prudence, or Brownie, performed just as I had described.......

One of the best outcomes of coming 'out from under my stone' and mounting the exhibition is that I have been asked if I would re-mount it at Johnstown Castle during the Wexford Opera Festival in late October, early November.
This I have now agreed to do, or rather, having had it pointed out to me that the Wexford Opera Festival attracts on of the best demographics (what an awful expression) of any event held in Ireland, I jumped at the opportunity and grabbed it with both hands.

So, when returning the items of Irish vernacular furniture kindly lent to me by Johnstown Agricultural Museum, I discussed the details with Matt Wheeler, the recently appointed curator / manager of the museum, and we came to an excellent agreement that I will not only re-mount the exhibition - which will be added to and improved - but I will also give an illustrated talk one lunchtime.

I regard this as a great recession-busting opportunity and, with the experience gained from the Kilkenny outing, I intend that it will be significantly more commercially focused without, I hope, losing the softer narrative of my involvement with Irish furniture of the past forty years.

But, as I said, it has been a very busy week.

Not only did the exhibition have to be taken down, the re-mounting in Wexford negotiated but Terry Bannon - the master of graphics - had urgent need of a counter for an extraordinarily irregular and complex alcove: this had to be measured, made and delivered within a finite time-frame. - But it was brilliant to be able to begin to reciprocate for Terry's defining efforts for me.

And then Nicola Brown, one of my co-exhibitors at Grennan Mill, launched her book on felting yesterday afternoon and we went to a charming lunch at her equally charming farmhouse at Kyle just under the Blackstairs that have had so much mention here this past year.

And today we were out again at another afternoon get-together of the the great, the good and the local artistic community (whatever that means).

So, I have truly been out from 'under my stone' for the past three weeks and I have enjoyed every moment of it.
As a consequence, I have met people that I haven't met for years; I have met many new people - whom I could (and should) have met had I not been living 'under my stone' and many others who knew who I was but had not met me because of my habitual habitat.

But I'm out now and I intend to stay out - stones are heavy after all......

Unfortunately the text is too small to read and, indeed, while the brochure was under preparation Terry complained bitterly to me that there were too many words!

So, later in the day I will photograph and put up the panels in the exhibition which contain the same infomation - word for word.