4 May Sunday
A lovely sunny morning. The doors and windows were all open. I rushed in and out doing jobs and then stopping myself from doing jobs and making myself sit down outside to enjoy the perfect weather and the birdsong. A swallow swooped in and raced around the big room. I closed some doors, opened a window and encouraged it to fly out again. I continued with my day. The swallow did not go toward the open window and it did not go back out the kitchen door. Instead it flew hard and fast into one of the large windows that is all glass and offers no opening. I thought it would knock itself out. I was waiting for it to either depart, or to knock itself unconscious. I had a colander at the ready to trap the dazed bird and to carry it outside but it did not do either thing. It just kept flying up high and sitting quietly on a wire while it decided on its next move. After a few hours I went and got a stepladder. My plan was to open the skylight and to encourage the bird to go out that way when it felt the air coming in through the window. But I was too short. Even at the top of the ladder, I could not reach the opening of the skylight. I went back to my other jobs and each time I heard the hard thwack of the swallow as it crashed into the window once again, I ran in to collect the stunned body. But each time there was no body. The bird was alert and back up high. Maud and Peter arrived. After our hellos, I asked how they felt about ladders. Peter said he would have nothing to do with them. In contrast, Maud said it was not a problem and she scurried up the steps to open the skylight. We went outside to drink tea and to eat her lovely cake. When we came back into the house, the swallow had departed.
6 May Tuesday
I spent a long time hunting for and then finally locating the fly curtain. It is ugly, but I put it up in front of the back door so that not only will insects be dissuaded from coming in but hopefully the birds will too. I can now keep the top half of the stable door open all day to let in the air. The fattest of the farm cats takes no heed. He jumped through the fly curtain right up over the bottom half of the door and into the kitchen. My shouts terrified him and he jumped out again. I hope he is too fearful to try this again.
7 May Wednesday
The roads are lined with frothy cow parsley. There is so much cow parsley, stitchwort and so much blossom on the hawthorn trees that this whole world seems to be a celebration of white flowers. Everyone talks about the quantity of blossom as well as about this ongoing stretch of sunny days.
9 May Friday
Simon was in a room with three beds. The other two men had strong Tipperary accents. He could not always understand what they were saying. Perhaps they had trouble understanding him too. Each time I went in for a visit over the ten day period, the man in the bed nearest the door told me that that he was going home tomorrow. His name was Noel and he did not have any teeth. He said that being in the hospital was like being in prison. Every day Noel gleefully announced that he was going home tomorrow and every day he was still there when I next returned. As Simon left the ward to come home today, Noel made his same pronouncement and waved goodbye merrily.
11 May Sunday
The gooseberries are not even close to being ripe but the birds are eating them. They are stripping the branches of both leaves and berries. It is a competition to see who will get the most berries.
13 May Tuesday
Two women were discussing the new conservatory recently built by someone else. In these cash-strapped times, this is less common than it was a few years ago. People build a conservatory onto the side of their houses. It is important to situate it in a such a way that every single person passing the house can see it. It is important for other people to know that a conservatory has been built. There is an element of bragging in all of this. If a conservatory is put onto the back of the house, it will be private but then no one can see it. It seems that all of the glass makes people nervous. They do not want to sit in the conservatory because then anyone who is passing can see them sitting there. Because it is not private it ends up being empty. People sit elsewhere in the house. They sit where it is darker and where they cannot be seen by anyone passing. A conservatory sometimes has carefully chosen furniture in it, but even then it rarely has people in it. Increasingly, the conservatory is a place with a washing line. Making people envious because you can afford a conservatory while they cannot afford one is contradicted by the fact that you have merely built an expensive version of the Long Shed for drying your washing.
The saddest conservatory is one I viewed from high up when I was on a bus traveling down from Dublin. It was completely empty except for a drooping washing line loaded with underpants and socks, pyjamas and t-shirts. Everything on the line had once been white. From the bus everything was a dreary shade of grey. All of this was on view in the place where no one wanted to sit because they found it lacking in privacy.
14 May Wednesday
I am picking gooseberries every day even though they are not fully ripe. Most of them are hard. If I do not get them now the birds will win again. I trust the berries will be fine once they are cooked.
15 May Thursday
It was during the winter of 1998-99 when I installed my envelope interiors in what we now call the Envelope Interior Room. The walls had been plastered by Tom Browne, using the soft grey plaster that is no longer available. These days plaster is pinkish in colour and it is called Thistle Plaster. I do not know what the grey plaster was called. Just plaster. I drew squares with pencil directly onto the unpainted walls and then, slowly, over many winter weeks, cut and tore and pasted my interiors within the squares. I have just this week finished the long overdue job of repairing and replacing the majority of the interiors. Many were faded and some had grubby edges. I re-used a lot of the ovals that we had chopped out on the Adana press for an exhibition in Aichi, Japan in 2008. I am so happy with the final result here. The fresh and crisp appearance of the interiors looks sharp. I cannot stop looking at the walls. I make a point of wandering in to the room often just to admire my efforts. My eyes bounce around following a colour or a shape. There is none of the regular repetition of wallpaper. This order is floating and flowing and never completely predictable. My grandmother’s handmade quilt looks perfect…as if it were planned.
16 May Friday
Buttercups are now rampant. The hedgerows are full of wild honeysuckle. The cow parsley is dying back and going skeletal. Elderflowers are displaying creamy polka dots in the landscape.
17 May Saturday
Whenever I leave the house by car, wherever I am going, it is imperative that I allow extra time for the journey. I may be held up in the farmyard by cattle crossing to or from their fields into or out of the barns. If the cows are crossing I can do nothing but wait and watch them. Joe has a lot of cows. Once out of the farmyard, I may meet a tractor in the road. Or someone else’s cows may be crossing a road from field to field. I can never anticipate what might be in my way and the time planned for travel is never what I expect.
18 May Sunday
It has been three weeks of hot dry weather. The farmers are desperate for rain. I would be happy for this weather to continue for three months.
19 May Monday
Lena was sad to learn that her brother had died so far away from home. She was devastated that his body had not been driven down the roads where they lived for one last time. She felt sorry that he could not say good bye to the farms and fields that he had inhabited while growing up as he took this final journey. When she learned that he had been cremated in that far away place she smashed her forehead on the table, with her hands flat on the table at either side of her head. She moaned as she banged her head repeatedly. She said over and over again: “How could they burn that beautiful body?”
20 May Tuesday
Jacinta brought over her steam cleaner. I do not know what kind of cleaning it is intended for, but she loaned it to me to defrost the freezer out in the shed. It was wonderful. I had a marvelous time blasting steam at the great chunks of ice lining the interior. Instead of chipping away for hours with the whole top half of my body leaning into the freezer, I had finished the job in less than an hour. I was eager to do more. While I was working thunder and rain began. The thunder was loud, but there was no lightening. The downpours were tremendous. The rain bounced off the hard dry ground. The noise of the rain beating down on the metal roof of the shed was deafening. I was trapped inside for a while but that gave me time to go through all of the frozen food and to sort and list all that was going to be put back inside. I cannot believe how many containers of black currant sauce we have. Simon will never look at this list, but I will.
21 May Wednesday
The all day and all night rain is the only topic of conversation. We needed it and we got it and everyone is happy, if a little overwhelmed by the intensity of it all.
23 May Friday
There is young life everywhere. Tiny lambs chase their mothers through fields. Joe’s calves are no longer drinking from the teat trailer, but are now out grazing in a skittish group. I met Siobhan in Ardfinnan for a short stroll. There are new tarred paths all around the playing field and along the river. Trees have been planted and new benches positioned for sitting. She told me all about the two baby geese that are the talk of the village. The rest of the geese make a tight circle around them and no one can get close. I did get to see the protection ring but could only make out a tiny bit of golden fluff in the midst of the geese. The whole gaggle is chased in to a tiny shed at sundown to protect both the geese and goslings from the fox.
24 May Saturday
We are still buying the Wexford asparagus at the market. It seems to be lasting longer than ever before. Each time I get some, I feel it is a bonus.
25 May Sunday
The expression Happy Out is used often. It just means that someone is in a cheerful mode. I used to think this was the only use of Out with another word. I know now that people say Gentle Out when describing a biddable dog, or Glad Out when one is all-round pleased, but I still do not understand why the word Out is included.