AH SURE AZURE

Category: Reflections

  • Sands of Time

    Sands of Time

    The sun enticed me to the beach today.

    A privilege of country living is being able to capture moments like this. The rippling of the waves brings peace.

    I thought of Keats’ wonderful lines:

    Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, 
        Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; 
            Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude, 
        Or fed too much with cloying melody— 
            Sit ye near some old Cavern’s Mouth and brood, 
    Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired! 

    Nature has a powerful way of allowing you to connect with yourself and what is really going on inside.

    Now I didn’t come across any sea nymphs or anything but I thought of my sister who left us four years ago on this day. The sea still comes in and out and always will long after we are gone. It leaves marks on the sand that are gone the next time the tide comes in. I suppose this is what they mean by the sands of time. Always shifting but never disappearing. When someone you love is taken away, other things you love still remain such as the sea, sun and fresh air.

    I thought of Neptune the God of the Sea – even he cannot hold the tide back. Last night I went to see the Justice League, a movie featuring Superheroes where there was an awesome pale blue eyed Neptune, complete with Trident. He managed to hold back a few floods in order to ‘save the world’ but even he was pushed back eventually.

    I have a metaphor for my efforts to change my career. Its from Castaway with Tom Hanks. There is a coral reef about 200 metres out from the beach that he has to get past before he can paddle out into the wide ocean. The waves break on it continually and he has wounded himself on the sharp coral many times. He spends his days devising methods to get himself past the reef, designing rafts and failing time and again. Eventually he uses an old piece of corrugated plastic that washed up on the beach and puts a makeshift sail on it. The wind in the sail gives him enough momentum to get beyond the reef, allowing him to journey back to civilisation.

    The wind in my sails has been my friends offering me a country retreat while I paddle past the rocks of convention so I can start forging a new way of life.

    It has been exciting so far but I hope I don’t have to get picked up by a liner in order to make it wherever I am going. I am going ahead with a mind ‘open to everything and attached to nothing’ – thank you Wayne Dyer.

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    Not  exactly a Coral Reef but what sun on a Winter’s day.

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    Patterns left from the ebb and flow of the sea.

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    Bright winter sunshine on the wet sand.

  • Up By Napper Tandys House

    This Sunday I went walkabout in Dublin’s oldest streets. Researching the price of organic cherry tomatoes, I made for the Dublin Food Coop. From Thomas Street, I passed throught Meath Street and The Coombe. Quiet and clean swept it being a Sunday, the redbrick houses are history in themselves. The families that grew up there, the messages bought, the workers arriving in , scraping theit boots on the built in irons that still protrude from the redbrick at foot level.

    The men who arrived home without work during the lockout and strikes of 1913 – the stories those walls could tell.

    IMG_3017Google maps brought me to the market – a buzzing hive of activity. Tourists from all over th world had found their way to this hub of crafts, music collections ,coffee and food.

    Cherry tomatoes were to be found @ €5 per kilo. Sourced from Spain so methinks there is a gap in the market for Irish Organic Cherry tomatoes.

     

  • Break my heart at Breakfast

    Apricot jam -v Marmalade
    unopened jar of Apricot Jam bought by mistake

    Did you ever cut open a brown scone, butter it and reach for the marmalade only to find the orange spread you ladle on is Apricot jam masquerading as marmalade?

    The illogical anger as your taste buds struggle and yearn for the zest and buzz of marmalade is matched only by the disappointment that your breakfast on your breakaway has been partially spoiled. The anticipation of the perfect breakfast scone has been unfulfilled and you look around for someone to blame.

    How could anyone think the bland smoothness of apricot would fool me? Who actually made the decision to substitute the real thing with an inadequate replacement. Better by far to say ‘We do not have marmalade’ than to lead one down or up the garden path and lull one into a false sense of consumable confiture.

    It is actually not jam at all  or jelly as they call it in the US.  The real thing was sliced in a manual slicer attached vice like to the kitchen table  Seville oranges came in once a year and the annual ritual would rotate between the Rayburn where the slices would bob around in the preserving pan, pounds of sugar added until it was decanted into sterilised Jam jars  and oh the smell!

    In times of need when the real thing was all eaten, mother would make it out of a tin .  Delicious !  Only when all else failed did we buy a pot of marmalade.

    The sausages are eaten, the second cup of coffee is poured but its all gone up in a puff of smoke.

    Is it worth talking to the waitress? Will this only serve to fuel the anger, underlining the unfortunate start to the day.

    Or does one just bottle it up and buy ones one jar of the real stuff at the local shop.

    Did you not know that ‘I was a morning grouch – until I discovered Little Chip marmalade ‘. One of the best pieces of advertising ever.

    So remember- serving Apricot Jam can be responsible for morning grouches all over the world.