Here is an invite to the opening of Sacred (after 2 pm on 14 November 2009) a show at the Dock in carrick-on-shannon curated by Siobhán Garrigan with works by Bernadette Kiely, Aileen Lambert, David Michalek , Katharine West and a time-specific perfectly edible art intervention for the opening afternoon by no other than I. Everyone welcome.

sacred invite lowres

Come and eat the soup (no trade offs necessary).

Last saturday leaving L and E in charge of of the maison djeribi operation at knockvicar N and I went to the funeral of a good guy, 54-year old organic farmer Ted Mole, who succumbed to a brain tumour. Upset and weather-beaten but in rather cool outfits, including an amazing papier mâché mask, we went to a local haloween party packed with pretty sick children and parents. So a couple of days later we started coming down with this, perhaps not the dodgy fashionable flu but a nasty one all the same.

No baking this week, I am afraid, I am not going to try and broadcast those little germs any more than is necessary. In old library books here it says : “Borrowers must report to the Local Librarian all cases of infectious diseases occurring in their houses while library books are in their possession.” Nowadays, however, with over-the-counter all-symptons-suppressants super drugs and a ruling system than only values functioning active human beings, what can you expect ?

Autumn is upon us and today as the sun shines brightly unto the browning leaves it feels like the right time of year, fruitful with ponderings and planning and introspection. Things are breaking down here, it is just money and temporary (we hope) inconveniences but it is wearing just the same, a non-exhaustive list in no particular order : the immobilizer in the van that is not needed, cannot be bypassed and I’m sure does not work to stop car thieves if they take any pride in their craft, the water softening machine for our well water, my camera. Is this the end of a cycle ? Is there any sense in reading through coincidences ? Sometimes it feels right to.

I found a piece cut out of The Guardian a while ago which I will share here, about the price of plastic water, sorry, I mean bottled water : “60% is for the plastic bottle, 20% for transport and 12% for advertising in a highly competitive market.” And in case you thought you had it all wrapped up like I did by reusing plastic bottles I will also add a link to an article on the dangers of plastic, read this article on Mother Earth News, Plastics : what’s dangerous and what’s not. As aluminium we now all know is not to be recommended, there are now stainless-steel bottles available to buy and carry around with you (since you are on the internet you can I’m sure find some, there are probably made far away but you can buy one for life).

We called in to friends before lunchtime, on the way to foot our turf in the bog. We lingered and were asked to stay, we had brought a picnic intending to eat in the open but we shared it happily instead—home bread, tinned sardined from brittany, home soft goat’s cheese—, and left the bread knife behind. We missed it for breakfast, dinner and tea, every day. Without this enforced separation which lasted a good few weeks would we really have noticed how much we loved our daily bread knife ? The ones we flirted with in its absence, acquired like most things in this house from charity shops, were too sharp, too efficient, too threatening, compared with the gentle efficient bonhomie of our own. When L on a subsequent visit remembered to pick it up, the hosts displayed a near ignorance of its presence, and were surprised to find it in their cutlery drawer. It had gone into the dishwasher and its handle looked almost bleached. Not everyone, we realized, imbued their relationship with their kitchen implements with as strong feelings as we do. And we do. How we do.

All week I have been feeling bad about the fact that last week’s wholemeal spelt bread was too sour, it was a little sourer than usual as I tasted it for breakfast before going out to market (and on to The Harvest fair in Drumshambo) last saturday but over the week it just got worse. Apologies, all, mine. As I feel that my ability to make the bread I make is something of a magic thing I have to be able to also allow myself to humanly fail sometimes.

We were very tired but satisfied. We travelled to Poland, for a wonderful wedding, four of us packed into the tiniest car available, 3956 km excluding what the boat travelled for us, applied geography and assorted tastings of local goods. Now we are back to home schooling, making hay while the sun shines, if we manage some hay cocks, and on monday we are joining the AVAAZ.org global climate wake up call in dublin, dressed in red at 12.18 pm on O’Connell street, at the junction with North Earl street. There are hundreds and hundreds of similar events organized around the world, perhaps you can join one, too. We are all together in this, the people who had to eat sourer bread and the ones who did not.

Don’t even think of keeping animals (goats, sheep, chickens, cows, horses) without this book.

Do I deserve this ? The kind of colour that appears in dreams once or twice in a lifetime. From Jelena Fischer, who makes beautiful beautiful beautiful things.

On Thursdays I am alone, trying to finish ordinary tasks in order to get to the studio. Last week, although I could have gone into the garden and picked enough for a wonderful lunch I chose convenience food instead. Polish smoked pigs ears from the lithuanian supermarket and frozen peas (we do have peas growing but only a minute crop, so I could not feast on my own). Each ingredient had no doubt been produced with plenty of nasty substances but nothing since harvest so no E figured on the label, so as convenience food goes it did not feel too bad and it tasted delicious. I can live in hope that the Polish don’t keep their pigs in batteries but there is little chance of that, industrial farming is industrial farming. At least they are turning their ears into tasty morsels (ingredients : meat, salt). As for frozen peas they are probably evil, but I do love them.

Last week was the first week of baking after a long and delightful holiday in brittany while all animals, plants and walls were looked after adroitly by LMS. How lucky.

Last friday was too hot in the kitchen for sourdough despite my freshly hung blinds and the resulting bread was a little flat as I hurried off to the train on saturday with N to Dublin to an artists book fair leaving the rest of the family to bring freshly baked goods to market, new cakes, flatter bread. This friday I won’t have to worry about packing books and rushing to Dublin and the weather is given rather wet I am told, I just need a little more breeze but
I know all will be well and I am greatly looking forward to take my weekly stand and talk to the good people who will come to knockvicar this saturday. I do love this job I invented for myself.