Pixelated friendship

Sometimes, here in the middle of nowhere,  I get the most precious correspondence. Mostly from people I don't know and have never met in the real world.

There's a tribe of ripening women who consistently show up and dazzle me with their shining wisdom. They are photographers, practitioners and bloggers of all kinds; sky watchers and lovers of sunsets everywhere, in Australia, Brazil, Alaska and on Horsecroft Farm in merry old England; sensitive types who love birds, and lanes and dogs; writers, creatives and friends of Ireland; sassy beach walkers and mid-winter sea dippers..... 

And lonely people, bedridden, who remind me of my Dad's last years and send me warm email messages. And men too, with foreign sounding names and fabulous websites of their own. People with all sorts of deep knowledge and technical skills in their own fields, or who live in big cities and pine for hedgerows. 

Even real old friends, who played in the back gardens of Ireland and beyond, send hand written notes with warm memories or mail me snippets from their lives. 

So thank you ALL. (Even if you never did send any love letters and just visit here occasionally, consider yourself included) We may never have met in person but through some twinternet alchemy we are developing a new kind of pixelated friendship. 

Soon Foxglove Lane will be moving lock stock and barrel to a new website. I have yet to learn how to fully make the transition, but things are falling into place and while parts of my brain are now fried, a few of those pesky old brain cells are leaping for joy.

Here's to you, me and continuing pixelated friendship!



By the way there's an interview with me here by nature lover and blogging legend Donna Abel Donnabella. Hands across the Atlantic! 

Open heart, cold sea : 15.8.15

I checked the sea temperature today. Not much more than 13/14 degrees centigrade anywhere in Ireland. This year the cold sea water was harder to bear. 

By the time we arrive in Kerry our friends are already a couple of weeks into the rhythm of twice daily swims. They glow from endorphins, icy water and warm wine. Dingle is their annual pilgrimage, and a sanctuary away from everything. 

As a brief respite from the awful summer, the sun appears. It calms the icy water and the waves in Coumenoule are a bit less terrifying. I tingle all over from a fair few dunkings and summer holiday happiness. 

On the way back I listen to John O'Donohue talking to Krista Tippett in a re-released interview from 2007. While I always found John hard to read, his lilting voice confirms so much tonight......

"Well, I think it makes a huge difference when you wake in the morning and come out of your house. Whether you believe you are walking into dead geographical location, which is used to get to a destination, or whether you are emerging out into a landscape that is just as much, if not more, alive as you but in a totally different form. And if you go towards it with an open heart and a real watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you. And I think that that was one of the recognitions of the Celtic imagination: that landscape wasn't just matter, but that it was actually alive. What amazes me about landscape, landscape recalls you into a mindful mode of stillness, solitude, and silence where you can truly receive time."

Friendship

There was a smudge of navy blue painted onto a peachy sky. Nothing had changed but the eery manifestation of fading light, on a February evening. 

A unique set of moments. And WE were there. 

The camera captured the scene. But the sound of the moorhens cooing, and of our footsteps through the darkening meadow remain only as memories captured in our hearts, forever. 

It's called friendship #Pilgrimage August

Out west the beauty of the landscape would make you weep, but it's the people and the chat that would warm your heart. It's summer in Kerry and there is no shortage of talk. From morning until night we are discussing the situation in Gaza, the decline of the Labour party and the travails of Johnser. 

Somewhere in Dingle, girls are eating three flavours of ice cream and coffee is being brewed "at exactly the correct temperature". A farmer fixes his gutters and three men are standing at the edge of the turquoise Atlantic wondering about the state of the world. Maybe Putin will blockade the Kerrygold butter next? They won't touch the baby formula though, one re-assures the other. On a tartan rug they rail against the travesty that is Garth Brooks and whether or not the GAA has lost the run of itself entirely.

The hot tea served from a flask on these beaches is of a very high quality, we Irish like our tea bursting with flavour. Later when we gobble our Kerry lamb or monkfish on a risotto of roasted tomatoes, we will still be sharing stories about family, the economy, or how we love those Scandanavian dramas on Netflix.

Along the coast, christened recently the Wild Atlantic Way, the sun is setting and the swimming rituals continue. There is a buzz of conversation from assorted picnics and shadowy squeals of joy coming from the shoreline. The elders have comfortable chairs. The younger generations wear wet-suits so they can stay immersed in the waves for longer. 

It's getting late and still we are talking away for Ireland. It's what we do around a fire on a winter's evening but tonight we are under the stars, barely believing the "real summer" that we are having this year, honing a true art form; it's called friendship. 



Browse more photos from my home in Ireland here

Friendship at the edge of time

Every year there is one sure thing, we will make a journey out to the west of Ireland where the Atlantic crashes against the shoreline of Europe, last stop before New York. There will be clouds, there will be mist and there will be a sense of leaping off the edge of the world and into the benign abyss.

Out past the road from Dungarvan to Youghal from Cork to Macroom, from Killarney to Dingle. Way out there is a spot where as the skies get bigger so do the questions. Back to the land, face towards the sea, how to go on, how to let go?

I swim with the hobbit footed woman, she is focussed on the cold. Still icy water creeps up our legs announcing the warmth of bits that have remained under exposed all winter. She dives in. She can't dilly dally, her gift to the world is to keep moving. Her style is discipline and three swims a day. It doesn't matter if it's warm, cold, raining, windy, misty, grey, blue, golden. She is relentless. Some one true to her commitments, some one you could trust. Part seal, part salty siren.

Later in the pouring rain we four slip into the ancient walled settlement, stone upon stone. The rain has seeped into my coat and is dribbling down the back of my shirt. Out here on the edge we hold each other momentarily while time swirls around us thundering down from the mountain, gushing up through the earth beneath our feet.

Moods swing in the modulating skies, colours chase shadows over the landscape, rainbows appear and disappear like visions in the firmament. Time breathes hard onto my face, drying the raindrops. With the faintest scent of herbs wafting through the air, we turn for home, our feet more firmly rooted, each in our own way.




Dedicated to my precious family and friends who have shared special small moments with me all through this summer.........

Also on Vision and Verb today

Summer Bay

If Ireland is green then Australia must be blue. It's Autumn but the sun is bright and the air is as balmy as one of our best summer days.

She left Ireland 30 years ago to go and live down under. She described her choice as the only option left to an Irish girl, still unmarried and without a good excuse to leave home. The plan was to advance her career, the result was a lifetime here.  There is a long story, about a very long journey, but it's hers.

She's one of my oldest friends. We shared the ups and downs of all the teenage years. You don't ever forget this kind of bonding, it's just a given that it's always going to be there.

She stands on the beach staring into this incredible Australian blue. Now I see her with fresh eyes. Making that epic journey to a new continent on the other side of the world. Leaving everything familiar far behind in time. It was a very long way from home on a quiet suburban street in the cosseted southside of Dublin. She has always had courage.

Only one other of our classmates has made it out here to visit her, and that was many years ago. We are not drawn here like the next generation. What must it be like to live so far away from Ireland for your whole life? 

I can see how much she loves her chosen home. I keep saying to her that I "get" Australia having visited here. It is so beautiful, easy going, idyllic.

Next month I will attend the wedding of a young friend also on an Australian adventure. There's a new generation of women making similar journeys to find their own groove in the world. If I had my life over again? Yes I would go in a flash, but something else has kept me here and that is another story.....


PS  Dear friends next week will be my 200th blogpost so I'm planning something special........if I don't get totally distracted by the heatwave that is!

PPs And yes most of these photos were actually taken in that "Summer Bay"of tea-time soap fame.....