The Sheep Rules
After being surrounded by the wooly critters at Mont St. Michel, I developed a certain affinity towards sheep. Driving around the Ireland countryside turned my affinity into a full-blown obsession.
You can’t avoid the sheep in Ireland. They are EVERYWHERE. Real ones, wandering around the green grasses. By the sea. Inland. Up the hills, out on cliffs, on flat land. Ambling across the road. Even black ones. Fake ones, in every Irish gift shop. On t-shirts. As stuffed animals.
The sheep are really what make the Irish countryside, in my opinion. Their shaggy off-white coats provide the perfect contrast to the vibrant green grasses. On the rare sunny day, the sheep mirror the fluffy white clouds in the sky. Sometimes, all you can see for miles is shades of blue in the ocean and sky, shades of green grasses, and shades of white in the clouds and sheep. Other times, the gray takes predominance over every other color. Even then, the wooly white still dots the landscape.
More often than not, the sheep add even more colors to the mix. The vast majority of the sheep are painted with some sort of bright color. I assumed the paint was some sort of marking system for the farmers, but I didn’t understand why some of the markings were so extensive. I later learned that the paint is washable and not permanent, and subsequently saw the proof in the window of a vet clinic:
I am sure that the branding spray is a practical solution to wandering sheep, but it interfered with my quest for a photo of the quintessential Irish landscape.
You would think by looking at my sheep photos that the sheep do something else besides eat. That would be a lie. Sheep are really just wooly, fuzzy pigs in disguise. They eat, constantly. It took hundreds of pictures of sheep to come up with ones where you could actually see anything other than there wooly butts. Their heads are always downward. They are worse than ostriches.
In order to maximize the opportunities for the best sheep photos, we had to develop the sheep rules. We were travelling in a two-car caravan without cell phones. As we learned the hard way, it is impossible for the second car to stop on its own accord. Thus, the sheep rules were born:
- We should stop for sheep that are wooly and fuzzy and unshaven.
- We should stop for sheep that are not branded with spray.
- We should stop for sheep that are by the sea.
- We must stop for any combination of the above.
Somehow, although there was much talk of the sheep rules, no one ever really enforced the failure to follow the rules. Besides, no matter where and when we stopped, there were some kind of sheep to be found.
Initially, we mistook certain sheep as goats. We thought horns were an indentifying feature of a goat, but it turns out that it is the tail. Sheep have tails that stand straight up, and goats have tails that point downward. Or maybe it was the other way around. Who knew? We didn’t. Standing on the side of the road on Conor’s Pass, a one six-foot lane pass through a mountain covered in sheep and fog, the six of us tried to remember our farm animals. I actually think they are goats, not sheep. No, they’re sheep! Wait, are sheep and goats the same animal? Not sure, but what’s a lamb? Baby sheep, right? Hmm, what’s an alpaca? I should be an alpaca farmer. Being the city folk that we are, we had to turn to The Google for answers.
One thing we didn’t ask The Google was why the sheep were being raised. Naively, we all assumed the sheep were there to shaved and shorn and later worn as one of the million wool sweaters sold all over Ireland. Then they would go on living their happy little sheep lives grazing by the sea while the owner of the sweater was nice and toasty warm. It was a sad day when we learned that may not be the case. As our last stop on the island of Ireland, we stayed at a beef and sheep farm to get up close and personal with the sheep. There, the farmer told us that he only gets 1.00 for the wool, but it costs him 1.50 to have the sheep shaved. So, what do you raise the sheep for? I asked, not wanting to hear the answer. Meat, he answered, simply. I paused before I asked the next question. You said you mostly have lambs. Do you raise them for meat, too? Yep, he said, cheerily. We kill everything!
Ten Things About Dublin
So, we received conflicting information about Dublin.
In the Irish countryside, we met two bikers from Dublin. They were insistent that Dublin was where it was at. Ya got to get to Dublin! Dublin’s the center of the universe!
A couple of days later, in a pub in Dublin, after the rest of us had gone home for the night, Tony and Jason were talking to two Irish lads who asked where they had visited in Ireland. When Jason told them they only had seen Dublin so far, they seemed very concerned. You gotta leave Dublin, man, they said, urgently. You’ve gotta get the f*ck out of Dublin!
(This last piece of advice made us slightly alarmed. They way they made it sound (or at least the way Jason told the story the next day), it was almost like they knew an apocalypse was about to happen and they were the only ones who knew about it).
While I can’t say I agree that Dublin is the center of the universe, here are ten things about Dublin that made me smile before we got the f*ck out of there (and none even involve alcohol!):
Murphy’s homemade Irish ice cream, made with the cream from the rare Kerry cow and natural ingredients… (this also made me smile in Dingle…and in Kilkenny…)
Queen of Tarts…
The doors of Dublin…
A “secret” garden…
This trio of young street performers, singing I wish, that, I knew what I knew now, when I was younger…
Rainboots and wool scarves at Avoca…
Bridges…
The light shining on this church…
and, last but not least, the man at the camera shop who fixed my camera for nothing more than the cost of a new filter after I dropped my camera and almost shattered the lens…(moral of the story: buy a filter for your lens!!!… and don’t let a klutz take an expensive camera around the world…)
Josh Ritter: in Ireland!
“I play rock ’n’ roll with lots of words.” – Josh Ritter.
Anyone who knows me, and anyone who pays attention to this blog (Hi, Mom!) knows that I absolutely, completely, love Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band.
I’ve seen Josh Ritter and his band play in some pretty cool places. Club Cafe in Pittsburgh, before they got “big.” (Big being relative, because they still aren’t anywhere near big). At a free concert in downtown Salt Lake City, and, later that same week, at the Mile High Music Festival in Denver. With the New York City Pops backing the band in Central Park.
But, without a doubt, my favorite show was the one we saw at the Galway Arts Festival. Maybe it was because it had been a while since we heard really, really good live music. (The guy with the green plastic kazoo later that night notwithstanding). Maybe it was because we were part of the biggest crowd in front of which Sean and I had ever seen the band play. Maybe it was because the band seemed really on that night. Maybe it was because they love Josh Ritter and the band in Ireland, and so do I.
As my cousin Karen would say, Josh Ritter makes my heart happy. I’m not the first person to say it, and I won’t be the last: Josh’s smile is downright infectious. You can’t help but smile too.
Our friend McIntyre joined us for the show. Is he on drugs, he wanted to know? No, I said. He’s always like that.
From the moment the band took the stage with bright lights bouncing to the beat of Lantern, from the new album, to the encore, which included one of my favorites, Snow is Gone, there was energy in the air. One or two songs from one of their older albums, The Golden Age of Radio, usually sneaks in, but is rare to hear Roll On and Me and Jiggs, more favorites of mine. The new album was well represented, of course, but so were the last couple of albums. I always like to hear what sort of creative spin the band puts on Harrisburg, a song born to be played live. I certainly was not expecting an insertion of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game sung by Zack Hickman, the bassist. And, I’m not sure, but I swear I heard a bit of the Talking Head’s Once in a Lifetime as well.
I had been wanting to see Josh and the band play in Ireland for a long time. The show in Galway will definitely be one of my highlights of the trip.
Brand New Day
When I look back at our photos from Ireland, I am struck by how many of the 19 days we spent there were gray. We couldn’t agree on whether it felt more like spring or fall, but it sure didn’t feel like summer. Some nights it was so cold you could see your breath. Rain, at least a misting, was an almost daily occurrence. Weather was a big topic of conversation, even though there never seemed to be anything new to say about it.
On our first day, with the rain pelting me sideways, I thought, god, why in the world do people like this country?
It didn’t take me too long to figure out.
When all the dark clouds roll away
And the sun begins to shine
I see my freedom from across the way
And it comes right in on time
Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light
And it comes from the sky above
Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me
And lights my life with love
And it seems like and it feels like
And it seems like yes it feels like
A brand new day, yeah
A brand new day oh
I was lost and double crossed
With my hands behind my back
I was longtime hurt and thrown in the dirt
Shoved out on the railroad track
I’ve been used, abused and so confused
And I had nowhere to run
But I stood and looked
And my eyes got hooked
On that beautiful morning sun
And it seems like and it feels like
And it seems like yes it feels like
A brand new day, yeah
A brand new day oh
And the sun shines down all on the ground
Yeah and the grass is oh so green
And my heart is still and I’ve got the will
And I don’t really feel so mean
Here it comes, here it comes
0 here it comes right now
And it comes right in on time
Well it eases me and it pleases me
And it satisfies my mind
Backwards Driving
Although Ireland was like coming home in many ways, driving was not one of them. Ireland is part of the third of the world that drives on the left. You always hear about Ireland and the UK driving on the left, but I never realized so many people in the rest of the world joins them. Figures the United States drives on the right as another f.u. to the British.
Supposedly, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Transport offers this advice for visitors: “Visitors are informed that in the United Kingdom traffic drives on the left-hand side of the road. In the interests of safety, you are advised to practise this in your country of origin for a week or two before driving in the UK.” Right. That makes perfect sense. We did not heed this advice, so Sean’s practice consisted of taking a spin around the rental car company’s parking lot before heading out on the road.
Now, if we had followed the highway like we were supposed to, Sean’s introduction to driving on the left would have been relatively painless. Instead, we criss-crossed over the highway we were supposed to be on for an hour, before we realized that the map was incorrect. Hmm…there’s that M6 again. But where in the hell is the N6?
Because the lanes on the highway are separated, you don’t really realize you are driving on the left. Not so on the smaller roads. Most roads are almost exactly the width of two cars without any shoulder whatsoever, meaning that every time a car passed, brush on the side of the road actually poked through the windows on the left side of the car. Adding in the fact that it was periodically pouring, it was a fun introduction to driving on the left.
All of the drivers (Sean, Danielle and Tony) agreed that once you got used to driving on the left, it wasn’t such a big deal. But still, every once in a while, especially when making turns, someone would want to drive on the wrong side, leaving the rest of us urgently shouting, wrong way, wrong way!
No one ever fully figured out the insane amount of traffic circles. Like much of the rest of Europe, the Irish like to substitute these for traffic lights. Best I could tell, the driver just turns into the circle blindly and hopes for the best. More than once we made several rounds of the circle, trying to figure out which way to go, which inevitably lead to one of us saying, Look kids! Big Ben! Parliament!
Every once in a while, someone would have a revelation. Oh, I bet the passing lane is on the right! Or, Oh yeah! You can probably make a left on red! We never did figure out some of life’s mysteries, such as whether the Irish default to walking on the left on crowded sidewalks or grocery store aisles. There does not seem to be a national consensus on that one.