“Fallen leaves in the night
Who can say where they’re blowing
As free as the wind
Hopefully learning
Why the sea on the tide
Has no way of turning
More than this, there is nothing
More than this, tell me one thing
More than this, there is nothing”
Bryan Ferry
On the way to Granda’s old farm in Dernaseill from Scotstown , driving in his Ford Anglia, we would pass St.Mary’s church on the right and then take a left at the crossroads where Murray’s fireplaces used to be, and pass the field where they hold the Tydavnet show each year and then turn right at the two trees.
The two trees grew in the middle of the road and were a handy landmark for directing people to the farm.
When I was 8 or 9 the trees were removed in order to widen the road, as the Co-op’s milk lorries couldn’t make the turn. Up until this point the small dairy farmers…meaning that their farms were small, not that they were short…had to take their milk in large metal cans to the small Ballinode Co-op, but now they were shutting down the Ballinode dairy and lots of other small ones, and everything was due to be processed in the larger , more modern Monaghan Town Co-op, and the milk would be collected daily by their fleet of lorries. And the lorry couldn’t make the turn, so the two trees had to go.
But everyone still referred to that turn as ‘the Two Trees’ and would use it as a reference point for another twenty years, which must have been confusing for non-locals.
On Monday my Soulmate and I got up at an ungodly hour and went over to the new gym in Kilmore, which for my non-Monaghan readers, is also near Scotstown, but on the Balllinode road, not the Tydavnet road. The Monaghan readers may at this point be shouting “That gym has been there for ages.” So , I apologise, and simply meant that it is new to me….as is the experience of getting up early on a Monday. The gym is set in amongst several of Scotstown GAA club’s training pitches on land that was once covered completely in row upon row of glasshouses that belonged to Dudgeon’s. They grew lots and lots of tomatoes. Any single one of those tomato plants could deadlift a heavier weight than I do in our sessions. My Soulmate loves me very much and almost draws blood as she bites her lip trying not to laugh as I wobble and point out, for the umpteenth time that barbell bar itself weighs 20kg and that I think its unnecessarily extravagant to be adding anything else to it.
Later that very day , because I’m an idiot, I started another six week course of Reformer Pilates with Niall in Fitness & Therapy 1988. That’s not correct. I do the Pilates with Ray, Declan, Brendan ,and Jonny, Niall strolls about and has to tell us constantly which is our right leg and which is our left.
“Now place your right foot on the bar and… No , your right foot….No the other one…No the other, other one…Yes, that one.”
Niall is very patient, and plays Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, and AC/DC to hide the sounds of our groans and creaking limbs. At one point on Monday night when he’d asked us to ‘Hold it !’ for what he said would be 30 seconds and then proceeded to count down in the time dilated way that only Pilates instructors do..Empires rise and fall during a Pilates instructor’s countdowns… and when we’d eventually collapsed , he said “You’ve all gone very quiet.”
“That’s because we’re thinking of how to dispose of your body !” I replied.
His classes take place in a unit that was once filled with grain in the long building which took up one whole side of Plantation Road that was Ulster Seeds. All that’s left is the yellow painted words on the green galvanised metal at the gable end facing the Model School.
On Tuesday Ryan and I left the sanctuary of Monaghan and travelled to Drogheda to see and exhibition of old cherished tee shirts that had deep meaning for their owners. Th exhibition, titled ‘Sweat , Sounds, and Stories’ was hosted in the Kiosk Project Arts Space, or rather it was hosted in a small hallway at the front of the Kiosk Project Arts Space. It was a small, but very powerful display of tee shirts that had meant so much to people that they’d never let them go. Brian, the curator had added a collection of his own concert tickets to the display and we chatted about the venues, the prices, and the memories. Each tee shirt displayed was accompanied by a note from the owner saying where or when it was from and why it still meant something to them. Mostly it was a memento of the people they were with at the time.
I currently have 37 tees in my wardrobe that I actively wear. They are from gigs that I’ve been to or bands that I like to support. It’s still shocking to me that a band get more money from the sale of a single tee shirt than they do from 15,000 plays on Spotify. Some tees are from places I’ve visited. As I write this I’m wearing my lilac Buc-ees tee from the largest gas station in Tennesse, and whenever I wear it I think of AnnaMarie and Ray and the adventure we had at the Barkley.
After the exhibition, which despite being tiny held us there for an hour, I thought that I’d write this week’s blog about my favourite ten tees and tell a wee story about each one. But then I remembered that my kids discovered my stash a few years ago and lots of my true favourites are now in drawers or under a bed in Dundalk, Maynooth, Galway, Edinburgh, Belfast , Lisbon, or Vienna. I should hasten to add that we don’t have 7 kids, we have 3, but they move around a lot, and are also very generous to their friends…with MY favourite tee shirts. I once walked into MoChara in Dundalk to discover my daughter Robyn, Dundalk John, and a barman all wearing my old tees.
Sometimes its fun to let go of things.
Or at least its OK to let go of physical things, we always have the memories.
Granda, his Ford Anglia , Ballinode Co-op, and Monaghan Town Co-op are all gone now, but that turn to Dernaseill will always be the two trees…to me.
Yes, it’s silly.
It’s OK to be silly.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This is for you.
P.P.S This is an older blog in audio…but it’s NOT a podcast !
P.P.P.S and this is from my ‘other’ blog…the worky one
Dotted around Monaghan town a hundred or more years ago there were many big houses belonging to the landed gentry, most of which are now either derelict or gone completely. Their demise began like many shifts in economies, personal circumstances, successes and failures, namely “Slowly then suddenly”. Up until the 1880’s the annual rent roll of the Rossmore estate which encompassed Monaghan Town itself and a surrounding 28,000 acres was the equivalent of €18 million today. But a succession of Land Acts between 1870 and 1890 allowed tenants to but their holdings on these estates, breaking up their financial foundations. There was also a general economic depression following the ending of the American Cicil War and the collapse of agricultural exports from the Britsh Isles to the US. There was the wild extravagance of the owners of these houses, which they seemed to continue with even as their esttes shrunk, and there was the ever present danger of fires. Many of the big houses were destroyed by fire over the years due to simple mishaps caused by every room, including bedrooms, being heated by coal fires and the constant removal of hot ashes. Later , during the War of Independence in the early 1920’s, many of these houses were torched on purpose, targeted by rebels to prevent their use as temporary barracks by state soldiers.
In any event there were many occasions when furniture rescued from either a burning , or decaying house, ended up being given to or taken by local people for use in their own houses. When I was a child and as my Granda’s first grandchild, I was taken by him to visit many of his old friends on their farms, and even as a child , it struck me as odd when walking into a small farm cottage in Gola, or Knockatallon, you could be invited to sit on a velvet covered antique chaise longue, or going out the back to use the toilet , passing a large gilt framed Italian rococo mirror hanging on a whitewashed kitchen wall.
They were probably very valuable, but in these places they were simply functional items that had been handed down from ‘the Big House , after the fire’.
Over the years a number of rather unscrupulous antique dealers travelled the highways and byways of Ireland visiting small farmhouses and hoping to snap up this furniture for a steal. One gentleman chanced upon a friend of Granda’s who lived at the foot of Bragan. She was an elderly widower , a kindly soul, and always glad of a visitor. She had the kettle on before the dealer had got out of his car and she opened the door as he was about to knock. She had already invited him in even as he explained what he was doing and what he was looking for. He looked around the parlour as he sat waiting on the promised cup of tea , and realised disappointingly that all of the furniture seemed relatively new.
As she handed him the tea he asked “Have you got all of this furniture recently ?”
“Yes ! “ She replied , beaming. “My two boys work the farm and they got me a new kitchen table and chairs, these two armchairs, and a sofa , which is in the good room, and all brand new from town.”
“Lucky you…I’m always on the look out for older furniture for , em, sentimental reasons…I try and restore them, or if I can’t , they make great firewood.”
“Really ? The boys moved the old table my grandfather got from Gola in the barn. It was always too big for here really. They said no one wanted that old rubbish anymore. This new one is great though, the tops formica and it doesn’t….”
“Sorry for interrupting , but did you say that you have a large old table in the barn, from…where did you say again ?”
“Yes, it’s in the barn, the chickens love it but it’s in the way out there too. It was from the Gola House fire in ’21.”
“Could I have a look ?”
“Of course”.
She led the way across the yard to the barn and there it was , a late 18th century George III Mahogony dining table, by Thomas Chippendale, covered in chicken litter and propping up two rusting bicycles. He gasped involuntarily.
“Are you OK ?” she asked concerned.
“What ? Oh…oh yes.” He said , composing himself. “It’s just the dust. That was once a very nice table. But I think it might be too far gone.”
“Oh” she said sadly. “I was hoping to get rid of it. Nevermind…”
“But, even as firewood, it’s worth a few quid to me. Would you take a tenner for it ?”
“ Ten pounds ??? For that ? No, that’s far too much. I’d be happy for you just to take it, so I can put in a proper chicken coop.”
“No , I insist”. He took out his wallet and handed her a crisp green ten pound note. “I’ll be back tomorrow with a trailer.”
With that he left. As soon as he had got the car down the lane a little he pulled over, got out and screamed at the top of his lungs “EUREKA !”. The last table he’d seen even close to the quality of the one he’d just left , in a Christies auction had sold for £3,000, and that had been 10 years ago, and this one was larger. These were the days antiques dealers dreamed of.
He slept very well indeed that night.
The next day he arrived back at the farmhouse, driving a Landrover and pulling a trailer. He drove around the back and parked near the barn before he knocked on the back door. She opened the door and the divine smell of freshly baked apple tart enveloped him.
“You’re just in time !” she said. “The boys have just left ,and I’ve baked you this apple tart. The boys couldn’t believe that anyone wanted that table, so they moved it out of the barn for you and put it beside the door.”
He looked back to where he’d parked.
“Are you sure ? I parked over there and didn’t see it. There’s just a pile of old fertilizer bags filled with something.”
“Yes, that’s it. I told the boys how generous you were, and they insisted on chopping it up for you. Save you the trouble. Would you like a cup of tea ? You’ve gone awfully pale.”
We don’t all value the same things.
And even if we do we don’t value them in the same way.
People are weird….
Cheers,
Paul
