BACK IN APRIL, I wrote about leaving Dublin behind for the country and our novice attempts to grow and rear our own food. Some kindly Dublin folk e-mailed afterwards pointing out that you don’t have to move to the country to embrace the Good Life. - While I heartily agree with the sentiment, I have to admit to being sceptical about just how self-sufficient you can be in a city garden.

After snooping around in the gardens of the four urban farmers profiled here, I discovered it’s possible to be very self-sufficient indeed. In fact, many of my city cousins are producing more food in small (and sometimes tiny) city gardens than we are on almost an acre in the country.

Dublin has a tremendous tradition of urban farming, and residents of a certain age will no doubt recall a time when allotments, cow yards, dairies and even pig farms were an occasional feature in city neighbourhoods. In less affluent times, back gardens were considered an asset to be put to work rather than an outdoor entertainment venue - they were given over to spuds and carrots rather than decks and hot-tubs.

The city still has vast potential for food production, given that an estimated 25 per cent of Dublin’s land is garden, but in the late 1980s, growing your own was stigmatised as a poor person’s game, and with the ubiquity of supermarkets and their tantalising array of cheap food, it became largely unnecessary, too. In the past decade it has often been dismissed as a hobby for middle-class people with too much time on their hands.

Thankfully, something of a revival is under way. There are ominous worries about food security and prices. Add that to concerns that many people have had for years about food additives/quality/miles/ethics, and you have a powerful motivation to grow your own.

The beauty of it is that it’s so proactive - if you feel overwhelmed and powerless about the world’s problems, at least there is something you can do about your own food security. You can do it right now, or later today, or tomorrow - stick a seed in the ground and watch it grow. Growing your own is not the preserve of any one social class. It doesn’t belong exclusively to country people or city people. It’s accessible to anyone with the motivation and access to even the smallest patch of ground.

TREVOR SARGENT

TREVOR SARGENT’S home-made apple juice is a great example of the vast food-production potential of a small urban garden. Each autumn, armed with an old apple press and the output of just one James Grieve apple tree, Sargent churns out enough apple juice to last him a year. “It freezes perfectly,” he says, offering a glass during our visit to his Balbriggan, Co Dublin garden. Very nice it was too.

The Minister of State for Food and Horticulture turns the “problem” of lack of space in his suburban garden on its head and views it instead as an opportunity. He has owned larger plots of land in the past (including an acre in Co Cork), but felt overwhelmed by the amount of work required to maintain them.

His garden is a model of efficiency and smart planning. Four deep beds are used for a three-year organic crop rotation and surrounded by neat paths. The main vegetable groups - roots (carrots, parsnips etc), legumes (peas, beans etc) and brassicas (cabbages, kale etc) - are moved around the beds each year to prevent the spread of disease. Tomatoes are grown in a planter and there’s a separate bed for herbs. Apple and plum trees provide shelter and interest (the plums, he says, make a handy Dáil snack) and he grows comfrey in the front garden, which is used to make an organic liquid feed.

There’s an aesthetically pleasing pond, but it too has its practical uses, encouraging bio-diversity and slug-nibbling frogs into the garden. His only concession to regular gardening is a minuscule patch of lawn in front of the kitchen window ("The cat likes to lie on it,” he explains), though that may shortly make way for an underground rainwater harvester.

“Investing the time creating the beds at the start was key. They are small enough to be easily planted and because of the paths I can go out there in hail, rain or snow, or even in a shirt and tie and do a bit of weeding. When I have a Sunday afternoon free, I love to be out in the garden chilling out. There is nothing as restorative to mental and physical health.”

Growing his own, he says, gives him an appreciation for the farmers and growers he meets in the day job. “By and large, supermarkets treat farmers with absolute disdain. It’s horrific for a farmer to nurture a product and then see it selling in a supermarket at a loss. When I buy food I appreciate it because I know the effort that has gone into producing it.”

Sargent is spearheading Transition Initiatives in Balbriggan and Malahide, which will see the towns attempt to move to low-carbon futures. Central to that plan, given the amount of energy required to get food to our plates, will be encouraging individuals and communities to grow their own food. He will address a public meeting on the initiative on Saturday, June 28th in Balbriggan Town Hall.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, he’s identified a corner where he wants to grow grapes and he is wrestling with the idea of keeping hens. “I’m aware there’s a time commitment required, so it’s up to the people of north Dublin to decide whether I’ll have time or not.”

BREFFNI AND KATHLEEN GALLIGAN

BREFFNI AND KATHLEEN GALLIGAN live about eight kilometres from Dublin city centre in Ballycullen (near Firhouse and the M50) and they keep chickens, hens, ducks and pigs in a tiny garden and a rented paddock. For Breffni, it was the desire to bring a little bit of country to their corner of suburbia (and a love of rashers and bacon) that convinced him to start keeping pigs. Just over a year ago he began renting a quarter-acre field a 10-minute walk away from their house from a local farmer and sourced three wriggling, squealing Gloucestershire Old Spot banbhs from a rare-breed breeder in Loughrea, Co Galway.

Tough as old boots, the Old Spot thrives on the outdoor life and produces top-quality meat. “The meat from old breeds tastes far better,” says Breffni. “The new breeds are mostly hybrids and they are bred for quick growth. Little attention is paid to flavour. When you buy supermarket meat you don’t know where the meat has come from or how the animals have lived.”

He opted for two gilts (female pigs before their second litter) and a boar. Breffni spends about an hour with the pigs each day. “I am up there twice a day, morning and evening. I take great joy from watching them have a nice life.” He feeds them a mixture of pig nuts and kitchen scraps - vegetable peels, apples, stale bread and left-over biscuits.

Someone once told me that naming an animal that you are rearing for the table is classic townie behaviour - Breffni called his boar Jasper - but he never allowed himself to become too attached to him, which presumably made it easier the day Jasper made the trip to O’Gorman’s abattoir in Castledermot.

“I knew all along that was his fate so I had no real qualms about it. My wife was quite upset though.” Kathleen admits shedding a tear, but adds that the meat was delicious.

The two gilts were kept for breeding and Breffni recently “rented” a boyfriend - another Old Spot boar - from a man in Roscommon. If their tryst is successful, he plans to sell the piglets, keeping one or two animals for the table. “If it goes smoothly I can’t see why we wouldn’t continue on with it. It’s a fantastic de-stresser, great fun and gets you back to basics. I think we’ve become so helpless as a society when it comes to feeding ourselves.”

While Breffni busies himself with porcine husbandry, Kathleen keeps ducks and hens for eggs and is rearing chickens for the table. The ducks were reared in an incubator and spent their first weeks in the house under a heat lamp.

She loves having them in her back garden (where they splash about in a paddling pool) but she admits they’ve turned her lawn into a series of bumps and hollows, completely devoid of grass. It’s worth it, she says, for the eggs. “I’m sure our neighbours think we’re nuts, but every road should have its eccentric couple!”

ELLA MCSWEENEY

JUST A FEW minutes walk from the centre of Blackrock, RTE Radio 1 presenter Ella McSweeney’s house is hidden away at the bottom of a laneway in a suburban housing estate. Behind a wooden gate lies a treasure trove of an urban garden - secluded, leafy and, from a food-production perspective, incredibly productive.

A walled vegetable garden with neat lazy beds at the back of the property is the venue for most of the serious growing, but there is evidence of a desire for self-sufficiency pretty much everywhere. A converted dog kennel with a small run attached is home to three laying hens, while a sun-drenched porch is choc full of vegetable plants at different stages of development - tomatoes, peppers, courgettes and cucumbers.

“You get hooked into growing things,” she says. “You put a seed in the soil, feed it, give it some sun and it grows. It works. I just love that. Making a dinner entirely from the contents of the garden is an amazing feeling because our day-to-day lives are so far removed from that.”

Does it save her money? “Food, especially organic food, is ridiculously expensive, so it’s a really good investment. I find it connects you with your friends more and I know that probably sounds hideously middle-class, but we give eggs to our friends or swap produce with them. I know you can romanticise the whole thing and that a lot of people are glad to turn their back on it and be able to buy in the supermarket. That’s fine. It doesn’t fulfil everything in life, but if you can do a bit of it, it’s a really nice thing to do.”

Star performers in the McSweeney garden are tomatoes - last year, while expecting her first child, she grew 60 tomato plants in her porch. The tomatoes were “juicy, sweet, gorgeous”, but as the pregnancy developed she discovered that the very notion of tomatoes repulsed her. “In the end we gave a lot away and made sauces for the freezer.”

Keeping a few laying hens, she says, is possible for most urban gardens, even the tiniest ones - though you shouldn’t get them if you like a pristine lawn. “They love splashing about and digging holes - very funny to watch but they definitely make a mess. On the other hand, the eggs are amazing and it’s very satisfying to eat an egg where you know what the chicken that laid it has been eating.

“They are a cinch to look after. I let them out in the morning and I close the hatch at night - both those things take about 30 seconds. You need to make sure they have food and water and every few days I clean out their house.”

Her advice to anyone interested in growing or rearing their own is to get stuck in. “Make a decision to try it this summer. Get a grow bag, put two or three tomato plants in it and keep it watered. See how it goes. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Ella McSweeney and Fiona Crowe (Highdell Organic Farm) are running courses throughout the summer in Blackrock on keeping hens in an urban environment. E-mail for details.

BRUCE DARRELL

BRUCE DARRELL HAS a cautionary tale about allotments. For five years until last year, the Canadian architect and Feasta committee member tended a plot in the Cappogue allotment in Finglas, but he says it was, at 400sq m, simply too big to handle by himself. Now, he’s happier to focus his efforts on growing in his petite Phibsboro garden. He also believes that the clamour for allotments can divert focus from the potential for back-yard and community garden growing.

“I’m much more in favour of people growing in their own back garden than saying back gardens are for entertainment and allotments are for growing food. With the allotment I did exactly what I advise people not to do - I tried to grow too many things.”

His own garden is a shining example of just how much can be achieved in a small space - every available inch is given over to some useful food production enterprise. In raised beds he is growing tomatoes (grown under some old windows), potatoes, peas, runner beans, broad beans, lettuce, onions, radishes and artichokes. Containers are used to grow herbs and carrots, and there are also fruit trees and a productive-looking compost heap. Hearty greens such as kale and cabbage see them through the lean winter months and he’s completely self-sufficient in garlic - two impressive braided bundles hang in the kitchen.

His daughter grew swedes last year and, though she didn’t like them, she ate them anyway because she had grown them herself. “It’s great for kids - to have a child who has picked peas and knows what a carrot plant looks like, that’s just fantastic.”

He’s keen to emphasise the benign climate that is available to city growers - because they are surrounded by buildings and walls, urban gardens are less susceptible to frost and enjoy less wind and higher temperatures. “The climate in Ireland is amazing for growing - it is so mild, you can grow pretty much all year around. In Canada there are entire months where you literally can’t get anything in the ground.”

Darrell is one of the organisers of the recently formed Dublin Food Growers’ Network, an ambitious project dedicated to food security in the city. “One of our long-term goals is that anyone who wants to grow food in Dublin can grow food. That means they have the space, the knowledge and the ability.”

There are examples of guerrilla gardening in his native Canada, where armies of urban farmers have taken over unused green spaces (such as grass verges) and planted vegetables in them. Darrell sees potential in a slightly less radical variant. “We are hoping with our website that there might be people out there who have gardens they don’t use who are willing to make them available to people who don’t have the space but want to grow things. Now that’s exciting.”

The primary limitation for most people, he says, is not space. “It’s the lack of knowledge about how to grow food that is our single biggest issue.”

http://www.dublinfoodgrowing.blogspot.com

(c) 2008 The Irish Times

CARLO PETRINI HAS a pithy phrase which he uses to describe the lack of a hierarchy in the Slow Food organisation, which he founded - austere anarchy. It’s a phrase that neatly sums up his approach to the subject of eco-gastronomy (another phrase he coined himself).

The 59-year-old Italian journalist established Slow Food in 1989 in opposition to the fast-food culture and more specifically, in reaction to the prospect of a McDonald’s opening up near the Spanish Steps in Rome. What started with an emphasis on taking time to cook and enjoy the conviviality of meal times, has grown into an organisation that promotes local food economies, helps small farmers and food producers, and strives to preserve endangered food and processes.

The organisation now has more than 86,000 members in 144 countries, organised into local groups, called condotte in Italy and convivia elsewhere. The convivia organise courses and tastings, promote Slow Food ideals, and link consumers with local producers. Presently, there are 14 convivia in Ireland.

Over the 20 years since he established Slow Food, Petrini has refined his message to a mantra of “Good, Clean and Fair” - that is, food that tastes good, is produced in ways that doesn’t harm the planet, and pays the producer a good wage. Of the environmental imperative at the core of Slow Food, he says: “A gastronome who isn’t an environmentalist is very stupid. But an environmentalist who isn’t a gastronome is extremely sad”.

While the Slow Food movement is undoubtedly tackling serious issues - the pervasiveness of fast, cheap, unhealthy and processed food; the lack of sustainability in how we produce food; the destruction of small farming and local economies; and the giant multinationals who control every aspect of our food chain - Petrini does not allow the organisation he founded to take itself too seriously. Why should it, he argues, when its core message is about pleasure - the enjoyment of good food in jovial company? Little wonder that Alain Ducasse dubbed Petrini the “Don Juan of the food world”.

This is one of a string of ironies that makes Petrini such a compelling figure. Slow Food is not a political organisation and yet it has growing political power. He promotes a return to tradition and yet is thoroughly modern in his outlook. He wants to change our agricultural system and replace it with local economies - but he is not against globalisation (if it is “virtuous"), commerce or industry.

Not that he’s afraid of ramming home some home-truths when needed, and they are all the more forceful because of his laid-back style. When the typical objections to Slow Food are put to him, Petrini becomes more animated.

In his latest book, Slow Food Nation, he places an emphasis on the importance of spending time breaking bread with friends and family. I ask him whether this is a realistic goal for a modern family, given the frenetic pace of life now.

“On this point we really need to wage a war of resistance,” he says. “Sharing food with family and friends in conviviality is a great ethical heritage that we have, especially you Irish and us Italians. If this heritage is not shared, this is a complete disaster. This is a fundamental part of our civilisation and also very important for our health and psychological wellbeing.”

He is equally emphatic when it comes to discussing the price of organic food and the accusation that Slow Food is elitist. “I have to make an observation on the cost of food: In 1970, in Europe, an average family spent 32 per cent of their disposable income on food. Now, in Italy and in Ireland, an average family spends about 15 per cent of their disposable income on food and 12 per cent on mobile phones. Perhaps we should make a couple less phone calls and concentrate more on food quality.”

The only way, he says, for organic food to become pervasive, is for us to increase demand. “In Italy, Germany and England, we are launching a campaign so that hospitals, canteens, universities and schools will buy from local producers. If we are able to increase demand, costs will come down and organic farming will be more commercial for farmers.”

As consumers, we have a part to play, in fact Petrini prefers the term “co-producers” rather than consumers. “Co-producers are consumers who are fully aware and sensitive to what’s involved with regard to food-production. They do not always look for the lowest price goods, but goods at the right price.”

Slow Food has taken a uniquely holistic approach to finding solutions, bringing together all the stakeholders, including producers, consumers, chefs, industry and academia. Petrini established a University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo to encourage academic study in the area. In Turin, he set up Terra Madre, a meeting of up to 5,000 food-producers from all over the world. These meetings are now spreading worldwide.

In keeping with his infectious joie de vivre, Petrini refuses to be pessimistic about the state of our food-chain. He points to the US, where Slow Food has 40,000 members. “Even in that country, which invented fast food, malls and the supermarket, there is a sea-change happening.”

• http://www.slowfoodireland.com.

• Thanks to translator Ronan O’Dowd.

© 2008 The Irish Times

ONE OF THE BEST good-news stories amid the current doom and gloom is that thousands of people around Ireland have been re-introduced to the joys of producing their own food. Growing your own is a lifestyle choice that not only makes sound economic sense, but is also good for physical and mental health, and makes you feel more connected with your community and environment. Industry sectors associated with food growing are among the few that are experiencing growth during the economic stalemate. For example, according to Bord Bia, the value of herb, fruit and vegetable plants and seeds sold in Ireland jumped from €9 million in 2002 to €15 million in 2008 - a 66 per cent increase.

These positive trends are being reflected in a resurgent interest in food growing among young people. Courtesy of the Incredible Edibles programme run in schools by Agri Aware, a whole new generation of children are re-connecting with the land and everything that grows in it - more than 100,000 children took part in this year's growing challenge in schools. The following young boys are producing their own food and turning it into more than a hobby.

Patrick and Hugh McInerney

The whole country has gone mad for pigs, according to these young Co Carlow siblings. The brothers balance their school work (Patrick is going in to third year, while Hugh is going in to sixth class in primary school) with the operation of a fledgling business called Carrigslaney Pigs, which specialises in selling rare breed pigs. They have been struggling to keep up with demand.

So how did they get into keeping pigs? ''I read an article in Country Life,'' says Patrick. ''It was about a girl from England and she was about my age. She had three or four breeding sows and was also buying in weaners and killing them for meat. When I started to do some research, I realised there was really no one out there doing it, so there was a bit of a gap in the market.''

The McInerneys are not a farming family. It's a strange thing, therefore, that the boys are so interested in keeping pigs, according to their mother Helen. ''They live on a diet of the Farmer's Journal, Country Living and DVDs about tractors and Victorian Farm,'' she says, looking somewhat bemused.

Patrick and Hugh got a one-acre field at the back of their house ready for pigs. They invested in a plastic pig ark, fencing, feeding troughs, feed and their first batch of pigs - Gloucester Old Spot weaners that they fattened up for six months. The pigs were then dispatched to the local abattoir and then to the butcher to be processed.

''Our local butcher has been really helpful to us,'' says Patrick. ''He butchers the meat and then packs it in plastic bags for us. So far we have just been selling to family, neighbours and friends. People will just say to us: “Put us down for a few pounds of sausages.”

Does he feel bad about the fate of the pigs? ''No not really. I love looking after them while they are here and after that the meat is fantastic. We love the rashers!''

We all trot down to have a look at the pigs in the field and I pretend not to be worried as a giant Old Spot sow and five weaners run towards us. They are all hungry and impatient to be fed. The pigs are fed twice a day - a mixture of rolled barley, flake maize, soya bean meal and beet pulp is soaked in water overnight until it looks like a big bucket of porridge. ''These weaners are 16 weeks old now so they have another eight or nine weeks to go,'' says Patrick.

The business developed so quickly that they soon hit a snag - they couldn't source enough weaners to keep up with demand for meat. So they decided to start breeding pigs themselves and sourced three Gloucester Old Spot breeding sows. Patrick brings us into stables beside the field where two of the sows have recently given birth to a litter of little piglets (six in one litter and four in the other). Though they are the size of little puppies (and just as cute), all 10 of them have in fact already been sold to customers who want to keep pigs themselves.

Later, as we sit down to eat, the phone rings. It is an enquiry from someone who has seen their ad on the classifieds website DoneDeal.ie, and is looking for seven gilts (a female pig before she has had her first litter). ''I'm planning to get another three sows,'' says Patrick, ''but for the moment I have no more pigs to sell. It's a pity.''

Though they are enthusiastic about the venture, the brothers don't have the naivety you might expect from ones so young. Neither brother is convinced their long-term future is in agriculture (Patrick would like to be a vet and Hugh a journalist), but for the moment they are happy with their enterprise. ''There's huge demand there this year,'' says Patrick, ''but there are lots of people getting into breeding pigs now so I wonder will it be the same thing next year?''

http://www.carrigslaneypigs.com

The following paragraph is written by budding journalist Hugh McInerney:

Hi I’m Hugh Mc Inerney. I am a partner of carrigslaney pigs. My brother got the idea from a girl in England and said he wanted to do it. At first I thought nothing of it because he has lot Ideas that he sticks to for all of 2 minutes then moves on to the next one. He went to cork and bought the pigs and it wasn’t until I was down in the field with them That I said this is actually happening. The first Pigs we bought were gloucester old spot pigs. Recently we went to the north to buy some saddle back weaners. We sell pork products and at the moment we also have baby pigs for sale. The baby ones are very cute and they squeal a lot if you pick them up. When my friends come to my house we always go and see the pigs. I really like being a part of carrigslaney pigs. So if you ever want a pig you know where to go

Oisin O'Neill

It's a fair bet that Oisin O'Neill will be forever known as ''the remarkable Oisin O'Neill'' - that is how he was described on the programme for the recent Dunmore East Festival of Food, and the name has stuck already. Oisin's talk on keeping hens was one of the festival's biggest draws, not only because it's such a hot topic, but also because he is just 12.

A large crowd (young and old) listened intently as Oisin expertly took them through the nuts and bolts of keeping hens - he talked about the different breeds, what to feed them, where to house them, and how to make sure they lay plenty of eggs. After his talk he fielded questions from the throng and kids queued up to rub a hen he had brought along for the afternoon. In the week leading up to the talk, he received quite an amount of press coverage - he was interviewed on RTE Radio 1's The Frugal Household and on local radio station WLR. By all accounts, he handled the pressure with aplomb.

How does a 12-year-old become an authority on such a complex topic? ''When I was really young my uncle had hens and we used to go visit him,'' he says. ''I loved them straight away and I asked my dad if we could get some. We got some of our own hens then, and after a year or so I started looking after them on my own. I went on the computer to read about them and I also got some books.'' He also joined the Irish Society of Poultry Fanciers so he could find out more about the different breeds.

Oisin has 11 hens in his garden in Co Waterford - a mixture of Rhode Island Reds, Sussex, Silkie and Seabright hens that wander around the lawn, scratching and foraging. His hens provide a sizeable quantity of eggs each day for the family to eat, and his mum and sister Deirbhile use the excess for baking.

''I enjoy looking at them and feeding them in the morning and afternoon. We give them layer's pellets and barley to eat, and plenty of water to drink.'' Not all the chores are quite so pleasant - the henhouse has to be cleaned out regularly. ''It's not too smelly if you do it every week,'' he says. ''We have a plastic seed tray under their roost, which captures their pooh, and we can wash it out then on to the compost heap. After a year you can use that on your plants to make vegetables grow better. If you put it on immediately it would burn them.''

So how did he turn from hobby hen-keeper to giving a talk at a food festival? ''They wanted someone to talk about hens and I have been really interested in them since last summer so I said I would give it a try. It was good fun.''

Download Oisin's guide to keeping hens at http://giyireland.com/news/5/69/GIY-Kids/d,giy_detail/

Stephen McMullan

At a recent County and City Enterprise Boards competition, a company that produces organic honey won an innovation award. What is particularly noteworthy is the fact that the owner of the company is just 14. Stephen McMullan is a young entrepreneur and environmentalist, and calls his company Huni, which stands for ''Honey Unspoiled, as Nature Intended''. Because he currently has just two hives (though he has expansion plans), his product is as sought- after as a rare consignment of truffles. You can't buy Huni honey in the shops, but if you are lucky enough to live in Stephen's neighbourhood or attend his school (Scoil Ui Mhuiri in Dunleer, Co Louth), he might just sell you a jar.

How did he get interested in bee-keeping? ''I was at our school sports day a few years ago, and a local beekeeper called Eoghan MacGiolla Coda brought along bees in an observation hive, and you had to guess how many bees were in the hive. I just loved everything about them really. How busy they were, how they made the honey. I've always loved nature anyway.''

During his summer holidays that year, Stephen became an apprentice to MacGiolla Coda, who has hives throughout Co Louth. He busied himself reading everything he could about keeping bees. He also did a bee-keeping course run by Sr Mary Catherine Duffy at the Louth Beekeepers Association, and became the youngest certified beekeeper in Ireland. ''Given the chance,'' he says, ''I'd rather be out with the bees than doing anything else.''

Now into his third summer keeping bees, Stephen has two hives at the back of his house. ''Eoghan gave me a mini-hive with four frames in it, which is called a nuke, and I built it up to a full hive. I have two hives now. To get started you basically need to get a frame with a queen in it and two other frames of brood and a frame with a store of food. When you have that you are basically a beekeeper.''

Once a week Stephen gets kitted out in his bee-keeper's suit and checks his hives. ''During the inspection you are checking the hive under the headings of REDDS - R is room, E is eggs, D is development, D is disease and S is stores.''

Getting stung is par for the course, and Stephen is well used to it. ''I get stung at least once every time I go down to the bees. I wear a suit that goes down to the waist but I don't wear the big bee-keeper's gloves because I find them too awkward. So I wear rubber gloves and you can get stung through them. It doesn't bother me any more. I just scrape the sting off with a knife, puff a bit of smoke at the bees to calm them down, and then get on with it.''

Bee-keepers are grappling with the impact of the Varroa mite, which can infest honeybee colonies, in some cases wiping them out completely. Conservation of honey bees is vital to the future of mankind, according to Stephen, given that we rely on bees to pollinate flowers. No pollinated flowers means no food to eat. ''Varroa is a mite that lives on the bees, and because it is imported from Asia our bees have no defence against it. You have to put strips into the frames which have acid on them, and the bees rub off it, which kills the mites. Because bees are under threat it's even more important for people to learn how to keep them.''

Stephen is expecting a bumper harvest this year. All indications point to it being his best ever. He has 40lb of honey on his frames already, and he expects that figure to rise to 100lb before he harvests the honey at the end of August. He sells the end product for €5 per jar. Profits from this year's harvest will be reinvested in the business, he tells me. ''I'll spend it on equipment or anything else the bees need. Then the rest will go in the bank. Eventually I would love to be a full-time bee-keeper, with maybe 60 or 100 hives.''

Ar mo ghabáil dom siar chun Droichead Uí Mhórdha
Píce i m' dhóid is mé ag dul i meitheal
Cé chasfaí orm i gcumar ceoidh
Ach pocán crón is é ar buile.

As I set out with me pike in hand
To old Dromore to join a meitheal
Who should I meet but a tan puck goat
And he's roaring mad.

From An Poc ar Buile

GROWING YOUR OWN veg, or trying to be in any way self-sufficient is a solitary pursuit most of the time, which is why it's called ''self''-sufficiency, I suppose.

Standing in my veggie patch contemplating a freaky rust on my celery or some other growing calamity, I find myself pondering how sweet life must be for people who have allotments. Imagine how handy it would be to pop your head over the fence and get advice from the grower in the adjacent plot?

Spurred on by my isolation, I went looking for a local group of like-minded people from whom I could pilfer little nuggets of wisdom and perhaps even exchange the odd bit of produce, if I had a glut. Most of all though I was looking to be part of something.

The Waterford Food Producer's Network is just such a group - a collection of old hands and hackers like me who meet on a monthly basis to hear a talk on some aspect of growing/rearing and to exchange tips, suggestions, war-stories and produce.

The group was established last summer and organisers were stunned when nearly 100 people showed up at the city library for the first meeting. It has already proven itself to be a hot bed of ideas, and one of the best in my opinion is the growers' meitheal .

The word meitheal describes the old Irish tradition where people in rural communities gathered together on a neighbour's farm to help save the hay or harvest crops. Each person would help their neighbour, who would in turn reciprocate. As well as getting time-sensitive jobs completed in a hurry, the meitheal also built up strong friendships among those involved.

Modern life can be lonely at times, whether you are living in the depths of the countryside or in the middle of a 500-house estate, which is why the sense of a community which a meitheal implies is so appealing.

The plan for meitheals within the Food Producer's Network is to put together small groups of people who meet regularly in one another's gardens or vegetable plots to accomplish a particular job of work and at the same time foster some community spirit.

Each meitheal contains five or six people and members pick some task for their garden, so that when it's their turn they have some interesting work for the people to get stuck in to. It could be sowing, planting, double-digging, rotivating, or making raised beds.

While the Food Producer's Network isn't prescriptive about what work should be done, it has highlighted that it's probably not a good idea to work fellow meitheal -members into an early grave. It is also important to have a growing/rearing theme - random chores that you've been neglecting for years such as cleaning out a blocked drain or filling a skip, have no place in a meitheal . Sometimes, it must be said, the focus seems to be on chatting and eating, rather than doing a whole lot of work.

Recently, on a beautiful spring morning, it was my turn to benefit from meitheal largesse. There's something incredibly heartening about a gang of people showing up on a Saturday morning to work on your vegetable garden. It's like being love-bombed - you just can't help feeling good about yourself. A special honorary mention must be given to the meitheal-member who arrived on his bicycle with his spade tied to the cross-bar and a plate of lovely apple and cinnamon sponge slices in his saddle bag.

I decided a good job would be to clear one of my long, raised beds of remaining crops (a few) and weeds (a lot) and to sow some potatoes. The meitheal made short work of it and within an hour they were looking for something else to do. While we worked, people were exchanging growing stories and talking about what works and what doesn't in their own gardens. All very valuable stuff for the novice grower.

After that we broke for some Waterford blaas and sausages cooked up on the barbecue. The sausages were from our own pigs and we opened a jar of precious, green tomato chutney especially for the occasion. The smell of cooking bangers was irresistible in the morning air.

Next up we moved on to the remains of a large pile of well-rotted manure which I got from a local farmer last winter to fertilise my soil. I spent an entirely mucky weekend back in November moving about 70 per cent of the manure and I was leaving the remaining 30 per cent on the long finger (hoping that if I ignored it, it might rot into oblivion).

No problem to the meitheal - wheelbarrow loads of manure were dispatched around the garden in double-quick time. As meitheal chores go, it can't get much worse than shovelling manure. We finished by 3pm and all hands departed, tired but much the happier for their endeavours. Whether it was the fresh air, the company, the sense of companionship or perhaps just the fumes from the manure - I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

http://www.GIYIreland.com

“WHAT ABOUT GIY Ireland?” There were six of us sitting around our kitchen table trying to come up with a name for a new group of food growers we had established. About eight months earlier we sent a press release to a local paper inviting anyone interested in growing vegetables to come along to the local library, expecting maybe five or 10 people to show up. About 100 came. The idea was to try to recreate the camaraderie of allotment growing for back-garden vegetable growers - to get people together regularly to talk and learn from each other, to exchange tips, produce and war stories. To take the self out of self- sufficiency.

In the months after, as we worked on getting the group in Waterford up and running, other groups were set up in neighbouring towns and villages. Before we knew it, there were six within a 50km radius, and we knew we were on to something. In spring, brimming with enthusiasm, we decided to go national. We hatched grand plans during seed swaps and growers' meitheals. A group in every county. No, every town. Think big! All we were missing was a proper name.

And then one of our meitheal members came up with GIY Ireland. And it seemed to fit. Grow it yourself. Giddily, we tried variations of it - GIY Dun Laoghaire, GIY Athy, GIY Middleton. Then we got more adventurous. GIY New York, anyone? How we laughed.

These past few months we've been so wrapped up in getting the national organisation off the ground and preparing for our launch event on September 12th, it's been difficult to see the wood for the trees. But when you grow your own, reminders of what it's all about are never far away: fresh produce from the garden for dinner; a pair of bursting sweetcorn cobs to plunge into some boiling water; some vibrant beetroot baked in tinfoil in a hot oven; the first ripe tomatoes, peas or spuds of the season.

That's the beauty of working with nature - she forces even the busiest of us to occasionally slow down and smell the roses. She moves at her own pace and you have no choice but to slow down with her. And in slowing down, you learn to appreciate.

It can be daunting to take the first steps towards growing your own. It doesn't help that it is made out to be so complex. For one thing, there's that confounding vernacular: cultivars, tilths, double-digging, broadcasting, chitting, blanching, thinning, pricking out, heeling in, planting on. In reality, at a basic level, GIYing is very straightforward. Stick a seed in the ground, and then eat it.

Here's what we've found about being involved in a GIY group - it's easier and far more pleasurable than doing it alone. When you get together with other growers, talk to them and learn from them. Visit their gardens and see how they do it. Go on a meitheal - you will be amazed how good it will make you feel to give your time to other people for free and to reconnect with your community and your environment.

So what's next? Well, we are looking for local champions to set up GIY groups in their area. We are hoping to get 200 to our launch in September, to find out more about GIY and go home and set up a group. We will give them all the help they need. For every local champion we can find, we could turn 100 people into GIYers. That's the exciting part: the mind-boggling potential. Imagine: 20,000 GIY enthusiasts around Ireland?

There are enough problems you are powerless to change: the economy, swine flu, global warming, the miserable summer weather. But you are not powerless when it comes to food security, food quality and food cost. You can go out today or tomorrow, stick a seed in the ground and watch it grow. Give it a whirl - pick a few vegetables you like and grow them. Savour the story that Mother Nature will tell you during the year - it's a fascinating adventure.

GIY Ireland is launched on September 12th in WIT as part of Slow Food Ireland's Waterford Harvest Festival. http://www.giyireland.com. Michael Kelly's second book, Tales from the Home Farm, is published next month by O'Brien Press

HERE'S A SHOCKER for you. It seems there is a whole generation of Irish people that doesn't know much about spuds. Sure, we can tell you whether we like them boiled, baked, mashed or chipped. But beyond that? Ask your mother or father which variety of potato they prefer and they could probably bend your ear all night about the enduring appeal of their favourite spud. They will tell you which of the varieties are best suited to particular types of cooking, and when each variety is in season.

But this new generation of pasta-, rice- and tofu-loving infidels don't know their waxy from their floury, their Records from their Golden Wonders. How many of us, for example, are aware that we are currently in the middle of the season for one of the great potatoes - the floury marvel that is the British Queen?

Rooster and Kerr's Pink now account for 60 per cent of potatoes grown in this country. The reason? They are hardy, perfectly uniform, available almost all year round, store well, and can be washed before being packaged, which means supermarket owners and time-pressed consumers love them.

The Queen, on the other hand, is only in season from July to September, and she lacks uniformity in the shape department. Most importantly, because it's an early variety (more accurately described as a second early) it hasn't completely formed its skin, which means it can't be washed before being packaged, and is therefore sold with the dirt on. Basically, the Queen is a little bit more work in the kitchen. But the phrase ''ball of flour'' was invented for her. Peeled at the table and served with plenty of butter and a dash of salt, it's a delectable taste of what potatoes used to be.

''The Queen wants to be cooked in its jacket,'' says Lar Flynn, a fifth-generation potato producer from Rush. ''If you peel a potato, you are peeling all the nutrition and flavour out of it. Queens should be boiled and, just before they are cooked, you pour off the water and let them steam for 10 minutes.''

North Leinster, where the Flynns have their farm, is serious potato territory. In fact, more than half the national production is based in counties Meath, Dublin and Louth. Most of the Queens sold in Ireland come from north Co Dublin, and most of them are subsequently sold outside the Pale.

''The reality is that Dublin people want a potato that's clean and washed,'' says Flynn. ''We stay away from the supermarkets, by and large, because they won't entertain a dirty potato. We deal with greengrocers and corner shops in counties such as Donegal, Galway, Sligo, Meath, Cavan and Kildare, where people are looking for a traditional Irish potato.''

Some Irish people are turned off by the ''British'' tag, so Lar's father, Paud, long ago took to calling his potatoes Rush Queens. It was a stroke of marketing genius - sales doubled almost overnight.

Paud's own grandfather started growing potatoes on a few acres in the 1880s, at a time when they were sown and harvested by hand, with the help of a spade and a pair of horses. The farm now stretches to nearly 1,000 acres, spread across north Co Dublin and Meath. Incredibly, there are now three generations of the family involved in the business. Though Paud retired in 1994, he admits to still being involved from time to time. ''I am the gofer,'' he says. “They tell me: “Go for this, go for that"." His five sons - Lar, Gerry, Vincent, Paul and Fergal - now run the business. ''It took five of them to replace me,'' says Paud, with a glint in his eye. Four of his grandchildren now work in the business, too.

Such a large farm is part of a wider trend of consolidation nationally. In 1996 there were more than 1,600 potato growers in Ireland. Ten years later, that number had shrunk to about 600. Demand for potatoes has dropped, but so too have margins, which means growers have to produce more and more spuds just to stand still. Rather than join the race to the bottom, as supermarkets continue to push prices down and take bigger margins, the Flynns have chosen to emphasise the uniqueness of their product. It's a strategy that is working so far, though he admits that increasing summer rainfall has made life difficult in the past few years. At this time of year - their busiest - an 18-hour working day is not uncommon.

With so many members of the family involved, how do they keep the peace? ''We all bring different skill sets to the table. We all know what we have to do, and we get on with it. The alternative would be to split the farm up and go our separate ways, but this way we pool the machinery and labour, which keeps our costs down.''

Before I leave, I have to ask: is pasta ever on the menu in any of the Flynn households? ''No,'' says Lar. ''A dinner is not a dinner without potatoes.''

See http://www.bestinseason.ie

There’s a tendency to look on the slow-food debate as a black-and-white issue: either you’re growing every morsel of food you eat yourself or you’re eating nothing but packaged, processed gunk. The reality is that there is a middle ground. Even if you love to cook, sometimes you’re just not in the mood, and you’ll look for a ready meal. Young entrepreneurs Cullen Allen and Colum O’Sullivan - aka Cully & Sully - are carving quite a niche for themselves at the premium end of the market with their soups and pies.

If you feel guilty about buying ready meals, it may be comforting to know that Cullen is a grandson of Myrtle, nephew of Darina and son of Hazel and Rory Allen of Ballymaloe House. It may be convenience food, but it’s got the Ballymaloe imprimatur. Colum O’Sullivan’s mother runs the Granary Food Store in Midleton, Co Cork.

Cully & Sully, who have known each other since childhood, began discussing business ventures at college. Perhaps inevitably, given their backgrounds, the venture they agreed on was a culinary one. “When I left college,” Sully says, “I was working in Dublin, and when I’d go to supermarkets there was nothing I could buy that compared to my mum’s prepared meals from the Granary. I felt that Cully and I could put together meals for that market.”

Crucial to the success of the enterprise was being able to use Ballymaloe recipes, given the brand’s cachet. But could the Allen family be persuaded to lend its name to convenience food? “We had to prove ourselves to them,” says Sully. “The challenge was to come up with a method of cooking the recipes that would give the products a decent shelf life without using preservatives, colorants, stabilisers and emulsifiers.”

The solution was sous-vide cooking, a method of preparing food by simmering it inside airtight plastic bags. “It is not available in Ireland yet, so we use a company called Fleury Michon, in France. One of the things that impressed us was that their meals were endorsed by chefs like Joel Robuchon and Paul Bocuse, three-star Michelin chefs.”

It helped that Robuchon and Bocuse are involved in the pan-European chef community Euro-Toques, of which Myrtle Allen is a former president. “I think she could see that this kind of food wasn’t the end of the world,” Allen says. “She’s very pro-business, and she was very much on our side. The fact of the matter is that people are buying meals in supermarkets, so why not give them the option of buying decent ones?”

Busy establishing their business, their nomination for last year’s Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards brought them face to face with a new challenge - and the concept of corporate social responsibility. At the 2005 awards ceremony, John O’Shea of the charity Goal asked the entrepreneurs in the audience to spend a week of their lives in the Third World, setting up businesses that would benefit impoverished communities. Tullow Oil’s Aidan Heavey, Michael Carey of Jacob Fruitfield and Stockbyte founder Jerry Kennelly took O’Shea up on the challenge and established different ventures in Africa.

This year, with their fellow nominees Anne Heraty of CPL Recruitment and Frankie Whelehan of Choice Hotel Group, Cully & Sully undertook projects in Asia. “The brief,” O’Sullivan says, “was to set up a business that would benefit local people, but it had to be sustainable.” The project they devised was to establish a microfinance co-operative in Nepal. Microfinance involves lending small sums to people who do not qualify for conventional loans, to help lift them out of poverty. “I heard of microfinance when the Grameen bank won the Nobel Prize, and it made a lot of sense to me, because it’s trade, not aid,” O’Sullivan says.

In April they went to Simikot, in northwestern Nepal, and helped villagers locate and finance the purchase of an oil press. “They take walnuts and compress them into oil by hand,” Allen says. “They knead them, as you would bread, and the oil leeches out, but they only get a tiny amount of oil from very considerable effort. An oil press presents them with massive opportunities, because they can use oil for cooking, light and fuel, and also as a base for soap.”

The pair are committed to returning to Nepal every year and are looking at other projects to finance through the scheme. “I think entrepreneurs love a challenge,” Sully says. “We love working on a problem, and I think we have the ability to get things moving.”

There’s deep cynicism about corporate social responsibility projects, with opponents arguing that companies get involved only because they see an opportunity to raise their profile and enhance their reputation.

Allen doesn’t see it this way. “There’s very good reason for the scepticism, because there are companies involved who are up to no good elsewhere. But you have to battle the cynicism and focus on the fact that it’s still worth doing this stuff. These are the kind of things that make life worth living.”

© 2007 The Irish Times

Some people are just born lucky. Take the denizens of Barcelona for example. Not only are they blessed with the kind of weather that we can only dream of, they also get to siesta for three hours in the afternoon while the rest of us work through that post-lunch energy slump. With the wonderful tradition of tapas, they enjoy officially the coolest, most sociable eating habit on the planet. And just when you think you have all the evidence you need that God loves the Catalans more then the rest of us, you come across (quite by accident) the glorious Mercat Sant Josep (known locally as La Boqueria).

If you ever needed a reason to get out and support your local farmers’ market, then La Boqueria is that reason. La Boqueria is what your average Irish farmers’ market can be when it grows up. If enough people who love good food vote with their feet (and their wallets) then every city and town in Ireland could have their own Boqueria.

At the moment, the typical farmers’ market in Ireland is a mixed bag. At one end of the scale you have thriving markets that are genuine competition for the supermarkets (Cork’s English Market being the best example). On the other you have a couple of stalls offering about as much variety as your local parish cake sale.

The blame for that rests with all of us - market traders aren’t stupid. They will happily bake some cakes, make some jams and serve some fruit juices, but they won’t risk financial ruin on the trickier stuff like meats, fish, and vegetables if they can’t be sure there’s a market. And frankly there are still too many people here who think that Lidl is the greatest revolution in Irish retail history ("they sell DVD players for €50!").

In the heart of Barcelona, on the city’s Ramblas (Rambla de Sant Josep to be exact), La Boqueria is a food lover’s paradise. The market was inaugurated at its current site in 1827, and most of the vendors on the site have been there for three or four generations. Set slightly back off the street (you’ll notice the high wrought-iron gates at the entrance), the cavernous hall stretches back for what seems like miles. It’s an absolute riot of colour, sounds and smells.

You know you are in serious food heaven when there is an entire stall dedicated to olives, or to basil plants. I saw red peppers which must have been a foot long. Strawberries the size of small apples. Homemade sweets and candies. Row upon row of every type of fish imaginable. Most of them I couldn’t even identify and all of them so fresh they were practically still wriggling.

It does make you wonder why your local supermarket can rustle up only a couple of old salmon fillets and some frozen prawns - what with us being an island nation and all. There are cuts of meat that would give a vegetarian a seizure. Cured pig’s legs hang from the ceilings. Heads, ears, tongues - all the things I presumed the EU had forced us to stop eating. Some of it is almost ghoulish.

When all that gaping becomes too much, we sit up at one of the many tapas bars in the market. If you look at them critically, these eateries are about as elaborate as a chip van outside a GAA ground. Diners sit up on high stools at the counter and would-be diners stand two or three deep behind the lucky ones, waiting for a space at the counter.

The food is almost thrown at you. But what food! We had pieces of steak, drizzled with pesto and served with fried potatoes. A selection of grilled vegetables, asparagus with rock salt and roasted peppers . . . mmm. All washed down with a cerveza or two.

And you quickly realise it’s not really the food that makes it memorable (it’s simple enough fare really) - it’s the banter from the chefs; the noise and bustle; the wonderful smells; friendly chat from the locals on your left and right (on their lunch break and soon to go home for siesta - what lives they have).

Everyone is happy because they are just pleased to have a seat. It’s no-frills food; eat up and give your seat to the person standing patiently behind you. And that’s the essence of La Boqueria - it’s about much more than just buying food. It’s a celebration of food.

Mercat Sant Josep is open Monday to Saturday from 8am to 8pm, http://www.boqueria.infoAer Lingus (http://www.aerlingus.com) has regular flights to Barcelona from Dublin and Cork. Iberia (http://www.iberia.com) has regular flights from Dublin to Barcelona. Ryanair (http://www.ryanair.com) flies to (relatively) nearby Girona and Reus

© 2006 The Irish Times

There’s a wonderful passage in Rosie Boycott’s new book, Our Farm , in which she describes the return of swallows to nests in her area after their long migration. They are, she writes, “wonderfully cosmopolitan creatures that connect two continents and two entirely different ways of life”.

That’s a fitting description for the author, a self-described city girl who now divides her time between London and the tiny Somerset town of Ilminster, where she runs a smallholding with her husband, a barrister named Charles Howard. “I’ve been many things in my life,” she writes. “Mother, wife, journalist, writer, magazine editor, newspaper editor, radio and TV presenter, feminist, hippy, divorcee, junkie, drunk and traveller - but pig-owner was never on the cards.”

Boycott, a founder of the iconic feminist magazine Spare Rib, was the first female editor of the Independent and Independent on Sunday, where she earned the nickname Rizla Rosie by campaigning for the decriminalisation of cannabis. She edited the Daily Express from 1998 until 2001, leaving after the newspaper was bought by Richard Desmond, who also owns OK! and at the time owned numerous top-shelf magazines.

Our Farm, her second book, is an account of her and her husband’s attempts to make their new venture profitable. She describes their decision to rent the farm as “a baby-substitute project”. “Charlie and I were both married before and have our own kids and our own lives, and since we can’t have kids together it is important for us to have a way of life that is our own.”

It’s interesting that the couple opted for commercial smallholding over the easier option of kitchen-table self-sufficiency. As the book highlights, smallholding is a tough slog with meagre financial rewards. Boycott is brutally honest about what worked and what didn’t. A local butcher was unimpressed with the quality of their first slaughtered pig, and they made a paltry 183 pounds (€268) on their first day at a farmers’ market. “We tried rearing rare-breed chickens, and that was an expensive failure. The geese and ducks weren’t great either, and the pigs were hit and miss economically. We are only now getting to the stage where we have two animals going to market each month. We also completely underestimated the amount of vegetables we needed in the ground. It is tough going, especially the lean winter months.”

Given that both she and her husband have alternative careers, is there a financial imperative to make it work? “We need it to stop being unviable,” she replies. “It has to be sustainable. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Boycott describes their efforts against the backdrop of food globalisation and our appetite for cheap, unseasonal food. The villain of the piece is Tesco, which rolls into Ilminster with plans for a supermarket. A band of small producers and shopkeepers come together in a fight for their livelihoods, but they fail to stop the behemoth. “The town is already suffering from it. They just keep winning all the little skirmishes. It’s relentless - and it’s kind of crap, really. They already take 1 pound of every 7 spent in the UK and are involved in every facet of life. They even sell funerals and weddings now. It’s cradle-to-grave stuff.”

She is aware of the cynicism that might meet a well-heeled writer and broadcaster telling people to grow their own, buy local and steer clear of the supermarket. “I cringe when I hear Prince Charles talking about this stuff, because it makes it sound like it’s for toffs. Supermarkets are not all bad; it’s just that things have gone too far when they are squeezing out the small producers. We just need some balance. I know it’s not realistic for everyone to grow their own food, but they can at least try to buy local.”

Our Farm leaves you with a profoundly depressing feeling that our current food model is simply unsustainable. Are we headed for a fall? “The entire food industry is completely predicated on cheap oil. Not just oil but cheap oil, and that era is almost over. Our food is in constant transit, whizzing around on planes and trucks. The saying goes that we are only ever nine meals from anarchy. In other words, if we run out of food on a Monday, by Wednesday you would be willing to shoot someone else to get food for your kids. That’s scary stuff. We all need to get prepared.”

There is hope in the book, though, and it comes from the simple pleasures of country life: mornings spent in the potting shed; giving a pig a rub behind the ears; the sense of community in small-town life. The fact that the woman documenting them previously considered any form of domesticity a trap just makes the point all the more forceful. “Imagine,” she says, laughing. “I had to wait until I was in my mid-50s to discover how incredible a laying hen is.”

Our Farm: A Year in the Life of a Smallholding, by Rosie Boycott, is published by Bloomsbury

© 2007 The Irish Times

Personally I preferred it when there was an urban/rural divide.  Urban people (ok, ok I mean Dublin people) were urban people.  And culchies were culchies.  And never the twain did meet. 

When it came to gardens, urbanites considered their gardens to be an additional room and a simply fabulous venue for outdoor entertaining.  Culchies saw their garden as a place to grow rhubarb.  Urban gardens were replete with expensive garden furniture, patio heaters, stylish window boxes, lanterns and lighting.  Rural gardens had things you would never see in an urban garden, like plants for example. 

But over the last few years there has been a blurring of the lines.  Urban people are getting more in touch with their inner culchie.  And country people now spend their Saturdays in Woodies buying lemon scented outdoor candles, barbecue accoutrements (''Will grill for sex'' apron anyone?) and DIY decking. 

Most of us are aware by now that the food chain is shagged - our fruit and veggies are sprayed with pesticides and our meat is loaded with antibiotics.  This realisation has gradually permeated our collective conscience and we have been encouraged (nay harangued!) by Jamie, Darina et al to question where our food comes from.  And that's a good thing. 

Your local butcher therefore has learned to smile indulgently when you ask him for the genesis of that lamb chop he is about to sell you.  He smiles because he knows he can tell you pretty much anything.  You don't really care about the answer to your question.  It's the asking that's important. 

TV shows like River Cottage encourage us to ''think country''.  City folk watch programs like that and after they have briefly considered and then ruled out moving to Roscommon, they decide that they want to buy in to some of the key messages.

They want to attend lively summer barn-dances with home made wine and parlour games and ruddy cheeked fat country women, sweating and heaving on the sawdust dance-floor.  They want to support the local, slow-food producer and buy more natural food.  It's suddenly not de rigeur for your only interface with the food chain to be a weekly hoosh around the Frascati Centre.  Damn!

What all this madness has created is what we call the Urban Farmer.  The basic rule of being an Urban Farmer is that the harder you have to work for your food, the better.  More pain, more gain.  Think about it as a sliding scale with a trip to Aldi being at one end and complete River Cottage Utopia at the other.  The further you can move along the scale the more you are earning your Urban Farmer stripes. 

If you are a little unsure and want to put a toe in the water, a gentle start can be online ''organic box'' shopping.  This allows you to make use of your favourite item - the credit card.  So go online and order a vegetable box for €50 and pretend you are happy when it is delivered to your home. 

Don't tell anyone that you have no idea what half the vegetables are (what the hell is chard?) and have even less of an idea as to how to cook the other half.  Take the veggies carefully from the box, arrange them in a bowl in the kitchen where people will see them and then?  Watch them rot.

Don't grumble about seasonality and how the winter box has only big ignorant turnips in it.  Also don't grumble about the fact that all the veggies are a funny shape, not lovely and uniform and shiny like the ones you buy in the supermarket.  And that brown stuff that's on them?  That's called dirt.  It's what the veggie was grown in.  Rinse it under the tap and it will go away.

Browsing the web of course is not really working hard.  You can talk about the contents of your box all night long and real urban farmers won't bat an eyelid.  So the next step involves a little bit more effort; you will have to get in to your SUV and go for a little spin.  What you are looking for is a farmer's market.  But don't worry you won't need to buy a pair of wellies or actually go to a farm.  Hell you won't even need to leave the Southside; farmer's markets are everywhere in Dublin now so you should have no problem finding one. 

Farmer's market etiquette dictates that you have to interact with the producers of your food.  For example instead of just going up and grabbing things from the stall you are expected to feign interest as you talk to the smelly farmer about the origins of that wilted cabbage he is trying to interest you in.  He's spent ages growing it and he's really proud of it so humour him, for God's sake.  When another stall-holder tells you proudly that he killed the pigs himself, don't look at him like he's some sort of nutter.  It's a good thing that he killed them himself.  So long as he washed himself afterwards.

You should always do the squeezey squeezey thing with fruit and veg to check for freshness.  Never mind that you don't know what you are squeezing for - it's all about looking the part.  Be careful not to squeeze too hard.  It's a fine line between savvy shopper and veggie mush. 

You are expected to say to people ''of course I can do my full weekly shop there'', even though 8 of the 20 stalls are selling jams and preserves, 9 are selling breads and the other 3 are gone to lunch.  Don't tell anyone that you stopped in Donnybrook Fair on the way home and spent €200 on ''speciality food'' items. 

Part of the Urban Farmer experience is developing a conscience and always feeling guilty.  It's kind of like being a catholic.  Being an urban farmer means feeling uncomfortable forever more about being a consumer.  You should feel guilty about all manner of things; not recycling enough, throwing out your printer cartridges instead of refilling them, all those detergents and bleaches and shampoos and conditioners that you pour down the plug-hole.  You should feel guilty about all of them.  But you should feel guiltiest of all about little Nathan's 4000 nappies that will end up in landfill. 

You will shift uncomfortably in your seat when during a dinner party that painful wife of the dashing young barrister discusses how she buys organic towelling nappies at poops-a-daisy.com.  Does she really like, wash shitty nappies and hang them up around the house? That's just disgusting.  You will be expected to give real thought to this but only serious head-bangers would actually do it. 

All Urban Farmers are expected to enjoy composting.  It's not enough to have a compost heap - you have to enjoy having it.  You are expected to be enthusiastic about it at parties (''Composting is like baking a cake, you have to layer it; green, brown, green, brown").  Even though you can buy a bag of compost down at the arboretum for €15, instead you are expected to trudge down the garden and lob your leftovers in to the smelly, rat infested half-tonne of sludge that you have been ignoring, eh I mean cultivating, for 16 months.

Under no circumstances are you tell ANYONE about the guy.  You were told about the guy under the strictest of confidences and are only to pass on his number to another Urban Farmer in an absolute emergency.  And by an emergency I mean they would have to have a really hideous heap of sludge beyond all hopes of salvation.  Tell them in hushed tones, if you absolutely have to, that the guy for a fee will come and take the smelly heap of sludge away. 

You can set yourself free and start anew (no meat this time).  The fee won't break the bank but it will be enough to make you confident he will be professional and discreet, i.e. his van doesn't say ''BARNEY BECKETT - FAILED COMPOST HEAP REMOVAL'' on the side.

Don't tell anyone other than those in the same boat that the guy told you that ''business is booming'' and that taking away failed compost heaps is ''putting his kids through college''. The guy is the urban farmer's dirty little secret. 

Next month we will look at how to take the next step and become an Uber-Urban Farmer, or a MOBY.  A MOBY puts that postage stamp of a garden to some use and grows her own veggies.  So when asked over dinner where those fabulous radishes come from, she can respond ''My Own Back Yard''.  And if you think growing your own veggies is too much like hard work, well couldn't the Filipino maid give you a hand? (Note to self, talk to Conchita about the deterioration in quality of ironing of late.)

© 2006 Gloss

Elaine is a recent but committed convert and now tries hard to be a fully paid up member of the urban farmer family.  She is chairwoman, but not founder, of the Terenure Wives Environmental Enthusiasts (TWEE) Society who meet for Fair Trade coffee and organic biscotti once a week in her house. 

Under Elaine's astute leadership the TWEE's talk about ways to bring a more environmentally friendly consciousness in to their lives.  Last week's agenda included “making furniture from recycled materials” and “eco-coffins”.  Interest in the weekly meetings among Terenure women has been so great that parking has started to become an issue of late.  At the last meeting there were so many SUV's parked outside her house, it looked like a Santa Monica shopping-mall car park.

So committed is Elaine to the urban farming cause, she recently convinced her husband that they should get rid of the €25,000 stainless steel construction which a celebrity landscape gardener designed and erected in their garden just so she could put in a vegetable patch.  Well, so that her gardener could put in a vegetable patch.  Elaine doesn't do dirt. 

Apparently the celebrity gardener was none to pleased and muttered something about ''jumped up Dublin wagons'' under his breath, as he departed the scene.  To which Elaine shouted after him; ''It looked stupid anyway!  I mean what's it supposed to be, a monorail?'' Elaine is feisty.

Her high net worth gives her the means to buy herself in to contention for the “Urban Farmer of the Month” accolade.  She wouldn't have thought twice for instance about the expense of getting a wind turbine for the garden but in any case that idea was shot down at a local residents committee meeting.  She has to make do with some solar panels which get the water lukewarm on hot sunny days.

She once waxed lyrical to me for twenty minutes about the importance of a product called hedgehog niblets which she buys in bulk online.  ''You have to do your bit for the hedgehog population,'' she said.  Her husband Tom stood on one recently on the deck and Elaine didn't talk to him for a week.

Elaine is the proud owner of an urban compost tumbler; an ingenious device which she tells me ''aerates better than your normal compost heap''.  She has an eggloo in her garden with two laying hens.  Her gardener gives out to her that they shit everywhere and make a mess of paths and beds with their incessant scratching.  But she politely gives him the background to the realities of battery reared hens and lets him keep the odd egg to keep him sweet.

''The problem I have for you is this,'' she said as we stood in the conservatory for pre-dinner drinks looking out on her garden.  ''Can you really be an urban farmer and own an SUV?'' This I assured her is a common conundrum for urban farmers who wonder about the irony of a situation where they go to such lengths to be kind to the earth while driving around in a 6-litre Land Rover.

We sipped our homemade sloe gin and gazed out at her nanny who was doing some late evening crop cultivation in the vegetable patch.  ''I'm confused about the whole situation.  I mean, don't our country cousins use them for pulling things out of bogs or dragging livestock to the mart?  Doesn't Hugh F-W drive one in River Cottage?  Am I being discriminated against just because his is a 20 year old rust bucket and mine is shiny black and just rolled off the forecourt?''

I had to accept that these were all good points. 

''Well,'' I said, the gin going to my head and making lucid thought generation difficult, ''I think the main argument people have is that people in the country who have them, probably you know, need them.  Their initial purpose was as off the road vehicles, for getting across fields and rivers and the like.  Whereas people in the city probably don't need them.''

Probably don't need them?  How else would I bring the kids to school?
Elaine, you only have two kids. Couldn't they like fit in a normal car?
But they have so much stuff.  Have you ever seen their school bags?
No.  How did they get to school before you got the Land Rover?
In the Jag.  In very little comfort. And what about the dogs?
The dogs?
Our dogs. What on earth would I do with the dogs? 
What type of dogs are they?
Highland Terriers. 
Not a very big dog.
They like their space. 
I bet they do.  Why else do you need it?
We go to the mountains at weekends.
Which mountains?
The Sugarloaf.
Do you drive up it?
Oh shut up.
It's hardly Everest.
I said shut up.

To demonstrate the animosity that exists towards SUV drivers, Elaine recounted an interesting experience which Mr. Elaine had last week.  ''He was stopped at the lights at Foxrock Church in the Discovery and he looked down at a woman driving a Yaris beside him and she made a wagging motion with her little finger as if to indicate that he has a small peepee,'' she said. 

''He thought it was a once off, but the next day it happened him twice.  Once with a young lad in a Golf and then that afternoon a girl in a Mini Cooper.  Is there some conspiracy towards SUV drivers that we are not aware of?'' she asked.

''It's the first I heard of it,'' I assured her, thinking to myself I must do it the next time I see a man driving an SUV. 

''Well, whatever, this whole thing has got him all worried that people think he drives it to compensate for some deficiency in the trouser department. 

Calling his manhood his “peepee” may not be helping things. 

''And I wouldn't mind but we spent €15,000 paving over our front garden so we could park the thing off the road.  Now he is thinking we ought to sell it,'' she moaned.

''You paved over your garden?''

''Oh give me a break Green Boy'', she said.  ''At least we didn't sell it off to developers like the people in number 28.  They are going to build apartments on theirs.''

Elaine reckons that at every dinner party she has hosted lately there always seems to be a Prius driver in attendance just to put her gas guzzling in to sharper focus.  ''They make me so uncomfortable, with their unbearable smug smiles,'' she said. 

''See that guy over there with the brown jacket?  That's Killian and the dowdy thing beside him breastfeeding is his fruitarian girlfriend Joyce.  He's a playwright of all things and was on a waiting list with his local Toyota dealer for a year and a half to get one.  There's sticker on the back window that says “What would Jesus drive?” Go talk to him and see how long it takes him to bring it up.  Apparently he hasn't put petrol in the tank in 4 months,'' she said looking rather worried. 

The room suddenly darkened as the sun went in behind the Land Rover in the driveway.  I moved over towards Killian, averting my eyes from the breastfeeding Joyce.

He did indeed bring up the Prius rather quickly.  ''Hi I'm Michael Kelly'' I said, introducing myself.  ''I'm Killian, I came here in a Prius,'' he said.  ''Are those hemp trousers?'' says I, looking at his pants in awe.  ''They are indeed.'' Could we smoke them later, I wondered.

''I made these earrings myself, from recycled plastic'' said daft-as-a-brush Joyce.  ''Really?'' I said, ''You would never know it''.  That was the wrong thing to say apparently and she went in to a bit of a decline.

Urban farmers never know how to feel about Killian and Joyce.  They are confused by them.  This might explain why Elaine invited them at all, given how uncomfortable they make her.  Does she envy them?  Feel pity?  Or is it disgust?  She isn't sure. 

Killian inherited some land in Wicklow where they lead ''zero footprint'' lives.  He told me about their woodchip burner, geo-thermal heating system and attic insulation made from old phone books. 

Joyce brightened up sufficiently to tell me how she makes a living (of sorts) by collecting poo from their sheep, sterilising and washing it and then making it in to recycled paper.  I had assumed the smell of poo was off Joyce's baby but now I wasn't so sure.

''It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “shit paper”,'' I said pleased with myself.  But neither Joyce nor Killian were amused.

Copyright 2006 Gloss

I went to my local equipment hire store recently to rent a chainsaw.  The genesis of this particular story is that there is lots of old wood lying around in our garden and I figured it would be a good idea to cut it up and burn it in the stove for the winter.  The hunter-gatherer in me was pratically orgasmic at the prospect of ''fuelling up'' for the impending cold season. 

Some years back I bought a big sharp axe and took to chopping wood when I was feeling out of sorts.  Wielding an axe over your head is the ultimate stress reliever and great exercise.  I seriously recommend it.  Buy an axe.  Get rid of your gym membership.  Improve your mental health.  You get the picture.

But the axe, impressive though it is, wasn't up to this particular job, especially given that there was a fallen telegraph pole amidst the bundle of wood that needed processing.  I tried over the course of a strenuous half hour to work on the pole with the axe and made barely a dent.  So I asked myself the question that all men ask when stymied by a difficult task; ''is there a piece of equipment I can buy that will make this job easier''.  There usually is.  Once you've spent top dollar acquiring the piece of equipment you can relax safe in the knowledge that the job is almost complete.  Well, half way there anyway.

Men are simple creatures and equipment completes us.  I am at my absolute happiest for example when chugging around the lawn on the crappy tractor mower which the guy who owned this house before us sold to me for €500 when we moved in.  It's not in great nick and you have to sort of finesse it around the garden but I don't really mind that.  I can't really explain why it makes me so happy. 

Oddly, the previous owner adorned the bonnet of the mower with stickers for the National Rifle Association, the North American Hunting Organisation and the Chicago Motor Club.  I say oddly because the previous owner was a retired actor from Luton.  You can imagine him getting those stickers and thinking ''where will I put these manly stickers?  I know, on my manly mower!''

One time last summer, I actually drank a beer while cutting the grass, relishing in the blokey cliché and delighting in the fact that I couldn't be done for drink driving in the privacy of my own home (doing 2mph).  I kept spilling the beer on myself when turning so I gave that up after a couple of rows.  I like to think the guys at the NRA were proud of my efforts anyway.

My garage is a final resting place for a myriad of power-tools that I bought and then only used once or twice; jigsaws, angle-grinders, power-sanders and the like.  All sitting forlornly on the shelf in their special carry cases, shiney new and waiting patiently for an angle to grind or a jig to saw.  Or any class of an outing.  But it never comes. 

Women can't understand why men love to collect so many power-tools.  I can only assume (because I haven't asked) that the feeling men get when buying them is similar to the one women get when buying new shoes.  You often don't get to use them more than once, but the act of acquisition and the subsequent ownership is fulfilling in its own right. 

So each time I go in to the garage and see the orderly line of plastic carry cases on the middle shelf I don't despair and think ''what a waste of money''.  Rather I peer with satisfaction in to the future at the jobs that might get done with greater ease as a result of their quiet presence.  That's a comfort.  It's like when women look in to the wardrobe at the rows and rows of unworn high heels and think of their triumphant attendance at dinner parties of the future (this article really is riddled with clichés, isn't it?). 

Anyway, in I went to the hire store and explained my predicament re the fallen telegraph pole to the guy behind the counter.  He eyed my slight frame suspiciously.  ''Have you used a chainsaw before?'' he asked disdainfully.  I explained that I hadn't but reckoned I'd be up to the job and wondered was there any dirt in my fingernails I could show him that might convince him of that fact. 

But the chainsaw-nazi wasn't for turning.  ''I don't give them out to just anyone,'' he said.  ''They are really dangerous and if you injure yourself it will come back on us.'' I assured him that I wasn't inclined towards litigiousness and protested my general competence.  It went back and forward like that for a while, increasingly feeling like some sort of bizarre test of my manhood. 

In the end I got all shirty with him and said ''well listen, I'm not going to beg you to do business with me,'' I said, preparing to leave.  ''I'll just get it elsewhere.'' Unimpressed by my impetuousness, he assured me that they were the only place in town that rented chainsaws.  We were at an impasse. 

Finally we agreed on a compromise where he would give me an electric model that was less powerful and had a cut-off mechanism so that I couldn't cut my feet off accidentally.  ''It's a bit Fisher-Price,'' I said glumly, staring at the big petrol jobbie on the shelf behind him. 

When I got it home I attacked the telegraph pole with great gusto admiring the slow growth in the pile of logs beside me and thinking of the long cosy evenings in front of the hearth.  My wife pottered about nearby pretending to be doing other things, but really I know she was either (a) attracted to the aura of masculinity that surrounded me while I worked or more likely (b) scared of her life I would do an amateur amputation on myself. 

My wife, like many women, hates to stand by while I am doing a job involving a cutting implement - she has an ''I-can-do-it-better'' mentality which needles at her relentlessly and forces her, against her better judgement, to say things like ''you're not doing it right''.  She's usually right of course but that's not the point. 

The point is women find power tools daunting and especially something as fundamentally rugged as the chainsaw (even if it's electric).  So while every muscle in her body screamed ''YOU'RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT'' and wanted to grab it off me and complete the job properly, her power-tool phobia restrained her.

All of which probably explains why men love buying power-tools so much.  They are a sort of a male-only preserve.  A last bastion if you will.  You can buy a power tool and put it in the garden shed safe in the knowledge that unlike your set of screwdrivers for example, it will never get mistreated, mislaid or given away to someone ''on loan''. In general, women tend to leave our power-tools well enough alone.

Marketing folk know all this of course.  They know women find power-tools to be sort of forbidding which is why they don't buy them, thereby leaving a great big gap in the market.  They also know that women want to get jobs done and are running out of patience waiting on their men-folk to do those jobs they promised they would do.  So to get women to buy power-tools they have to make the products less ominous looking. 

As a consequence, urban farmer tools such as pruning shears, power-saws, hedge-cutters, trowels and drills have recently undergone somewhat of a female-friendly makeover.  Tools are suddenly available with handles in pastel shades, mauve and pinks; there are smaller grips and lighter products; brand names like ''Garden Gals'' and ''Ladies Comfort''. 

In the main these products do much the same as the men's variety - just with less testosterone.  We men like our power-tools to be black with red go-faster stripes and the words ''Extreme'' and ''Power'' must always appear in the brand name.  They know women don't like that stuff.  And for the same reason that women won't touch our power tools, a pink handle on a power-saw is a veritable guarantee that men won't be tempted to borrow them. 

Garden Tools for women are big business - some surveys estimate that 40% of DIY purchases are made by women.  Organisations are springing up (like Barbara K and Tomboy Tools) that have bet the farm on it.  So I might have to put up a new shelf for Mrs Kelly in the garage for her to store her tools that she too will use only once and then neglect forever.  Or better still, she could put it up herself. 

For example there was scarcely a murmur of disapproval the year I turned thirty and decided to take time off from my job as an IT salesman to record an album.  Looking back on it now, it seems entirely obvious that I was experiencing an early onset mid-life crisis but at the time I was absolutely convinced that I was taking a practical step to secure my deliverance from the tawdry world of sales.  Unfortunately this was to ignore the fundamental reality that most of the songs I had written were complete and utter shite. 

Anyway, while I was in the studio pretending to be all rock and roll (well trad and folk at any rate), we should have been lying on a beach somewhere enjoying a well-earned holiday but not a word of complaint did I hear from her.  Neither did she say ‘told you so’ when the inevitable happened and the stretch limo failed to show up at the front door to whisk me off to superstardom.

We were out for a meal the night I told her I was giving up my job permanently to become a freelance writer.  Given her track record of unlimited patience, it is not surprising that she was generally supportive of this latest announcement even though she is pretty sensible when it comes to money and could have been forgiven for wishing I would just knuckle down.  On some level perhaps I was relying on her to call foul, to tell me to cop on and forget the madness.  At least that way I would have had a way out and someone to blame for the fact that I had to stay put in sales.  But instead she was egging me on.  Telling me it was a great idea.  Lighting a fire under my ass.  ''What is the worst that can happen,'' she said swirling the wine around in her glass.  ''We won't starve.''

I suppose you could say that when it comes to flightiness, there's pair of us in it.  Three years ago we abandoned life in Dublin for the good life and a leaky cottage on an acre in the Co. Waterford countryside.  Mrs Kelly had her own bout of career disillusionment shortly after we moved here and gave up a job as a management accountant to become a teacher.  The pendulum of economic power has a habit of swinging erratically to and fro in our house - we've both spent time as monetary top-dog and fiscal runt of the litter respectively and I'm sure a gender psychologist would have a lifetime's material in the way each of us have handled our time in the lead role.  For her part, Mrs Kelly didn't seem unduly bothered by the fact that she was sponging off me while she was studying to become a teacher and I don't recall feeling any different about her because of her lack of earnings.  If anything, I was proud of her and happy I could help out. 

But when it came time for the boot to go on the other foot and as I pondered my first month's earnings as a freelancer - the princely sum of €1,525 before tax - perhaps predictably (well I'm a man after all), I could hear rumblings of emotional trouble bubbling up in the old noggin.  Did I have the strength of character to handle life as a ''kept man'' without things degenerating in to a fuzz of emotional emasculation?  Could Mrs Kelly still love someone who had all the earning potential of a 16-year-old supermarket shelf-stacker? 

What do women really want in a man anyway?  Good looks?  Charisma?  A sense of humour perhaps?  But what about earning power?  Do women secretly (or even overtly) desire a man who will look after them financially?  Was Mrs Kelly furtively hankering after a chest-beating Wall St. banker who would provide her with a house in the Hamptons and an unlimited shoe budget?  Do you still want to get it on with a guy that you're doling out an allowance to so he can do the weekly grocery shopping? 

When I started writing first, I had plenty of time on my hands and it seemed only right and proper that I roll up my sleeves and do whatever chores needed doing around the house.  I washed clothes and dressed beds.  I cooked.  I cleaned.  Basically I was Calor Housewife of the Year.  No big deal - I mean we've never looked on household work as belonging to one or other of us.  It's always been the case that we share the load as much as possible and whoever has more time, does the work. 

But somehow, in tandem with the fact that I was now earning less than her, I suddenly felt remarkably self-conscious about doing the housework.  And when Mrs Kelly tried to have a bit of a laugh with the whole situation (''Sure you're a grand little woman to have around'' she said, slapping me on the arse while I was walking past with a dish of lasagne) instead of laughing at her cutting-edge satire I got all offended and wanted to tip the dinner over her head. 

Waving out the window as the Alpha Female went off to bring home the bacon each day, I couldn't help but feel worried about my place in the world.  I should have been delighted with myself - I had after all abandoned a career I despised and was making a (meagre) living doing something which I absolutely loved - but instead I felt like a loser. I felt unemployed.  Useless. 

It's a classic male reaction of course - we are simple creatures and part of our emotional well-being is tied up in believing that we are breadwinner-in-chief.  Of course that's an enormous f**king cliché that has little if any relevance to the modern world, but we just can't help being stuck in the stone-age when it comes to it.

With the benefit of hindsight, Mrs Kelly tells me that she actually found it sort of exciting (maybe even a bit of a turn-on) that I was willing to give up my job and take this monumental risk.  But at some point the excitement faded - perhaps it was because she realised that there was an existential crisis going on behind the devil-may-care facade.  Or maybe it was because after the initial hum of new beginnings we were left with an astonishing yet mundane reality - tightened belts.  Pinched pennies. 

Thankfully things have improved somewhat on the earnings front but when the former accountant sits down at a spreadsheet (she loves those spreadsheets) to calculate my annual earnings I still feel like a bold boy about to get a scolding for being naughty.  You cling to the notion that what people find attractive in their significant other is not wealth or earning potential, but success, passion, hunger.  That as long as we can admire our partners then it doesn't really matter how much they contribute to the household budget.  Does it?  Hello?  Anyone?

Trading Paces - From Rat Race to Hen Run by Michael Kelly is now available from The O'Brien Press, RRP: €9.99

The Gloss Magazine - June 2008

An Irishman’s Diary - March 18th 2008

All counties have their colloquialisms, customs and peculiarities. Waterford must be unique, however, in having its own food product, consumed by a third of its population daily, but which few outside the county have ever even heard of, never mind sampled: the humble blaa, asks Michael Kelly .

I’ve often wondered what visitors to the Deise County must think when they stand in a shop and hear a local say: “Give us a few blaas there, boy, will ye?” What on earth is this exotic-sounding item, this “blaa” of which your speak? Perhaps they are disappointed to discover that a blaa is merely a type of bread roll, but that disappointment will not last, so long as they make it their business to sample one.

Before we go any further, let’s make one thing perfectly clear: A blaa is not a bap! Once you’ve tried one, you will know that to compare the two is to denigrate one and elevate the other. Blaas are what baps want to be when they grow up. Bap-makers in Waterford are a destitute bunch - they loiter in the bread aisles of shops and supermarkets, placing a bap or two among the blaas when no one is looking, in the vain hope that locals might buy a bap by mistake. Thankfully a blaa is instantly recognisable. It is square, rather than round, and its crown is dusted liberally with flour. Because of the floury topping, eating a blaa is like sucking the juice from a rack of spare ribs - it’s incredibly messy.

Waterford people are known regularly to leave the house in the morning with a generous coating of flour on their noses, chins and lips, but they do so without shame because that’s all part of the blaa experience.

So how did the floury marvels come to be made in Waterford in the first place? The most popular explanation is that they were first baked by Huguenot craftsmen who arrived in the port of Waterford towards the end of the 17th century. The Christian Brothers’ founder, Edmund Ignatius Rice, was responsible for making blaas popular with locals when he put them on the menu in the school he established in Mount Sion in 1802. The origin of the word blaa is thought variously to come from either French (pain blanc is white bread and blé is used for certain types of flour), Latin (blandus, meaning bland) or Spanish (blando, meaning soft).

Dermot “Blaa” Walsh and his brother Michael own one of the three bakeries in the city that still bake blaas daily. “We started 20 years ago and we are third generation bakers. It’s bred in to us,” he says, oblivious to the rather marvellous pun. There are about 12,000 blaas sold each day in Waterford and getting them out around the county in time for breakfast is no mean feat: “It takes about three hours to bake a blaa and we have to finish by 3.30am to let them cool in time for loading the vans at 5am.” In a world of culinary globalisation, the blaa stands almost alone in its refusal to become ubiquitous.

Why is it, since it tastes so good, that it is still available only in Waterford? A clue is to be found in the simplicity of its ingredients. “Blaas are not enriched with anything,” says Walsh. “They are made from a very specific lean dough of flour, yeast, salt and water. There’s no fat, sugar or anything like that in them. As a result they go stale within hours so they don’t travel very well. There’s no fat in them to keep them soft. It’s a morning product and 90 per cent of them are sold before lunchtime.”

In other words, the blaa-baker inserts a time bomb of sorts into the product to ensure it is never tempted to travel beyond the county border. Walsh tells tales of Waterford mammies trying to defuse the time-bomb by sending frozen blaas overseas to homesick offspring.

Blaas can be eaten with several fillings or none. They taste great with real butter and some jam or with an egg atop for breakfast. Favourite lunch-time fillings include ham, coleslaw, salad and crisps (not all together, obviously). A particularly odious local custom is to fill your blaa with “red lead”, a type of luncheon meat - it is rumoured that red lead blaas are the reason that John Mullane always looks so fired up before inter-county hurling matches.

When I was in college in Waterford RTC (now Waterford IT) the staple diet was “a blaa and two sausages” and a more profound culinary experience it was hard to find. Blaa Walsh’s very own recipe for “Waterford Bruschetta” is a great way to use blaas which have survived until teatime. It involves a topping of extra virgin olive oil, chopped tomato, garlic, onion and mozzarella, toasted until golden brown. Yum.

There are two different types of blaa - soft or crusty - and if ever there is to be a civil war in the county it will surely start with a row over which tastes nicer. “Soft blaas are more popular because they are easier for kids to eat. Crusty blaas are very tasty and have more flavour because they are baked longer,” says Walsh. Can the blaa be made at home or is there a secret ingredient? “The only secret ingredient is time. The longer you leave them sit before baking, the more flavour they develop.”

Walsh is so synonymous with blaas in his native city that most people have forgotten he actually has a first name.

“Most of my friends don’t even know my first name. Even my friend’s kids say, ‘Well, Blaa?’ - and I say: ‘The name’s Dermot, ye cheeky pup!’”

© 2008 The Irish Times

An Irishman’s Diary - Monday May 5th 2008

YOUR FACEBOOK account has been deactivated.” That’s how easy it was. A few clicks and I’m free. But let’s take a step back - to the day last year when I signed up, just out of curiosity and because I was tired of always answering “No” to the question: “Are you on Facebook?” It took about 10 minutes for my deepest suspicions about the site to be confirmed: that it’s an entirely pointless social-networking pyramid scheme, writes Michael Kelly

They have a phrase in the US for the defining moment when a TV show reaches its peak and is spiralling towards obsolescence - “jumping the shark”. Facebook has jumped the shark.

Shortly after signing up, I got an email from “The Facebook Team” saying that such-and-such a “friend” had written something on my wall. Click here to log in. So I did. Entered username and password. Read the message. And immediately I was struck by a thought - wouldn’t it have been easier for such-and-such to send me an email? And from that moment my relationship with Facebook was compromised. Each time I logged in I couldn’t help but wonder: What’s the point?

I have had similar experiences with other social networking sites. I have a MySpace profile which has been dormant since the day I set it up. Ditto, a profile on Broadjam. Back when I was still working in corporate-land people were always asking me “are you on LinkedIn?” When I said no they would shake their heads in sorry disbelief at the notion that I would deliberately deprive myself of such bountiful business opportunities. (Has anyone, anywhere ever made a single profitable business relationship on LinkedIn? Answers on a postcard, please.)

Of course, you get out of these sites what you put in to them. Or, more correctly, what you give away. The more information that you put up there, the more stimulating your site will be. I wasn’t comfortable giving away any information and I was too lazy to upload photos, so basically my site was a catastrophic failure.

I have “friends” on Facebook who put up an alarming amount of content all with the noble aim of making their sites more interesting - their email address, phone number, date of birth, favourite books, TV programmes, films. Sometimes I get sucked in to looking at their photo albums, feeling distinctly uneasy and voyeuristic. Clearly they want you to look, since they uploaded them, but still. . .

So what is the point? Counting friends. The success of Facebook is measured by the number of people who join and everything about it is designed to hook more people in. And that’s its primary problem - once you’ve joined up, that’s pretty much all there is to it. Once you tire of adding friends, you tire of Facebook.

But until that time, Facebook exploits you mercilessly by playing on your innate need to be popular. Browsing the profiles of your “friends”, you notice they have several hundred “friends”, while you only have 23; and it makes you feel 10 years old again.

It’s ridiculous, of course. These people don’t actually have several hundred “friends” at all. It’s not real. It’s an illusion. But that doesn’t matter. They appear popular and sociable. And by contrast, you feel like a leper. This vulnerability forces you to make questionable decisions about “friendships”. You accept friend requests from people you don’t even like. You send friend requests to people you would cross the road to avoid in real life.

When you log in to Facebook you are greeted with a news-feed that updates you on what your “friends” have been up to in your (prolonged) absence. It’s not useful news, like how they are getting on at work or how the divorce proceedings are proceeding. It’s Facebook news. So it’s immensely childish and utterly useless. Tom is now friends with Barbara. Barbara is now friends with Sheila. Sheila has left the “Amazing Sexy Bitches” group. The news-feed creates an illusion of activity and makes it seem like your “friends” are having lots of good, clean fun without you - running quizzes, giving each other gifts, comparing likes and dislikes. A “friend” sent me a beer on Facebook - not an actual beer, just a picture of a beer. Can’t they bring me for a real beer, in a real bar?

I’m still hazy about “poking”. I know it’s crept into the public consciousness and RTE even had it as part of the dialogue in a recent drama series. But I’m embarrassed to confess that I don’t understand what it is. The only person I ever poked on Facebook was my sister-in-law and she poked me back and then I wondered if it was appropriate to poke one’s sister-in-law? Is “poking” some sort of flirty pseudo-sexual thing?

Someone “rated” me once using something called the “You’re a Hottie” application.  I’ve no idea what it meant and whether I should be flattered or offended. Another “friend” requested that I join a group committed to getting Chas and Dave to open the Olympics. Someone else suggested that I download a “family tree” application, but of course the same ruse applies - they want you to get all your family members to sign up to Facebook too.

I couldn’t help wondering: who does it help if I convince my family to sign up? Does it help Facebook attract advertising revenue? Yes. Does it provide any value whatsoever to me or my family? No.

This morning when I logged in, it kindly suggested a list of people that “I might know”. I didn’t know any of them and I have no idea why Facebook thought I would know them, but it gave me the option to add them as friends anyway, so I did. And then I thought again (one last time, with feeling): this is utterly pointless. So I clicked on “Deactivate Account”. Please let us know why you are deactivating, it said sulkily. From a list of options I chose: “I don’t find Facebook useful”, which was as close to “I don’t see the point” as I could find.

So that’s me, folks - friendless, faceless, free. Farewell, Facebook Friends.

© 2008 The Irish Times

An Irishman’s Diary - Christmas Eve 2007

Five minutes. I am to meet Santa Claus in his own house at the North Pole, but Mrs Claus tells me that I am allowed only five minutes. Santa and Mrs Claus are like good cop, bad cop. She’s the bad cop. “Five minutes,” she says again firmly, scuttling from the room. I sit on an oversized armchair staring into a log fire and wait for the Big Man to join me. I’m nervous. 

What will he be like? What will I ask? Should I have changed the batteries in the Dictaphone? The door opens and in he walks. I’ve never realised how accurate the description “jolly” is until now. It sums him up perfectly. There is snow on his boots and he is ruddy-cheeked, so he has clearly been outside. He unlaces his enormous brown boots and pulls them off with considerable difficulty to reveal bright red woollen socks. There’s a hole at the end of one and his big toe is sticking out. He sits back in an armchair opposite me, stretches out and puts his feet practically in the grate of the fire to warm them up. He wriggles his toes.

My first preconception about Santa Claus is shattered within two minutes. I thought he was old-fashioned, but in fact he’s thoroughly up to date. He tells me, for example, that he has abandoned his traditional fur-trimmed garb, having received a compelling protest letter from PETA and he now wears a suit of organic red cotton. His half-moon granny glasses are gone, thanks to the marvels of laser eye surgery. He knows all about the latest trends, gadgets and gizmos, though he’s not crazy about some of them - don’t get him started on violent video games. Modernity has even arrived at the elves’ workshop - to keep up with soaring demand, all manner of efficiencies have been introduced, including the recent implementation of a Just In Time inventory system.

Santa knows his way around email and the internet and is a fan of Google Earth (though it’s hard to imagine that Google Earth can teach him anything about navigating the globe). He’s big on green issues and, despite his all-round jolliness, he worries about global warming, especially the impact that it is having on his beloved North Pole. He tells me with considerable pride that his Yuletide globetrotting leaves no carbon footprint thanks to that most eco-friendly mode of transport, reindeer power. And in a boon to the slow food movement, he tells me that the reindeers apparently prefer organic carrots ("Rudolph says they taste like carrots used to,” he muses).

Alarmingly, it would appear that Santa is not immune from health concerns either, though he is, after all, exceedingly old. He has long since given up pipe-smoking ("Mrs Claus hated the smell of stale tobacco,” he says ruefully) and while his frame is indeed ample, he’s not the corpulent Santa of old - there’s no belly shaking like a bowl of jelly. Like most men of advancing years he worries about cholesterol.

“I have to be careful about all that food that the boys and girls leave out for me,” he says with a hearty chuckle. “I love mince pies and the odd glass of Guinness but - well, you saw what it did to my figure and Mrs Claus was worried about my ticker. I take a little bit in each house and I give some to the reindeers. Come January I’ll be back on the rowing-machine in the basement and doing my yoga.”

Santa doing yoga? Where’s the magic gone?, you might well ask. Has Santa become bogged down in worldly concerns? Has he become, dare we say it, boring? Thankfully, no. Scratch the surface of modernity and the magic is still there in spades. It pops up with a vengeance when I ask him the questions that you, dear reader, would no doubt have expected your correspondent to ask. How does he get around the world, delivering gifts to millions of children, all in one night? How does he know if the children are naughty or nice? Does he park the sleigh on the roof? What if there’s no roof? How does he fit down the chimney? How does he get into a house where there is no chimney? Does he really use a magic key? Isn’t that just breaking and entering?

He laughs - a massive, infectious bellow which eventually trails off into a smile and a sympathetic look. “Ah, you adults make me laugh. Everything is questions, questions. You think children are the naive ones? I’ll tell you how I can do all these things,” he says, leaning forward and giving me a conspiratorial wink. Here it comes - the big scoop.

“The magic of Christmas,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s no more simple or more complex than that.” He notices that I look disappointed. “You know when you hear a Christmas carol and get a warm tingle inside?” he asks, warming to the theme. I nod.

“That’s the magic of Christmas. You adults feel the magic of Christmas less and less as you get older. You’re too wrapped up in stresses and strains, Christmas party season and adult stuff. But imagine a person who feels the magic of Christmas all the time. Who thinks the magic of Christmas all the time. That is the magic of Christmas. All the time. Imagine what that person could accomplish? That’s me. That’s how I do all those things. Do you understand now?”

“Well yes, but. . .” I stammer, trying to get in a follow-up question as Mrs Claus re-enters the room. “I’m afraid we must call it a night, my dear,” she says. “He has a busy few days ahead of him and it’s getting late.” We say our goodbyes and, as I walk out beneath the clear, Arctic sky, I hear his voice behind me. “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

© 2007 The Irish Times

An Irishman’s Diary - October 13th 2007

I’d been thinking about joining a choir for quite a while, but my mind threw up a whole series of objections: I wouldn’t know anyone there; I can’t read music; I might have to do an audition in front of everyone and I might be terrible; aren’t choirs just, you know, naff,? asks Michael Kelly

I sang in the school choir as a lad and I’ve always remembered that hair-tingling feeling on the back of my neck when everything came together and our raggle-taggle group inadvertently and momentarily sounded like the Vienna Boys’ Choir. But I’ve also never forgotten the moment when my voice broke in mid-song and I changed from Aled Jones to Satchmo in one ego-crippling moment.

Who could blame me for giving choirs a wide berth after that, particularly since society in general referred to my new voice as “broken”?

But time clearly dulled the psychological trauma. I got an e-mail recently about an open night for a male voice choir in my area and its tone was inviting: “Why not come along and see if it’s for you?” it asked. “It’s great craic and there’s great camaraderie; we don’t take ourselves too seriously and above all, singing makes you feel great.”

I’m not alone in taking that first step towards joining a choir - in fact, community choirs are experiencing something of a revival. “We have noticed a huge increase in our membership,” says Sinead Ni Mhurchu of the Association of Irish Choirs. “According to our members, people are really starting to understand the health benefits of joining a choir. Singing helps to lower blood pressure and is a proven stress-buster. It’s good for the lungs, excellent for posture and relaxes the neck and shoulder muscles.”

In our increasingly fragmented society, choir membership also fulfils a social need. “It’s a fantastic way to develop social bonds,” says Ni Mhurchu, “and a great way to make connections and increase your circle of friends. Being in a choir is the ultimate unifier because everyone in the group is focused on one aim; to produce this beautiful sound.”

Revival or no revival, however, there is a persistent shortage of male recruits. So why do men stay away? It’s certainly not because we don’t like singing in groups - think about the thousands of men singing at the top of their voices on the terraces each weekend. “Older men do join male voice choirs, I suppose because at that stage they don’t feel they have to prove their masculinity,” says Ni Mhurchu, getting in a gentle dig at us younger fellows. “They just see it as a pleasurable pastime that they enjoy doing and they’re not so worried about what other people think.”

The male unease about choirs can be traced back to how music is taught in our schools, she feels. “The musical education system pretty much exclusively caters for females and there is no tradition of all-boys choirs. The attitude is, ‘Ah, sure boys are more interested in sport’.”

Driving to the choir’s open night, I felt nervous. What if I opened my mouth and a squawk came out instead of a note? But I needn’t have worried. I have never felt more welcome than when I walked sheepishly in the door.

There were nearly 50 men in the choir and I think nearly all of them came over to say hello. Thankfully, there was no audition: the conductor decided I was a baritone by listening to my speaking voice. “I can’t read music, is that a problem?” I inquired. “What makes you think the rest of us can?” he replied with a conspiratorial wink.

(It’s the notion that you have to be able to read music which is most powerful in keeping people away from choirs. “I would say 90 per cent of people in community choirs are not reading music,” says Ni Mhurchu. “The point we are keen to emphasise is that it is people who can’t sing well and can’t read music who stand to gain the most from joining a choir.")

The conductor introduced me to the group and they gave me a gracious round of applause for showing up. I was mortified - so much for getting in under the radar. “It’s great to have him here,” says the conductor, “because it’s important that we get our age profile down.” One or two of the older gents stood up and pretended to leave in a mock show of disgust. “That’s some way to tell us we’re not welcome,” said one to general merriment.

We did some warm-up exercises and I tried not to feel self-conscious while we sang through the mee-may-mah-mow-moos. Rusty larynxes revived, we started practice with the gospel song Down by the Riverside. It’s a lot of fun to sing. From the very first minute I found myself thinking, “Why didn’t I try this years ago?”

But I was also struck by how technical it all seemed - the bass, baritone and tenor sections had different melodies to follow and it was tough to get your own bit right, especially when the music sheet might as well be written in Cantonese. And yet the conductor seemed able to coax some wonderfully complex harmonies from us, despite ourselves.

I began to wonder what possessed people to come to a cold classroom late on a Monday night, bleary-eyed after a day’s work, to struggle with four-part harmony.  But then I suddenly got it. After an hour or so of practice we nailed the song and it sounded fantastic. Hairs on the back of the neck time. “Smile! It makes you sing better,” the conductor encouraged us. He didn’t need to remind me. I was smiling already.

© 2007 The Irish Times

An Irishman’s Diary - August 18th 2008

If you walk to work you are entitled to feel pretty smug about how petite your carbon footprint is, aren’t you? But what if someone told you it would be better for the environment if you drove to work instead?

Chris Goodall, Green Party candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon and author of How to Live a Low Carbon Life , caused a right old eco-kerfuffle on the blogosphere this week when it appeared that he was claiming exactly that - that driving is greener than walking.

This conjured up images of delighted SUV owners driving endless laps around town, happily belching out fumes and yelling “You’re ruining the earth for all of us” at walkers along the way.

Goodall’s claim seemed sure to make environmentalists and health officials incandescent with rage, while delighting car manufacturers and oil companies. And couldn’t couch potatoes take it as a ringing endorsement of their lifestyles - all that stuff we’ve been told about taking the stairs instead of the lift was wrong all along. We knew it didn’t feel right! Walking, that most arduous of pastimes, finally exposed for the ecologically unsound activity that it is. Hallelujah!

The science behind Goodall’s argument is as follows. Driving a typical car for three miles (4.8km) from point A to point B adds about 0.9 kg of CO2 to the atmosphere. Which sounds like a lot - surely you would be kinder to the earth if you put on your runners and walked instead? Well, the catch is that while you walk, your body has the annoying habit of burning energy (in this case 180 calories), which is terribly bad for the environment because that energy has to be replaced using food. And the food which we eat has to be reared, grown, processed, sprayed, packaged, transported and refrigerated - all of which results in lots of emissions.

For the purpose of the study Goodall uses beef for calorie replenishment and calculates that 100g of meat is required, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions - four times more than produced by driving. The net result is that the environment would prefer it if you didn’t walk at all, thanks very much.

Before you go off and throw your tatty runners in the bin, there are a couple of points to bear in mind. First of all there is an obvious flaw in his methodology - most of us don’t have a diet that consists exclusively of beef. A claim that driving is better for the environment than a group of perambulating Atkins Dieters might have some basis in fact. But the rest of us tend to eat other things as well.

Secondly, this is a classic case of taking the headline from a scientific study and completely missing the point of that study in the process. Goodall was not advocating driving as a greener mode of transport than walking; he was highlighting the fact that food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with the calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. So, in other words, if I am out walking and along the way consume a South American banana, the fact that the fruit has been flown half-way means my innocent walk has a carbon footprint the size of a small town.

Only a fool, however, would suggest that I should give up walking to fix the problem. Goodall’s study, for those who bothered to read it fully before jumping out of their own skin in anger, makes a prescient point: the way we have chosen to set up our food chain is a major contributor to climate change.

All of this serves to highlight just how many complex decisions we face when it comes to food shopping. You would really want to be putting an entire day aside for trips to the supermarket these days to give you enough time for in-depth analysis of the environmental and health implications of every item that goes in the trolley.

I could stand in the aisles for hours riddled with climate change guilt, pondering the pros and cons of an organic mango, for example. On the one hand, it hasn’t been sprayed with any nasties, which means it should be pretty good for me. But on the other hand it has been flown in from India so it’s an air-miles disaster zone. Maybe I’m better with a bag of good old-fashioned Irish carrots; but hold on, they’re not organic so they’ve probably been sprayed half to death and they’re wrapped in plastic.

What to do? Should I be in a supermarket at all? Should I just stop eating altogether? Is my “five-a-day” health-kick responsible for turning the Irish summer into monsoon season? Perhaps the only realistic approach in a world gone mad is to try to be sensible, difficult as that may be.

In a supermarket a few weeks ago I had in my hand a garlic bulb from China priced at 99 cent. Ninety-nine cent! Garlic grows perfectly well here in Ireland, so how can it make sense to ship it over 5,000 miles and then sell it for less than €1? That’s how bizarre our food chain has become. That’s how unsustainable it is. That’s why it’s important than ever to try to grow some of your own, buy local when available, organic where possible, and try to keep away from processed and packaged food. Oh, and give up that walking. It’s killing us all.

© 2007 The Irish Times

An Irishman’s Diary - Saturday April 4th 2007

The closing credits to Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth finish with the statement: “A Carbon-Neutral Production”.

Now, I’m a big fan of Al and his movie but he said himself that he has delivered his famous presentation more than 1,000 times around the world, so he must have clocked up many more thousands of air-miles in the process. Then there’s the ground transportation, hotels for the crew, and all of the carbon emissions you would associate with any film production. So how can the documentary be carbon-neutral?

Well, it’s simple. It’s done via a process called carbon offsetting. It works on the premise that an entity which produces a lot of pollution can buy credits from an entity which does not. In the case of An Inconvenient Truth , Paramount Classics and Participant Productions, which produced the movie, hooked up with a Native American energy company called NativeEnergy to offset 100 per cent of the emissions produced during filming and post-production activities. Voluntary carbon offsetting is in vogue: at the recent Fianna Fail Ardfheis the Taoiseach announced that the Government would offset the emissions from public service and ministerial air travel.

Even ordinary individuals like you and me can get in on the carbon-trading fun. Let’s say you’re planning to fly to your holiday home in Barbados, but feel bad about the 1.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions that will be produced by the flights? Feeling bad is for mugs! Log on to any number of websites that trade in salving eco-guilt - oops, sorry, I mean trade in carbon offsets - and for €40 you can neutralise the flight’s emissions by buying into “new environmental technologies, projects in developing nations and forestry plantation”.

They’ll even send you out a personal certificate to hang on the wall so you can show your friends just how green you really are. Now off you go to Bridgetown and enjoy your holiday, you big, green, lean eco-machine! It’s surely only a matter of time before you will be able to buy “green” petrol that has a built-in fee for offsetting the emissions the petrol produces. SUV drivers across the land rejoice: no more guilt at the petrol pump.

Trading carbon emissions is very big business indeed and it is estimated that the voluntary offset market will be worth €450 million by the end of this decade. It is frontier stuff for the moment - almost entirely unregulated - but let’s leave that aside for the moment. If carbon offsets are here to stay and we all agree that they are a good idea, then we can assume that the industry will be regulated eventually.

But the bigger question is whether carbon trading is a good idea in the first place. Or is it all simply hot air that allows individuals, corporations and governments to delude themselves and others that they are doing something about climate change while, at the same time, disguising the lack of real progress on the issue. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to reduce carbon emissions. Is paying someone else to reduce their emissions the same thing? The reality is that offsetting is a licence for us to continue (or worse, intensify) our carbon-intensive lifestyle with impunity, leaving that nasty eco-friendly abstinence to others. Let them plant trees, switch off lights and start compost heaps. I’m busy living.

The environmentalist George Monbiot likened carbon offsetting to the middle-age practice of trading indulgences. The perverse logic back then was that you could buy your way out of purgatory by buying indulgences from people who had a surplus of good deeds and so could afford to sell you some of them. Actual penance for your sins - kneeling, praying, fasting, doing good deeds - well, that was for poor people. If you were, in modern parlance, cash-rich, you didn’t need to bother yourself with such undignified grovelling. Sin was an income generator and subject to the laws of supply and demand. Carbon offsetting is much the same, with climate sins being traded instead of regular ones. Impure air rather than impure thoughts.

Let’s get back to the Taoiseach’s green announcement at the ardfheis. Every year around St Patrick’s Day the government gets a collective kicking for sending ministers off around the globe to represent Ireland at various hoolies. Nobody is seriously suggesting that they should abandon this ambassadorial role; traditionally we were just jealous that they were getting out to warmer climes while we had to stay here in the wind and rain watching tractors pull floats down main street. But now, armed with our new eco-awareness, we can kick them over their carbon footprint instead, which is a lot more fun.

Offsetting the emissions of ministerial flights is a cunning ploy by the Government in the run up to an election in which the Green Party is threatening to take a big chunk of the uncommitted vote. It also means that from here on, the Government can swat away criticism about the emissions generated by high-flying ministers. But why stop there? There is no end to the possibilities which offsetting provides the Government with. Ministers can now happily dispense with the nonsense of being driven around in hybrid cars and use a fleet of Hummers instead. They can get rid of the radiators in Government Buildings and replace them with coal-burning open fires. Back off, mister, we’re offsetting!

When the Hummer pulls up outside your door and the minister looks for your vote, ignore the offsetting guff. Ask him instead by how much our carbon emissions are being reduced. Oh, you mean, they’ve actually increased by 140 per cent since 1990? Now that’s not very good is it?

© 2007 The Irish Times

An Irishman’s Diary - Saturday March 17th 2007

My father-in-law tells a great yarn about an old farmer who lived near him when he was young. The poor man used to get his water from a stream that ran close to his house and the tea he drank often had frog-spawn floating in it. It probably didn’t taste very nice, but it did him no harm: the man lived to see his 90th birthday. That little anecdote - and the fact that roughly a billion people on the planet have no access to fresh water - seems a good place to start a discussion about “luxury waters”.

The priciest water on sale in Ireland is the Norwegian brand Voss, which is available at the Ice Bar in the Four Seasons Hotel and the trendy Dylan Hotel. At the Dylan it costs €9 for a 0.8 litre bottle (we’re always giving out about the cost of petrol but at approximately €1 per litre, it’s cheap compared with Voss). Norwegian newspapers recently reported that the company which produces Voss asked the authorities in the nearby town to drill a new well to supply locals so that Voss could have sole use of the famous spring. In other words, the fact that local residents were flushing their toilets with the product was considered detrimental to the brand’s exclusivity.

That tells you pretty much all you need to know about the bottled water debate. One man’s €9-a-bottle lifestyle choice is what another man uses to wash his teeth free of charge. The only difference between the two is a fancy bottle and some clever marketing. Does Voss taste any better than standard water? Well, it tastes nice. But it’s not €9 nice.

We drink 160 million litres of bottled water each year in Ireland and, apart from the environmental concerns (65 per cent of the bottles go to landfill), the obvious question is: is the stuff any better than what comes from the tap? The Thames Water Company in England reported that in a blindfolded taste challenge, wine writer Richard Ehrlich opted for tap water over two leading bottled brands. In fact, he was so impressed by the tap water he described it as “so pure and neutral it was almost sweet”. High praise indeed. Why not try a test yourself and see if you notice the difference?

There was a great scene in a 1992 episode of Only Fools and Horses in which Del started bottling tap water in his flat and calling it Peckham Spring Water. How we laughed. Who would have thought the scam would catch on? An estimated 40 per cent of the water on the bottled market globally is purified mains water, so unless it specifically says spring water on the label, you are paying for the same drink that comes from the tap. Coca Cola has the following to say on its website about where their bottled water Dasani comes from: “Coca-Cola Bottlers start with the local water supply, which is then filtered for purity using a state-of-the-art process called reverse osmosis.” Reverse osmosis, eh?

Meanwhile, water becomes more and more exclusive in the West with producers, bars and restaurants falling over themselves to encourage us to view water like a fine wine. Colette Water Bar in Paris offers more than 60 brands, while the top selling H2O at Water Works restaurant in Philadelphia is Bling H20, priced at $50 a bottle and poured from a corked frosted bottle handcrafted with Swarovski crystals. It seems the more you charge the more people want it. Water Works even has a “water sommelier” who will advise on which water to drink with your food. Eau dear.

A Californian called Michael Mascha has written a book on the subject and even set up a website, http://www.finewaters.com, to introduce readers to the “epicurean delights of water”. The website is full of tips for the budding water connoisseur, including optimum temperature and stemware, and how to differentiate between the “loud” bubbles of a sparkling water such as Perrier and the effervescent small bubbles of Voss.

Conrad Boult, bar manager at the Dylan Hotel, says the style of the Voss brand is as important as what is in the bottle. “We just wanted something a little different and Voss is very big in the UK at the moment. The bottle is almost a fashion statement and it fits in nicely with the boutique feel of the hotel.” So, as the marketing executives are at pains to point out, it’s not about the water. It’s a statement about who you are. Take that as you will.

Customers of the Dylan clearly think they are worth it. “We have a very up-market clientele who think nothing of paying €140 for a bottle of champagne. In that context, €9 for water is not much. People are paying to be in a nice establishment and they come here for the atmosphere.” What would happen if I asked for a glass of tap water?

“If people specify that they want tap water then we will give it. Of course we will. We are not in the business of ripping people off.” So the choice is yours, it would appear: €9 a bottle or on the house? You decide.

© 2007 The Irish Times

An Irishman’s Diary - Saturday March 3rd 2008

Odd as it may sound, the most exciting part of my first skiing holiday about two years ago was the transfer by coach from the airport. As the bus left the city, trees replaced office blocks and we climbed higher and higher, winding our way up treacherous mountain roads. And then we saw it. The first glimpses of snow on trees. Then on roads. More and more of it, until finally it was everywhere and we were immersed in a winter wonderland. We see so little of the stuff in Ireland that a frisson of excitement rippled around the bus, writes Michael Kelly

But this year there is no snow to be seen anywhere on our journey to the Tyrolese resort of Soll, which nestles in a valley between the majestic Wilder Kaiser and Hohe Salve mountains. When we arrive at our destination the dearth of snow causes a tangible depression on the bus, which is odd given that we are on a week’s holiday. I recognise the feeling immediately from boyhood memories of snow melting away after a brief spell of delighted snowman-making, snowball-throwing, frozen fingertips and ruddy cheeks: an all-encompassing melancholy that my parents told me was childish. “Snow melts,” they would say. “It’s what happens.” But resorts such as Soll are trying to bend these strict meteorological rules.

While the town itself is completely devoid of the white stuff, up on the nursery slopes and further up the Hohe Salve the local ski industry carries on in defiance of Mother Nature. This is made possible by a massive and mostly unseen operation which takes place while sore skiers head for the après-ski bars or retire half crippled to bed.

About half-way up the Hohe Salve there is a kidney-shaped water reservoir (there’s no ice on it, incidentally, which tells you how mild the weather is). From here a pumping station carries pure mountain water to a battery of snow-making machines on the pistes. At night, when temperatures fall below -2 degrees C, the machines crank in to action, blasting out compressed water which immediately turns to snow in the chilly alpine air. It is not quite real snow (it’s wetter for a start) but it is not quite artificial either. Gravity-defying snow ploughs creep up and down the slopes all night smoothing out this fresh snow.

When holidaymakers climb out of bed the following morning to wrestle with hangovers, aching limbs and ski-boots that seem heavier than the day before, there is fresh snow to ski on. By day, the frozen ground underneath delays the melting of snow in rising air temperatures. Skiing in a balmy 12 degree C is an odd experience. We even see some skiers abandoning the normal bulky apparel and heading down the slopes in T-shirts. The slopes themselves look like small white enclaves surrounded by armies of green grass.

By mid-afternoon the snow bows to the inevitable and turns to slush, making conditions hazardous, especially for novices attempting inaugural snow ploughs and parallel turns. Then the temperature drops, night falls and the whole operation begins again.

Snow-making is controversial. While the machines are undoubtedly effective - operating all night, a single cannon can cover two acres in a foot of snow - they are notoriously inefficient. They use up to 400 gallons of water a minute and need enormous amounts of energy to run them. It’s a vicious circle: global warming means a lack of snow, but the machines themselves increase CO2 emissions, thereby contributing to global warming and making the snow even scarcer. And that’s before you count the emissions from the aeroplanes that flew all the skiers to the resort.

But before you go getting all judgmental about the snow cannons, bear this in mind: almost every house we saw in Soll had large south-facing windows and enormous solar panels. The local Volkshochschule has a grass roof. How many towns in Ireland can you say that about? For locals there is a simple fiscal imperative: snow cannons keep the skiers coming and the entire community employed.

We obsess about snow for the entire week. The lack of it. The quality of it. Rumours about it. A guy tells me that another guy told him that it might snow on Wednesday. Maybe. People huddle around optimistic talk as if it’s a warm fire. In the event, Wednesday brings more bright sunshine and blue sky. People who were in Söll last year talk of a mythical time when snow was three metres deep on the roofs of houses. “Last year you could ski right down to the town centre from the slopes,” someone told me as we struggled along in our ski-boots, carrying our skis and poles. An optimistic local told me that there was a winter even worse than this in the middle of last century. “The good times will return,” he said, somewhat wistfully.

But such optimism is not well-founded. This year is not a freak. The past 15 years have included four of the warmest years in the past 500. The OECD warned recently that global warming could kill off as many as two-thirds of all ski areas in the Alps. A 2 degree rise in temperature will make skiing at altitudes below 1,500 meters impossible (Soll’s highest peak reaches 1,829m but most of the slopes are below the 1,500m line). Eventually it will be too warm even for the weather-defying snow cannons.

© 2007 The Irish Times

It’s ugly, our new polytunnel. And yet it’s also an object of great beauty. For out of it will come - shortly, we hope - potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce and, with luck, some Mediterranean fare: basil, aubergines, watermelons and the like. Polytunnels are often called poor men’s greenhouses, but I like to think of them as good value rather than cheap. Ours is five metres (15ft) wide and 10 metres (30ft) long and cost about €600. A greenhouse of those dimensions could cost €6,000.

So I like to think of the polytunnel as a workhorse and a greenhouse as a show pony. If you want an abundance of vegetables and fruit for the table in difficult Irish weather, get a polytunnel. If you want your garden to be considered for a gong at Chelsea Flower Show . . . don’t.

We got the tunnel for a few reasons, but mainly because our soil is seriously wet. As a result our vegetable plot was usable only in high summer. It gave us a bountiful crop last year but then stood abandoned, untidy and boggy for the better part of seven months. We reckon the tunnel will extend the growing season as well as allowing us to produce some slightly exotic fare. We had a serious problem with slugs last year; our many unpleasant night-time expeditions with bucket and torch convinced us that the vegetables needed a drier environment. The tunnel now stands pretty much where our vegetable plot was; as this is down in a corner of our garden, it’s not too much of an eyesore.

We bought our tunnel from Simon Cummins in Wexford. He delivered it himself, and although he chatted amiably about tunnels in general he didn’t seem to be making any moves to erect ours. I eventually discovered, with some concern, that putting it up wasn’t part of the deal. It basically comes in a kit that includes the frames and plastic. The day it was delivered I laid the aluminium frames out on the ground, about where they were going to go, and, satisfied, headed back inside for dinner. They lay there patiently for a week or two before I got around to doing anything with them. I would see them when I opened the curtains in the bedroom each morning, and sometimes I would just close the curtains again, so I wouldn’t have to look at them.

The tunnel guy had given me a kind word or two of advice and left a suspiciously short page of instructions, but I was confident I could erect the thing. Mrs Kelly knows me well, however - and her mother, who has a polytunnel already, knows life’s realities - so on the QT she organised for some reinforcements to be sent down to help.

Her sister, her brother and his wife duly arrived, and we got started. Her brother in particular seemed to know what he was doing. He got stuck into a complicated-looking procedure that involved running builder’s line around four pegs that marked out the corners. He and Mrs Kelly discussed at length the application of Pythagoras’ theorem to the problem of ensuring the frames were square. I tried to nod in all the right places and look interested. (I didn’t believe my maths teacher when he tried to convince us that theorems would come in useful in later life.) I kept to myself the fact that my plan, had I been left to my own devices, mainly involved “digging”.

Next we drove aluminium tubes into the ground along the boundary (five on each side). The U-shaped frames around which the plastic is going to be stretched are fitted into the tubes (that sentence is easy to write but took a bit of huffing and puffing in reality). We then dug a trench along each side - essentially, you bury the plastic in them, one on each side of the tunnel. We probably should have waited for a warmer, less windy day to do the work with the plastic. It comes in one huge sheet, and it took a lot of effort to position it over the frames and bury it in the trenches on each side. At one stage a gust of wind nearly took the whole sheet into a neighbouring field. It was like struggling with an enormous errant kite. The key with the plastic is to pull it rigidly tight over the frames. Otherwise the wind will catch it (which would be very, very noisy) and water will collect on it. When we were finished, one side in particular looked kind of saggy.

The father-in-law arrived later that evening for a look, and he insisted we dig that side out and start again. He was right, as we got it much better the second time (and he helped, so we couldn’t complain). We leaned on our shovels, admiring our handiwork. It was like Amish getting together to build a house in a day. I felt the warm glow of community, of shared effort. Or that might have been the Deep Heat I put on my back to ease the pain from digging.

The next day I dug out a path down the centre of the tunnel, about half a metre deep. Initially you couldn’t stand up straight in the tunnel, but now, with the path, you can, which makes life more comfortable. It wasn’t comfortable digging, though. Even at this time of the year it’s like a sauna in there when the sun shines. It’s a tropical kind of humidity that warms the bones the moment you enter. (You can imagine how it will be in the summer.) Someone once told me that they hung a clothes line in the tunnel in the winter, to dry their washing. Now that’s resourceful.

The lowered path leaves you, in effect, with a raised bed on each side. The path took me most of a day to dig: 10 metres long by half a metre deep is 60 cubic tonnes of soil (or something like that) to remove by wheelbarrow. Now when Mrs Kelly says “You never do any work in the tunnel” I can say: “I never do any work? Do you not remember how I lost half a stone digging out the path?”

Design flaw number one: I actually dug out too much soil, and the path was below the water table. So when the first really wet day came the path looked like a narrow swimming pool. I got in 40 lengths while I was thinking about how to remedy it. Next up were the doors. Tunnel guy doesn’t supply doors or door frames; he assumes that as you’re up for erecting the tunnel you won’t mind knocking together a few. The last time I went to the local DIY store for wood it was for my much-maligned hen house. When the owner saw me coming this time he praised God and shouted something to his wife in the back about how they would “eat well tonight”. I bought lengths of two-by-four for the door frames, waterproof plywood for the half-doors, and hinges and bolts. I bought more lengths of two-by-four to lay along each side of the path, to keep the soil in the beds from falling out. Mostly I’m just telling you that so I could write two-by-four again. Once I had the frames in place I got the door up in no time with my favourite tool: the electric screwdriver. It’s the only tool on God’s earth that can make a DIY novice like me feel like Handy Andy.

At the moment only spuds and onions are growing visibly in the tunnel. But they provide enough greenery to let the onlooker know that serious food production is going on.

The potatoes were in the ground before the tunnel arrived, but they are thriving now. We have also planted tomatoes, basil, lettuce, scallions, spinach, aubergines and cucumbers. We are watching eagerly for signs of life. Because of the heat in the tunnel, it needs daily watering. Design flaw number two: we didn’t place it near a tap. Our garden hose doesn’t stretch far enough, so until I put an outside tap near the polytunnel we are reduced to going up and down the garden with the watering can. But who cares? These are labours of love. And while we dig and weed and water we dream of the lushness of summer. When our tunnel will be crowded with green leaves, plump vegetables, aromatic herbs and fleshy fruits.

You can contact Michael Kelly by e-mailing

The problem with farmers’ markets in Ireland can be summed up in one word - inconsistency. Anyone who does the rounds of markets will be familiar with the broad spectrum of experiences that they can throw at you. On the one hand it can be a genuinely thrilling alternative to the supermarket. You roam from stall to stall, bursting with enthusiasm as you stock up on fresh, seasonal and local produce. You chat amiably to stallholders, sip fresh coffee or eat a freshly barbecued free-range sausage.

And just when you think you will never darken the door of a supermarket again, on another weekend jaunt the majority of stalls seem to be selling brown bread, cakes and jams, which are nice and all, but you can make them at home. There is one solitary fruit and veg stall with a frankly uninspiring array of produce and, wait a minute, bananas and oranges? They’re not local or seasonal. There is no meat or fish available, but there is a stallholder selling Che Guevara T-shirts. And speaking of farming, where are all the farmers?

At the last count there were 126 farmers’ markets operating across Ireland, and new ones open up almost every week. You get a sense of a movement at a crossroads - it is either a short-lived elitist, bourgeoisie fad, or it is the saviour of the rural economy and a bulwark against supermarket hegemony. A fitting juncture then for the movement to host its first get-together, which it did recently at the Farmers’ Market conference in Athlone.

The Government turned out in force, sending two Ministers along: Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Eamon O Cuiv and Minister of State for Food and Horticulture, Trevor Sargent. The latter’s arrival (by train, no less) created a palpable buzz, and when he informed us that he used to sell his own vegetables to a Co Meath market, some delegates swooned. He talked about whipping refusenik local authorities into shape and addressing the anomalous situation where some authorities are the markets’ most passionate advocates, while others treat them like a boil. As one speaker put it, markets are funded in some counties and fined in others. “Local authorities have a long-standing responsibility,” Sargent said, “which has been allowed to wither and which I am trying to rekindle.”

The consistency issue was articulated most forcefully by the movement’s high-priestess, Darina Allen, who set up Ireland’s first farmers’ market in Cork in 1999. When Allen talks about what markets should be like, you can’t help wishing that she was involved in your locality, cajoling and encouraging producers and organisers.

Markets must be there every week, she said, so that consumers are not confused about when they are on. She advocates short evening markets to cater for modern shopping patterns. There should be a market controller to monitor quality, and a code of practice which producers must sign up to. She tells the story of a stallholder caught un-wrapping a cake and trying to sell it as home-made. “If we break the bond of trust with the consumer,” she said, “we are doomed.”

Markets must offer variety. Breads, jams and cheeses are important. But what about wild game and rabbits, rare-breed meats, live chickens, fresh fish, home-made stocks, old varieties of apples? What about educational stalls showing people how to sow seeds or a “forgotten skills” stall that shows people how to make butter?

Allen believes that stallholders and consumers have a part to play when it comes to the thorny issue of markets being perceived as expensive. For their part, stallholders need to tell the story of their food. “A lot of people,” she says, “don’t realise that it takes 100 days to rear a really good chicken and that’s why they have to cost €15, whereas the ordinary chickens are produced in 38 to 41 days.” And as for us consumers, we can’t have it both ways - we can’t expect wholesome, fresh, nourishing food at discount store prices.

The problem is how we go about bringing our markets up to the level of our aspirations. Is there an argument for a national standard, or tasking local authorities with regulating and monitoring to ensure the markets do what they are supposed to? Or will that just suck the life out of it? There is no real consensus on this central issue and that’s a worry. “I think it’s imperative that we have some sort of protocol in place,” says food writer Clodagh McKenna. “If a market wants to call itself a farmers’ market then it should be regulated. I think we should establish a national expert group to come up with a well thought-out set of regulations.”

Darina Allen, on the other hand, believes that self-regulation is the way forward. “Rather than getting involved in national regulations where one size fits all, I think every market should have a code of practice and protocol, and a strict one at that, which is what we do in Midleton.” But not every market has a protocol in place and therein lies the problem. “If local authorities make a space available for a market,” says Denis Shannon, who organises markets in Co Wexford, “they could also write down basic criteria that they expect of producers. In England you have to be producing within 50 miles of a market. There’s a lot of merit in that.”

As conference chairman John Bowman said: “This is not just about markets - it’s about the health of the nation.”

© 2007 The Irish Times

There’s an episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa tells her father that she is becoming a vegetarian and will never eat meat again. Aghast, Homer asks: “What about bacon?” “No.” “Ham?” “No.” “Pork chops?” “Dad! Those all come from the same animal.” “Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.”

In Ireland we consume more pork than any other type of meat and it accounts for 41 per cent of our total national meat intake, according to the Central Statistics Office. On average, we devour 40kg - or 881lbs - of pork each per annum. Ham, pork chops, roast pork, pork steak, salami, pepperoni and of course the jumbo breakfast roll, with sausages, bacon and pudding. Yum Yum. A wonderful, magical animal indeed.

Recent years have seen massive improvements in the supply of free range and organic meat, but oddly, not pork. Think about it. When’s the last time you saw free range or organic pork in your supermarket? The answer most probably is that you haven’t. To understand this anomaly we firstly need to understand how the industry is set up. At a time when our annual output of pigs has soared to more than three million slaughtered animals (3.16 million in 2005, according to Bord Bia), the number of pig farmers has fallen dramatically - from over 60,000 in 1970 to less than 500 today. Some 3 million pigs from a few hundred farmers? That’s one hell of a herd at each farm.

As well as fewer, bigger farms, we have fewer, bigger abattoirs killing the animals. Small local slaughterhouses have been all but eliminated by government policy, EU directives and economic realities. When the Government announced a €50 million grant scheme for large processors recently, the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland called it an “attack on small and local processors”. With small farmers and local abattoirs squeezed out, we are left with industrial-scale pork production: bad news for the poor pig.

Almost all commercial pigs are kept indoors in cramped conditions. An intensively reared pig will never eat a blade of grass or a vegetable or feel the sun on its back. Because they can’t go outside they never get to indulge in their favourite pastime: rooting.

About half of breeding sows are kept in stalls so narrow they can’t even turn around. These unfortunate creatures produce six or seven litters and are then slaughtered. They are probably better off. Their offspring fare no better. Their short lives are all about fattening up quickly.

It’s not right to treat animals this way, but most of us don’t warm to animal-welfare issues when pigs are involved. Unfortunately, pigs have something that makes their misery even more complete: intelligence. Pigs have lots of it - at least as much as your dog. We get all misty-eyed at the mention of someone harming a dog, and we buy our dogs treats for Christmas. The pig ends up as the Christmas ham.

If animal welfare doesn’t bother you, then think about food quality. These days pork is an insipid, average affair. When you grill a rasher you can see the grill tray through the rasher, and that’s a bad sign. It looks meaty enough in the packet but shrivels to nothing when you cook it. And it seems to be covered in a white froth. What’s that about?

Thankfully, free-range pork producers are popping up at farmers’ markets, and they deserve support. The only other way to be certain of a decent rasher is to rear your own.

The decision to get into porcine husbandry is not to be taken lightly. Growing vegetables or keeping a few hens is easy, but keeping pigs is a whole new ball game. You are unlikely to be alarmed if a hen runs at you; you are likely to be very alarmed indeed if a fully grown pig runs at you. Pigs are livestock. Keeping pigs is, dare I say it, farming.

We got two piglets a few months ago, and it has been a revelation. When you get to know an animal - its habits, personality and temperament - it’s very hard to ignore the plight of its intensively reared cousins. Our pigs are a breed called Tamworth, an old, unusual, rust-coloured breed known for its gregariousness and long snout, which it uses for vigorous rooting.

Pigs don’t need as much space as you would think. We keep them at the end of our garden where we used to have the compost bin and throw the grass cuttings. It was a no-go area, overgrown with ivy and weeds. I bought a small, €90 battery-powered electric-fence charger and some fencing posts and cordoned off a pen about 20m long and a bit less than 10m wide. It’s not piggy heaven, but they seem happy enough. They enjoy running around two trees in the middle of the plot. All that exercise will probably mean it will take longer to fatten them, but maybe that’s no bad thing. The trees also provide them with shade, which is important for pigs, as they burn easily.

You can buy specially designed “pig arks” for them to sleep in, but pigs are not very fussy as long as they have somewhere warm and dry. My neighbour got me an old plastic oil tank that we cleaned and then cut one end out of for a door. It has worked a treat. When they come towards you they cock their heads up, quite endearingly, just like Babe. They are quiet enough for the most part. They’ll squeal if they are hungry or if they see you coming with the bucket, and they are fairly noisy eaters, slurping greedily in the trough. We feed them a mixture of rolled barley and organic pig feed.

Pigs root and eat soil because it gives them vitamins and minerals. They also eat insects, grubs and worms that they find while rooting. They root all day long. I can’t imagine what Ireland’s three million other pigs do with their time. We had to revisit the electric-fencing arrangements because the animals escaped once too often. A pair of pigs can seriously damage your lawn or vegetable plot, so secure fencing is vital. We got some sheep wire as a second line of defence.

There’s one myth I can dispel. They are not particularly dirty, and there’s no discernible smell. They keep their house completely clean and tend to reserve an area at the other end of the patch as their toilet. I go in every other day and clear it, because it’s dynamite for compost.

The job of naming them fell to our nieces and nephews, who came up with Charlotte and Wilbur. I still think we should have called them Rasher and Sausage, to keep us focused.

© 2007 The Irish Times

SOMETIMES WHEN I take a break from writing and look out the window at our passable impression of The Good Life - vegetable plot, polytunnel, hens, pigs etc - I can’t help but marvel at the fact that we’ve ended up here. You know when you look back on the really pivotal decisions in your life, and you can’t believe you actually had the balls to make them? I wonder if we were faced with the same decisions again, would we have sufficient courage second time around?

In the grand scheme of things, two people jacking in corporate life in Dublin to move to a leaky cottage in the country is nothing remarkable. But in terms of our life, it was huge. Sometimes I think if the wind had been blowing in a different direction, we might not have moved at all, and it’s sort of scary to think about just how random life can be. We could still so easily be getting up at 5.30am and commuting three or four hours a day to jobs we had no particular love for. Living in a commuter town we had no connection with. Wishing away the week. Living for the weekend.

Moving to the countryside was about taking back control of the seconds, minutes and hours that make up our day. It was about lifestyle and standard of living. It was about community and family. We bought our windswept acre in Co Waterford without even having jobs organised - that’s the sort of bravado the late, lamented Celtic Tiger conferred on its cubs. Mrs Kelly took the plunge first, leaving corporate life behind to become a teacher shortly after we moved here.

It took me a little longer. In early 2006 (less than two years ago, but in some ways a different lifetime) while I was still working in IT, the editor of this magazine published a tiny, 150-word piece about invisible keyboards (don’t ask). It was a blink-and-you’d-miss-it start to my journalism career, but a start nonetheless. I was, I assured myself, Irish Times material. Shortly after that, I got a larger piece published about keeping hens under the mouth-watering headline “Living in Eggstasy”. These modest incursions into the world of journalism were enough to convince me that I might have what it takes to make a living from writing.

I still get excited shivers down my spine when I think back on the day in July of that year when I finally abandoned life as a corporate drone. My boss was just back from holidays and he was all tanned and relaxed looking and when I finally managed to stop trembling sufficiently to get the words out - “I’m handing in my notice” - I could see he was thinking: “This is all I need, I haven’t even got through my e-mails yet.” And that was that. Overnight I went from (relatively) successful software salesman to struggling freelancer. Sure, our income is looking a little emaciated, but my God the flipside: the freedom, the flexibility, the free time. To love work, to be excited and challenged. Not to hate Mondays anymore.

The wannabe smallholder stuff started with a bulb of garlic. We were in a supermarket one afternoon shortly after we moved and came across something that seemed to highlight just how absurd our food chain has become: a bulb of imported Chinese garlic on sale for 42 cent. That bulb of garlic was our epiphany - how can it make sense to ship something so tiny and so cheap half way around the world when it grows perfectly well here in Ireland?

What started with a decision to plant some garlic in the garden to give two fingers to the Man, spiralled completely out of control to an obsessive, highly-addictive quest for kitchen table self-sufficiency. That can be frustrating when you know as little about growing and rearing things as we do. Looking back on it now, I can’t imagine us living our lives without producing our own food. It seems to complete the picture - it’s the icing on the cake. The garden has provided us with some truly magic moments. The first pristine egg from our new hens sitting triumphantly on a bed of straw. The day we brought two wriggling squealing piglets home wondering if they would always be this loud? Spending a whole day preparing a seed bed with my back and limbs aching and then at dusk feeling sorry the day was over. The distinctive cheep-cheep from the coop heralding the arrival of little chicks for Easter. The day we got Roger, the Sussex cockerel, and when his crowing woke us up at 5am the following morning, giving serious thought to turning him in to an earthy coq au vin. But above all, the steady momentum of the seasons. The abundance of high summer and autumn. The gentle, melancholic pause of winter. The excited anticipation of spring. These have been the most honest moments of my life.

© 2008 The Irish Times

MARKET GARDENER Jim Cronin works two muscular Percheron horses on his smallholding in Bridgetown, Co Clare. His family and locality were steeped in the tradition of working horses, so when he bought his farm in the 1980s, it was natural for him to use horses to work the land.

“Everyone around me, my family, neighbours and friends, knew about horses and I knew they would work well with small-scale horticulture. I started with a Cobb, and I have had all shapes and sizes since. My grandfather did it, my father did it, I am doing it and my 14-year-old son is able to work horses now, too. That continuity is important to me.”

But it’s not all about tradition - he says that horses are also the right tool for the job. “My philosophy is that it has to work. A lot of people would be interested in antiquated old machinery - things that need a lot of tinkering. I am not in to that at all. I don’t view my horses as antiques. They are here to work.”

Cronin has a tractor on his farm but is less and less interested in using it. The horses, he says, are better suited to particular jobs, such as preparing a seedbed, planting, cultivating and fertilising. Their impact on the land is gentler, too.

While a tractor will compact soil, a horse steps lightly between furrows leaving only footprints rather than long-lasting tracks. There is something magical about the idea of this enormous animal (they weigh about 800kg each and stand up to 17 hands tall) being able to tread delicately between furrows.

“I have a weed-control programme here, for example, which involves using a green manure. In February, I have to run a harrow through it which knocks back the first flush of weeds and opens up the soil. You couldn’t do that work with a tractor on our land in February.”

The horses also give him a certain protection from the world of economics outside the farm gate: he doesn’t need to worry about the price of diesel, for one thing.

They also fit beautifully with the smallholding ethos that a farm should be a self-contained and self-sustaining ecosystem with little need for outside resources. The horses are fed from the land’s produce and, in return, they work the land and fertilise it with their manure. For all the bells and whistles of the modern tractor, it is not that accommodating.

The Percheron, he says, is the classic French working horse. “I just love the passion and the power of the Percherons. They are very strong and very willing to work and perfect for working wet land. They will slosh through mud quite happily.

“The mothers of these horses worked so the ethic is in their bloodline. Putting a harness on them is a mixture of work and pleasure for me, the sound of the leather on the harness and the feeling of walking beside them. You must love the animals to do this. If you are constantly thinking that you could be doing the job faster on a tractor, then you are not in the right mindset.”

It’s unlikely, of course, that every farmer in the state will suddenly abandon the tractor for the humble horse, but with rising fuel costs there is an emerging interest in the idea.

Four years ago, Cronin started giving instruction classes on his smallholding and at The Organic Centre in Rossinver, Co Leitrim. What started as a niche course is starting to have more mainstream appeal. “It does take knowledge and skill to work horses, and it’s an accumulated knowledge that has by and large been lost. I see a change happening slowly with farmers being interested in keeping their tractors and using horses for specific jobs. These are very much people who want their farms to work. They don’t have their heads in the clouds.”

Wexford smallholder Denis Shannon attended one of Cronin’s courses in Rossinver in April, and was so impressed that he sold his tractor a month later. Shannon runs a 20-acre smallholding in Mayglass where he rears pigs, cows and poultry as well as growing fruit and vegetables to sell to local restaurants and markets.

Horses have been on the farm for years but they were basically pets. “Working them is something that had been in my mind for years,” he says. “When I was about nine or 10, we had a neighbour who had a pony and we used to borrow it to weed the furrows for the potatoes. So there is that element of nostalgia about this for me.”

Cronin’s course was a revelation, he says. “It’s like someone laying something out for you and you are sitting there wondering, ‘Why the hell didn’t I think of this before?’ We spent a day working with these magnificent animals and Jim painted a picture of this being something very practical rather than being about nostalgia.”

Within days, his own horses - a 16-year-old grey Connemara pony called Beauty and a 12-year-old Cobb called Blaze - were being put through their paces. They are still in the early stages of their training, he says, but he was confident enough in his (and their) ability after a month to sell off his tractor and other machinery.

“It took a while to drag the knowledge from the brain, but I just knew from the start that I could do the jobs I needed to do with them.” Does he miss the tractor? “I’ve spent days up on a smelly, noisy tractor and by the end of the day, I feel strung out - there’s nothing satisfying about it. Certainly, working a horse is physically demanding but it’s far more satisfying.

“Tractors have a lot of drawbacks on a smallholding. They are expensive to maintain and expensive to run. We can feed the horses from the smallholding so we have basically a free power supply. I go out in the morning and put the tack on them and they are there for the day, ready for whatever job I might be doing - weeding, hoeing, harrowing, ploughing.”

We tack up Beauty and head off around the farm. She seems delighted to be going out while Blaze is decidedly annoyed at being left behind, grunting dismissively as we head off. A small timber cart is attached to the tack and we use it to pick stones in a paddock, while three cows look on inquisitively.

Both horses love to work, according to Shannon. They are fitter than they used to be - as is he! Even with the substantial weight she is carrying, Beauty is eager to break into a trot. “She’s that type of horse. You are constantly reigning her in. She’s a real character but she’s some horse to work. I work on my own mostly but when I am working with them, I don’t feel that I am on my own. A horse is a thinking animal; they communicate with you.”

Beauty is impressively responsive, reacting instantly to voice commands such as “stand”, “go on”. We bring the stones from the farm up to an alpine rockery in front of the house. She effortlessly swings around on the lawn, stopping beside the rockery while we unload. You could do all this on a tractor, of course, but the lawn would take a year to recover from the trauma.

Next up, Shannon attaches a forecart to the tack (it looks for all the world like a rickshaw) and we sit in. The forecart has a tow on the back which takes all manner of attachments. Shannon loads a car trailer to it and Beauty heads off, pulling a cart with two people in it and a car trailer with apparent ease. Shannon tells me that he has been using the horses to collect feed and run errands at the local co-op.

What do the locals make of it, I wonder? “They are always amused at me anyway,” he laughs. “But they have even more reason to be amused now.”

Working with Horses, a one-day course for beginners, is at Jim Cronin’s farm in Bridgetown, Co Clare on August 30th (€99). Book with The Organic Centre, Co Leitrim, 071-9854338, http://www.theorganiccentre.ie

© 2008 The Irish Times

Camphill Jerpoint

THE CAMPHILL MOVEMENT was established in 1939 in Aberdeen by a paediatrician of Jewish origin, Dr Karl Koenig, who was fleeing Nazi persecution in his native Vienna. Koenig was drawn to the incredible ability of people with disabilities to live their lives from within a disabled body and he resolved himself to live with, care for and educate children and adults with special needs.

There are now 95 Camphill communities in 22 countries (including 14 in Ireland) where children and adults of all abilities live, learn and work together. In the tranquil Kilkenny countryside near Jerpoint Abbey, a Camphill community is home to approximately 20 people who share various tasks including domestic work, cooking and maintaining a substantial smallholding and food-processing facility.

Nine of the community’s co-workers have special needs, ranging from mild learning disabilities to autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy and according to the centre’s manager, John O’Connor, all have a role to play in keeping the community functioning properly. “They happen to have a disability but we look on that as secondary to their personalities and interests. The tendency in social care is for the person to be in the middle and surrounded by healthcare professionals - what’s called person-centred planning. The difference with Camphill is that all the adults, including those with special needs, are part of a mutual support group.”

Dignity through work is central to the Camphill philosophy, as is the belief that meaningful employment is therapeutic and boosts self-esteem. In many of the communities, including Jerpoint, “care farming” is used to promote mental and physical health. There is an unmistakable air of calm around the Jerpoint centre, but it is also highly productive and incredibly cutting-edge. The land here is farmed using Biodynamics, a form of organic husbandry which views a farm as a self-contained unit requiring minimal external input - that means home-produced composts, manures and animal feeds.

O’Connor shows me the woodchip boiler which heats every dwelling in the community and aimpressive compost corner where at least 10 heaps in varying stages of decay are busy producing black gold. “We try to care for the land using environmentally friendly methods and by living lightly and engaging responsibly.” Co-workers are busy toiling in the fields to the front and rear of a 19th-century Georgian house which houses the community’s busy kitchen. Every fruit, herb and vegetable imaginable is being grown in abundance here. A couple of pigs are being reared for the table in a small paddock while two more co-workers are busy lime-washing a cow-shed. The produce is used predominantly to provide food for the community and organic box schemes for local families and the excess is occasionally served up in the Watergarden café in Thomastown which is also run and staffed by Camphill.

“The idea of land work is not just to grow good vegetables - it is to provide meaningful work and educational possibilities. Broadly speaking, individuals develop a sense of well-being on a horticultural project - whether they are involved actively or passively, they seem to benefit.” The input that each co-worker makes varies greatly, ranging from what O’Connor calls “dabblers”, to the more seasoned gardeners and farmers such as James (see below). “They need to feel they are needed. They need to feel responsible for creating a meal and getting it on the table. For each and every person involved, the dignity that real work offers can not be underestimated.”

http://www.camphill.ie

St Raphaels Cork

LOCATED IN A renovated greenhouse in Frankendael Park, Amsterdam’s De Kas restaurant puts the importance of ultra-fresh produce quite literally front and centre - the kitchen and restaurant sit in the middle of a nursery where chefs get fresh seasonal vegetables, fruit and herbs. That same culinary ethos has followed former De Kas head chef Martijn Kajuiter to his new job running the kitchen of the Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, Co Waterford.

The Dutchman has a straightforward and almost completely egoless food philosophy - growers and food producers, he tells me, are the real heroes and the chef is but a messenger, telling a story about their food. All the better if that story is a phenomenally interesting one - take a look at the menu in this hotel’s restaurant and it describes a mutually beneficial collaboration with St Raphael’s Centre in nearby Youghal, Co Cork.

St Raphael’s provides residential and day-care services for more than 150 people with intellectual disabilities and one of the employment and therapeutic outlets for them is a horticulture project in the grounds of the centre. Up to now they were predominantly focussed on producing lettuce which was sold locally, but with Kajuiter’s encouragement and patronage, they have expanded their output considerably, growing fruit, herbs, edible flowers and a variety of vegetables including potatoes, tomatoes, kale and beetroot.

According to Ned Cotter of St Raphael’s, the collaboration has given a tremendous boost to the seven workers who work full-time in the vegetable garden and has provided a much-needed injection of funds - for example, the hotel has agreed to buy new plastic for the polytunnels which were vandalised and are looking a little worse for wear.

While there is clearly an altruistic element to his involvement, Kajuiter insists that the partnership ultimately satisfies his need for supremely fresh produce. “The only way you can get the most flavour and the healthiest produce is to buy seasonal and local. I needed access to that but I can’t do it alone - I am a chef, not a gardener. I called the St Raphael’s centre and told them what I needed and they said ‘Why not?’.”

He is cognisant of the need to balance his kitchen’s voracious appetite for produce with the fact that St Raphael’s is not a standard commercial growing operation. “When we spoke first they were afraid I would be coming down and saying, ‘I want this and I want that.’ But I am not like that. This doesn’t give us consistency of supply, but so what? I change my menu every day anyway. It’s good for the kitchen because it takes more effort to work this way and it gives us an extra dimension. Every chef gets produce from the same producers, whereas we always have something different.”

His chefs are encouraged to visit the garden before work to forage for interesting titbits for the evening’s menu and because they are picking only what they need, there is no waste. Kajuiter has an easy rapport with the St Raphael’s team - he respects their work and they enjoy being part of the Cliff House success story. “It gives a lot back to me too. I bring cake and coffee here and we sit down and talk. I am a visitor in their world.

“They cannot articulate the way we can but they want to be treated as normal and they want to show me everything. They don’t want to be pampered or patronised.”

© 2008 The Irish Times

Other days the cottage seems to resent our very presence and petulantly throws up interesting experiences (a leak in the roof or a draughty window) to show its displeasure.  Sometimes I shake my fist at the cottage and mutter dark threats: “We own this land you crabby old git! If you’re not careful, we’ll knock you down and build a bungalow!”

It might seem odd for people to have a relationship with bricks and mortar but then cottages are notorious for having more personality than most dwellings. We lived in a three-bed semi and, while it was a fine house, it didn’t seem to have much of a personality - perhaps it had an identity crisis, being surrounded by hundreds of other three-bed semis that looked just like it? Anyway, we had a perfectly ordinary relationship with it - perhaps a little bland, as relationships go, but surely, that’s how it should be? It’s only a dwelling after all.

The first day we saw the cottage, I knew we were home. As we went from room to room I had a big goofy smile on my face and Mrs Kelly had to give me a dig to play it cool in front of the estate agent because I was saying things like “wow, that’s lovely” instead of being critical like you’re supposed to be.

The realities of cottage living soon hit home. For starters, cottages are typically not as big as regular houses - we’re not after a McMansion or anything but we really could do with it being just a little bigger or for us to be just a little smaller, one or the other. We have two little box bedrooms upstairs under the rafters which are incredibly cute - if you saw a picture of them in some country-style magazine you would think “Hurrah! How adorable!” but unless you’re Frodo Baggins or an Oompa Loompa they’re just too small for comfort. We’ve tried all the clever space-saving optical illusions - they don’t work.

Secondly, cottages are not as toasty as regular houses. Ours is leaky, draughty and prone to damp and I expect The Consumption to set in any day now. We put in a solid-fuel stove and (environmentalists look away now) keep it lighting for most of the winter.

There’s a certain rustic, even romantic, charm to snuggling up in front of a stove on cold winter nights but sometimes you just wish it was 25 degrees so that you could sit around half naked. I’ve done what I can to improve the heat situation with various DIY insulation jobs, but there’s a fundamental reality you have to deal with when it comes to cottage living - there have been serious advances in building and insulation technology and all of them happened after your cottage was built.

There’s an unwritten rule about cottage life - all manner of little critters have been using the floors, walls and attic as their home for almost a century so they have more right to be here than you do.

At one time or another we’ve had mice, shrews, bats, rats and spiders in, under and over the house. When I get up in the attic, I do so with my heart in my mouth, half expecting to disturb some bears or a herd of caribou. We’ve even had a ghost in our sittingroom, though there was a lot of drink taken that night and he seemed of benign temperament.

For all its faults, we could never go back. There are just too many things about cottage living that I love.

I love that the stone walls are about a metre thick with bumps and hollows rather than a smooth plaster finish. I love those old-fashioned light switches and the half-door front door. I love the old flagstones on the kitchen floor and the wooden beams on the ceiling.

I love the feeling of warmth (metaphorically speaking), comfort and contentment that it evokes. I love that we have a duty of care to maintain this building which holds many memories for people in the area (we still meet people who know of someone who grew up in it, or picked mushrooms in our garden as a child). I love that it has history, provenance. I love that it has a story.

Now that summer is here - a time when cottage living really comes in to its own - our relationship enters its annual purple patch when we forget its foibles and fall in love again. No doubt we will fall out again when the winter returns - but we’ll never go our separate ways.

© 2008 The Irish Times

For a start there's the general untidiness that dogs seem to leave behind them - why can't they clean up after themselves?  A half-eaten green welly left on the deck; bits of an old toy or a long since eaten bone abandoned on a path; bedding taken out of the kennel and left on the lawn; a sponge stolen from it's perch on the windowsill and torn in to a million little yellow pieces that are then scattered to the four corners of the garden by a gentle spring breeze.

Holes dug in your favourite flower bed and heads bitten off your prize roses.  Rocks taken from the alpine rockery and used as chewing toys.  And all this is before we even get to what he does to the lawn.  My poor beautiful, green lawn.  There's poo everywhere - how can one dog produce so much poo?  Is it even physically possible?  Is he ill perhaps?  You pick some up, he deposits some more.  Just to annoy you he deposits some more while you are picking some up.  Your once pristine, manicured Wimbledon-esque lawn is covered in little yellowy-brown pee-stains.  Ah yes.  Man's best friend is indeed the gardener's worst enemy.

In our case, this war between love of dogs and love of garden is a war which our two dogs (loveable-but-bold Springer Ozzie and new arrival hyper-pup Sam) won a long time ago.  I've learned not to let it bother me so much anymore by telling myself that the garden is their territory too and since they spend more time in it than I do (lucky them), leave ‘em at it.  In any case, it's fair to say that in our garden the dogs aren't the worst offenders so we are more forgiving of their untidiness than we might otherwise be.  Two Tamworth pigs, five hens and a cockerel called Roger are also not particularly conducive to an award-winning garden.

Both of our dogs are keen to involve themselves in any activity that's going on in the garden.  Any time you get down on your knees, say for a spot of weeding, Ozzie sees it as an opportunity for some quality belly-rubbing (his belly, not yours) and will place himself strategically between you and the weeds.  It's fair to say, this makes weeding tougher than it would otherwise be.  Strangely, Sam thinks the red bristles on our yard-brush represent the teeth of some sort of scary animal so if I try to sweep a path he will go in to a frenzy of barking until I stop.  He is also adept at pruning and has developed a particular competency at stripping trees of their branches. 

Just last week I was transplanting some herbs to an old iron bath we use as a herb bed and when I went inside Ozzie climbed on top of the bed and curled up and went asleep.  I was mad as hell - all the herbs were ruined - but you could sort of understand his logic: in his mind, I had spent 20 minutes lovingly preparing this bed for him.  It did look like quite a snug fit and in fairness to him, he looked fairly appreciative. 

The biggest issue that most dog owners/gardeners have is the damage done to lawns by dog's urine and the general unpleasantness involved in clearing up poo.  I was in a pet store recently and noticed they were selling tablets which claim to neutralise the ammonia in your dog's urine, thus protecting your lawn.  My advice would be to treat such products with the contempt they deserve and leave your poor dog's inner workings alone.  If the pee-stains bother you and you have the time and the inclination, the best and cheapest solution is to pour some water over the pee when he's done.

Picking up dog poo is unpleasant.  Every other day I walk around the garden, shovelling the stuff in to a container and muttering dark words in the general direction of the dogs under my breath.  Far from being trained to eliminate in one area of the garden (see panel), our dogs seem to enjoy the challenge of doing it somewhere obscure in the hope that I won't find it until I am cutting the grass.  They sit and watch me as I stop, get off the mower, go get the shovel, remove the offending item and then get back on the mower again.  As I shake my fist at them they seem to be laughing at me - though I might be imagining that.

There is a product believe it or not called the Pet Poo Converter which is a specially designed wormery that breaks down dog poo in to a garden fertiliser.  Available from http://www.just-green.com and http://www.wormsdirectuk.co.uk for approximately £60.  This seems like a good plan - better than lobbing it over the wall in to your neighbour's garden at any rate.

Speaking of products, there is a plethora of them available to help dog-proof your garden.  I can't say I've tried any of them but they all appear ridiculous to me.  You can get special sprays for your plants which will allegedly keep the dogs away from them - highly toxic, I would think, to both plant and animal.  There are motion sensing water sprayers which will give your dog a spray in the face if he comes near a particular plant.  There are also books on canine-friendly garden design and garden-friendly canine training. 

My advice would be to hold on to your hard earned cash.  The best approach is to use a heap of common sense; don't expect your dog to stay out of your vegetable plot out of the kindness of his heart.  Fence it off instead.  Also, always remember that a bored dog is a dog that's about to get up to no good - so if you leave him in the garden from 6am to 6pm there's a fair chance he will occupy himself with some mischief.  A well exercised dog on the other hand will mainly spend his free time asleep.

There are plenty of old wives tales and recipes for keeping dogs away from your prize plants; everything from mothballs to ammonia.  I tried out one interesting one I found which involved sprinkling some freshly ground black pepper and chilli powder around the plant.  It seemed to succeed if the bout of sneezing it produced in Ozzie and Sam is anything to go by which incidentally gave me the best laugh I've had in a long, long time.

Dog Training

Lisa Whelan, a trainer with Dog Training Ireland agrees it can be difficult to combine a love of gardening with a love of dogs.  ''The two key concerns that people come to us with are digging and toileting and there are a number of practical steps that dog-owners can take to reduce the impact of these activities.  It's almost impossible to stop a dog digging if it is in their nature to do so.  Instead of trying to stop the dog digging, we would encourage people to designate an area for digging.  A digging pit can be made say in the corner of your garden using sand and topsoil and you encourage your dog to use it by burying some treats deep in the sand.  You should praise the dog when he digs in the pit.''

''Just like housetraining, training a dog to toilet in a particular area of your garden requires effort from the owner.  It's important to have a different type of surface in that area so he will start to understand that he shouldn't go on grass or on paths.  Woodchip is really good for this.  Lead the dog to the area and give him lots of praise when he toilets there.  If you catch him in the act of toileting on your lawn, say ''NO!'' and lead him quickly to the designated area.  Don't ever punish a dog if he has an accident.''

''In general terms a dog that gets lots of exercise is less likely to misbehave.  When dogs are bored and have lots of excess energy they will usually turn to mischief which is bad news for your garden.  If you have to leave a dog on it's own in a garden, make sure it has lots of things to distract it.  You could try for example hanging some toys from the branches of trees.''

Dog Training Ireland's website is http://www.dogtrainingireland.ie

I keep telling myself that I’m being stupid, that he’s just a dog, but you can’t help how you feel, can you?

“Do you want to take the collar off him?” the vet asks. It would be stupid to leave it on him, but it feels like stealing a wallet from a dying man. How could you do this to me, Ozzie seems to be asking with those big doleful eyes.

He was always somewhat pathetic looking - it was his most lethal weapon - but he’s particularly pathetic looking now: painfully thin, his ribs visible on either side of his back and his breathing shallow. We say an awkward, self-conscious goodbye. For want of something meaningful to say, I pat him on the head condescendingly and mutter “You poor old divil”.

And that’s it: out through the waiting room with the empty collar in my hand, the other pet owners staring at me, horrified. Some must be saying to themselves “I’m not taking my pet in there!”

Ozzie was a springer spaniel and our first pet. We had him for about five years. We always called him a rescue dog, which makes it sound as if he came from a pound, but we bought him from a farmer, who dragged him out on a rope and told me he was selling him because he was gun-shy - admittedly a major liability for a gun dog. He was riddled with fleas and worms, and whenever you put your hand out to pat him he would hit the deck, cowering at your feet while he waited for a blow. In that sense he was rescued.

His favourite pastime was escaping, and, perhaps because of the difficult start he had in life, he was very good at it. He used to escape from our garden, over a two-metre fence, then escape back in again before we got home.

Some mornings, when we’d go out to feed him, he would be covered from head to toe in muck, a sure sign that he had been on an early-morning jaunt. He wouldn’t even bother to look guilty. We tried everything to keep him in the garden, but he always found a gap in a ditch, scaled a wall, chewed his way through some chicken wire. Whatever worked.

You had to love his engine. He was a different dog when out on walks. If you walked two kilometres he would run 10, scurrying to and fro, his head down a hole, bum in the air, tail wagging furiously. We discovered that if you threw a stone into the sea or a river he would jump in and put his head down in the water until he found it. His logic seemed to be: “I will find this stone, even if I have to drown doing so.” He spent a lot of time at the vet.

He was like a canine Woody Allen: there was always something wrong with him. A fight with another dog meant he had to have his gum stitched up and some teeth removed.

There were always problems with his stomach, his eyes, his intestines. There were infections to be cleared, wounds to be dressed, tablets to be administered.

Bringing Ozzie to the vet was always stressful, because he made me feel like the worst dog owner in the place. He would frantically circle the room, sniffing at people’s feet and other dogs. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any more embarrassing, the leg would go up and he would pee against a chair.

He stood on a sea urchin one day, and his paw swelled up like a balloon. I rubbed his ears while he lay at my feet in the waiting room, and he started a kind of purring, which was a first for him. It was the most contented sound in the world, and the other owners were practically besides themselves with joy. “God, but he knows who looks after him,” said the owner of a terrier with a scabby eye.

About a year ago he stopped eating. The vet said he had a tumour in his intestines. We debated back then whether to put him down, but in the end he bounced back, and within a week or so he was his old self again. Lazarus, we started calling him. Then he stopped eating again. He started wheezing instead of breathing. This time there was to be no recovery.

You can’t reconcile the phrase “just a dog” with the hours spent at the vet, the countless walks, the throwing of a ball and occasional fetching, the feeding, worrying, caring, patting, laughing. He wasn’t just a dog. He was our dog.

Worrying about the food we eat is a complex issue.

To start with there’s the straightforward worries, let’s call them food pyramid worries, concerning the type and quantity of food we eat. Too much fat, too little fruit. Not enough of this, far too much of that.

Then there are worries about the artificial preservatives and colourings that have been added that might make our food dangerous.

And, finally, there’s the whole area of environmental concern, food miles, organics, packaging.

When you stand in the aisle of your supermarket trying to decide between organic asparagus flown in from France or a non-organic head of cabbage from Wexford, you are standing at the crossroads where all these concerns meet. It’s a confusing place to be.

Increasingly a trip to the supermarket includes a demanding mental workout. Should I forsake a tray of juicy vine tomatoes on account of their excessive packaging? How can I get my “five a day” if all of the fruit on the shelf comes from the southern hemisphere which we are told to avoid on the grounds of excessive air miles.

I scan the ingredients on a packet and try to recall information gleaned from a thousand healthy-eating articles. Which fat is bad fat? Saturated? Monounsaturated? Or was it polyunsaturated? Oh damn it. Just throw it in the basket.

To add to the frustration, food experts frequently move the goalposts just to keep us on our toes. We were told for years that eating too many eggs was bad for cholesterol. Now we’re back to “rise and shine, go to work on an egg”.

For a decade they said margarine was preferable to real butter - now apparently it’s the other way around. Faced with these complexities, perhaps the best approach is to be guided by common sense, but where to start?

One eminently sensible article I read suggested that keeping a food diary was a good way to take a long hard look at your diet.

I kept one for a week and I can tell you it makes for scary reading. Just the physical act of recording what you eat each day is revelatory.

Day 1

We are staying in a hotel so I kick off the day at the breakfast buffet with a bowl of All Bran, some berries and a mug of tea.  I have to be honest I would probably have opted for the full breakfast but I was a little delicate from the night before.  In the mood for some serious grease for lunch at the airport I have a ciabatta with bacon and a fried egg (basically a posh jumbo breakfast roll) and a mug of tea.  That evening, feeling tired after traveling we are not in the mood for cooking and so have cheese on toast with a poached (organic) egg.  Washed down with a mug of tea and three chocolate biscuit fingers.  Alcohol: None.

Day 2

Needing some detox after a rough weekend I start the morning with a glass of hot water with a squeeze of lemon, a bowl of porridge with a tablespoon of linseed and some honey followed by a cup of tea.  Mid morning I have a cup of coffee.  My mother invites me over for lunch and serves up an enormous grill; 3 sausages, two rashers, fried egg, white toast and tea.  This is not going to look good in the diary, I am thinking to myself as I scoff every morsel with relish (i.e. with delight, not the spicy sauce).  Feeling guilty after lunch I get back to basics for dinner.  We start with tomato soup and then have a big steaming bowl of homemade lamb stew made with butternut squash, carrots, spuds, leeks, red wine and stock.  Washed down with a glass of water.  After such a healthy dinner I feel I have earned a bowl of Tipperary ice cream and raspberry coulis.  Later on that evening I have a cup of tea and a single Belgian chocolate.  Alcohol: None

Day 3

Kick off the day with porridge, a poached egg on white toast and a cup of tea.  Mid morning coffee is followed by lunch which consists of a toasted sandwich with tomato, cheese, two rashers and home-made chutney.  To counteract the mid afternoon slump I opt for an apple and cup of tea.  For dinner we have the leftover of yesterday's stew followed by half a mince pie each.  Watching a movie that night I treat myself to tea and two chocolates.  Alcohol: None

Day 4

Feeling guilty about all the white toast I ate yesterday I have a poached egg on toasted brown bread and a cup of tea (after the customary porridge).  At 11am I have a homemade cookie and a cup of coffee.  Naughty boy.  Lunch is a white toast sandwich with lettuce and rocket from the tunnel, cheese, tomato and chutney.  Apple and a second cup of coffee at 3pm.  For dinner we have chilli con carne with rice and potatoes.  Having recovered suitably from the weekend's debauchery I have three glasses of red wine which gives me the munchies so I have some cheese on crackers and some crisps.  Later in the evening my mouth feels fuzzy from all the wine so I have tea and toast.

Day 5

We are attending a wedding today.  Breakfast consist of Cornflakes, tea and toast.  For lunch I have two ham and mustard sandwiches on white bread with a cup of tea.  The wedding dinner includes smoked turkey and chorizo salad followed by seafood paella with potatoes.  I opt out of dessert.  The exercise comes in the form of some dodgy dancing.  The less said about the alcohol consumption the better……. Oh ok then I had a glass of mulled wine, five bottles of Heineken and three glasses of red wine.  As far as I can remember.

Day 6

Breakfast at the hotel.  How could you not have the full Irish breakfast when the hotel specializes in organic fare?  I have a glass of apple juice and some tea to wash it down.  For lunch I opt for a BLT (more bacon, my GOD what is it with me and pork?!) on a white ciabatta with salad and coffee.  For dinner we are back at our own house feeling tired, sore (from the dancing) and in need of comfort food.  Beef stew from the freezer fits the bill followed by tea and chocolates (which thankfully finishes the box of Belgian chocolates).  Alcohol: none.

Day 7:
Back to normality and my standard breakfast of porridge, a poached egg on white toast and a cup of tea.  But it is the weekend so for lunch I have a grill; two sausages, two rashers, toast and tea.  For dinner we have risotto with walnuts and butternut squash and a glass of water.  A glass of white wine is just the job to wash that down and finish this pesky diary.

The Verdict:
Margot Brennan of the Irish Nutrition Dietetic Institute was kind enough to analyse the diary for me and offer some advice. “Food diaries are an extremely useful tool to look at overall diet and lifestyle. They are, however, only as good as the person writing them and honesty is the key ingredient,” she says.

“On our website we have an example of a food diary - once you have kept your diary you can then examine the nutritional quality of your intake by comparing it with the food pyramid.”

So what’s the verdict?

“Overall you are quite healthy with a sensible approach to diet and alcohol. You eat regular meals and don’t leave long periods between them. There are, however, a few changes that you could make which would improve your overall health.

“Fruit and vegetable intake averages at two servings per day as opposed to the recommended five. This can be increased by including fruit as snacks throughout the day and including juice with breakfast. Vegetable soups or smoothies may also be useful for quick lunches and will contribute to your overall intake.

“Your intake of calcium, which is very important for healthy bones and teeth, averages at two servings per day while the recommended would be three. Extra calcium can be taken by including a low-fat yogurt as a snack and substituting a latte or cappuccino for ordinary coffee.

“Fat intake is high with a reliance on saturated fats from meat products like sausages and rashers and dairy products like cheese. This can be addressed by including fish in your diet, especially oily fish like salmon and mackerel, and changing to low-fat milk and cheese. Fibre intake is low but this would improve by changing from white to wholemeal bread and increasing your overall fruit and vegetable intake.

“The safe intake of alcohol for men is 28 units a week. One unit is one measure of spirits, a half pint of beer or a small glass of wine. While your intake does not exceed this figure, it is better to spread your alcohol intake over several evenings as opposed to taking larger volumes in one go.”

The Irish Nutrition Dietetic Institute website is http://www.indi.ie

© 2007 The Irish Times

Giving Up.....Driving

Last year, in a job which involved lots of travelling, I clocked up 25,000 miles in my car and was responsible for the emission of 10 metric tonnes of greenhouse gas.  So I guess I shouldn't feel too smug about giving up driving for a week. 

The rules were that I wasn't allowed to drive or be in a car (i.e. getting a lift to the shop is cheating).  We live about 2 miles from Dunmore East so each morning this week I cycled in to the village for the paper.  I haven't cycled in years so it's been part nostalgic reunion and part arduous struggle.  OK, mainly arduous struggle.

Anyone who knows Dunmore will be familiar with the fairly serious hill from Killea down to the village.  The first day I cycled in I descended it at what felt like 150 mph feeling a mixture of adrenalin-induced euphoria and absolute terror.  I was smiling so hard I looked like I had a vitamin C surplus and my eyes were streaming at an alarming rate.  At one point I had to brake hard when I caught up with a pair of nuns in a Micra. 

For every freewheel thrill-ride downhill there is of course the corresponding ''King of the Mountains'' slog back up.  I was in a heap afterwards.  It does make you wonder why we pay through the nose for gyms when you can pan yourself out on the bike for free.  Giving up driving means combining travel and exercise in to one activity. 

I took the bus in to Waterford one day and was left wondering why I never thought of it before.  There is a bus stop about 200 yards from our house, it costs €2 (!!) and drops you in to the centre of the city (no parking hassles). 

As I walked out our gate to go for the bus I realised it was the first time I have ever walked out my gate.  I have driven and more lately cycled.  But never walked.  Imagine.  While I was waiting on the bus, a delightful old lady stopped and offered me a lift but since that would break the rules I had to reluctantly decline. 

By the end of the week having conquered sore legs (and tender arse) I was starting to enjoy the cycling.  It reminds me of when I was younger and biking it to school (barefoot in the rain).  CS Lewis talks about the car ''deflowering the very idea of distance''.  Ironically, although my car abstinence confined me to a relatively small realm, that realm seemed roomier and more interesting as a result.  ''The modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation than his grandfather got from travelling ten,'' said Lewis. 

Ambling along on my bike, with cars flashing by me, I was taking in things I never take in while driving and thinking about how much of a rush we are always in.  You could get used to this.

Giving Up.....Shaving

I hate it when big corporations take over (or invent) a daily routine and them make you pay through the nose for it, like some form of tax.  ''One-a-day'' advertising for pro-biotic drinks is a good example.  Do they really think we can't see through that?

That's why I hate buying razors.  I hate the way they change the razor design so regularly and then phase out the accompanying blades to force you to upgrade.  I hate the fact that the blades are so expensive; €16 for an 8-pack of blades!  That's extortion.

Increasing competition has made the razor industry sort of ridiculous.  For one thing, there are those overtly macho names.  Mach 3!  Mach-3 Turbo!  Mach-3 Turbo Power! Force 5!  (OK, I made the last one up).  Shaving is macho.  We get it!  Then there are the increasingly bizarre designs - the latest models have 5 blades on the end of one razor! Where does it all end?  400 blades?  Why not get Edward Scissorhands over to shave you instead? 

The history of shaving goes roughly like this; our ancient ancestors used seashells.  Egyptian priests and Alexander the Great were the first major promoters of shaving.  Alexander himself then established the Gillette corporation in the 4th century BC (note: no he didn't) which has been collecting the shaving tax from men ever since. 

So this was one of the ''Giving Up'' series that I was looking forward to.  Day one or two stubble is fine and at that stage it's actually pretty cool in a Ryan Giggs kind of vibe.  Day three and four were more difficult.  It's itchy and I couldn't stop at it, massaging it like a beatnik pondering the mystery of life.  A man has 30,000 hairs in his beard and I could feel every one of them. 

On the fourth day I actually got a spot below my lower lip and I felt like a pubescent teenager (what I would have done for hair on my face back then). 

It started to soften up towards the week end.  The gradual growth means you don't get any great sense of change so it's only when you meet someone who has only ever seen you clean-shaven that you realise you look terrible. 

When my sister saw it she laughed so hard she gave herself a pain.  ''It puts ten years on you,'' she said.  I've noticed that some of the growth is actually a reddish hue.  Mrs Kelly started calling me ''Ginge'' and refused to countenance kissing me.  In a shop in town I happened to catch sight of myself in a mirror and it scared the lights out of me.  I looked like Ronnie Drew. 

By the end of the week I couldn't wait to shave.  You never feel really clean with a beard. I would get out of the shower and think “why did I bother?” So it's back to the Force-5 Xtreme Powers for me.  Or maybe I could buy one of those cutthroat razors?  Hmmm. Interesting.

Giving Up........Deoderant

I know, you're thinking; Oh God that's disgusting.  But before you move off to another article, I promise this won't put you off your breakfast.  First of all, let me explain that my motives for this experiment were good.  Secondly, I'm a hygienic person so the idea grossed me out as much as it would you.  And thirdly, I found an alternative so I wasn't a complete minger for the week or anything.  OK?  Still with me? 

Firstly - motive.  Pretty much every morning I wonder about the health implications of using deodorants.  They have been the subject of various, largely unproven, health scares over the years; it was suggested for example that the aluminium in deodorants could cause cancer and Alzheimer's. 

I'm no scientist but bottom line - could it possibly be good for you to spray an extensive concoction of chemicals on to highly porous skin?  Take a look at the ingredients on your brand - mine showed up the following among other things; butane, propane, aluminium chlorohydrate.  Propane?  Isn't that what I use in the patio heater? Why am I spraying that on my pits?

There are actually two very different types of deodorants on the market, which I wasn't aware of.  Antiperspirants do what it says on the tin - they interfere with the process of perspiring by blocking the sweat glands.  That might sound like a good thing until you consider that sweating is a vitally important method for the body to cool itself down and expel toxins.  Unlike antiperspirants, deodorants do nothing to prevent sweating - they merely smell nice. 

For the first few days I was disappointed to discover that I didn't seem to sweat or smell at all.  I am not sure if that is a comment on how unnecessary deodorant is or on my sedentary lifestyle.  I don't fell trees for a living.  I spend most of the day sitting behind a desk writing - how sweaty could you really be?  Like most people any exercise I take tends to be in the sterilised confines of the leisure centre where you shower afterwards. 

On the third day following some activity in the garden I was excited to find that I was actually sweating.  I wasn't falling over with the stink but it was a trifle unpleasant all the same.  So I found a recipe for homemade deodorant on the web.  ''This is what I'm reduced to,'' I thought as I cooked up a brew of oils (almond, rosemary, lemon) and beeswax. 

The finished product was a jar of pungent soft wax, a very tiny amount of which is applied to the underarm.  The jar will apparently last a whole year (it will be a miracle if I am still using it in a few days) and it seemed to work well enough.  The key to abandoning deodorant is to accept sweat as a natural and necessary bodily function - while continuing the battle against the odour.  Friends and family beware - I'm thinking homemade deodorant might make a quirky Christmas present.

Giving Up.......mobile phones

Take a step back and ask yourself; when did the mobile phone become something we have to bring with us everywhere we go?  When did it become necessary to be in constant contact?  What exactly will happen if it's left behind?  Or switched off?  Will the world collapse around you?

I powered down a week ago and waited to see what would happen.  Nothing did. During the week I counted all the times when I reached for my phone, or went to send a text.  It was scary how often I did it.  That little inanimate object can have a disproportionate and very disruptive effect on us.  It's a tough taskmaster.  When it bleeps or beeps or rings, it expects an immediate reaction.  And it usually gets it.  How long does it take for you to read a text when it arrives?  Is the text ever as important as the immediate attention it gets?

The greatest lie that has been fed to us is that the mobile has turned us in to great communicators.  Rubbish.  In fact, paradoxically, it's an isolating device.  When you are on a mobile you are in a private world, ignoring the real events going on around you.  The mobile plays to our innate shyness - we can get in touch with people without having to meet or even talk to them. 

Missing my phone manifested itself in two ways.  Firstly there's that vague feeling of unease.  What if something happens and someone needs to contact me?  Let's be honest; in all likelihood, nothing will happen.  And if it does?  Well if it's that important they will find an alternative way of contacting me.

The second way is when you actually need it to ring or text someone.  I didn't have long to wait for that.  My nephew was starting school for the first time on Friday and I wanted to text my sister to wish them luck.  I asked Mrs Kelly to send it instead but in the spirit of the column she wouldn't play ball.  ''That's cheating,'' she said.

So I picked up the landline and called my sister.  Texting is such a lazy form of communication.  A text saying ''hope things go well 2tomorrow'' would have taken twenty seconds to send.  The phone call took twenty minutes.  But I was, of course, the better for it.

Later that day, we were heading away for the weekend and I realised in the car that we had a builder coming to do a job in the house.  I hadn't let him know we wouldn't be there.  Again Commandant Kelly wouldn't cooperate.  ''O for God's sake.  No one will ever know,'' I said in somewhat of a huff. The text went unsent and I tried to ignore the minor panic gurgling inside my stomach.

I'm interested in how many texts and messages are stored up on my phone which is sitting forlornly in a drawer in the kitchen.  Interested.  But not obsessed.

Power down.  Enjoy the freedom.

Giving Up.....Neckties

As you may know if you have read this column before, I recently abandoned the corporate life.  One of the greatest pleasures in that move has been my release from the purgatory of wearing neckties.  Surely there is no greater abomination on God's earth, than having to strangle yourself in the interests of….well what exactly? 

Ties have no function.  They are a badge only of conformity, of belonging.  Of membership.  They are the ribbon on a gift - completely useless but thought to complete the wrapping.  For ten years, the tie represented the corporate noose around my neck.  Rather childish, I'll admit - but I hated them.

Recently I have had a bit of a problem with shirt sizes.  My neck has increased from 15.5 to 16 (so it's not just metaphorically that I have an increasingly ''thick neck'') but the size 16 shirts are too big on me.  As a result I have had to become used to wearing a shirt that is too tight in the neck.  The addition of a necktie ensures that that no oxygen at all can get to my head and adds to the risk of my eyes literally popping out of my head. 

We still feel obliged to wear them.  Would you for example, attend an interview, tie-less?  Or a wedding?  Well, this week Mrs Kelly and I had two weddings to attend in the space of four days.  So I thought it would be a good week to test whether society accepts tie-less men at formal occasions. 

It's not like I showed up in jeans and a t-shirt.  I invested some effort and expense in trying to ensure that the rest of the ensemble would be sufficiently smart to take attention away from the fact that I wasn't wearing a tie.  I have a nice pin-striped suit and some decent shoes.  At the first wedding in Wexford I wore a fetching pink shirt, open necked.  I counted about 10 guys at the wedding wearing no tie so I didn't feel too conspicuous. 

It is thought by some psychologists that the wearing of a tie is a subconscious effort by men to draw females’ eyes down towards the male genitalia.  As I was tie-less, the evening was unfettered by bothersome women staring at my crotch. 

The second wedding was in Wales and there was only one other guy at the wedding not wearing a tie.  At our table, there was a couple who admitted to having colour-coordinated their outfits.  The woman was wearing a fetching black dress which had some orange flourishes in it.  The guy had an orange tie on. 

Posh and Becks would no doubt be pleased, but for us males this is a scary development.  It means we are now a fashion accessory - occupying a position of importance somewhere between the hairclip and the ankle bracelet. 

I tried to explain this to a friendly Welsh girl sitting on my left whose name I couldn't pronounce.  ''Well at least he wore a tie,'' she said.

Giving Up........my BMW

Mrs Kelly and I both drive old cars which is terribly unsporting in ''keep-up-with-the-Jones'' Ireland.  I have a thing about car loans and when I am sitting in traffic beside a gleaming '06 luxury car I always assuage my envy by thinking about the size of the loan that must be necessary to fund such an expensive automobile. 

There's a complexity at the heart of our longing for flashy cars which I have been thinking about a lot this week.  I give out about the environmental impact of SUV's but still can't help coveting them ever so slightly despite myself.  What's that about?  Why does your head say Prius while your heart says Hummer?

My car is a 1999 BMW - a tank of a car with a 2-litre engine which I persuaded myself that I needed because I was commuting to Cork from Waterford a few days a week in my old job.  ''It will be safer, driving a big car,'' I told myself.  Which is statistically true - but not the whole story.  In reality a BMW is a statement about affluence.  A '99 BMW is a statement about affluence on a budget. 

Mrs Kelly's car is a 1994 Toyota which I lovingly call ''the jalopy''.  Although not yet a teenager at 12 years old it could probably do with being put out to pasture.  However, since it still performs its basic function of getting her from A to B there is really only one reason to change it: so as not to be seen in a 12-year old car and Mrs Kelly doesn't go in for stuff like that.  Most of the time. 

I am kind of embarrassed by my car now - it just doesn't seem to fit with my downsizing.  It's a businessman's car.  An affluent person's car.  And these days I am neither of those things.  So as a dry run for a potential down-grade, I persuaded her to swap for a week.  I drove the jalopy while she travelled to work in refined German luxury.  I was horrified to discover that those fleeting flashes of luxury-car envy I spoke of earlier are part of wider character flaw.  I am, in fact, a complete car snob. 

I was fine when driving.  Actually behind the wheel there is very little difference between the two.  But then I met someone I knew coming out of a shop in the village and I actually held back and let them go rather than approach the car.  When I finally sat in to the battered driver's seat I was disgusted with myself.  Am I really that shallow?  Apparently, yes.

We all buy in to status symbols on some level and we are willing to spend lots of money (ours or a bank's) to acquire them.  Our clothes, where we live, our house - all part of a carefully constructed message.  What message did I think it would send if I owned up to owning the jalopy?. 

Giving Up.....Coffee

I have a notepad in which I write down my list of things to give up.  Originally the list had about twenty things on it but it has grown since, mainly because when I mention to people that I do a column on giving things up they tend to proffer a couple of suggestions.  Some of the ideas are pretty outlandish - one friend suggested I give up talking, for example.  Actually, that's a pretty good idea! 

Anyway, there are some items on the list that I have tended to put off giving up because I love them so much - that's the whole point of course but some things are more sacred than others.  Coffee, for example.

I am not a massive coffee drinker - just one or two cups daily - but I'm compulsive about it.  I've never been able to work out whether that's because I find comfort in the routine or whether it's straight-forward caffeine addiction that's responsible.  Either way, there's something a little unhealthy about a routine which you can't do without. 

Just after 10:00 a.m. each day I get a strong urge for a coffee and head off to a local bakery for my daily hit.  I don't go for anything fancy - no double shot, half-decaf, skinny lattes for me - just a plain old americano.  I'm sure the baker wishes I would push the boat out a little and maybe buy a bun.

The jury is out on whether coffee is good or bad for you.  Years ago it was blamed for pretty much everything from cancer to heart disease.  These days some physicians say it could actually be good for your health.  Who knows?  Certainly not the physicians!  What I do know is that coffee doesn't do me any good.  I have a bad stomach which is exacerbated by strong coffee and it definitely disrupts my sleep at night.  Hell it doesn't even taste all that great.  But still I persist. Why?

A single cup contains 100 milligrams of caffeine which by all accounts is enough to give a potent kick.  Half an hour after my trip to the bakery, my resting metabolic rate (the number of calories burned just sitting quietly) increases by 10%.  My heart rate accelerates, blood pressure climbs and my breathing speeds up.  Neurological activity also increases.  In other words, I am starting to come to.  It's no wonder it was hard to give that up. 

Amazingly the idea of giving up my harmless little routine filled me with more dread than anything else to date but once I started it was actually fine.  Experts believe that we do not get addicted to caffeine in the true sense of the word - it's more a dependence.  I found the key is to use a substitute - take the trip to the bakery and have tea instead (and maybe that bun).  One night in a restaurant I did feel a little miffed having a herbal tea instead of an espresso but hey I'm a big boy.  I can handle it. 

Giving Up.......Meat

I come from a family of notorious meat-eaters.  When I go over to my mother's for dinner and it's just the two of us, she will usually cook two chickens (''Just in case someone else joins us'') and we enjoy a gluttonous feast of ancient Roman proportions.  The Consumer Analysis Group estimates that the average European will eat 760 chickens, 20 pigs, 29 sheep and five cows in their lifetime - amazingly this is the same amount of meat as consumed at the last Kelly family reunion. 

Part of the joy of cooking with meat is that it's so simple.  Scratching the noggin in relation to what to have for dinner you can pop your head in the freezer and pull out a few lamb chops or perhaps grab some mince and rustle up some homemade burgers.  Simple.  But at the start of my planned week without meat, I sat down to think about what we could eat, and couldn't come up with a single vegetarian recipe.  Does soup count as dinner?

Having trawled through various cookbooks I came up with a vegetarian meal plan and glumly went shopping.  ''Hi there Michael'' said my portly butcher smiling and reaching for his favourite sharp knife.  I walked past the meat counter with my veggie-laden trolley trying to avoid eye contact and feeling somehow, adulterous. 

First on the menu was a mackerel supper.  I'm ashamed to say that even though we live in a fishing village we rarely have fish in our house.  That's a scandal and I blame how much I love meat.  The fresh mackerel were rubbed in butter, dumped in flour and chargrilled.  Served with brown bread, a wedge of lemon and a cup of tea.  Very tasty but a bit ‘Lenten fast', if you catch my drift. 

I was nervous about day two's lentil burgers but in fact they tasted really nice served with rustic potatoes and tzatiki.  If you closed your eyes and ignored your tastebuds you could kid yourself that they were real burgers.  Day three I had great fun making pizza bases and a tomato sauce from scratch.  Covered from head to toe in a sticky, doughy mess I had to answer the door to a guy selling paintings.  You should have seen how fast he ran away!  The pizzas were very tasty.  Day four salmon fillets in a tomato and herb sauce were yum but I found myself increasingly dreaming of a bloody steak.  On day five, feeling pale, lethargic and barely able to stand up we went out for dinner and I had the vegetarian dish.  I think it was Ratatouille - there were courgettes in it.  Yum Yum. 

Ah no only messing, it was really quite pleasant being off meat for a week.  The key for the novice vegetarian is having a meal plan.  I don't think vegetarianism is for me.  I'm a Kelly after all.  But I might become a flexatarian and include more fish and vegetable dishes in my diet from here on in.

* before you mention it, yes i know that eating fish is not normally considered vegetarian.  We already got some email politely pointing that out....!!

Seasons at the Four Seasons

I read an article recently about the concierge in the Four Seasons having pictures of famous guests up behind the desk so that they can recognise them when they arrive and greet them by their first name.  ''Good morning Lord Toomey'', I expected.  ''Good morning Sir'' was what I got when he opened the door of my taxi.  A bad start. 

Then a terribly rude man standing outside the hotel ignored me when I asked him for a light for my cigar.  I was about to dress him down when I discovered to my utter embarrassment that he was in fact a statue.  In my defence I had a slightly ''intoxicating'' morning.

These rather creepy life-like statues are everywhere in the Four Seasons.  In the courtyard there's even a statue of a man asleep on a bench with a newspaper over his head.  I confess, with my head pounding, I felt like joining him.  The cynic in me (and there's a lot of cynic in me) thinks maybe the statues are there to give an impression of casual idleness about the place.  And casual idle is not what the Four Seasons is about.

As always, I was late for my lunch time rendezvous with my epicurean friend Lady M, who I have known since my days in the diplomatic corp.  She told me I looked terrible and reeked of gin but seemed happy to see me.  She enquired with some bemusement about my role as roving restaurant reviewer.

I said to her, ''My darling, this will be undoubtedly the only restaurant review ever written by someone who knows damn all about food''.  She tried to reassure me that this would be refreshing and that those in search of food reviews would reach for Tom and Paulo.  ''Those guys know their food,'' she said.  ''But is there anything more boring than reading about what someone else had for dinner?''

Me?  I'm basically jaded by restaurants.  Circumstances have brought me to the greatest eateries in the world but I've never eaten anything so delectable that it eclipsed the Brandy and Cigar course. 

All of which might make the chef at Seasons at the Four Seasons very nervous indeed.  I mean if you put a Bresaola on your lunch menu, you would hope anyone reviewing it will know what a Bresaola actually is or at least be impressed by the word itself.  I would guess that 90% of you reading this haven't a notion what a Bresaola is either.  So, in a rare departure for me, I'm with the majority. 

Our waitress politely explained that Bresaola is cured raw beef that looks like prosciutto, a specialty of Lombardy. See? We are learning things together.  I've been told that most reviews start with a lengthy preamble which is why I am waffling on.

Seasons is a great looking place if you're a student of the Donald Trump school of home furnishings.  Being used to the real thing I find faux-opulence slightly tiresome.  Lady M reckoned the restaurant was like your rich Auntie's living room and I told her that amazingly I did have a rich aunty in India who had a living room that looks just like it.  Without the waitresses in yellow waistcoats.  Lady M christened the starter table, the ''Auntiepasti table''.  I thought that was clever.

I was a trifle (food pun - I'm getting the hang of this) miffed by the whole buffet starter table thing.  Just as we sat down our waitress came over and told us we had to get up again and help ourselves.  I struggled out of my chair and tottered over to inspect the bill of fare.  There were 4 or 5 waitresses standing around looking at us so it seemed spectacularly unfair that we had to work so hard for our starters.  Legendary service?  More like ''all you can eat shrimp''.

The food at the starter table was uniformly excellent but at the end of the day a buffet is a buffet is a buffet.  I had an uncomfortable sense of déjá vu of some snore-fest book launch I attended some weeks back.  I half expected to be handed one of those wine-glass holders to attach to the side of my plate. 

When we finally settled back down, the waitress laid a black napkin across my lap and gave Lady M a white one.  I felt somewhat cheated by all this fawning attention after the laissez-faire buffet. 

I was also disappointed with the calibre of our fellow diners.  Clearly they all have plenty of dosh but don't we all at this stage?  I was expecting some old-world class and got instead; a hideous American couple with plastic bonhomie; golfers in slacks and polo shirts of all things discussing that most boring of games ad nauseum et ad infinitum; business suits droning on about ''paradigm shifts'' and ''pushing out the envelope''; and loads of old people.  I know we will all end up old at some stage but do we really need so many reminders of the fact sitting around us at lunch?

I was expecting lots of yummy mummies doing charity lunches and clearly remember the editor promising me that Seasons is where they congregate.  I discovered with some glee on a cigar break that they were outside enjoying the good weather in a spectacular courtyard.  I puffed away beside the supine statue on the bench and admired the bare flesh and heaving bosoms.

For mains I had Gnocchi with a chive and tomato sauce.  Lady M had simmered cod in white wine, olives and tomato.  I was under-whelmed.  We suspected the sauces on both main courses came from the same pot but couldn't be sure.  Desserts were the highlight for me but then they generally are - served on bow shaped plates, we both had vanilla Crème Brulée with fresh berries. 

I retired to the Bar with Lady M for a quick fortifier to see me through the afternoon.  Now there's a room I could happily spend an evening in; a yummy mummy in one hand and a snifter in the other.  Maybe another day.  For now, Lady M and I departed bidding farewell to the statues as we left. 

L'ecrivain

Having only recently retired, I have been surprised to discover that there seems to be an entire network of people who have never worked and yet fill their lives with social engagements.  My cousin Dorothea (or Dolly as we call her if we want to really irritate her) is a case in point.  I have never known her to ''do'' anything much and yet she always manages to appear under pressure when we meet.

There is a frankly mystifying melancholy about some idle wealthy people and with Dolly more so than most.  She's a chronic hypochondriac and today told me rather unnecessarily that she's a martyr to piles.  Still I love the old girl dearly and the fading glamour which surrounds her. 

''You look marvellous, cousin,'' I said enjoying the sight of her crusty exterior momentarily melting.  ''Well my dear,'' she said philosophically, ''I have my wig on and my makeup complete.  So you caught me on a good day.''

She waxed lyrical about her ''busy morning'' which basically consisted of a chauffer driven trip to the nail bar in Brown Thomas and very little else (although I'm fairly certain it also included a visit to a real bar somewhere between BT and Baggot Street). 

I'm all for the odd drink in the morning to get one's constitution up and running.  My grandfather's distant relative, Winston Churchill, apparently enjoyed a scotch and soda first thing while propped up in bed and it's a tradition some in the family still preserve.  Dolly claims she would be long dead without it.

She is somewhat of a regular at l'Ecrivain, attracted by the confluence of wealthy businessmen and fine dining that occurs there.  There were indeed a lot of business men there, doing deals and throwing shapes.  Most of the diners seemed regrettably sans alcohol. 

Dolly appreciates the muted lighting at l'Ecrivain since bright restaurants tend to dazzle her and the wide spaces between tables allow for the luxury of the odd wobble on the way to the ladies room.  But the biggest draw, she tells me, is that it is one of the only places left in Dublin where you can not use a mobile phone.  Dolly does not own one.  ''I find them disagreeable,'' she says. 

Dolly is a widow but her advancing years do not stop her from being an outrageous flirt.  While I pondered over the drinks menu she took to rubbing the back of the handsome maitre-de's leg who was waiting to take our order.  Ever the gentleman, bless him, he pretended not to notice.  When Dolly flirts she becomes ostentatious believing that young men can not resist an old lady with money, so she ordered a bottle of Krug Grande Cuvee for us to enjoy with dinner.

We perused the menu and Dolly was delighted to see that a consignment of truffles seemed to have winged its merry way to l'Ecrivain recently.  Every second dish seemed to include the little delicacy.  Truffles are reputed to be an aphrodisiac and she likes to feel loved up.  The maitre-de had right to be concerned.

We discussed trufficulture in detail over some fine breads.  ''They are simply wonderful,'' said Dolly misty-eyed.  ''Ah but so expensive'' says I.  ''Nonsense,'' Dolly said, ''if they were cheap, do you think anyone would eat them?''

There is something very pleasant about an afternoon at l'Ecrivain.  It manages to pull off something remarkable indeed in providing the very finest food, expertly cooked and served, without ever appearing stuffy.  Of course the food and wine is expensive.  But food and wine is expensive all over Dublin, often in places with no charm whatsoever.  And at least at l'Ecrivain the atmosphere is cosy, comfortable and generally affable. 

Dolly has a single pet hate about l'Ecrivain and it is the enormous tapestry on the back wall.  ''They have less taste in fine art than you have in dining attire,'' she said, eyeing my red velour waistcoat distastefully. 

Still, the waiting staff that tended to our increasingly inebriated table were incredibly nice and very understanding.  In so many well-heeled restaurants waiters are afraid to smile or chat, just in case it might come across as casual and therefore unprofessional.  Piffle. 

If I was to have one crib about the place it would be the toilets.  You can't help thinking that having expended all their creative energy on the truffles, they just had nothing left for the johns, which is a real shame.  I was horrified to discover I could barely fit in to the men's.

I also tend to like a dash of eau de toilet to freshen up after a meal but there was only Lynx Africa deodorant in l'Ecrivain.  I've never heard of Lynx but I've spent time in Africa and can tell you it doesn't smell all that great.  So I gave it a miss.

Meanwhile back at the table a minor kerfuffle was underway as waiting staff tried to clean up after Dolly who had just spilled the bottle of 2003 Domaine de Mont Calmes on the padded table.  The padded tables felt luxuriant under elbow - but I am not so sure their absorbency is a good thing when it comes to a bottle of red wine.

After being served a selection of cheeses by a rather fetching girl with a trolley, we retired to the piano bar downstairs.  Dolly seemed genuinely upset at the fact that the piano was mysteriously playing itself.  How she would have enjoyed an afternoon cosying up to a fine pianist, singing her repertoire aided by some vintage Armagnac. 

Guilbaud's

There was an unseemly row in the letter pages of the Times recently about the price of their restaurant reviewer's meal at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud.  ''Dear Madam,'' they wailed.  ''How can he justify paying that much for a meal?  That is a month's wages for some people!  I trust you will take a stand and not pass his expenses!'' My my, weren't we exercised?! 

''What a load of old nonsense'' I said to my editor as we discussed my planned trip to that fine establishment on Upper Merrion Street.  We never discuss money, her and I, and I can only assume that the Times' man and Madam enjoy a similar relationship.  And rightly so.  As the colloquialism goes, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.  ''Who are you bringing with you?'' the editor asked.  ''Old Major,'' I said resolutely.  ''Oh really?  Right then.  Have a nice time,'' she said trying not to look too concerned. 

I've met all manner of weird and wonderful characters during my career and none more so than Sir Phillip Dawes or ''Old Major'' as he is known to his pals.  I met him during my brief sojourn during the eighties in Vienna where he was stationed with the British Foreign Office.  He had a long and illustrious career with “the old firm” as he calls it before falling out with them over his pension.  A book he wrote about his time in the service allowed him to extract his auctorial revenge and sold enough copies to keep him in the style of his earlier high life.

Old Major is a great lover of Ireland and whenever he visits he commences his stay with a long weekend in Dublin, stationed in opulent grandeur at the Merrion Hotel.  The hotel's location allows him to amble next door to Guilbaud's where they typically reserve for him the table under the Louis le Brocquy tapestry.  In that pleasing setting he holds court and dines with old chums. 

Giving out about the cost of Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud is a complete waste of time for any number of reasons.  Firstly, to say that it is beyond the means of the average Joe (as many an outraged writer to Madam did) is actually offensive to the average Joe's fiscal means - the two course lunch is €33 a head.  €33!  Think of all the woeful culinary experiences you've had in your life that cost you €33.  Then go to Guilbaud's, the only restaurant in Ireland with two Michelin stars and enjoy the real thing.
The more extensive A La Carte menu is pricey.  Of course it is.  €42 for lobster ravioli starter is a lot of money.  Get over it.  It's hardly worth getting ones knickers in a twist.  How many of those amateur letter writers, incandescent with rage, would happily shell out big time for a little handbag by Fendi or Prada?  And besides, you only need to be in the restaurant a few minutes to know where the money goes.

When you look up from your Patrick Guilbaud embossed plate and survey the room, there are finely tailored waiters as far as the eye can see.  But they are not buzzing about like bees busily seeking their next chore - instead they fan out from task to task with quiet purpose and zen-like calm.

Old Major, resplendent in a fine suit and his ''Gunner Tie'' (a throwback to his days in the Royal Artillery which he only dons on Fridays), enjoys the formality and military precision of it all.  Assistance appears from nowhere to help him take off his suit jacket.  Chairs are pushed in and pulled out from behind as appropriate.  The dramatic removal of silver platter is synchronised to perfection.  In particular, a man of his advancing years appreciates the gentle reminder from our waiter of what he ordered as each course is served. 

Some find the preponderance of waiting staff off-putting or perhaps a trifle claustrophobic.  It's easy to see why, put in all honesty the formalities are part of the Guilbaud package and you should just enjoy it like you would any master-class display of a dying art.

The interior of the restaurant is pleasant but not overwhelmingly luxurious.  You could be forgiven for being somewhat disappointed with the décor after the grand opulence of the drawing room where we were served the first of that afternoon's brandies.  The carpet in the main restaurant is Old Major's single beef with the place - a bewildering patterned affair in purples and pinks which he claims gives him a migraine.  In general though the dining room is bright and airy and we had a fine view of proceedings from our table. 

They used to call the lunch menu there ''Dublin's best kept secret'' - not anymore.  Every now and then if the swarm of waiters died down sufficiently we could see that the room was in fact packed out with people.  You do get the impression that the moderately priced Table d'Hote lunch gives many young lawyers, designers and other professional types the opportunity to dine out in style and then be able to loudly announce in whatever watering hole they frequent for postprandial drinks: ''Well, while I was dining at Patrick Guilbaud's earlier today…..''

I was giving out about young upstarts in general while sipping a sublime Langoustine bisque when Old Major stopped me with a wave of his hand.  ''I seem to recall we threw some shapes ourselves once, old boy.'' That we did.

Rhodes D7

I met Clarissa Marling, then a 29 year old attractive blonde at the Yacht Club in Istanbul in the early seventies and we catapulted in to marriage a mere three weeks after our first encounter.  ''This is love with a capital L,'' I wrote to a friend of mine that year.  Initially our marriage consisted of living in cheerful disorder amidst friends and alcohol but not long afterwards I discovered that Clarissa's method of dealing with neglect (and with my work keeping me away, she was permanently neglected) was to have ''accidents''.  We had a row one night in London while on a tour of our favourite haunts and after throwing a bottle of whiskey at me she drove off at high speed and deliberately crashed in to a shop window.

She spent most of the next five years at a clinic in Switzerland recovering from various maladies in between giving birth to our two children.  In 1975, she found out about an injudicious affair of mine with the wife of a New York Time's journalist and promptly set fire to the living room, suffering minor burns as a result.  That was to be the final climactic act of our turbulent marriage. 

An annoying, yet strangely comforting feature of my subsequent life was that no matter what country I wound up living in, Clarissa would inevitably show up and reside nearby, using some charity project as a pretext.  It was no surprise to me therefore when she “retired” to Ireland around the same time that I moved here.  We meet infrequently for an affable lunch to reminisce over some of the better times we enjoyed together and discuss our ghastly children who converge on Ireland every now and then to sniff around after their inheritance. 

Last week, she called to suggest lunch.  I had to get her to repeat herself four times when she was giving me the name of the restaurant over the phone.  ''Roadsy Seven? What on earth kind of a name is that?'' I bellowed, feeling irritated.  ''No you old fool.  Rhodes!  As in Gary Rhodes.  He's a famous chef from television.  Really, I can't for the life of me imagine why they employ you to write for that magazine.  Your cultural reference points are non-existent.'' The only chef from the television I have any time for is Delia Smith - I can never quite understand why the rest of the world doesn't appreciate Delia's smouldering sex appeal which resides, with her ample bosom, beneath her cashmere sweaters.

''How does one get to Rhodes D7, since you are clearly a habitué?'' I asked. ''You could try getting the LUAS,'' she said cheekily and I could practically hear her smiling down the phone at the idea of me slumming it with the red-liners.  ''I shall taxi as normal, and well you know it,'' I sniffed. 

I can sort of understand how Mr Rhodes was talked in to locating his restaurant on Capel Street with visions of cosmopolitan Dubliners pretending to be European while enjoying his cuisine al fresco as trams idle past.  But the reality for Clarissa and I at lunch time on a Tuesday in the middle of winter was quite different.  For a starter the terrace was closed so the nicest part of the restaurant was off limits.  And apart from one lonely office party shoved up on to the mezzanine level, we were practically the only people there.  The restaurant's much vaunted capacity of 250 covers does it no favours at all when no one shows up.  Along with the weather, the atmosphere was dare I say it: bleak.

I had the terrible misfortune once to be caught in an airport waiting on a much delayed flight and the only eatery open was a place called Garfunkel's.  I think it may well be a chain of restaurants (my cultural reference points aren't so meagre after all!).  Rhodes D7 looks a lot like Garfunkel's on the inside.  I have always displayed a noteworthy disregard for the décor of life but even I was moved to think that the interior design in Rhodes is somewhat confused - ghastly paintings of glowering farmyard animals seem to say rustic.  Orange lino on the floors shouts minimalist.  A gold urn replete with jeroboams of Moet et Chandon screams ''CLASSY''.  So which is it?  I was none the wiser.

In common with Garfunkel's, the lunch menu at Rhodes D7 goes for single word descriptions of dishes, as in CHICKEN.  SALMON.  GAMMON.  As if lunch breaks are too short to waste time navigating lengthy meal descriptions.  Why not go the whole hog and put an exclamation mark in there too?  PORK!  RASHER!  You can never have too many punctuation marks.  The menu was printed in stark black and red on a single sheet of white A4 paper, like a menu a small child might produce if given access to a Gateway PC and a bubblejet printer.

I ordered smoked EEL! for starters and was alarmed to discover it came with a poached egg on top.  My housekeeper, Mrs O cooks me an egg each morning so I felt this was rather unnecessary.  Clarissa ordered CRAB! and beside her potato salad was a another egg this time wrapped in breadcrumbs.  I try to stick to one egg a day, so when the mains arrived I poked around under my halibut just in case there was another egg hiding there.  There must have been a glut of EGG! in the Rhodes FRIDGE!.

Clarissa and I discussed our affairs in hushed tones, our moods becoming more sombre in the funereal atmosphere.  A round of applause from the office party briefly shattered the silence.  We eschewed desserts and ordered some green tea, placing much confidence in its abilities to replenish even the most troubled soul.  As we headed for our coats, Clarissa briefly recaptured some of her customary bon vivance leaping over some tumbleweed that rolled towards us.  ''Let us meet again soon in happier circumstances,'' I said as we bid au revoir. 

Still at The Dylan

My youngest daughter Violet was the result of a tempestuous dalliance with a stage actress in 1980's London.  She's a decade younger than my two other children who are in their thirties and while I don't understand most of the universe she inhabits we have always got on well together.  I read once that children of affairs can be angry, confused and unable to commit to relationships; Violet is none of these things - she's a vivacious creature who enjoys life, is even more beautiful than her mother at that age and has never judged me for being a lousy father.  She has lived in Dublin since her late teens when she came here to study drama.

Violet has been complaining bitterly that my recent reviews have included a cast of characters she has described as ''stuffy old people''.  ''You really need to invite some beautiful young people to dinner for a change, father.  I'll get together some friends and we'll take you somewhere trendy.  It will be fun.'' It will be fun - four words guaranteed to strike terror in to the heart of an old man like me.

''Somewhere trendy'' turns out to be Still restaurant at the newly refurbished Dylan Hotel in Eastmoreland Place.  Violet keeps her end of the bargain - arriving at the Dylan with a coterie of her friends who are indeed very beautiful young people.  Over our first bottle of champagne I enquire around the table as to chosen careers and get vague and non-committal responses; Mark is a Brian Jones look-alike and actor with lofty ambitions whose résumé to date is limited to TV commercials.  He is wearing a brown cardigan and jeans that are pulled down too far revealing alarmingly sharp hip-bones.  Christine, a stunning photographer in a navy silk dress admits to having a lot of free time between shoots and starts rubbing my leg with her foot under the table as soon as we sit down. 

Heavily pregnant Anna is an interior designer ''on a career break'' at the age of 24.  Her next project she tells me is charity work in Zambia although it is not clear whether baby will be brought along for the trip.  They are an eclectic bunch with a carefree attitude; I'm pretty sure that everyone at the table, barring myself (and hopefully Anna) are taking some form of stimulant, judging by the frenetic conversation and frequent absences from the table. 

Quite how this motley crew can afford to large it up at the Dylan is a mystery to me; I can only assume they are dependently wealthy.  I am not one for giving out about the prices at restaurants but even I baulk at the frankly ridiculous Scandinavian water at €9 a bottle.  ''It's called Voss and it's the purest water on the planet,'' purrs Christine resting her hand on my arm.  ''Madge won't drink anything else''.  Who the hell is Madge I wonder, looking around the table frantically to see if I have missed someone.  ''It just tastes like water to me,'' I reply.  She laughs a sort of ''oh you loveable old codger'' laugh.  ''What birthstone are you?'' she asks.  I tell her I have no idea.  ''What month is your birthday?'' November.  ''Ah, the topaz.  That explains it,'' she says turning away mysteriously. 

Still is an elegant but comfortable place with impeccable service and despite myself I like the atmosphere.  The restaurant is beside the lively Dylan Bar which is busy with more beautiful young people than you could shake a stick at enjoying their post-work drinks - this has the effect of creating quite a pleasant buzz in the restaurant.  At our table there is a peculiar mixture of chairs, all cream leather but of different shapes and sizes.  There are two that could best be described as thrones, with two-metre high backs - we put Anna in one on account of her being ''with child'' and handsome Mark in the other since he has already downed most of a bottle of champagne by himself and probably needs the support.  ''We're like Posh and Becks,'' he says to Anna and they exchange a meaningful glance.  It occurs to me suddenly that perhaps Mark is father to Anna's impending sprog, though I assumed he was gay.  The rest of us slum it in chairs which have no backs at all, good for the posture I grant you; but not exactly comfortable.  That minor gripe aside, it's a tasteful place.

Violet spends most of the evening pointing out the great and good of trendy Dublin society who have clasped Still to their bosom in it's infancy (it only opened last year) - I recognise one or two TV/radio celebs.  I am immediately impressed with the indulgent menu which offers an array of meaty treats; trotter and cheek of pig, rabbit, pheasant, venison and beef.  It's like an end of day feast at a hunter's lodge.  Christine clicks in disgust.  ''You're vegetarian?'' I ask.  ''No I'm doraphobic.  It's a fear of animal skin,'' she says glowering as I order pig's cheek and rabbit.

After a sublime 6 course dinner we have a drink or two in the Dylan Bar where Mark continues to defy the meagre income of an advert actor by ordering more champagne for the group.  The bar's opulent décor is certainly different; I can't help feeling that I have wandered in to an Asian brothel (not that I would know what that's like).  I join Mark on the terrace and take out a large cigar while he puffs away on a cigarillo.  ''I'm Brahms and Liszt,'' he says.  ''You know, Brahms and Liszt, pissed.  It's rhyming slang.'' ''Ah, very good'' I say, nonplussed. ''I'm going to the jacks to see Charlie,'' says Mark mincing back inside.  Madge?  Charlie?  Who are these people?

Feeling increasingly confused I decide to call it a night leaving the group to their revelry.  Violet walks me to my taxi.  ''We're having a party back at our place,'' she says linking her arm in mine as we walk out the gates of the Dylan past smiling doormen.  ''Are you sure you won't join us?'' ''My dear, I could think of nothing worse.  But bless you for asking,'' I say leaping in to the taxi.

Thorntons

It's unlikely that the handful of expense-card diners with their sparkling waters and inane corporate drivel will have recognised my dinner companion as a former Oscar nominee.  Time marches on relentlessly (I can vouch for that) and almost thirty years have passed since alcohol problems and ''an allergy to backstage dust'' put an end to her heyday.  She has continued acting, mostly on stage but these days she is almost completely unknown outside her native Brooklyn.  It's hard to tell whether she appreciates the anonymity.

I have an enormous weakness for stage actresses and have fallen in love with many of them over the years.  My Editor knows this and thought it would be fun for me to interview this grand old dame and review Thornton's at the same time.  I guess that's called double-jobbing.  I pick her up outside the Shelbourne and she links my arm as we walk across St. Stephen's Green to the Fitzwilliam.  Despite her advancing years you could still fall for this exceedingly slender woman with her strikingly attractive face and piercing eyes. 

There are two traits which I find impossibly attractive in women - eccentricity is one and the other is a murky past.  She has both in abundance.  In her heyday she caused quite the scandal when it was rumoured that she would sleep in a coffin lined with letters from her lovers (of which there were allegedly over 1000).  Since the death of her fourth and final husband ten years ago she has shared her home with a menagerie of dogs, cats, monkeys, lions, and alligators. 

Walking in the door of Thornton's after helping each other up the stairs (two old ciggie lovers I'm afraid) we were met by a smiling bank of waiters who descended on us with intent to disrobe us and deposit us to our table.  But she was not to be distracted from the fine cellar beside the reception area from which, after much deliberation, she picked two unspeakably expensive bottles and insisted they be opened immediately.  I like her style.  We drank a few glasses seated at the canapé bar to the left of reception which is darker and more moody than the airy front room where the restaurant is housed.  We could see Mr. Thornton himself working in the kitchen through a porthole which I was relatively excited by but which interested her not a jot.

We discussed her most notorious roles over the first bottle of wine; the big-city dames and cattle queens, the adulterous wives and dewy-eyed ingénues. She played them all.  ''After all these years, I can pick only one or two moments where I met my own standards of perfection,'' she purred.  I ask her will she ever retire.  ''Retire?  Oh my goodness no.  What would I do?  Besides, age is not important my dear, unless you're cheese.''

We relocate our conversation to the table in the main dining room.  There's a nice touch in the restaurant that I feel I should mention - it's a small thing but sometimes the most useless details take on an astounding importance when enough red wine is consumed.  We were seated in the corner of the room but rather than having one of us facing in to the wall, both chairs were on one side of the table facing the centre.  This had the effect of making things surprisingly intimate (those dazzling blue eyes studying me closely) and giving both of us a fine view of the room.  If only there was someone interesting to look at. 

I gave her the background on Thornton's much vaunted redecoration (carried out by New York firm 1100 Architect) but she bored quickly of this conversation.  ''Frankly I find the notion of a firm of architects designing a dining room completely ridiculous.  One of the greatest meals I ever had in my life was sitting on a bench with a man I adored outside a restaurant in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere.  We were eating a fish supper and drinking the house red while overhead we could hear the fluttering of immaculate white sheets hung out to dry.  So romantic.'' She sighed wistfully at the memory.

You can see her point.  The greatest environment to eat is surrounded by interesting people who love food.  And with Thornton's that's where we come across a problem.  Here is a Michelin starred chef serving up fine food in a lunch menu for €35 a head.  The place should be bursting at the seams.  Instead we have three tables of suits trying to impress clients by ''doing Thornton's'' on the cheap.  There is a funereal, hushed and overly reverend atmosphere.  Diners lean in to each other to speak.  The laughter at our table shatters the silence and you almost feel you should apologise for it.  We don't.

Clearly the canapé bar is designed to try and combat this and if it was full of punters there would be a different dynamic in the rest of the restaurant.  Unfortunately it was completely empty when we visited but you would have to think that will change.  It really should.  The food is magnificent and it deserves to be enjoyed by throngs of delirious customers, merrily wolfing down Thorton's creations.  Now that really would be joyous.

The Shelbourne

Life truly does throw up some wonderful coincidences.  I was contemplating who would be an appropriate dinner guest to bring along to review the revamped Grand Dame of St. Stephen's Green when I got a phone call.  Out of the blue an old acquaintance, who is forever in my memory connected with the Shelbourne Hotel, called to say she was visiting Dublin.  When I suggested we meet there for lunch, I could hear her gasp audibly down the line.

Madame Bovary is a French novelist who I met in the early eighties when she came to Dublin sans husband to watch the French play Ireland in the (then) Five Nations.  At the time I was living in Austria but frequented Dublin regularly in the springtime to gorge on rugby, brandy and the female form.  We met in the Horseshoe Bar as two strangers, dinner followed, candles flickered and sexual tensions burned.  Eventually we ended up in an ecstatic embrace beneath the sheets in one of the hotel's slightly musty rooms overlooking the Green.  I nicknamed her Madame Bovary on account of her being married, from Normandy and engaged in a life-long, futile search for love.  She seemed to enjoy this moniker.  The following morning she was gone.  We kept in touch intermittently through the years. 

Knowing I was to visit the Shelbourne, I cleared the decks for the day - well, it's not the kind of place that one goes just for lunch and I had a feeling the visit could last well in to early evening.  It is a place, as the saying goes, where all the events of life are accomplished.  I arrived therefore at about 11am, enjoyed a wonderful cappuccino and cake in the Lord Mayor's Lounge, before tottering downstairs to the hair salon.  There I had what's left of my hair expertly coiffed while enjoying an amiable chat with the barber. 

There are options aplenty for diners but for my reunion with Madame Bovary I eschewed the grandeur of the Saddle Room restaurant and Oyster Bar and opted instead for the bar/lounge, No. 27.  Don't get me wrong - I'm sure the Saddle Room is perfectly lovely - it's just that it seemed that No. 27 is where the real buzz was and given that I hadn't seen my dinner companion for nearly ten years, I figured the informal atmosphere might be more appropriate. 

Being that little bit early, I secured a wonderful table just inside the door in front of a roaring fire.  When the initial curiosity about the refurbishment subsides, things won't be quite so busy, but for the moment the place is heaving - my advice is get there early.  There is a winning feel about No. 27 that I dare say the Saddle Room may never be able to match - it feels connected with St. Stephen's Green, no doubt in part because you can see the bustle of the street outside the window - but also because of some clever design inside.  Imitation street lights over the tables and paintings of various scenes from the Green over the bar give the effect of reflecting the streetscape outside.

Madame Bovary finally made her entrance - still sexy at 65 years of age - and we celebrated our reunion with glasses of Louis Roederer champagne.  We surveyed the lunch menu - chowder, prawn cocktail and crab cakes as well as a daily sandwich and soup options, the obligatory burger, steak and club sandwiches.  But the chef's recommendations caught the eye of this Irish wannabe - coddle and hairy Irish bacon!  Very Brendan Behan.  With no further appointments to act as a restraining order, we opted for a bottle of full bodied Chateau Larose Trintaudon and got down to catching up.  Her poor husband died last year.  I commiserate, feeling uncomfortable.  ''We were never happy,'' she said.  ''But that didn't matter. Passion is more important than happiness.'' She is still a master of seduction - all subtle nuances and well placed silences. 

One of the things I dislike intensely about many great hotels is the stuffy, overbearing HUSH.  The Shelbourne's reincarnation, thank God manages to blend opulent with comfortable.  It remains quintessentially Dublin and Dubliners it would appear have reclaimed it as their own already.  It really does feel like it was never away. There is a healthy smattering of celebrities, journalists, actors and High Court judges - as one would expect - but crucially there are also lots and lots of regular Joes too.  It is a happy mix.  Where else in the world would you see a well known politician sitting up at the bar beside an auld wan in a tartan skirt and pop socks, with one of those trolley shopping bags parked beside her? 

Faces burned from the fire and red wine we repaired to the Horseshoe Bar where affable barman John McLoughlin served up a pair of wonderful martinis, made with Grey Goose Vodka and a splash of vermouth.  The afternoon disappeared.  Followed by the early evening.  The crowds milled around us.  Madame appeared keen to recreate the rhapsodic passions of old, but regrettably I felt compelled to call it a day - the spirit may well have been willing, but the flesh is no longer up to the job. 

Of all the Giving Up experiments that I have tried, this is the big one. Being without electricity is a whole series of experiments rolled in to one - giving up lights, heat, showers, the oven, fridge, kettle, toaster, TV, radio, house alarm, dishwasher, microwave, vacuum cleaner and, in all likelihood, sanity. Given the level of delicate negotiations which were needed to get Mrs Kelly on board for this one, it’s probably appropriate that this is the last Giving Up article in the series.

On the first morning I light the solid-fuel stove in the sitting room and then turn off the mains at the fuse board, just so there can be no cheating. An eerie silence falls over the house. No background noise of TV or radio. No gentle humming from the fridge. My first task is to do some hand-washing in the kitchen sink using water heated on the stove. It’s a complete pain and takes me the better part of an hour. The experience of hand-washing our “smalls” will live long in the memory.

Later that evening when darkness descends, I light about 20 candles and an old oil lantern but it still seems really dark. One of the great things about this experiment is that it highlights areas of peak-oil vulnerability - take our cooker for example. Some years ago, we had a bit of a debate about buying an Aga but in the end we opted for an electric range with a gas hob. Oh for the comforting warmth of an Aga now. Still, at least we have the gas hob for cooking, albeit using a match to light the gas - the little clicker thing is powered by battery.

While struggling to make spaghetti Bolognese in the semi-darkness, I hold a candle near it to see if it’s cooked and some wax drips in to the saucepan. Is it because it’s so hard to prepare a meal in the dark that people used to eat dinner in the middle of the day? We ponder this question while eating our waxy meal and then retire to the sitting room, the only place that has any heat. We pull two chairs up to the stove and sit there talking. I try reading the paper but give up after 10 minutes, half blind from squinting in the dark. We play cards for a while. “It must be time for bed,” I say. “It’s only 7.30,” replies Mrs Kelly.

The darkness is incredible. Oppresive.  Everywhere.  We carry the lantern with us wherever we go. I can’t help thinking how electricity has helped us make an irrelevance of the seasons. We carry on with our hectic lives in the depths of winter using artificial light but the darkness must have forced our parents to slow down for the winter months. Perhaps this semi-hibernation is how nature intended it?

We head for bed and I try reading a book by candlelight, but the candle blows out and the room is suddenly plunged into darkness. I wake up in the middle of the night and feel my way downstairs to put fuel on the stove. Out the back door I see the most magnificent array of stars in the sky. We live in the countryside and they are always pretty bright but with the house blacked out they are incandescent.

The following morning the alarm goes off at 7am, but the room is pitch black and Baltic with the cold. The stove downstairs is still lit and the pot of water on top still warm. Since the electric shower won’t work, washing is done at the sink with the pot of hot water and a facecloth. I am pleasantly surprised to find I feel quite clean afterwards.

I boil up some water to make tea and since we can’t have toast, we have some poached eggs and white bread. I find I appreciate the daylight more than normal and try and cram in as many things as possible. I prepare a stew during the day and put it on top of the stove. The fridge is out of action but you realise that the vast majority of things in our fridges don’t actually need constant chilling; beer, wine, chutney, marmalade, fruit, vegetables etc. I put butter and milk out in the porch, where it is about minus 20 degrees anyway.

The week drags on. By day I head for my office, which is separate to the house and still powered up (well I have to work) - it’s a little island of electrification. It’s warm and bright and things beep, buzz and whirr. There is an inevitable relentlessness about the arrival of the darkness each day. I spend half an hour playing with the dogs in the kitchen one night, just for something to do. Another evening I try a jigsaw but it’s just too dark. The stove is our best friend, the star performer. We conquer the art of getting it to stay lit all night long. We sit close to it and each other.

For our final night we invite friends and family around for storytelling. I am keen to talk to people older than myself about what life was like before electrification or when electricity shortages were commonplace. I tell our guests it will be quite rustic, a bowl-of-stew-on-your-lap sort of thing. But it morphs in to a dinner party for 10 people. Since it will be so dark, do I need to bother cleaning up beforehand? I sweep all the floors just in case, eyeing the vacuum cleaner covetously.

We have a truly magical evening. Stories are told, songs are sung. We really start to appreciate how stories and folklore would have been so much more vivid when told sitting around a fire like this. Shadows flicker behind us. It’s almost eerie.

Particularly striking are the many references to how much more careful people used to be about consuming electricity. When it arrived first it was seen as an luxury rather than a utility - people were careful with it, and certainly didn’t take it for granted. They turned off lights that were not in use, and switched off the mains when going to bed. Environmental concerns and increasing energy costs may force us to revisit this frugality. The general consensus at the end of the night of story-telling is that we should do it more often. The washing-up afterwards, however, is a nightmare.

The following morning I luxuriate in a long hot shower. Candles are put away. Lights go on. Radiators heat up. The electricity meter ramps up again. Nobody really knows what impact an oil shortage will have on our lives, but most experts agree that electricity will not be as readily available as it is today. If you want to get a sneak preview of what the future might look like, you only need to flick the switch labelled “mains fuse”.

(c) 2007 The Irish Times