Reading My Way Around the World

Tuesday 31 December 2019

Dorothy

I've been missing you all for the past while  - it's been a rollercoaster of a month.

My mother in law Dorothy passed away very suddenly early in December and left us all shocked and feeling in limbo.  She had been in and out of hospital with minor ailments and on this occasion was getting ready to go home when she suddenly became unresponsive and never really came out of it.  It was scepsis. 

Dorothy with Tom and his brother David


Between her passing and her funeral we had been invited on the back of our Birdsong book to visit the home of the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, for the lighting of the Christmas tree and Tom decided to go as it was quite an honour to be invited in the first place.   Aras An Uachtarain is a beautiful building and the day was very special.   That was the Saturday and on the Sunday my singing group Singmarra had a workshop with the amazing vocal group Anuna and performed in concert with them in the monastery that night. 

Then Dorothy's funeral was on Monday.

By Tuesday morning I didn't know what end of me was up and proceeded on to our rehearsal and choir dinner on the Tuesday night, more rehearsals on the Wednesday and our Christmas concert on Saturday.

I will tell you more about the positive December happenings in a future post but it doesn't feel apt at this point.  I still feel like I"m reeling.

So in the midst of all this emotion Christmas got put aside until the 23rd when my lovely Aussie cousin arrived from London and I was forced into doing some sort of a clean up and get organised.

My apologies for not being in touch, and not sending Christmas cards - the house eventually got decorated on Christmas Eve, thanks to cousinly efforts,  and we had a lovely Christmas with friends as my mother had decided not to join us this year.

I am happy for Dorothy - it was a blessing for her as she was so unhappy and so wanting to "go home" but it has been a strange Christmas for us, particularly for Tom, and without my own mother here it made it even stranger.   However we're now on New Year's Eve and have somehow surtvived, albeit with another funeral tomorrow to start the New Year :(

I hope next year is a bit less tempestuous and I look forward to keeping up some level of regular practice of blogging...  I have been dropping in and keeping up with what you're at, just not getting around to commenting. 

This blogging community means a lot to me and I wish you all a very happy, healthy, peaceful and above all safe New Year.  See you in the next decade ...eeek!

Fil

Tuesday 24 December 2019

Merry Christmas



Merry Christmas to you all
 It's been a pleasure following along with your blogs throughout the year and I look forward to more of the same in the coming decade.  
Enjoy the holidays.
I've been AWOL for the past few months but hopefully normal service will return soon.   

Thursday 21 November 2019

The Birds' Song Book

It seems like a long time since the end of July when we launched Tom's children's book at Fiddlers Green Festival back at the end of July.  Since then we've waited to promote it until we decided how to proceed.  It has been taken back to primary schools in England, Germany, Denmark, Australia and Canada and there's already a German translation of it, so there are possiblities if we can follow them.  It has even ended up on the desk of the President of Ireland!

The Birds' Song is a fun song about the problems of immigration ... and when we first started to sing it in folk clubs, several people asked for it to be put into a book for children as it relates to the themes of diversity and culture that they focus on for 6 and 7 year olds.  

So now we're onto its second print (and we're delighted to be able to take the price down a wee bit) and we're just starting to get it out beyond friends and family and the local area, so fingers and toes crossed that we can get it to those who like to read to children and teach them songs.  One teacher in Liverpool has promised to teach it to her children for christmas assembly and video it for us - that would be so exciting and another friend in Germany who did the translation of it is also teaching it to  her 6 and 7 year olds. 
The Birds'Song illustrated for children in a 16pp book
to teach that differences are good.

Robin and his friends Blackbird and Thrush are wondering why the foreign birds are not visiting and think that something is afoot.  Are other birds stopping them at the borders?  


The Birds' Song is a gentle parody song about immigration, in a language that children can understand.  It is told from the perspective of the home birds versus the migrating birds. It was Tom's idea and he wrote the text.   It has been illustrated beautifully by Colum McEvoy and I wrote the music.

“We may have different feathers and sing a different song
But when we sing together the differences are gone.”

Aimed at children aged 5-7 years old and covering themes of diversity and culture, the Birds’ Song book is 16 pages, A4, has the sheet music included and is priced at £6.

Listen to The Birds Song here
Purchase here

Friday 15 November 2019

Little footballs ...


It was a relief to get out for a walk today after being laid up for nearly 2 weeks (again - yes, the third time this year ... )  and with the diary filling up with mainly choir and singing group commitments between now and Christmas I thought it was way past time that I started to get a bit of exercise. 

 It was actually quite warm in the sun but you could really feel the bite in the wind. 

 Is it just me or do these pine fruit look like little footballs - they really made me smile.

Judging by the amount of berries around, it's going to be a very cold winter ... the birds have lots of choices...


It was a really lovely walk around the bay at full tide. 


We've been shocked to see the terrible floods across the north of England and the awful fires in Australia.  I hope you are all safe and dry.  It's been raining a lot here and very cold but thankfully there's not been a lot of flooding other than in the fields.


Sunday 27 October 2019

The Invisible Tree

Pic: Courtesy of RARE

For my Moment of Joy this week I'm sharing the story of the Invisible Tree which has just won the NI branch (excuse the pun) of the Tree of the Year competition.  Read more here ....

http://www.irishnews.com/…/sessile-oak-tree-in-rostrevor-c…/

A while back I wrote a piece about a building project that was being proposed on the edge of the forest where the council overturned their own planners advice and allowed the project to go ahead in spite of no proper traffic assessment or assessment on the danger to the animals and trees in the forest.  As it turns out, the site was afterwards put up for sale and the planning permission was listed as being suitable for changing to alternate purposes.   In other words, the original plans to build a nursing home and some luxury apartments was a ruse - no nursing home will ever turn up there.

Rostrevor Action Respecting the Environment (R.A.R,E) started a campaign and took it as far as the High Court to get the plans at the very least reduced in size, but a high court judge ruled in favour of the builder.

Not deterred, RARE carried on with a much more successful action, focussing on this tree that was left off the plans along with a right of way.   Now The Invisible Tree and the story is getting worldwide attention and the site is still not sold - there are many ways to skin a cat ...


Friday 25 October 2019

The Search Engine that Plants Trees #WATWB


Ecosia - the search engine that plants trees


We've just started using this search engine to see how it compares to Google which frankly I am fed up with - they are everywhere - sorry Google, if you're watching this!!  

Ecosia makes its money just like any other search engine, by advertising, and for every 50 searches they earn enough to plant a tree.  So far they've planted over 71 million. 

Furthermore they don't share your details, they're completely transparent with their accounting and all the hardware they use is carbon neutral as far as possible.   It all sounds good.   Another small way to help the planet.  
Here's a review ...

https://www.patharoundtheworld.com/ecosia-review/


Joining in again with We Are The World Blogfest #WATWB - spreading positive news across the Blogosphere.


Sunday 20 October 2019

A moment of joy

Glorious


Autumn Days 


Resplendent in colour


Fruitful End of Year


Joy


Have a great week - I hope you're getting lots of sunshine wherever you are.








Monday 7 October 2019

A reading challenge

After Christmas I read a book that my brother had left behind on his last visit home from Australia - it was by Tim Winton which described a journey up the West Coast of Australia through and to an area that I will never get to visit and I just loved the descriptions of the landscape and travelling along with the characters.

So I decided to start a little challenge for myself - to travel the world with the books I read.
While I've always been very loyal to Irish writers, and there are many many wonderful Irish writers, both north and south, male and female, old and new - I've long been fed up with the emigration story and often pick up books just for the sake of going somewhere new.  And I almost have to put on blinkers when I pass Waterstones - their book of the month nearly always ends up in my bag.

Anyway, looking around the web at reading challenges, I came across Tale Away, a fantastic blog written by Ash, an American woman who regularly puts up challenges to read 52 books from 52 different countries each year and her suggestions are fabulous.  I'm not following her challenge as I've already read a lot of the titles on her suggestions lists and I don't get through that many books in a year either,   So my challenge to myself is to read a book from or about every country in the world - ideally written by someone from that country but as long as it's set there, that will be enough.    I've no time limit as I'll likely wander off at various times to read the latest best sellers and books by local writers, and some of the books by new to me authors will almost certainly send me in search of more that they've written, but it's already a fun journey.

So for this year, here's the pile of books I've been through so far.  I mostly only read at night, so I don't get through many books a month, but a lot of these have been real epics, and not all will go onto my books of the world list.


The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - a lot of people didn't like the tv show of this book which I haven't watched, and I've never read any Atwood books before which was why I picked it up before I started this challenge (although I might cheat and add her as a Canadian entry).   I found it fascinating for a book written 30 years ago and so much of it is scarily possible in this crazy world we're in at the minute.  

Dirt Music by Tim Winton - the book that started this idea.   An interesting story of a dysfunctional community on the south west corner of Australia - and the journey up the full length of the west coast was fascinating and the landscape was well described.

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce - set in England and not really a travel type book, there was a fascinating insight into classic and classical music in this story of a record shop owner who has the gift of knowing what piece of music a distressed person needs to hear to heal.   And there was a great Spotify playlist added at the end which I've listened to several times. 

Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks - a collection of short stories that all revolve around a typewriter.   I'm not particularly into short stories but I was interested to see what Tom would write and they were very enjoyable short night time reads and his voice is almost audible in the way he writes. 

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.   What can I say.   This book was amazing - really a 5* from me.  It's not recent and I'm sure many of you have already read it, it held me enthralled the whole way through.   Set in Afghanistan during the rise and subsequent fall of the Taliban, it's the story of two women thrown together.  

Stones From the River by Ursula Hegi - this is set in Germany between the two wars and again it's a fabulous story, a suggestion I got from Ash's blog .   The lead character is superb - she's a dwarf and thereby an outsider and is featured in other books by this writer which I will definitely look into.   We spend so much time in Germany and yet I had not read any books by German writers before and the translation was very good as well.   I loved the fact that it left some German words untranslated, words that are already in the English language or are well enough explained that you understand what they mean.   

Eva Luna by Isabel Allende - although the country isn't specified in this book, it is definitely South America and it had a really surreal cast of characters, but then that's Isabel Allende's trademark isn't it? It wasn't one of my favourite of her books but still an enjoyable story.  

Small Island by Andrea Levy - Oh, I adored this book - another 5* from me.   And it explained a lot to me, or rather pointed out a lot, of the awful discrimination suffered by the Windrush people who came from Jamaica to help out in Britain's call for workers after the war.  Great story, beautifully written and a wonderful cast of characters.  

Tangerine by Christine Mangan - I only picked this up because of the title and it gave me a north African storyline but for me it didn't hit the spot.   

There's more to come, but I'll not bore you just yet.   



Thursday 3 October 2019

Off to a calmer place



I had to venture outside today for various meetings and passed a dog yapping delightedly at the waves that are churning up the beach - the poor girl who was with him was huddled against the wall trying to get some shelter while the dog yelped at every passer by to come and look and see what he had found ... very funny.   Unfortunately I was in too big a hurry to get out of the rain and too busy laughing at him to take out my phone and take a picture of him ... but this was later




Thank you all for the lovely comments on the photos at the Scavenger Hunt - I really must go and figure out what on earth is going on with Blogger - "give it a good talking to" as Kate would say :) . But it won't let me comment individually and by the time I go back and look at what someone else has said to comment on it, I've lost the original thing .... Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh.   Life's too short ...

Yesterday we gathered to give a final send off to a lovely singer colleague of ours, Rosemary Woods, who battled for several years with cancer and could finally rest without pain.   It was a very emotional day but a beautiful send off for a beautiful woman who blessed everyone who ever met her with her presence, her heart felt words and her gentle personality.   Even when we visited her in the Hospice, Tom and I came out smiling, feeling like we had been uplifted and gifted with something.  We worked on the same circuit and with the same agents and although we weren't close close friends you were a big part of my musical family and I will miss you dear Rosie, as will all the many people who's lives you have touched.  Rest in Peace dear friend.


Friday 27 September 2019

September in Photos


I started this at the start of September in the hope that I might get to play along this month with Hawthorn's aka Kate's Scavenger Hunt. - a word for a picture, a picture for a word.   The past two months I've been almost there, but not quite .... and here I am on the last Friday rushing around looking for the last couple of photos lol.  So here goes ...

Cosy

Meet my new grand nephew born at the end of August - this photo is the epitome of cosy to me ... the size of it - awwww.   Unfortunately he lives in Australia so it'll be some time before I meet him, but all are well.


Changing Foliage

I had great plans to photograph a local house that is always covered by a beautiful red climber at this time of the year, but I'm just back from the dentist, thinking I was due for a simple procedure and ended up with a root extraction ...on my birthday!!!!!   So photo forgotten - so this is one I took this week last year up the Fairy Glen



Scarf

My friend Cat and I went to see the American knitting designer Stephen West at Woollin outside Dublin earlier in the Summer.   He was a hoot, so over the top, and a perfect antidote for me who has to do everything by the book.  
I decided to do one of his patterns - this is The Doodler which was great fun to knit and I know it's more of a shawl than a scarf, but I wouldn't have the nerve to wear it as a shawl, so scarf it is!  And it's a bit out of focus cause the wind just wouldn't keep still for a second.


Cobweb

There are thousands of cob spiders around at the minute and cobwebs everywhere - our house is quite old and if you leave it for a couple of days it's been invaded again.  
But none of the webs are pretty enough - but this is one from last year when the fuchsia were still in full flow





Baking


What can I say?   Not my finest hour lol . This should have been a nut crust for a quiche ... oops


My Own Choice

I have to include another pic from my flight at the start of the month - and yes, I'm still smiling about that.   But it's a full year past now since the big birthday ( a year ago today in fact :) ) - this birthday doesn't count for anything other than the fact that I've managed to survive another year.

I thought the islands looked like those big crystals you see - you know where the edges are a different colour - 


So delighted to be playing again - off to visit the other photos now.


Thursday 19 September 2019

New Voices of Ireland

Dublin is a cacophony of sound and the most noticeable thing for me are all the different languages and accents you hear walking down the street.   So an exhibition of immigrant artists and connected themes was a perfect end to our day in the city last week.

New Voices of Ireland is run by the Centre for Creative Practice, an organisation in Dublin who facilitate immigrant artists and local artists working with immigrants, helping them integrate into the arts scene in Ireland and helping them get their work out there. 

The opening speaker Ailbhe Murphy, an Irish gay activist, was very eloquent and asked an interesting question about the word immigrant - if we went to work in New York say, would we be immigrants?  Probably not ... We'd more likely just be people who have moved to NY for work.   So why is it different?  in a country who's people have been so badly treated down through the years as emigrants, why are we so bad at welcoming this new wave of people to our shores.

My friend Csilla from Hungary is a poet and film maker writing in English.   She was one of 10 artists selected for this exhibition and it was a very inspirational evening.  Ranging from a play, a monologue, photography, architecture, film, and a very unusual installation of written words, the show was varied and of the highest standard. 

One who really caught my attention was Nicola Anthony who is based in London, and takes stories from refugees and immigrants and turns them into mini works of art - words carved in bronze, put in a bottle with a clock mechanism and sometimes with sound - I found it incredibly moving.

Nasrin Golden  from Iran, takes items from her home and turns them into large scale photographs that  end up resembling Persian carpets - beautiful work. 

She says: "The project uses images from the past, the longed for. However, they are shaped by the experience of cultivating a new identity in the here and now,  mirroring and duplicating in an attempt to replicate the identity of the observed and create the new. Questioning the order of form in the world around us by surrounding our self with perceptions of our own identity." 


Csilla Toldy presented two short film poems about Belfast - the changing view of the city - an outsider looking in.   They're not up on her website yet, but it was interesting seeing what an newcomer sees of our city - I tend to not see the mundane side of it and only view the nice bits, but she very cleverly highlighted the similarities between the two sides of the still divided town.  This is one of her other short film poems.


Unfortunately I didn't get time to view "Still Waiting for the Summer" by the German film makers Barbara Lubich and Michael Sommermeyer, documenting how a musical group made up of people from several different nationalities, challenged the very strong right wing element present in Dresden where they all live.   Well worth watching I'm told.   Over 30% of people in Dresden voted for the right wing Deutschland fur Alles in the last election - a very scary thought.


Wann wird es endlich wieder Sommer / Waiting for the summer's return (Trailer) from hechtfilm - filmproduktion on Vimeo.


All of the pieces presented on the night were very interesting - the other artists were Mirjana Reneduzic an actress from Croatia, Romi Cruanas a theatre director from South America, Leia Mocan who presented several pieces made from recycled waste,  Irish digital artist Joe Ryan who looked at the point when an old building is taken over by a new structure and how it changes the community.

Lots of food for thought.





Wednesday 18 September 2019

Not good at change

There's so much new stuff to learn all the time these days, particularly to do with computers and various devices.   As a result when I find one thing I like I'm very reluctant to change. 

But, I've finally given in and changed my browser from Safari - for months now I've not been able to leave comments on your blogs from my laptop, but could do it on my computer.   Now it won't play either.   I really don't like using all Google products, or all from any company for that matter, but it's so annoying when you spend ages writing messages and none show up.   So apologies if I've been AWOL and I'll see if Google Chrome performs any better. 

Sat with my mother for an hour on Sunday eating ice cream and looking out at the sea at Bundoran.
The hills of north Donegal were just about visible across the bay
It is still the most calming thing... looking at waves ... love it.

Monday 16 September 2019

In Dublin's Fair City

It's a gorgeous day here today but I'm sitting in a long queue on the phone waiting to get through to national insurance people so I'm putting the time to good use.   

For a myriad of reasons we had to cancel our planned holiday in France this year so we decided on a few day trips to make up for it.  Firstly to Dublin

And we had blue skies and warm sunshine for it on Friday.  My friend, Hungarian poet  Csilla Toldy, with whom I collaborated on a two handed theatre piece called The Emigrant Woman's Tale, had a video poem in an exhibition of New Voices of Ireland (I'll give this a separate post) so we decided to make a day of it.   The train to Dublin always feels like a treat to me (trains were already gone when I was growing up in rural Fermanagh) and after lunch in my favourite Lebanese restaurant and a wander around Grafton Street we headed in to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells.

Image borrowed from the Internet
Photography was not allowed in the main room where the actual book is on display so I've borrowed these couple of images from the Internet.  
Now, I'm sure all you learned folks reading this know about or at least have heard of The Book of Kells.   It's a 9th century illuminated manuscript of the Four Gospels plus some introductory texts which was written by 4 scribes and 3 artists as far as scholars can tell.  
It really is a beautiful thing and is considered the oldest example of its kind in Europe and is Ireland's greatest treasure.  
As well as the main manuscript, the University also holds 7 out of around 20 remaining small transcribed books that monks would have written themselves before setting out around the world to preach the gospel.  

Internet Picture ( I think this one is of Matthew)

The exhibition From Darkness to Light describes the making of the book, plus The Book of Armagh which was written slightly earlier and the Book of Durrow, what inks were used and how they. were made and the fact that the exhibit book took somewhere around 189 calf skins to make.  Such laborious work.  And the scholarly research is impressive.

I've wanted to visit this for as long as I can remember, but I'm a terrible tourist and never got around o it and unfortunately when we went in the place was packed - apparently there was a cruise ship in for the day.   We got a glimpse of the book for a couple of minutes and the young people from the tours were so noisy we couldn't wait to get out again.   I will go back sometime though - perhaps in Winter.   

The best part by far of the exhibition for me was walking through The Long Room which is the oldest library in the world and was built in the mid 1700s to house every book that was printed in the British Isles.  It's a beautiful space and houses over 200,000 ancient books and manuscripts including an original copy of the Irish Declaration of Independence - apparently only 2 of them exist.  

The magnificent Long Room

Notice there's no J on the edges - there was no
letter J in Latin
The domed ceiling was added
long after the original building to house a second level of books
 The library also houses the Brian Boru harp which interestingly (for me anyway ) has nothing to do with the 11th century High King of Ireland Brian Boru, but was given to Trinity in the 18th century and dates back to the late 14th or early 15th century.   It is the symbol of Ireland and is one of only three instruments of its kind in existence.
Again there were so many people around it was hard to get a decent photo but I loved the detail on this - it's encrusted with tiny jewels and crystals which suggests that it was the instrument of a master musician or bard or someone from a very prominent family.
A detail of the Brian Boru harp



Another image borrowed from the internet

So all in all a very interesting browse and I'd highly recommend it, if you haven't already visited.   Trinity is right in the centre of Dublin so very easy to get to - but try to avoid the cruise ships unless you're actually on it yourself lol

So from there after a wee sojourn in Powerscourt Town House for tea and cakes, it was a long walk to the exhibition which was a delight.  

As I said earlier I'll do a separate post for the exhibition .... stay tuned :)





Sunday 8 September 2019

A walk in the woods and a new sculpture in the park

Hello all
It was lovely to hear from some of you last week and good to get back to having a bit of space in my head again.  

A new metal sculpture in the Narnia wood
For the record, I spent ages leaving comments over a couple of weekends only to find out that my laptop doesn't like to play with Safari :( and kept none of the comments .... So hello to Kate and all the Scavenger Hunt players for the last couple of months - I loved your photos - Kate always puts up some out of the box words to illustrate with a photo and the challenge is a great way of catching up on the month gone by - my drafts folder is full of *nearly* ready to post posts that didn't quite make it ... maybe this month.
Not sure if I like her but she'll not blow away
like the willow figures



Have a great week - hopefully the Autumn isn't in full swing yet and that there's a bit of sunshine left

Beech nuts in profusion this year







Monday 2 September 2019

Flying in to September

Hello Blogland friends

I hope you are keeping well.  

It's been ages since I've posted here - life has a habit of getting in the way of things at the minute.   There are several half finished posts waiting for a bit of editing and shuffling around that are now way out of date but they may still see the light of day if I can get a bit of head space.   

Can you believe it's September already - although it feels a bit like Winter here today - at least we're not getting what the poor people in the Bahamas are having to face.  

Yesterday was so different though - in between the showers there was good bouts of sunshine and I got to take the last part of my (last year's) big birthday present - a flight in a Cessna plane!!  Wow - what a fabulous experience and what a wonderful present.   


Strangford Lough from a Cessna plane
We flew from Newtownards down to Newcastle with the Mournes in our sightline - that's what I was aiming for when the pilot let me take the controls - talk about exciting - I'll be grinning for a week.   I was so excited I forgot to take a photo though.

And then back up the Ards Penninsula which is simply beautiful to fly over - lots of wee islands on Strangford Lough, and as the tide was low we got a really good view of the shape of the lough

even spotting a shipwreck....
You can see the ship broken in two here - one half lying out of the water on the bottom right
and the other half up near the shoreline beside the 6 white dots (boats)

 We were so lucky with the weather - a huge cloudburst landed just 2 minutes after us but the whole flight was just perfect.


I've wanted to do this all my adult life but never quite got around to it.   Then for my 60th last year, my lovely choir clubbed together to get it for me - one of the ladies had heard me talking about it one time when we were all talking about things we'd wished we'd done.
 The islands looked like jewels in the water - you know like the big blocks of amethyst you see in crystal shops that have edges that look like they've come out of the water.





















I hope you're all keeping well -whether you're heading for Autumn or Spring at the minute - best wishes from Belfast where I'm sitting in a cafe catching up.  

Tuesday 9 July 2019

A quick trip to West Cork and a great idea


Gosh I'm so far behind with posting photos and coming by to say hello.   Every time I think I've something ready, something else needs doing .... aargh ... but I'll catch up.   I will, I will, I WILL :)
So to recover we ran away for a few days to West Cork.  And got a heatwave for our trouble.   
PURE BLISS.


We did a couple of songs with the fabulous John Spillane (the essence of West Cork someone called him) in the wonderful de Barra's Folk Club which was our reason for being down that far south (it's about a 5 hour drive from here) - so to capitalise on it we decided to take our caravan (adding another couple of hours to the drive) and have a wee break which was worth it.   







We've played in de Barra's several times, but maybe 25 years ago - we were wondering if one of our posters might be at the bottom of this pile we spotted on the wall!













As a bonus we hit upon the annual Old Time Fair and Brass Band Competition on Saturday  - a really joyful day of swing music, old trades, everyone in great form and the shops doing flying business.


Clonakilty is a beautiful town at the best of times, with loads of boutiques, great places to eat, excellent music and lovely pubs - it's about 40 minutes west of Cork city and well worth a visit if you're ever around those parts.

Here's a blast of the wonderfully fun (and pink) Ambling Band from Bristol who treated us to a splendid round of well known songs and got the whole crowd joining in the Can Can.   And they lead the final parade of vintage cars and steam engines in the evening.  If you're ever needing a band to add a bit of fun to your festival these guys are the business.




And the wonderful idea?  
I spotted this sign in a cafe and I'm sure there are uses for it everywhere ... 
The photo's a bit blurry but it says


A Brilliant Idea.





RECYCLED MUGS
TO TAKE AWAY
Reduce Use of Paper Cups
If possible please return
DROP OFF YOUR UNUSED MUGS HERE.














We're getting ready for Fiddlers Green Festival now, coming up in under 2 weeks - a couple of gigs for us and for Singmarra and Tom's book launch - and also preparing for a tour of the Emigrant Woman's Tale over the Winter - so lots going on.

Hopefully I'll see you again before too long.
In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying your summer (or Winter, Susan :) ) .