Here is the travelogue from our babysitter, Jaki, who is now a nanny in Ireland. Escape for a few minutes and enter a completely different world than the one that most of us mothers are currently inhabiting! It's a bit long and very stream of consciousness, but to me, that is what makes it so fun to read! Thanks, Jaki!
. . . Martina and Garret both work for RTE, which is the main radio wave throughout Ireland. The two of them have been working on creating a documentary series called Soundscapes of Ireland. They are a bit behind schedule and have asked me if I would help them, by doing some recording for the program. The job includes a pay raise and traveling to all sorts of events and places to catch little sound bits, all expenses paid. Recording sounds from a laughing creek to a screaming sawmill. Hmmmmm let me think about that for a minute…. Uh YEAH!
My first assignment was a story telling festival out in a little town called Kinnity. When I say little I mean little. This town makes Daingean look like San Francisco. The town consists of one “crisper” (deep fry diner), two pubs, a church and a corner market, where you can find anything from a pack of over priced batteries to a freshly plucked chicken. The rest of the village consists of bed and breakfasts and a couple deserted businesses. I was put up in a most charming B&B, called Ardmore house. An old 2 and a half story stone house covered in vines surrounded by a gorgeous Victorian style garden. The proprietress, Chris, is a sweet friendly woman. She is a former school teacher who 17 years ago decided to buy a place and start her own B&B. The house really gave me the feeling of an old farm house, the kitchen has stone walls, an old bucket sink, shelves lined with antique dishes and of course a roaring peat/ turf fire burning in the den. We sat and chatted next to the fire while she ironed everything from clothes to pillow cases. She made me feel so very at home.
The story telling started at 10pm Irish time which was more like half ten or eleven, at a cozy little pub called the rambling house. Being there as the official sound recorder for RTE (woo woo) I was given a seat dab smack in the middle of the musicians circle, which was growing by the minute and quite literally taking over the bar. A fiddle bow in one ear and an accordion in the ribs, it was grand. The pub soon filled to the brim with locals from age 40 to 100, plus one accordion player who must have been 11. It wouldn’t surprise me if the whole town was in there that night. I had quite a task of trying to make my way from one performer to the next with all the recording gear. I am sure a lot of the recordings will have strange crashing noises as drunken folk bumped into me to get to their destinations.
Everyone had something to offer. There were poets, singers, story tellers, drummers, guitarists, fiddlers, accordions, flutes, and bag pipes, all the way down to the one guy keeping rhythm by clicking two animal bones together. Chris the lady of the house played a mean fiddle along with the rest. I felt like my ears dropped some acid when I wasn’t looking. They played till the wee hours; I could have stayed there forever. I think if they had been given the option they would have played forever.
