This article from New York Magazine about the children making lemonade in the city is priceless. I’ve often wondered why Ireland doesn’t have this culture of letting the children go out, set up stalls and learn how to be entrepreneurs.
No child gets abducted selling lemonade. Think of all the things Irish children could be selling. But then you think about it and ask yourself…… when is the last time I saw a child any further than twenty meters from their home WITHOUT one of their parents keeping a paranoid eye on them. Even Hallowe’en on your own seems verboten nowadays. Take the case of the nine year old riding the subway in New York that sparked outrage and applause across America and sparked the Free Rang Kids movement. My mother had always set the bar for a solo trip into town on the bus at ten for me, but when I was nine, I took my pocket money and got on that bus. I came home unscathed. Wow - was it exciting to be in town on my own. I’m all for free range children. I was one. I can’t imagine stifling any children I may ever have. Refusing to let them out of my sight or without supervision for fear they may be snatched away from me by the very same man who snatched Madeleine McCann. The thing about Madeleine McCann is I have never ever believed that she was abducted. Something else (in my opinon) happened to that child. But getting back to not mollycoddling children just becasue you feel guilty that they live in a creche during the week, think back to your own childhood. I think back to mine and remember that my mother had us making our breakfasts, school sandwiches, loading the washing machine with our washing and doing our own ironing from an early age. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to do it for us - but she understood that there was a more valuable lesson to be learned - Independence. Earn your own money. Reap the financial rewards. Long live the lemonade children. “Go out there and make your own money” has so much more to be said for it than “Here’s my credit card, now don’t buy too many designer sunglasses on it” or even at a lesser degree, a new toy every week and chocolate treats every day.

Previously I posted about my desire for a desk. The ingo.

My ingo currently looks like this:

The reason why is that the LACK shelves we purchased require extra special bolts M5, extra long that you can only get in Sweden. For these holes:

These bolts are hard to find in Woodies and DIY shops in Dun Laoghaire. They required a search in Sweden because they are extra long. After looking in Sweden, it was discovered they can be sourced in B&Q here in Ireland.

Here are the lack shelves:

Then, to add to my misery, I come across this post, repeating what I said about her needing a desk as much as him. I concur! Now I am sad. No bolts. No shelves. No desk. Chaos. Part V of Better Living through IKEA storage on hold.

It can make even cider look like something some what sophisticated.

Champange Flutes are designed with bubbles in mind. Cider has bubbles. Lots of them.

Champange Flutes by Riedel. Cider by Bulmers.

In March 2006 the Irish Sugar industry faced a dismal day when the sugar beet processing plant in Mallow closed down. There were many reasons cited for the demise of Irish Sugar beet production. I accepted them all without too much thought. Obviously it was too expensive to produce sugar from beet. End of Story. But, this evening on BBC Two I watched Jimmy Doherty’s Farming Heros. The programme covered Turkeys, Celery and other crops grown in East Anglia. What really stirred my interest however was coverage of a sugar beet processing plant. But not any normal sugar beet processing plant. This one is special. The sugar beet is washed by being shifted into drains. The by products of the washing process, soil and stones are kept. Soil is used as topsoil (sold on), stones (also sold on) for landscaping. The sugar beet is sliced and diced and cooked. Then it goes into large cylinders where it is spun and the sugar crystals form. The by-products are hot water, CO2, sugar beet cellulose. The sugar beet cellulose of hard not sugary stuff is used in animal feed. But the next part is the most clever part. Next to the sugar beet factory is one of the largest green houses in the UK. It stretches to over 24 acres or something. It is home to tomato vines. Thousands of vines producing millions of tomatoes every year. Apparently, enough tomatoes to account for 10% of the British consumption. This green house is heated by one sugar beet by product - hot water. The tomatoes which require Co2 to grow are fed with the other bi-product of the sugar beet factory, Co2 which is released through plastic sausage tubes into the vine area where tomatoes grow. They crop yield is increased by the abundance of CO2. The tomatoes grow without use of pesticides. Instead, wasps are used to eat green fly and white fly which plague tomatoes. Bees pollenate the tomato plants. Symbiosis at its best. Low food miles achieved. My heart slumped into my shoes when watching this programme. I have often thought how much tastier the British vine ripened tomatoes I buy in places like Marks and Spencer are to the tastless ones from Holland or Spain. Considering how many tomatoes we import into Ireland, I couldn’t help but feel Irish Sugar really didn’t make any effort to make sugar beet a sustainable crop. They didn’t consider their by products and think what they could be used for. The British sugar factory shown would have a huge carbon footprint were it not for the fact that tomatoes love C02. The CO2 has no destination other than the tomato glass house. No CO2 emissions. Not just that, sugar beet farmers get to process their crop, the tomato farmer has reduced costs as his heat and CO2 are cheaply provided by the sugar processing plant. Everyone benefits. Home grown sugar. Home grown, sustainable tomatoes. Ireland in the dark ages closed its plant. I doubt this sugar plant in East Anglia and the tomato nursery didn’t exist two years ago. Why didn’t anyone think of trying this in Ireland? It beggars belief. We now import sugar when we could be producing it and we also import tomatoes when we probably could be self sufficient in them. Everyone speaks about high food prices in Ireland - well here’s a reason. No one in this country thinks of crops as anything other than mutually exclusive.

SK and I helped deliver a boat to Kinsale this weekend. It was an interesting trip, a run down to Tuskar and then the wind into our faces all the way to Kinsale. Still, we did some nice things, like pass Cork Harbour’s entrance, which I had never done before. Here I am passing my native harbour and toasting it. You can just make out the spire of Cobh Cathedral.

The sky was very pretty going along the Cork coast as we approached Kinsale harbour.

More pretty sky:

Kinsale in dusk.

I learned on this trip that the East Coast of Ireland is pretty boring. It gets prettier as you move around Tuskar and towards Cork. Of course, Cork Harbour and Kinsale are only the gateways to all the prettiness of West Cork, the boats final destination in a few weeks.