Toy Soldiers & Shamroguery!

I must say at this point that when traveling you need to be very careful about who you pick to venture out with you.  The thought of a plane ride and foreign accents with Ed gives me (and him) the heebie-jeebies.  My sister's husband Peter was similar to Ed regarding travels.  If he could drive out to Arizona and hike and camp, fine.  Otherwise he wanted to stay home with the cats and do yard work.

So Barbara and I left them home and traveled to Australia, Spain, Costa Rica, Nova Scotia and now The Auld Sod.  We were not all that alike as kids.  For one thing my sister was a girly girl who loved dolls and combing people's hair, while I was a tomboy and had three dolls that I can remember ~ Davy Crockett, Rob Roy and Henry the Eighth (to go with a set of his wives that my sister had).

Most of the photos of us as young kids were in dresses ~ my grandmother always sent dresses and we had to wear them, but Barbara pretty much always looked like that.  We had free rein when we were not in school or on car trips with our parents, like a lot of kids in the 1950s.  They sent us outside and called us in for lunch and supper.  Still, she played with dolls and I climbed trees.  We got more compatible as teenagers when we both got to escape our real lives and invent new ones by attending Unitarian church camps and conferences.  They were a big deal when we were in high school and an escape from what we (or I, at least) thought were our boring existence.  We headed out in our own directions after high school, lived thousands of miles away from each other for a long time, then really reconnected after I moved from Phoenix back to Vermont.  Since then I think we have been each other's best friends.  So when we travel we can happily make way for each other's preferences.  I like Irish music more than she does, so we didn't overdo that, for example.  We can take a nap now and then without one of us feeling like we are squandering or vacation.  It's great.

We both love to read and Barbara found this wonderful op-ed piece in the Irish Examiner.  It was a serious piece about cheapening celebrations of the anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 which is approaching, but the language of the writer just floored us - and they gave him half a page!  Here's a short excerpt:

"Road to the Rising Tramples on Our History"

"The event which enveloped O'Connell Street on Easter Monday was a crass tribute to the realities of Dublin and Ireland in 1916 when poverty and war was everywhere.  What a sort of Donnybrook Fair of undignified shamroguery will have been unleashed by the centenary?  A tatty shambles of fake craic and jollity.  It was remorselessly crass and gobeen-like.  The sort of thing that in the days when we might have had some claim to a bit if dignity concerning our national holidays, would have made us sneer at US organisations such as the Loyal Sons of St. Patrick and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a piece of fake pageantry that would have fitted happily into a reel of The Quiet Man...cue a mess of dressing-up box tat, mainly grubby ankle-length skirts, somewhat battered hats last seen at the cousins' wedding six years ago, and badly applied fake moustaches."  Emer O'Kelly   Irish Examiner, April 10, 2015

I hated The Quiet Man, too.  John Wayne bashing Maureen O'Hara, and terrible acting.  Ugh!

So, back on the road.  We left Cork for Killarney in County Kerry, by far the most pleasant drive so far, slightly wider roads, fewer roundabouts, less white knuckling on my part.  My only complaint was the lack of places to pull over to photograph the striking mountain views.

We saw a sign and decided to stop at a Toy Soldier factory.  Now, let me say, we both love toys and when we were kids in London one of our favorite trips was to Hamley's Toy Store where my mother bravely took all five of us shopping.  Don't be fooled by all the plastic Disney junk if you follow the Hamley's link.  It really was magical in the 1950s.  Hamley's vied with Madame Tussauds Chamber of Horrors as our favorite outing at the time.  You may not know that a large number of Madame Marie Tussaud's prominent figures were modeled from death masks made after they had been guillotined during the French Revolution.  The Chamber of Horrors showed all kinds of medieval torture and gore ~ we loved it!

Anyway we stopped for better directions in the market town of Macroom where Barbara said she thought she could live happily ever after.  Everything was right there on the high street:  butcher, fishmonger, stationer, green grocer, clothier, etc.  It was very charming but a long way off!  We finally pulled in to the Prince August Toy Soldier Factory where they make hand painted pewter soldiers and are building an additional room to hold their upcoming Battle of Waterloo exhibit.  Wow!  I so wished my grandchildren were with us.  They allowed kids to pour molten pewter into molds, then cool and paint the figures.  You couldn't have dragged me out of there when I was 10.

 
I am an amateur scenic photographer, to tell the truth, people are my specialty.  I don't take my work camera with me on trips, but have the trusty Canon G10 which does a pretty nice job.  I do love great faces, though and found many in Ireland.  I photographed a few and here's the first.  We found Willie Burke and his dog Bracken outside the toy factory and he is certainly a natural.  Thank you, Willie!

We're in Killarney for 3 nights. Whoo hoo!  We've had the nicest hotels, all clean, quiet and charming.  We had tea and whiskey in the bar of the International Hotel.  Cosy and relaxing, we sat with the beautiful Irish Wolfhound by the fire.  Everyone should be so lucky!

Next up: Killarney sights!