Tour of Meath

This sounds like a cycle race. But it was a tour that T and I just did by car. We were exploring ancient sites chosen by Peter Harbison, the former head of the National Museum of Ireland. I was given a copy of his guide book ‘Monuments of Ireland’ as a going away present from my job in England when I left to join Queen’s. The book was given to me by Des, a young colleague from Mayo, and it has been by far the best and most used present I received.

That was in December 1997, during those almost twenty years I have travelled through every county of this island by bicycle searching out the ancient sites he picked out as the most interesting. It has been a process of exploration as many of these ancient sites are difficult to find. They are often in fields surrounded by cattle, behind new bungalows and rarely signposted. You need a good OS map to find most of the sites in the guide and even then some still remained undiscovered.

The Irish approach to antiquity appears to be benign neglect. The ruins are usually left alone and rarely exploited by the heritage industry. I am all for this. I can’t stand interpretative centres with their mock ups and models, as you often get in England, I want to experience the real thing.

We started in Ardee. This is the only town I know with three castles on the main street. They are tower houses. The sort that you got a government grant to help build in medieval times. You find these throughout the Pale. Then we went on to Cruicetown, which was a settlement built by the de Crys family around 1200. They were Normans. All that remains is a ruined church in the middle of a field of cattle with later family tombs in it. We picnicked there using a large flat tomb as a table. Interestingly, over centuries the spelling of the family name changes to Cruise. So is this quiet site now in danger of being overrun by Scientologists and film fans?

The next stop was Kells, which had a large monastery founded by monks from Iona who were fleeing the Vikings. The Book of Kells was said to have been written there in the 9th Century. But the monastery was raided repeatedly by the Vikings and the Irish and burnt and the Book stolen. All that remains of this is a large round tower and four high crosses, most of which are in a dilapidated state.

Travelling back in time, we went on to the Hill of Ward. This is a splendid isolated hill with earthworks. It was said to have been founded by Lug and dedicated to the sacred fire. For thousands of years there were gatherings here to celebrate the passing of autumn and the beginning of winter. In ancient times, all the men of Ireland were called to take part. This was the feast of Samhain, which has been sort of transposed into Halloween. From the top of the hill you can clearly see Slieve Gullion and the Wicklow mountains.

We spent a good while at Trim, the town with the greatest concentration of ancient sites in Meath. It has the largest and best preserved Norman castle in Ireland, which featured in Braveheart (this Australian-Scottish epic was all filmed in Ireland)). Along a lovely riverside path beside the Boyne is a huge 12th century monastic settlement, as well as remnants of a 14th century abbey, town walls and tower.

Then we followed the Boyne up to Bective Abbey, a well preserved Cistercian monastery with a fine cloister. We ended up at Duleek at the remains of an Augustinian priory, where the youth of the town were hanging out, smoking dope and having pizza delivered. They sat on a large flat tombstone and ate their repast. We repaired to the restaurant next door, which happened to be in an old church. It had been a grand day out that had ranged over many centuries, a salutary lesson in learning from the past and living for today.

FODMAP

I’ve begun a diet. I’m not trying to lose weight but to improve my digestion. Over the past year in particular I’ve been getting symptoms of bloating, cramping, wind and diarrhoea. I don’t have these uncomfortable symptoms all of the time, they seem to flare up intermittently and unpredictably. T, who had previously suffered from IBS, did some research into my problems and came up with the FODMAP diet. I’ve tried it for a week and there has been a marked improvement.

The diet originates from research done at Monash University in Australia. They looked at the chemical structures of food and its absorption through the digestive system. They found that some foods were very poorly absorbed and the residues of these foods became fermented by the bacteria present in your gut, producing the bad symptoms. They then classified different foods by how absorbable they were. The FODMAP diet has been tried and tested over the past decade and is now recommended by the NHS.

For the past week I’ve been eating only foods that are relatively easily absorbable and doing my best to avoid those that are not. The FODMAP chart is quite odd. The badly absorbed vegetables include onion and garlic (two foods that I already instinctively avoided) but also peas, mushrooms and cauliflower. The easily absorbed fruit includes bananas and grapes but not raisins and sultanas as their chemical structure is changed by the drying process. You have to keep checking the list. I keep a copy in my pocket

I reckon that my flare-ups could easily have been associated with eating foods from the poorly absorbed list. It’s particularly difficult where processed foods are concerned as you have to scan a long list of ingredients. Indeed many of the sweeteners used in low-calorie foods and drinks are on the avoid list. The research also suggested that having bowel surgery (which I had a year ago) was likely to increase the irritability of your bowel.

The recommendation is that you eat only foods that are easily absorbable for at least four weeks to see if your symptoms improve. After that you can try and reintroduce foods from the poorly absorbed list as some people can tolerate some of these, but you should only do this one food at a time.

I’ve found that my symptoms have improved after only one week. Yesterday I went for a long bike ride. Previously all my long bike rides had left me with bloating and cramps in the latter stages. I changed my Kit-Kats and Snickers for nut and cereal bars and ate only dark chocolate. I also took some cheese and oatcakes. I kept the bananas. I was delighted that I managed a round trip of 65 miles through Co Meath without any gut problems. 

Of Mice and Mother-in-Laws

Les Dawson built a comedy career around a series of mother-in-law jokes. A notorious one goes: ‘I can always tell when my mother-in-law is coming to stay, the mice come out and throw themselves onto the traps.’ It was the day before T’s mother was due to stay with us. T suddenly screamed. I rushed from my study to see what was happening. T was in the corridor, one hand to her mouth, the other pointing. Streaking past me along the corridor was a mouse.

The mouse ran into the front room.

We pursued it and closed the door behind us.

‘Now we’ve got it’, I said.

The mouse was lying low.

I slowly moved an armchair and peeked behind it.

T screamed again.

The mouse ran out, along the skirting board and behind the TV unit.

I strode forward, trying to flush it out.

The mouse stayed under cover.

T handed me an umbrella.

I looked quizzically at her.

‘You can bash it’, she said.

The mouse must have heard. It ran across the room and past the fireplace.

T screamed piercingly.

The mouse was behind us at the closed door. It was small and brown and desperately trying to find a way out.

I glanced at the crooked handle of the umbrella and back to the mouse. I didn’t want to kill it.

‘Can we catch it?’, I said.

We scanned the room, there was nothing to hand that would work.

The mouse was running backwards and forwards along the base of the door.

Resignedly, I grasped the umbrella.

The mouse stopped halfway along the door and began to squirm under. It’s rear legs and tail wriggled, then it disappeared.

I snatched open the door and peered along the corridor.

The mouse was nowhere to be seen.

We called him Usain and put down traps. It was the first mouse I had seen in the house for years. The next day T’s mother arrived. The visit went well. Each morning we checked the traps but Usain hadn’t thrown himself onto any of them. In Cyril’s continuing absence, we also thought about putting a poster on the front door: Cat Wanted, Enquire Within.