Brainstorming Electric Drives.

The renovation of the 'Anna M' has escalated into an undertaking which is frankly beyond my means. I tried a bit of crowd-funding on the basis of offering trips, as I used to do, in exchange for participating in the renovation of this classic wooden boat, but we did not raise enough to make it work. This leaves the way clear however for an even more exciting project, a way that will not alone see the boat through to a new lease of life, but a highly significant and productive one at that.

A felicitous meeting of minds, between myself and Alec Lammas, who is directing the renovation, finds both of us keen on the idea of installing a self-regenerative electric drive in the now empty hull, soon however to be stronger than ever, and using the 'Anna M' as a research and development platform for same, while also sailing round the Gannetsway (predominantly Portugal, Spain, France and Ireland, where Alec has the franchise for selling Lynch Electric Motors) to demonstrate and sell them.

Our John invited us to a brainstorming session in the old cow shed that he has brilliantly adapted to this purpose at his place in Co Clare*, and Alec flew from Portugal to participate. John kicked off by asking us both to write up on the boards our answers to the questions Why? What? & Who?  Off we went to work in the stalls on each side of the shed, and this was the result:-

(Joe) WHY?

Boat

1. Finish ‘Anna M’ (Worthwhile keeping classic boat afloat).
2. Install electric drive because it’s quiet, smooth, cheap to run, instantaneous power, little servicing, puts emphasis back on sailing.
3. More interesting and more FUN than steaming along under power in the noisy little bubble of one’s own intention.

Family /personal

1. Need to spread responsibility and justify spending when this old man is on the way out.
2. Instead of being a mere ‘hole in the water for pouring money into’, the boat will create work and business opportunities for the new generation.
3. Been dreaming about it these last 10 years or so - it’s now or never!
4. This Gannetsway project builds on my long interest in Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal and the relationship between them.

General

1. Transition to sustainable post-Oil Age extremely urgent.
2. Many possibilities in both leisure use and fishing.
3. Developing a whole new culture and relationship with nature, especially for seafarers and fishermen, particularly between the Atlantic nations of Europe.

WHAT?

Phase I - Install self-regenerating electric drive in ‘Anna M’, monitor performance, modify/improve. The propeller will charge the batteries through the motor, when the boat is sailing well. The direction of the power, to or from the prop, will change easily as appropriate. There will also be as many solar panels as practical, and of course it will be possible to recharge with shore power.
Phase II - demonstrate, sell and install more drives, make money.

Phase III - if possible move on to manufacturing, with preference for cooperation with small artisanal outfits rather than big business.

WHO?

The Electrosail Project stems from a meeting of minds between Alec Lammas and Joe Aston. Alec will be Managing Director - see his Who? section. Joe will be focussed primarily on the Anna M and promotion of the equipment, as well as overall strategy.

(Alec)WHY?

• It’s something positive to pass the time with.
• It’s a collection of subjects I’m already linked to.
• I’m at a place in life where I need to lighten up the work I do (physically - clarify priorities - lighter mind).
• Money isn’t about to go out of fashion (i.e. need income).
• I trust the people and products I’ll be involved with.
• The potential for success of project is limitless.
• It’s something I’ve had on the backburner for years and the time is right now.

WHAT?

• Replacing internal combustion engines in both commercial and pleasure boats with electric propulsion units, principally ‘LYNCH’ marine drive systems.
• Developing, improving, conceiving, producing and researching new technologies such as battery management systems, regenerative charging systems, revised versions of ‘LYNCH’ motors.

WHO?

• Joe / Alec - communication, testing/researching, demonstrating, selling, promoting.
• Alec / Joe - ideas, technical improvements/ R&D, installing, selling.
• Secretary T.B.A. - paperwork, billing, accounting etc
• Investors welcome.

Heads together in the cow stalls - Ger Kavanagh,
Joe, Steve Morris and Alec Lammas.

The brainstorming session was brilliant and we have a clear idea where we want to go. One might ask also Where? Alec is based in Nazaré, Portugal, which is strategically placed between Northern and Southern Europe, and there we hope to open a premises with workshop, store and office. Conversion jobs would preferably be undertaken there, but Alec hopes to put a lorry with a crane on the road that will be able to transport small boats by road. If there proves to be the demand, we may look for premises elsewhere also, in Ireland for example. Now for the hard part - we have to set about seeing what capital we can raise! Any potential share-holders out there?

In the Party Shed at Astoneco.

*see https://www.astoneco.com/en/homepage

A Bit of Paper.

Two lung-fulls of Irish air, after getting off the 'plane from Portugal, and soon I had to take to bed for 3 days with a shocking chest-cold. Doc says I have also some 'atreal fibrillation' into the bargain and have to start minding the old heart. This has left me prey to some introspection, instead of for instance braving the weather like Fiona with  a respectable family representation for the Pope’s Mass.

En route to the Pope's Mass, by Fiona.

Meanwhile, my sister-in-law Linda has come up with a pretty document, to wit, the Oath of Allegiance sworn by my German great-grandfather to ‘His Majesty King George the Fifth, His Heirs and Successors...’ on the 26th day of September, 1912.

Charles Albert Beck had dodged the Prussian Emperor’s draft and been in America for some years, before returning to his native Reutlingen with the intention of opening a bakery there, and then having to flee to London after being tipped off that someone had reported him as a draft-dodger and he was about to be arrested as such. Little did the poor man realise the catastrophe that was so shortly to materialise, otherwise he would have chosen some other place to open his German bakery. He died of a heart attack in 1915, as far as I know.

Such quaint documents have rattled around in attics down the years since without anyone taking them very seriously. Nowadays, with millions of stateless persons in the world while our own citizenship counts for massive privileges, as opposed to those others for whom the lack of the appropriate bit of paper constitutes destitution and virtual imprisonment or maybe worse, it may be appropriate to take a new look at them and consider carefully their significance (if we do not find it too painful to do so). Fortunately things are not so bad hereabouts (yet?) that one dare not say where one stands now and again, thank God. One of the best sayings to have come from Pope Francis is that ‘one not alone has the right to express oneself, but also the duty’!

Unfortunately I for one have long since ceased to be disposed to grant my allegiance to any of their Britannic Majesties. It is nothing personal; in fact I quite like Prince Charles, but the institution seems to me obsolescent beyond recall; in its political dimension for a start, how is it remotely compatible with the notion of popular democracy, whereby decisions of vital national interest are apparently to be taken by plebiscite? In what way has the Queen managed, or even attempted, to assert her declared authority in Parliament? As for the other dimensions of the Monarchy, the alleged moral and indeed spiritual leadership involved, it all seems a classic box of English fudge, no good and well passed its sell-by date anyway! About the only thing that one might say in its favour is, where are the alternatives? We can only hope that they will emerge in the course of the catastrophic upheavals that no doubt are coming round again. One thing is for sure: the massive inequities cannot go on for ever.

As an interim measure, I swore allegiance to this Irish Republic back in the ‘70s. While I still am happy to support it in law, the Irish Republic has not escaped the chaos of democratic disintegration that has overtaken its bigger Anglophone neighbours, has far too little to boast of in terms of addressing present problems, and has also forfeited much personal spiritual affirmation by taking its cue from the international Liberal Agenda. It's not by any means that I disapprove of the separation of Church and State. However the ‘progressive’ establishment is anything but focussed on the future, and having got the present so wrong is unlikely to be effective in addressing its challenges.

In the seminal matter of abortion, their smug self-satisfaction was gently but very neatly debunked in the words of Pope Francis as he flew home:- 'The problem of abortion is not religious. We are not against abortion for religion, no! It’s a human problem and it should be studied anthropologically. To study abortion, beginning with the religious fact is to skip over thought....There is always the anthropological problem of the ethics of eliminating a human being to resolve a problem.'  

If it is to get its priorities right, democracy needs to be rebuilt, from the bottom up. I am hardly saying anything new. I have spent my adult life watching the decline of the current version, which bases itself on an affirmation of individual autonomy that is of a largely spurious and illusory nature. Actually the very heart of the crisis is in the U.S.A.; the rot really set in there with the Vietnam War and the assassination of President Kennedy, which has appeared to me to be by no means unconnected with his decision to pull out of Vietnam and his refusal to really back the attempted invasion of Cuba. Nobody however has really been held accountable for his murder, and the fact seems like an unexpurgated sin that has dogged American politics ever since, constantly dragging them down.

Whatever about that, the tyranny of the ‘majority’ has to be repudiated, and genuine representatives installed at the higher levels who have proved their worth and sense in the course of real work and achievement at the grass roots. They should be held to account by the communities they represent, newly empowered by communication technology, and by no means merely take their line from some political party or ideology or leader, let alone from the diktats of big money. 

This is the agenda that the European Union must accommodate itself to, if it too is not going to die away in the coming bonfire of vanities! Meanwhile we must work together with whomever we may in good faith, concentrating on William Blake’s ‘minute particulars’ and building up mutual trust and understanding, with a common sense of responsibility for our dire problems, as best we can.

Entretanto, muchas gracias, Papa Francisco, por haber venido. It is a privilege to unite our holy sacrifices with yours, offering up our disasters and miseries and frustrations with those of Our Lord on the Cross, so that we too may participate in the eternal rhythm of death and resurrection. 

As for how my poor old Anna M  is to make her way to new life, I shall be back on the case with the next blog!

Book II. Beyond the Judicious Retreat.

Horseshoe Cottage was a great delight in those weeks of fine weather, and the bay was actually warm enough to enjoy swimming in. This warming climate admittedly has its advantages for some of us. I helped

Ger Kavanagh to finish plastering the outside of our new extension, and then it was time to head for Nazaré and another stint on the Anna M.

Arriving in a heat-wave.

The next and final item on the agenda of fixing the hull had to be tackled, and accordingly I dived under the cockpit floor. There were plenty of nasties there, and the decision was soon taken to rip the whole cockpit and steering out so that they could be tackled properly.

It was rather easier than tackling corruption under the floor of the Church, it has to be said, despite the Master's warning about certain people being cast into the sea with millstones round necks. Still I can't help throwing in my comment that the element of hypocritical hysteria in the stories about things that happened mostly half a century ago is somewhat given away by the fact that they are cast almost exclusively in terms of paedophilia, whereas in the majority of cases it was a matter of homosexual relations with young men. Did anyone ever notice any discussion of the borderline and distinction between them, or of 'the problem of homosexuality amongst the Catholic clergy', in the Irish Times or the Guardian?

The weather became cool for Monday morning, and Stephan Colsman showed up to my delight. He is a joy to work with and very steady, and was refreshed after taking a small boat down through the inland waterways from Germany to Marseille. The cockpit was soon torn apart, also the last remaining rotten ribs, and now at last the Anna M was on her way back to health and strength again. I have well over 2,000 copper nails driven in through the new ribs, with Stephan riveting them on the inside.

It is an odd thing how these cups of suffering have to be drained to the dregs! That lovely cockpit with its beautiful old wheel! We all like to hang on to our illusions, stick to the easy way out, as long as we possibly can. There was a copy of War and Peace in the Calypso when I sailed to England with Alec, if one may talk of 'sailing' when there are always two diesel engines thumping away beneath the floor, so I beguiled the boredom with rereading Tolstoy's epic. I actually enjoyed it more than I did 54 years ago, when I considered his work somewhat heady in comparison with Dostoevsky.

If, in Jungian terms, human perception occurs by way of the four modes of intellect, intuition, feeling and sense, then I suppose those artists will appeal to us most whose work agrees with our own makeup; still, the more they can bring them all into play together, I would say the greater the result, even if so many people these days just don't seem able to cope if they can't put things in their tidy boxes. As a novelist, Tolstoy is perhaps a bit heavy duty in the intellect department. However, I mention him because his portrayal of General Kutuzov and his tactics struck me forcefully; he overcame Napoleon's Grande Armée in the course of much judicious retreating, including even the abandonment of Moscow, much to the consternation of the Tsar and his court in St Petersburg. I somewhat sillily compare it to my abandonment of Anna M's lovely old cockpit, steering wheel and all. It will be gracefully retired on the wall of our new room, and the old boat will find herself being steered at the flick of a button.

Yes, I have been thinking about it long enough, she is going all electric. If I don't do it now, I never will; a case of the old man in a hurry. But it also happens to be a case of a planet in a hurry. At long last it is getting difficult not to be thinking, if the house burns down, and we ever happen to be in any way called to account, what did we try to do about it? Alright, there are always plenty of excuses for sliding out of responsibility. I myself tried not to face the Anna M's need for a drastic overhaul as long as I possibly could; however, I did so before she sank; better late than never!

Indeed, we all have our constraints. One interesting question for me just now is why those Lynch electric motors, if they are as good as they seem to be, are not already much more widely used? Perhaps it is just to do with the fact that Cedric Lynch was a bit of a maverick and eccentric, didn't have the right qualifications or hit the right buttons as he threatened to cut rather a lot of ground from beneath the great capitalist corporations of this world? A bit like the way the drugs industry reacts to homeopathy? But then some people just can't cope with things that come by way of a different mode of perception to what they are used to; they can't even cope with different languages to their own!

To what extent are such blockages maintained and indeed reinforced by certain powerful interests? I think for example of Brexit. I wonder in whose interests it may be to maintain ways of thinking that have led to so much misery in the past, to people maiming and killing each other in vast numbers? Well, here's to all the people who prefer sharing their gifts, listening to each other's languages and enjoying each other's company! There's plenty of that about Nazaré,

Nazare market

which I do enjoy, even if it is a bit too crowded this time of the year. I generally say it's the cars rather than the people who do the damage. It has to be said that I am looking forward to taking that Sherkin ferry again shortly!

The Last Post of Book I.

Anna M at Sherkin Island in 2010, by John Aston.

Deliberately going to live on a remote island says something both positively and negatively. Well, it is a common human experience to feel alienated from one’s society, and surely nothing new.  The pain of being ‘cut off from the herd’ goes a long way towards explaining why human beings can so passionately embrace both light-heartedly absurd group enthusiasms, like those of football supporters, or more sinister ones of a political, ideological or even spiritual nature. But what might constitute a sane and rational response to a sense of alienation? Well, what causes it in the first place?

Not being heard, for a start. Certain things are important to you, but the world ignores them and shrugs them off. One’s questions go unanswered, even unacknowledged. If one digs to discover why, there is resistance, resentment that the question should be insisted on. How dare you disturb me, demanding that I respond to awkward queries and challenging my assumptions? Most people, most of the time, are too lazy to examine themselves in any radical sense.

Eventually however, one comes up against the final questions. What is to be done about this or that dreadful problem? What is it all for anyway? What is the point of living? Yet perhaps the world was never more determined not to answer them. Even the liberal contemporary establishment seems to experience them as a dangerous threat. One is inclined to conclude that they fear there is no point in living, though maybe they merely fear that any answer to such questions would constitute a threat to their ability to do as they please and to live without anyone being able to hold them accountable.

The Irish Constitution begins however, ‘In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred’. No doubt the secularists would change this preamble if they had a chance, but why bother, once the meaning has been sucked out of it? And what meaning can it possibly have, if one cannot agree where such authority, the basis of such accountability, is to be discovered? Not alone have they spent their major efforts in discrediting its traditional seat, but nowadays they tend to deny the very existence of any such authority. Hence the refusal to face those ‘final questions’; unfortunately however, human life becomes simply impossible without some viable answers to them, and, while our human societies will always be of a provisional and unsatisfactory nature, they cannot thrive at all without a basic consensus in these matters.

The results of that refusal are plain to be seen all about us, and the more dramatic victims include such youngsters as the 23 year-old grandson of a friend of mine, who died of a drug after a party the other day. They are victims of us all when we refuse to answer the questions they are actually schooled these days not to pose. Does one spend one’s life getting more and more frustrated and crotchety, trying to work a system that has lost its way, or maybe does one try to strike for something new? At which point, is one merely taking off into a fantasy land? How does one avoid falling into some kind of schizophrenia? What kind of connection must one maintain with what is called ‘the real world’, ‘as long as we are in this body’?

St Paul’s answer was faith, in the Lord and also in the ‘great act of begetting’ that He has initiated and continues to sustain; but we must have signs and symbols of this Faith, words and structures to give it effect! There has been a widespread attempt in recent centuries to do so primarily on a national basis, but today it is no longer possible to maintain the fiction that our lives function primarily on a national basis. Hence it is not just wrong-headedness that has sucked the life out of, for instance, that Irish Constitution. No amount of huffing and puffing by, for instance, Brexiteers, will put life back into national myths. On the other hand, they are right when they say that institutions like the EU can be hopelessly remote from 'the action'.

This can take place on all sorts of different scales and levels at the same time, and the trick is to somehow integrate them. While I believe that the Catholic Faith is vital to this process, it is not helpful just to throw it at people, off whom one knows it will probably bounce, as some kind of abstract system; nor is it designed in such a way, being thoroughly earthed in physical process. One does not cast pearls before swine, but one does try to plant little seeds.

Catholic social teaching proposed the idea of subsidiarity. This is not to be envisaged in merely regional terms; zones of concern of one kind or another are equally relevant. One of my particular interests is Fisheries Policy, and how this may be made more functional and, as a quid pro quo, accessible for fishermen; less a matter of dysfunctional 'command and control'. This fits my approach of coming in sideways to the big questions, with what Hilaire Belloc called ‘the common sacrament of Mankind’- the Sea, which teaches with an authority that nobody who experiences it at all can deny.

Taken from the Sherkin Lt. Ho.
by Jamsie Durrant.

Belloc sailed his little boat about the British and French coasts with no engine. I am hoping to get the Anna M  back in the water with an electric drive that will be primarily an extension of the power of the sails, but this will nonetheless involve a slowing down, even one might say, a limitation of one’s horizons. Sometimes anyway breadth is only achieved by a lack of depth. My limited energy, I expect, will be fully stretched upon the Gannetsway, from Scotland to south of Spain. Digging deep in this zone, and with the help of the powerful action of the sea, I try to discover and expose that wonderful pearl, that buried treasure that makes life worth living, and may yet enable us to avoid destroying this beautiful world, through a combination of boredom, laziness and disgust.

Where do we start? One possibility is by doing our best to reply honestly to the least of questions that are sincerely put to us, promptly and without evasion. How can the Common Fisheries Policy be made to work? How can we really wean ourselves off fossil fuels, fast? That's just a couple of the more salient questions relevant to the Gannetsway. Diving down deep into the sea, let us seek those shimmering answers! For they are there yet. These are William Blake's minute particulars if you like, without which good intentions become vacuous or even worse. However if Faith means anything, it involves the conviction that the answers are there for those who seek them!

This post is bringing to an end the first Book of Sailing the Gannetsway. I am looking for a publisher to bring out a printed edition. There will be more to come, after a few weeks' break, as we discover whether the Anna M makes it to a new lease of life as an electrified, autonomous sailing boat....

Hoping they Understand the Buoys on the Other Side of the Lake.

Alec and I left Camaret in the Calypso with a calm sea and a light westerly breeze, only to find ourselves steaming north in the Chenal de la Helle in thick fog, with just the odd glimpse of the buoys marking the channel between the rocks. No doubt those lads I mentioned in the last blog, who headed for England in 1940, would have liked it, but having neither AIS or radar, we were not too happy. At least we did have GPS and a good chart, unlike them, or indeed unlike myself with my father sometimes back in the day.

Alec was chuntering on about how we couldn’t cross the shipping lanes like that, but fortunately the fog lifted before we reached them. It came down again though, and we weren’t free of it till we were in the lee of the land off Dartmouth; the only sign of Start Point was the odd blast on its foghorn, now sounding very close, now far away, now not at all.

We spent an agreeable night in Brixham, so that we could hit the tide right for Exmouth next day; then we found the entrance buoys easily and whistled in on a strong flood. No room at the little marina at the town, so on we went up to Topsham. The channel swings unexpectedly to port when one passes the entrance, then there are a few miles of winding between the mudflats, marked by buoys here and there. We just managed to scrape into the one and only berth alongside where there was enough water; the one and only spot in all England that served our purposes to a tee!

The Mouth of the River Exe.

That was the end of the trip for me; we hired a car in Exmouth next day and drove to Honiton to visit the Lynch Motor Co, whose electric motors I am very interested in; then Alec left me to Bristol airport, and soon I was enjoying fabulous views of the coast of South Wales and Pembrokeshire from one of those nice turboprop aircraft. I never had such a fine sight of the Irish Sea, with both sides visible at once, though low enough to still feel part of it all, and so I came back to Killruddery that evening and Sherkin next day.

I  was reminded of it today when our priest Fr Michael was commenting on Jesus in the Gospel ‘going to the other side of the Lake of Gennesaret’, otherwise known as the Sea of Galilee. He pointed out that this was a journey to a different people and culture, where the cultural reference points of Jesus’ homeland did not apply, by way of encouraging us to ‘go to the other side of the Lake’, to listen to and try to understand those whom we often meet these days, even in our own families, who no longer share our culture or values. Nonetheless, on that other side, they could tell the difference between life and death, when it came to Jesus raising Jairus’ daughter from death.

The contrast struck me between Fr Michael’s approach and that of our  high-priests and priestesses of Progressive Liberalism, who are in full cry these days back in Ireland. Fintan O’Toole in the Irish Times for example, along with other commentators I’ve glanced at, is gearing up for another ‘epic struggle with Fascism’. ‘What we are living with is pre-fascism’, just getting warmed up for the real thing, according to Fintan. One understands what he is on about; I too decry the Duckie and Brexit; the problem is his want of self-awareness, let alone of hearing those ‘on the other side of the Lake’. But if we allow this approach to roll out, the result could make World War II look like a tea party.

He avers that one of ‘the tools of Fascism’ is ‘the generation of tribal identities, the division of society into mutually exclusive polarities’, which unfortunately seems to me to be what he and his likes are at the whole time, along with  undermining moral boundaries, inuring people to the acceptance of acts of extreme cruelty’, ‘dehumanising… members of despised outgroups’, such as unborn babies for instance? Indeed the recent referenda in Ireland and Britain bear many of the hallmarks of Fascism, but the likes of O’Toole are wholly impervious to such a view of them, where it applies to the ones he campaigned for, and indeed he is apparently unaware of the whole sorry business of pseudo identity building that are their stock-in-trade.

To add to the fun, we have our former President, Mary McAeese, on a Gay Pride march with her poor darling son, announcing that the teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality is ‘evil’. Along with that of every major religious tradition in the world? Some people have noticed that life flows in a binary fashion, even down to electricity and computers. The buoys are there to mark the channel. Those who stray are likely to get stuck on the mud, if not rocks, and there is nothing that anyone can do about that. But the likes of Mrs McAleese are in danger of putting a generation astray and wrecking a whole society.

At Sherkin Regatta, by Fiona.

Meanwhile it is hard to bother one’s head about such things, in the midst of the best spell of summer weather in Ireland that I recall since the ‘70s. It is positively delightful to swim in Horseshoe Bay, more so than in any of the previous 13 summers we’ve been living here. But if these dear grandchildren who are staying with us are to have the future we would wish them, those buoys must be maintained, even while there’s going to have to be a lot more ‘going to the other side of the Lake’ to both listen and help other people to understand, in language they can hear, where the deep water lies.

A calm evening in Horsehoe Bay, by Fiona.

Keeping those Sea-legs.

Sorry the posts have got erratic. That's what one gets for going to sea, but, not having done so for a year now, I badly needed to do it, so I am helping boatbuilder Alec to deliver a boat from Nazaré to Devon. 

Alec on the wheel approaching Finisterre.

     The Calypso is a heavy old steel ketch. She has a strong hull, two fine diesel engines, good steering with a dodgy autopilot. Alec is pressing on, motor-sailing, a somewhat tedious business, but it is very good to be on the Gannetsway  again.

Leaving the Islas Cies.

In the Canal de Sagres off Pta Falcoeiro.

With me, it's not just a matter of making sure that I still have those sea-legs. The sea has always been my therapy for the confusion that so often surrounds us. To know what is true and false, right and wrong in the elemental way that is vital at sea, despite being thrown around, blinded by fog and all the rest of it, keeping one's sense of direction nonetheless; all this is the great gift that the sea imparts to her lovers! It is surprising how neatly it fits the moral sphere, and will carry through to it if you let it!
     When we reached the harbour at Finisterre, we were delighted to find a new pontoon inside the entrance, providing berths for visitors and shelter for the boats inside. Here is the Calypso tied up to it:-

The engineering is superb; exactly what's needed at Baltimore. If there is any doubt that these lads know what they are doing, how about this for a champion mooring set-up? 

And this for a grand wee netter?


That grey cloud and mist has been with us a lot, though the passage of Biscay was calm. It takes the two photos below, of one of the Arklow ships heading for Ireland, to show that lazy old swell.

We arrived at Camaret, just south of Brest in Brittany, on Saturday afternoon. I wandered over to the church to see what time Mass was to be; it turned out to be the day when they headed out to the Pointe de Penhir, to celebrate Mass for the veterans of the Force de France Libre at the monument to them there.

It is a spectacular site, overlooking theTas de Pois:

The fact that the grey mist turned to rain half-way through Mass did not seem to matter, though I felt sorry for the priest who got a right wetting. General de Gaulle's simple proclamation and call to arms from London in 1940 was read out, and a very old man evoked the young men who had responded from these parts. I could only make out parts of his speech, but gathered he was talking about them heading for England in small boats, leaving all they held dear for a very uncertain future indeed. As St Paul had it in the reading: 'Frères, nous gardons toujours confiance, tout en sachant que nous demeurons loin du Seigneur, tant que nous demeurons dans ce corps; en effet, nous cheminons dans la foi, non dans la claire vision.' It was a moving ceremony, and for me the combination of patriotism and catholicism worked, for once. 

     General de Gaulle's appeal was all the more effective for its reference to universal values, rather than merely national pride. Of course most politicians try that card; then what do they base such appeal on? Anyway, what was the alternative for those young men? I have sometimes asked myself whether, with time, we would not perhaps have arrived eventually more or less where we are now, had the Nazis been left unfought; but even if so, and it is a big 'even', how many would have died in concentration camps in the meantime?
     It's a pity some appear not to have learned, or to have forgotten, the lesson. The price of true liberty and human flourishing is continuous spiritual and moral struggle. Our Irish Taoseach thinks he can force Catholic institutions to provide abortions. He has clearly indicated that he expects that to be on similar terms to the ones available in that sad (dis)United Kingdom. I suggest he might be better advised, or at least  more honest, to set up Leo Varadkar Clinics for the Elimination of Unwanted Lives, rather than assault the moral integrity of those who have devoted themselves to the preservation of human life.
     Old stones on the road to the Pointe de Penhir indicate the age-old struggle of mankind to get things straight!

The Megaliths of LagatJar.

Serious Fun.

At Keating's, Kilbaha, Co Clare.

When the electricity in the cottage where we are staying went down this morning, (it is entirely dependent on electricity) - my reaction was to go outside, find some wood and light a fire, and to revel in the opportunity to introduce two little grandchildren to the delights of frying bangers and brewing coffee the outdoor way. My plan was quickly shot down on multiple fronts - the danger of fire, children burning themselves and getting grubby, blackening stones, pans etc. What with the wonders of modern communication, we were soon out of the fix and in another house, where the electricity still worked, having a splendid breakfast. That was all very satisfactory; I make my little point above not to say that I had the better idea, but just as a plea to keep my approach alive as an option, and furthermore the notion that breakdown can after all be a splendid opportunity for fun.

As it happens, some of my very best boyhood memories are of the blissful Sunday hours that I used to spend with a few mates - officially a ‘patrol’ in the Boy Scouts - frying up on a fire in the woods at Worth, in the Sussex Weald. We were under the apparently minimal supervision of the Scoutmaster, Fr Michael Smith, and were provided in due process with the necessary gear and goodies, including matches and a hatchet; having been trained up to such self-sufficiency in the Cubs, we were left to get on with it. Couldn’t happen these days, of course!

The contemporary mind boggles at the very idea of letting 11 year-olds loose in such a way, in those lovely wild woods of oak and silver birch and what-not. Anyway the last time I was there, they had mostly been cut down and replaced by ghastly ranks of sitka spruce. So much in Nature has been similarly degraded in the years since my boyhood; but I say also that by and large her beauty still remains, and there is no inevitability about going on to destroy the rest. Perhaps indeed we have the means to appreciate and enjoy Nature, and to care for her, on a wider scale than ever before.

Cliffs white with guano from nesting auks on the cliffs of Loop Head.

However, I read in the Irish Times today (30/5/18) two stories that are evidently related to each other: the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is warning about ‘renewed signs of overheating’  in the Irish economy, and the Environmental Protection Agency warning about Ireland ‘being locked in a trend of rising carbon emissions’ on account of ‘strong economic growth and increasing fossil fuel consumption.’  ‘Ireland has committed to a legally binding EU target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20% (on 2005 levels) by 2020, but, at best, will only achieve a 1% reduction by then’. This clearly carries the implication that our present course as a society is not sustainable; is in fact a bubble that the next spike in oil prices or whatnot will pop; and the next pop may well be a lot worse than the last one, because there is not the same wriggle room any more. But there is nothing inevitable about it; there is always the possibility that we will take it into our thick collective head to change course!

Where do we go from here? I still find myself sometimes having to argue the toss about climate change with apparently reasonable and intelligent people. I would have thought that the science is well established, but also that even if it weren’t, and what we are being threatened with were only a possibility, we had still better act to avoid that possibility. I go on to point to separate evidence chains such a ocean acidification, also the facts that the environmental mayhem and economic imbalances generated by fossil fuel industries would be much better avoided, that much of the money we pay for fuel ends up financing weapons of war, and anyway that we have no right to expend those precious resources, built up over millennia, at any faster rate than we absolutely have to.

Some people remain unconvinced. There are undoubtedly vested interests at play, but there is something else too: some kind of visceral opposition to the very idea of taking the environmental crisis seriously. Perhaps it is because people understandably find it very difficult to handle the kind of pessimism that tends to be associated with it, and I can sympathise with that. After all environmentalists frequently associate the crisis with over-population. As the father of nine children, I reply that in Europe at least the problem is quite the reverse; there are too few babies. I

At Cristiona's wedding.

do allow that we have too many cars. We need to reorganize ourselves so that we are not so dependent on them, and on burning fossil fuels one way or another.

We need to slow down and find out how to enjoy life again, but actually we do also need a thriving population and economy to drive the required revolution, and what’s more, it is no use leaving it to governments and huge corporations to make the running. Their priorities are all too often different to ours. But is there an alternative? This very machine that I am typing on proves that there is; at least its Linux operating system does so. This has been developed on the basis of the cooperation of individuals, working not (at least directly) for profit, but for the love and fun of the thing; and it is the best operating system in the world. Yes, they will find ways of turning a euro, pound or dollar out of their work, and especially out of the contacts, skills and reputation which they build up in the course of it; but that is a very different proposition to that of some overblown corporation with its copyrights intent on making astronomical profits.

It is in this spirit of serious fun that I am having a final crack at turning words into action, in my own field of experience, namely that of sailing craft of one kind or another. The hull of the ‘Anna M’ will soon be sound again; but there it is, empty. I am trying to refit with an electric drive, deriving its electricity from the wind (via the propellor when the boat is sailing with sufficient power) and the sun(via solar panels), supplemented it is true sometimes by shore power. Let’s hope that too is increasingly derived from decentralised and renewable sources, in a similar though more sophisticated way than lighting a fire to cook breakfast in the garden! More about the electric drive as things progress….