That Bite of the Apple.

The weather is getting a bit too broken for keeping the Anna M in Horseshoe Bay with comfort. I hope to have the sun-room roofed this time next week and will be looking for a spell of good weather for heading to Spain. Anyone out there up for the trip?

Jean-Paul on the wall.

I was given a sharp reminder of how dependent I am becoming on the internet lately, by being shut out of it for a while. It is undeniable that the world had better watch out, as to who is going to be in control of it. There seem to be two quite distinct alternatives ahead; there is the possibility of a world controlled by a small and hugely rich clique of global companies, able to manipulate impoverished masses who face a very difficult struggle to survive, and on the other hand a new civilisation which will see an unprecedented blossoming and empowerment at all levels of society, as the new technology is finally made to serve rather than enslave!

I suppose everyone knows this at some level, but for one reason or another, there will be widespread efforts to cloud the issue. A good example is a column in the Daily Telegraph lately by Mr AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD; ‘Apple travesty is a reminder why Britain must leave the lawless EU’.  It seems to me that since time is generally too short for people like me to read this sort of stuff, it goes too often unchallenged. One advantage of the internet is that it enables one to peruse those opinions that one does not buy into, but there still is a danger that, confronted with so much material, one just settles for reading congenial stuff.

Anyway, in order to challenge Mr Evans-Pritchard, I shall have to quote him at some length. First of all he sets out to demonise the European Commission:-

‘Europe's Competition Directorate commands the shock troops of the EU power structure. Ensconced in its fortress at Place Madou, it can dispatch swat teams on corporate dawn raids across Europe without a search warrant.

It operates outside the normal judicial control that we take for granted in a developed democracy. The US Justice Department could never dream of acting in such a fashion.

Apple is just the latest of the great US digital companies to face this Star Chamber. It has vowed to appeal the monster €13bn fine handed down from Brussels this week for violation of EU state aid rules, but the only recourse is the European Court of Justice. This is usually a forlorn ritual. The ECJ is a political body, the enforcer of the EU's teleological doctrines. It ratifies executive power.’

Splendid stuff indeed! But one might remind the writer that the European Commission is appointed by the (democratically elected) national governments precisely because the likes of the British Government did not want to give it the prestige of being directly elected. The ECJ is one of several balances to its powers. The Star Chamber  was a Court set up under a Catholic monarch of England, according to Wikipedia ‘to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against the English upper class, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes.’ It acquired its pejorative connotations under King Henry VIII who used it as ‘a political weapon for bringing actions against opponents to his policies.’

I shall deal with the ‘EU's teleological doctrines’ later. After the preemptive strikes that even Telegraph readers may dismiss as mere rhetoric, Mr Evans-Pritchard gets around to addressing the awkward facts of the matter in a rather surprising manner:-

‘We can agree too that Apple's cosy EU (? - they’ve always been in contention with the EU) arrangements should never have been permitted. It paid the standard 12.5pc corporate tax on its Irish earnings - and is the country’s biggest taxpayer - but the Commission alleges that its effective rate of tax on broader earnings in 2014 was 0.005pc, achieved by shuffling profits into a special 'stateless company' with its headquarters in Ireland.

"The profits did not have any factual or economic justification. The “head office” had no employees, no premises and no real activities," said Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition chief.

This may be true but that does not empower the Commission to act arbitrarily, retroactively, and beyond the rule of law. What is really going on - as often in EU affairs - is a complex political attack on multiple fronts. It is a reminder of why Britain must remove itself entirely and forever from the clutches of this Caesaropapist construction.’

Our friend does not even attempt to grapple with the mere essential facts of the case. Instead he dismisses the whole business as ‘a political attack’, and he concludes by responding to it in these terms:-

‘The US has in past played down the episodic outbursts of anti-Americanism, but patience is wearing thin and the strategic calculus is shifting. Donald Trump has already warned that he is willing to "walk away" from NATO altogether.

Others question ever more loudly exactly why the US should continue to guarantee the EU's eastern border against Vladimir Putin's Russia if Brussels is behaving in such an unfriendly fashion - and without the American security blanket a disarmed Europe is almost completely defenceless.  The EU needs to watch its step.’

Clearly this columnist sees the world purely in terms of power politics, and according to the bleak doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest. Actually Europe would no doubt enjoy a much better relationship with Russia, and President Putin would be less troublesome, if the USA pulled out. Certainly we need ‘defence’ by a President Donald Trump like a hole in the head.

Such concepts as social justice or equity or even consistency and coherence are mere will o’ the wisps to Mr E-P, or perhaps rather they are teleological doctrines or Caesaropapist (that’s a good one, but why not just Papist while he’s at it?) constructions. I had to look up that grand word teleological myself. Collins English Dictionary informs me that it derives from the Greek telos, meaning end, and teleology  is defined as for instance ‘The belief that certain phenomena are best explained in terms of purpose rather than cause.’

The one crowd who will certainly profit from all this are of course the lawyers. On the other hand, what we need to screw our politicians up to is the essential end of creating a fairer, more humanly flourishing world, rather than pandering to the mega-rich. I agree with this editorial in El Pais:-

‘La multa récord de 13.000 millones de euros impuesta a Apple por la Comisión Europea merece apoyo.

La política de defensa de la competencia, desarrollada con energía, ejemplifica no el capitalismo desregulado y neoliberal, sino la economía de mercado corregida por reglas de equidad económica, y de positivo efecto social.

La paralela queja de Dublín apelando a su soberanía nacional fiscal es asombrosa. No le basta con la fiscalidad societaria más leve y discriminatoria de la Unión: la rebaja hasta el 0,005%. Solo la Unión, y no los nacionalismos de Estado, puede combatir tales dislates. Así que para los asuntos de alcance global se necesita más UE y menos retórica soberanista.’

- ‘The record fine of 13 billion euro imposed on Apple by the European Commission deserves support.

-The policy of defending its competence with energy exemplifies, rather than deregulated and neoliberal capitalism, a market economy corrected by rules of economic equity, with positive social effects.

-The complaint of Dublin appealing to its national fiscal sovereignty is amazing. Not content with the lightest and most discriminatory corporate tax regime of the Union, they lower it to 0.005%. Only the Union, rather than State nationalisms, can combat such nonsense. So for matters on a global scale we need more EU and less rhetoric about national sovereignty.’

As I predicted, in the event of Brexit, Ireland is finding itself in a horrible tug-of-war. One can only  hope now that Scotland achieves independence, and together we may find a different voice for the people of these islands to that of the Tories and Trumpeters. At least the EU might be able to get on with its business properly without having to drag the UK along. Some clarity may be dawning, but I hate to see such a radical disjunction of perceptions in our midst!

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In Search of a Genuine Voice of the People.

This early autumn weather in Sherkin is glorious. Finally the sun has got the better of all that melted ice-water, and the prevailing breeze off the Atlantic has lost its chill. I love to start the fine mornings by gathering some blackberries for breakfast. One never knows what treats there may be on the bushes along with the swelling berries - the sun lighting the dew-drops on a most exquisite spider’s web, or warming a pair of peacock butterflies as they spread their gorgeous wings to its warmth.

    The building is going on well, especially since Jean-Paul started to give a hand. He is one of those people who can turn their hand to anything practical. I mean no unkindness at all - on the contrary it is one of the highest compliments that I can pay someone - when I say that he is a true peasant. Perhaps that is why he prefers to live in Sherkin to his native country. France, one might like to imagine, should be the Mecca of all true peasants; but alas, the sophisticated, over-educated bourgeoisie has got the upper hand there as it has throughout the West, and not least here in Ireland.

    A true peasant to my mind is someone to whom it is natural to undertake the primary businesses of living themselves, insofar as is practical. They like to feed, house, clothe and to entertain themselves; indeed for them, the very division of life into work and play tends to disappear. They are practical, thrifty and rooted, and the antithesis of your ideal consumer; independent and self-reliant, yet well able to cooperate with their neighbours and look after each other, and they celebrate their traditions.

Gael's photo of J-P at work on the Anna M's engine

   J-P is full of stories about the way things used to be done in Brittany, where he grew up, especially with reference to food of course! But he reminds me of very different children of the old peasantry, whom it has been my privilege to encounter. Fiona and I went looking for them, mind, especially when we went to live in Glencolumbkille, Co Donegal. We were not disappointed, and learnt a great deal from our neighbours and men like AndyJohnieAndy, John Maguire and Anthony Boyle. But the person who began my re-education from an over-intellectual, bourgeois upbringing, was from a cottage now on the very fringe of Tallaght, Dublin, which has swollen out to nearly engulf it.

    I first got chatting to Rory Dunbar one sunny day on the roof of the Simon Community in Liverpool, where we found ourselves trying to fix a few leaks together. It was in those innocent days of 1960s when one could get up to all sorts of high-jinks which concerns about safety, insurance and all that have since put a stop to. Fiona and I were helping to run the place, but Rory, provided he was sober at the time, knew a whole lot more about things like fixing the roof than clueless me!

    At the foot of the Dublin Mountains when he grew up they had just got electricity, ahead of most of rural Ireland, but still cut turf for fuel, grew vegetables, and even had to draw water from a pump. He showed up in our lives from time to time until his death, especially when there was building to be done, and we both learnt a lot from him, myself especially about building, and Fiona from stories about how his mother used to manage with basic domestic facilities. He was also full of stories, poetry (Kavanagh and Yeats) and song. Both wisdom and joy spring from taking up with the physical basics of life, which provide a spring-board for genuine intellectual life also. Mind you, it has to be said that all these guys tended to be haunted by the sense that the basis of their way of life had been torn away from them!

    Nonetheless, I grew in the conviction that the Catholic Church owes much of her charm for me in the unique reconciliation she offers of the spiritual with the physical sides of life. By their fruits shall ye know them, however; it is a good test of any religion, culture or way of life to observe their effects in the physical world, in buildings and art and culture. To my mind the most attractive cultures in the world are the Catholic ones; but anyway, in considering any perplexity, a good place to start is with a measured assessment of the physical facts of the matter!

    Alas, on this scale of values, contemporary culture scores very badly. As the Psalmist says Their hearts are astray…. These people do  not know my ways…. I took an oath in my anger, never shall they enter  my rest! Yes indeed, the Lord is merciful and kind, but His anger is too often inclined to be underestimated these days. If you don’t like such language, let’s just say that Nature will have her revenge.

     So, even as we pray to God in His mercy to spare us from complete calamity, it seems to me that a bright thing to do is to live in terms of constructing a peasant culture for the Post-Industrial Age. And if anyone should be so foolish as to want to do anything in the political line these days, they might do worse than to found a Peasants’ Party. It just might turn out to be an effective riposte to the obnoxious demagogues that are afflicting the democracies today!

Skibbereen's Revenge? Local  heroes return from Olympic Triumph!

Photos by Fiona, except Gael's from 2012.

    

The Spray is Flying....

The spray is flying, the sea is heaped and blattered every which way at the mouth of Horseshoe Bay. The Anna M is heaving at her lines and I am in her cabin, a little haven of relative tranquillity. I came aboard this morning and now it would be rather difficult to get ashore with the wash that’s on the rocks. So now for a blog, while from time to time I cast an anxious eye upon the lines.

The critical bits attached to the rocks are heavy braided warps which washed in here over the years, gifts from Old Man Sea who must have robbed them off some storm-tossed deck. The set-up is fine so long as they stay looped around their rocks when the swells are trying to lift them off. One has to anticipate the weak points and do something about them in good time, and always have a second string to fall back on! Life being full of weaknesses, it is a fine balance to remain alert without getting neurotic.

The blessed relief of summer is coming to an abrupt end; that brief respite when one can stand back a little and relax! I hope that many of you readers have been able to do this, like me, since my last blog, and won’t have missed it. Actually it was probably all the visitors round these parts that took the internet down, which was what actually made me take a break from writing - along with the building and sailing to Clare for a family get-together (and a sniff of the West coast).

A poor summer there again, it seems. The high pressure has been hanging out to the south-west, and we have just scraped a reasonable share of it here in Sherkin, though it has stayed cool. People say, what’s that about global warming? The answer seems to be that all the melting ice has kept the North Atlantic cool, blocking the circulation of warm water, forcing the Gulf Stream further south.

You always get the wee fine spells though, and Fiona and I had a good sail up to Clare, for a lovely family get-together at our John’s house near Carrigaholt. What with insulation and modern windows and imagination, he has made a fantastic job of what was another rather cold and damp stone cottage, having managed to enhance the cottagey atmosphere while making it comfortable.

Fiona went off grandmothering then, and Con Minihan (who lost his ‘e’ above in Clare) sailed back down with me. His grandfather came from Sherkin, but his father ended up in Clare, having found work sailing a trading smack around the Shannon Estuary. Con finished up with a farm on its shore near Kilrush. What fun to find another link between the two places!

We had a cushy sail with mainly SSE wind as far as the Blaskets, complete with mackerel for lunch and a fine pollack for supper; however once there we faced a stiff beat across to Valentia. It seemed a good idea to tack on down to the west of the Great Blasket, but we unexpectedly found ferocious squalls in its lee; still, having rounded it, we could nearly lay Valentia on the other tack. Those Blaskets once again proved a spectacular but very dodgy place!

We found good shelter for the night in Glanleam Bay, Valentia Harbour, and next morning it was warm and sunny. I swam, and our Fionnuala and Anto and his family, holidaying nearby, showed up. The afternoon brought a typical Irish contrast, with mist on the strong SE wind; still a gang of them came aboard and sailed for Port Magee, on the other side of the island. Then they got a taste of the real North Atlantic, though we were in the lee of the land. There was a heave in the sea, the surf and spume were gnawing away at the haggard rocks, while gannets floated like snowflakes against the tall dark cliffs above. A great way to get to enjoy fish and chips and a pint in a snug bar!

Next morning the wind hauled round NW, even as Con and I faced out into the still heaving and misty sea. It got better all the way, and once past the Mizen was positively peachy. Anna M loved it, and we made Horseshoe Bay in less than twelve hours. Here the flowers reproached me for not bringing Fiona back, for their all to brief glory is under threat of a sudden end, as the first storm of autumn sweeps in.

I spare a thought for Mrs May-or-May-Not, because I should think her bit of respite will come to a similar kind of end shortly. However, the EU could do itself and her a favour, and possibly even keep Britain aboard, if it took the opportunity to consider what has gone wrong, and how to reconnect with its citizens. It must overcome the Napoleonic tendency, of which I shall mention three examples, and make a renewed effort to apply the essential twin principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.

My three examples are Greece, the way in which the Irish taxpayers were virtually forced to meet the massive liabilities of the banks, and the Common Fisheries Policy; but let’s just briefly talk of the latter, since it is the only one of which I have much knowledge. The only effective way to establish effective conservation is with the full engagement of the fishermen and other stakeholders. A sense of ownership is necessary, but not the kind of a few big capitalists in cahoots with the banks. Neither does such ownership have to be on a national basis. Let the relevant stocks of fish be our guide! More regional institutions are needed, and more regional consciousness to go with them, which is the kind of thing I’m trying to foster on the Gannetsway!

So now, with the wind pulling round to the West, things are beginning to settle again in Horseshoe Bay; but with the equinox on the way, I shall not chance to face another bad forecast on a spring tide here. Time to head south again shortly, to find that winter berth on the sweet Guadiana again, well away from this most unruly North Atlantic! Tony Whelan has signed up for the trip, but that still leaves room for more. Anyone out there like to sail for Spain around September 10th?

Photos by Fiona. I've mislaid my camera!

Fiona at the wheel.

A Message Down St Michael's Way.

Anna M in Villefranche, Nice, 2013.

Anyone who has followed my blogs long enough will know that I was in Nice three years ago with the Anna M. I also have a niece living thereabouts. Presently, I look across the sea to the south-east, across that land that I love, and am appalled. We may be getting hardened to such dreadful events, but this particular atrocity struck like a blow in the solar plexus! How are we all going to settle down to enjoying the good life this summer?

As a matter of fact I felt rather sorry for M. Valls, as he stood on the Promenade des Anglais being booed. What is he supposed to do? We’ve heard all the nous sommes en guerre stuff and President Hollande’s appeals for national unity. Now the Boss looks more bewildered and impotent than ever. The aircraft carrier and bombers have been dispatched to Syria, the State of Emergency in place for months. It is hard to see what’s left, that is any way compatible with Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. Yes, there are endless security measures that may be taken, but they tend to heighten the atmosphere of fear, hatred and insecurity in which evil men thrive, and who will find a way to ratchet it up.

If it goes on like this, the dream of Lib, Eg, Frat may not stop a certain future Mme Présidente from rounding up all young men of Arab extraction and putting them in concentration camps, or let's say -'centres for re-education', or alternatively sending them out of the country so that they can go off and fight for Isis. There is a certain horrible logic to things, after all…. Why not go for the Final Solution? Get the Force de Frappe on the job, drop the bomb on the lot of them! Les Anglais might help with those submarines of theirs, and maybe President Trump will be in the White House to offer his support!

After all the Middle East is all desert anyway, pretty uninhabitable and what with the wars and also with climate change, getting rapidly worse especially while everyone these days is apparently too distracted to think seriously any more about stopping it! And we found out long since that it’s not on to let them into Europe, didn’t we?

Is there an alternative to such a scenario? How about a little French logic, for starters; let us define the problem. What are we up against? Just suppose we try calling it simply spiritual evil? We might then go on strangely to admit that no amount of material power, technology, psychology is capable of overcoming it. Horrible, unthinkable admission, to some! We may even be reduced to taking words from Christ; for a start, ‘this kind of evil spirit can only be driven out by prayer and fasting!’

Well, Notre Dame is still there; it’s a small step for a man, though it may be a giant step for a socialist French President. You too can do it, M. le Président: on your knees and beg Our Lady, all the Saints and all the Holy Angels to deliver us from the Evil One; St Michael the Archangel, do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God thrust Satan down to Hell, and with him all the wicked spirits that wander through the world for the ruin of souls! How come it sounds so outlandish and impossible? Largely because the French Revolution set up that secular trinity of Lib, Eg, Frat.

But here is the most outlandish and impossible part - many people, present as well as past, can testify that such prayer works, which is more than can be said for revolutions! One might recall the relationship that St Joan of Arc had with St Michael.* How about some more advice from the Gospel? ‘Before you take the splinter from your brother’s eye, take the beam from your own! Then there is always ‘By their fruits shall ye know them'.

As I’ve said before, one little amusement that I indulge is to ask French people what they think of their Revolution; would they call it successful, in retrospect? This question generally evokes the same kind of bewilderment that is so familiar on the face of M. Hollande these days. One is not used to thinking about it. Well, we got our Republic out of it,  is about all that may be said.

Yes, at the cost of a lot of murder and mayhem, which ruined and permanently weakened France, and ended up in the rule of a tyrant who could look on a field of corpses, young men whom he had led into futile battle, and say “Bah! Une nuit de Paris remplacera tout cela!” (‘One night in Paris will replace that lot!’) And they still call him ‘un grand homme’! Quite some beam in the eye, and the more so because one can see there were some noble aspirations in it all, even though the Lib, Eg, Frat did not quite come off.

At aother time when Europe had fallen into chaos, long before the Ancien Regime and the horrible ensnarement of religion with power politics of those days, humble men set out from remote Irish monasteries to remind the Continent of what already was its ancient heritage. In those so-called Dark Ages, they travelled broadly speaking along the St Michael/Apollo Axis.

It actually runs from Skellig Michael off Kerry, through St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall and Mt St Michel in Brittany, on through various eminent churches and shrines associated with that Archangel messenger of God across France, come to think of it, not far from Nice, on through Italy and to Greece. There the line also strangely passes through some famous places associated with another bright and shining divine messenger, Apollo, notably his birth-place at Delos and his oracle at Delphi. After that it goes on to Mount Carmel, a place long associated with hermits and seers, where the Hebrew prophet Elija discomfited the 250 prophets of Baal, according to 1Kings 18 vs20-36.

Mosaic in Ostia

Delphi was to the Ancient Greeks the navel or centre of the world, where Apollo could be consulted through the Oracle, and many people travelled far to do so. The consonance with dolphin is not fortuitous, for Apollo was said to have come there in the form of a dolphin. He slew the Python, a serpent or dragon that had lived there at the world’s navel, which reminds us of the warrior-archangel Prince of the Heavenly Host who thrust Satan down to Hell, and rescued the Christ-child from the dragon that threatened to devour him at birth, according to the Book of Revelation.

There's much more about St Michael and ley lines, including one up through England from St Michael's Mount; so much rubbish to those children who claim to be of the Enlightenment. One might be tempted to call them endarkened! At least, as every sailor knows, there is no arguing with physical facts, such as rocks! There they are, in a line across Europe, eminent places associated with St Michael from long ago. How on earth did it come about? I’ll leave you to do the googling, if you are interested**. Funnily enough, this little island of Sherkin is also pretty much on that line. I send my small voice along it to say: Fille Ainée de l’Eglise, ressouviens-toi de ton vrai héritage.***  

* <http://angels.about.com/od/Famous_Saints/fl/The-Relationship-of-Archangel-Michael-and-Saint-Joan-of-Arc.htm>

**You might start with <https://lucaamendola.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/the-st-michael-axis/>,

though I do not altogether agree with the comments!

*** 'Eldest daughter of the Church, remember your true heritage.'

'Take That, Fritz!'

What does one do with unpleasant truths that refuse to be simply spun away? Why, have a Government report into them of course, preferably one that takes years, and produces a ton of words under which said truths may be buried.

Learning the Hard Way

 In the case of the Chilcot report on the Iraq war, the one obvious and outstanding lesson may be drawn very briefly: it is not a good idea for the UK to tag along on the coat-tails of the USA. If they really wanted to do something effective about the Middle East for instance, it would be far more likely to do so by positively taking their place with their peers in Europe; or at least they would be less likely to do harm that way.

Flowers in the Sand.

One might think the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme was another chance to remember the lessons to be learnt from war. What was the outstanding lesson of the two World Wars? Why, that competing nationalisms are highly dangerous; and eventually, after much suffering, the politicians actually got around to doing something in order to establish peace and security in Europe….

Yes, the grey voters who swung that Brexit vote have a lot to answer for. But it is amazing how the images of one’s childhood return with a new vividness in old age. How well I remember my Dinky toy tank, and armoured car with its gun turret, and the lorry with its towed gun that shot bits of matchstick and the scout car and the jeep; and the toy soldiers and the comic booklets full of our lads battling nasty Huns - Take that Fritz! - Zap, bang! Actung! Aaagh! Englisher svein!!! O yes, and there was the brave Biggles in the air, and there was the bomb site across the road to prove that it had actually happened. It was all supposed to have been the epic, archetypal struggle between Good and Evil.

The fact was that my father had just spent the first five years of his married life fighting that second war. He was extremely fortunate to have come home at all (and fathered myself), having escaped by luck from being massacred with his fellow officers in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment by the SS in a barn, while in the rearguard of Dunkirk.

It was difficult forgiveness and

peace-making, the stuff of actual Christian faith, which broke down much of the jingoistic nationalism. We have lately been rudely reminded, however, that this remains alive and well in many hearts and minds.  The huge effort that went into the political expression of that peace-making in the EU, in all those contacts, low level and high, means nothing to them. The unsettling realisation that perhaps the wars were not all the fault of the Germans, any more than it is now the fault of immigrants that the NHS is in trouble, has not been admitted by them, nor that ‘foreigners’ are human beings much like us. One doesn’t even know who ‘we’ are any more! Give us the old certainties back!

Mrs May’s "bold new positive role" for Britain in the world, along with Mr Johnson’s "intensifying our relationship with Europe", ring as hollow as her ‘one nation’ stuff.  "The government I lead will be driven, not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives…." One does not know where to start, the rhetoric rings so hollow. Where has she been for the last ten years? How long will these people get away with standing the truth on its head?

I came across an interesting article in El Pais lately by Leonel Fernández, ex President of the Dominican Republic and founder of the Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo. He quoted figures from the World Bank showing, for instance, that in the period 1980-2014, derivative contracts went from one billion dollars’ worth to 692 billion: ‘a fabulous sum, without precedent, which means that they have come to represent nearly 70% of global financial dealings.’ ‘The excess of liquidity which we find today in the global economy is not used to invest in industrial production, that of food or energy or creating infrastructure. On the contrary, it is mostly used for financial transactions which, instead of creating some kind of material wealth which meets the needs of consumers, generates rather a kind of artificial wealth based on commercial contracts.’

This shows where we really do need to ‘get our countries back from’, and again, who has been making any shape to do something about this situation? But enough of Brexit, that extraordinary act of vandalism, self-harm and misplaced anger. The sun is shining here on Sherkin, Tony Whelan has come to help get this building up. Time to take a break from all that nonsense and look for something more sensible to write about next week!

Grand Crew.

Thanks to Tony and Fiona for the photos.