On 19 December I began an entry that started thus......

And so I have been and gone and done it again – as my mother would have said about herself on repeating a mistake – as it's two weeks since I was last here!

I have half an entry prepared on our visit to the Cathar castles at Lastours with Martin & Sile on one of our last days in France and another on the flea market in Thomastown last weekend.............

And here we are now, well into the new year, with still not a word delivered since 3 December.

But this time I won't beat myself up or burden you with apologies because, anyone from within Ireland who reads here, will know that up to Christmas we lived through a period of climactic extreme: no not extremes, just extreme, for it was all the one way, cold, colder and unbelievably cold, for a solid month – from 27 November to 26 December.

Thus, reasonably, the normal order of things, routines, plans and actions were upended and thrown into confusion.

In my case, not only did the blog fall by the wayside but, for the first time in thirty seven years, I was driven from the mill on the grounds of it being too cold to work: the temperature fell to a constant minus three Celsius in the machine shop so, if there was any moisture on my skin it stuck to the machines when I touched them!

But to begin at the beginning..............

As you know, we left for France on 26 November and, on 27 heard that Ireland had been gripped by ice and snow.

Our house being, as you should also by now know, tiny, has no ceilings upstairs and thus no roof-space requiring insulation to prevent water tanks and pipes from freezing as, when the house is occupied, they are constantly warmed by its ambient heat but, when left empty for any length of time, and with its massively thick stone walls, it slowly becomes (like the mill) an ice-box in which all water-filled objects would freeze.

So I called my friend and colleague, Martin Diack, and he kindly turned-off the water at the inlet and drained the system.
And it worked a treat - save for one small and unforeseen glitch..............

On the evening of our return, 5 December, when temperatures were still significantly negative, night and day, I reopened the rising main and, without hesitation, the tanks began to refill.
I turned on the central heating and it fired immediately so I opened radiators throughout the house to commence the process of re-heating our home.
But the boiler cut-out before there was heat in any radiator.
There was a problem after all and I went in search of it.
It took just minutes to discover that the only exposed pipes in the system, those between our back door and the boiler – a distance of less than a metre – had frozen.
But I was in luck: instead of bursting a pipe it had stretched a joint so I was able to effect an immediate, temporary repair and fire-up the heating again. (Needless to say the permanent repair has yet to be done but the pipes have been lagged and boxed-in!)

Once back in the saddle, the priorities became: fighting the cold and its effects, not least of which was constantly defrosting the girls' drinking water (hens drink an extraordinary amount) and trying to explain to them why their world had turned white and hard so that they were denied their favourite activities – roaming, scratching the ground and pecking at bugs and slugs; jump starting the van at 6.00am each morning while Sue's car warmed-up in anticipation of her slide to work; felling ash trees on the mill race to provide firewood for Christmas and many more weather and heat related chores that normally consume small thought and little time.

Then, monitoring Hannah's efforts in getting herself from London to Ballyduff and Alice's from Dalkey, took up another couple of days during which the text message became an indispensable, if not magical, tool.

And so, the work done, Christmas and the family arrived and I vowed to reward myself by spending happy, holiday hours blogging all the extremes and experiences since 3 December.

But I was to be thwarted or, at least, thought myself to have been thwarted.

I went to open Movable Type – for that is the vehicle by which these pages are delivered – to be asked to enter my user name and password, which I did but to no avail. I tried again, and again. I tried to get in via the 'forgotten password' route but was told that the user name was not recognised. I checked and confirmed my user name and password. I went onto the Movable Type website and struggled to make contact with them but they ignored my problem and pleas for help.

So I gave up, having decided that it was not right to burden Caitriona Dwyer (she who had set me up and minded my early progress so patiently) with my difficulties especially since she had only very recently brought Ruadhan, a brother to Fionn, into this world and I knew that she was in the midst of introducing him to his grand parents, Martin & Sile, home from France for an (expanded) family Christmas.

But a day or two ago I decided it was respectable to contact Caitriona and she duly replied that she thought I might be entering a wrong user name.
On entering the one she suggested I was straight in.
How could this be, my having checked these details at the outset of the difficulty?
On re-checking I found that I had checked the user name and password to Statcounter ( the means by which I can determine how many of you a following these pages – when they are written!) not Movable Type.
How stupid can you get?

So what to do now?

I have decided not to back-track and post all the entries that were in my mind over the period – and what a fertile period it was. - Instead, I will just show you glimpses of some of the pictures that would have accompanied them (had they been posted) and then strike-off again in the present tense, so to speak.

I will start that process tomorrow..................

Trust me!

Meanwhile, some of the aforementioned glimpses......

The view of the first castle from our parking point.

Getting closer to the top..........

....................and the view from one castle of another.

In later years Lastours became a weaving town and this magnificent chimney played some part in the process.

..........the same chimney from above as we climbed towards the Cathar Castles.

Thomastown Flea Market

On the weekend following our return from France there was a flea market at the back of the Bridgebrook Arms in Thomastown.

We decided that we would take a pitch and see if we could sell some of the 'finds' from the ongoing 'mill clearance'.

Loading the van...............

.............our offering.

A general view of the market.

Ramie Leahy roasted one of his pigs...........

.......and exhibited some allegorical paintings of the current political situation in Ireland.

Gavin Lynch made paella.....

.............and my next door neighbour was Mr. Oisin Walsh Agnew - the best salesman in the market, by along head!!

It was not a great day for sales as it was a dead, cold afternoon and the event had not been widely publicised but it was fun to do.

Logging at Ballyduff

As I mentioned we went logging for the Christmas firewood.

As mill owners, we have a right of access to one yard either side of the mill race for the purpose of keeping it clear. To say the least, this is not a right that I have exercised regularly. Thus the race is somewhat overgrown and not least by small ash trees. (Fortuitously, ash is the only species (of Irish-grown) hardwood that will burn successfully when it is totally green (not dried-out).

So I set-off, chainsaw in hand, to do some laudable clearing of the mill race and collect the Christmas firing! - A win, win situation!

Work in progress on the mill race............

.............a slender tree sawn into logs where it fell.

I did the sawing and Sue did much of the porterage..............

.................and we ended up with another fine pile of logs..............

..............and some spare, which saw us through the holiday right up to today.

And we surely needed them as the cold went on and on getting more intense as the days went by.

As you can see............

I've shown 'our river', the Arrigle, here on many an occasion - mostly when it has been in spate. But, even when it is not swollen, it is, as it passes us, fast-flowing.
Just above the bridge there is what (hereabouts) is referred to as 'a pool', an area of relatively slow moving water, created by the minor weir immediately below the bridge (our side), beyond which it speeds, tumbles and, sometimes, roars through a rocky and stony descent to another pool beside the mill - (they knew what they where at, those eighteenth century engineers).

So, imagine our surprise - no astonishment - when we woke one morning to find ice collecting on the stones on our (fast) side of the bridge!

But, a day or two later, not only was ice collecting on exposed stones but it had formed above water flowing rapidly over the little weir!
This seemed, to my simple mind at least, almost contradictory of the physical order.

It was less surprising - but surely very beautiful - that ice should be forming across the pool above the bridge.

Another marker of the cold was, as also mentioned, defrosting the girls' water..............

And then Christmas arrived and it presented as a day of exquisite beauty.
It remained astonishingly cold, one of the coldest, but also one of the last, and we had a wonderful family walk before we feasted.............

Do I need to comment?

There were two further, memorable, events that I will report upon that, although now history, I will shift into the....... 'Present Tense'!