From Dia Dhuit to Diamonds on the Soul of our Feet

The week began with Sheila starting her Irish classes at the local college and end with dancing in the Isles to Paul Simon. Average week then really. Sheila writes...

As you might remember Ballyferriter is located in an area called An Gaelteacht which means that Irish is the first official language. And most of the locals will speak in Irish to each other but English is also spoken, particularly when you look blankly at them when they say "Dia Dhiut". I thought it would be good to be able to have even the basics of conversation and certainly show intent on learning what is after all my native language.

I should say at this stage that I did Irish classes in school but like most of my education it went on over my head and little stayed in the brain. And so, at 9am on a beautiful bright sunny morning I head off for my first lesson of the week. By 6pm I am shattered, the brain is frazzled, and I can only nod a yes when himself asks me would I like a glass of wine.

There were 10 people in the class and we had the most brilliant teacher in Caitriona. A woman gifted with immense patience and who guided us through the whole week so that by the end, sure we were fluent. Well fluent in that we could say our names to each and say what lovely weather it was.

Himself had his official retirement do in London so did a flying trip over on Tuesday and back on Thursday. The evening part of it coincided with the semi-final of the world cup. In case anyone had their head in a bucket for last week that match involved England. Peter has no interest in the football however the three friends he was having a retirement meal with are ardent supporters. Once England made the semi-final a refined meal in a central London restaurant was changed into a BBQ at The Knoll with beers. In truth everyone was happy although the football result was not.

In the middle of all this we are hunting down kitchen and bathroom suppliers, talking to flooring installers, learning how a heat pump works, calculating the costs of underfloor heating and measuring up the tiles needed.


Friday saw us head to Dublin for the Paul Simon concert. This was billed as a farewell tour and he was supported by Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.  I mean what a gig. Bonnie "greased the pan" for her two friends with fantastic guitar playing and singing.
James Taylor was amazing.

Paul Simon was fantastic and sang all the classic songs which, on a sunny Dublin evening, was wonderful.

The following morning, we headed off to Ballybunion for an evening of song from Christy Moore. Christy was in fine form, both singing and with his understated but spot on,political comments. It must be decades since I was in Ballybunion and I am hoping that it might be decades again… avoid at all costs.

The news for Sunday was that it rained! I know Ireland and all that, but we are in a drought, except in Kerry where it poured for most of Sunday.

First Week living in Ireland

And so the first week of living in Ireland permanently is over and we ask ourselves where did that go and how come we had not a minute to spare. How did we ever fit in time to go to work…?

We departed Beckenham at 7am on Saturday 30^th June and hit the road for Holyhead. It was a perfect day for a 7-hour journey, bright sunshine and only the occasional traffic issue. Our aim was to arrive on the island of Anglesey in time for lunch. We had seen a recent restaurant review of a place called The Marram Grass Café. It was a superb review and we thought sure why not let’s try it, https://www.themarramgrass.com/ and the food was absolutely sublime. Although the service was on the chill and casual side but definitely worth the wait.

We stayed overnight in the Dublin flat before hitting the road for Ballyferriter. The four hours of driving a fully laden car seemed to fly by and before long we were in The Kingdom, as native Kerry folk and the tourist industry are wont to call it. Sunday was nothing but relaxing as we looked to organise ourselves for this next stage of life.  This included a long walk on the nearby beach and a hop over to Ventry for a pint of the black stuff at Quinns.

Our first challenge was to prepare for our meeting with David Morarity, our architect. Now we have planning consent we need to move the remodelling of Carrigeen on to the next step, and that means making lots of decisions, materials, finishes, fittings, colours. We spent most of Monday and Tuesday pouring over all the Grand Design magazines and assorted kitchen and bathroom brochures that we had accumulated from the start of the project. Developing our “mood board” was a joy and great fun.

On Wednesday we had four hours of discussion with David that commenced with a bit of self-congratulating at winning the appeal and gaining an over rule of the local planning officer. ( We used “victory” quite a lot.)We moved on as quickly as possible to a redesign of the internal layout. The time spent living in the house and wondering whether we’d get permission to do the build, gave us a chance to rethink some aspects of the layout.  Besides the musings over where to put sockets, wall lights, we needed to make decisions about heating systems, window types, what flooring we might choose. This is all to prepare the “Tender pack”.

This next stage is to put together a detailed specification of the build so as to put it out to tender to contractors for quotes. We needed to include all the details of the elements that have an implication for the work. By being as certain and detailed as possible at this stage minimises the number of changes we look for

during the build. As David M pointed out, making changes now, on paper, costs nothing whereas making changes onsite, during the build will cost – time and money. We now have a fairly good idea of how it is all going to pan out and what it might look like. If we can find a contractor who is ready and willing, we could see the work start by October.

These three days felt like a real start to living in Ireland and having Ballyferriter West as the location of our main residence. Even though there is every chance that we will end up spending much of the next 12 months not living in the house as it is pulled apart and remodelled with the planned extension.