Kate Kerrigan

Just Do One Thing…

It was dry and sunny yesterday so I ventured into the garden. The house was empty apart from the baby who was asleep, so I had an hour to myself. Within five minutes I was hysterical with stress. I picked up the phone and rang my Auntie Sheila in Fermoy. She is my garden mentor, although most of the time she has a therapy role.

“There are weeds and dead grass and rubbish everywhere.  I have lost my special gardening stool/kneeler. My herbs are overgrown and dead. My rhubarb patch is grown over, my vegetable patch has gone to lawn. I have six pairs of gardening gloves and they are all covered in mould – and yet I have no gardening tools apart from a children’s set whose plastic handles have just snapped off. All my seeds are two years past their sell by date. There are two tents from last summer in pieces all over the back fence. There are drifts of dead leaves in every corner, probably with dead foxes under them. Can I put dead leaves in the compost? Can I put dead foxes in the compost? I don’t know what’s in my pots. What will I do? Where will I start? Help! Me!”

Sheila, a keen gardener, attempts to calm me down. “You tackle the garden the same way to tackle everything – bird by bird – bit by bit – one hour at a time.”

It mystifies Sheila that I can undertake the daily discipline of writing novels and yet I cannot seem to master the twice weekly task of pinching out my tomato plants.

When she asked after my tomato plans this year I exclaimed, “Blasted triffids! They took over the whole tunnel and not one tomato!”

“What about in pots? One bush tomato plant in a pot - then take it from there.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, opening the lid of my composter to study my un-composted compost, “I can’t do tomatoes any more. I put all that work into them…” I can hear her silent frustration coming down the line at me but I don’t care, “…then they let me down. I have to let go of them Sheila. They’re too painful. Tomatoes are out.”

She takes a deep breath and brings me onto a more positive note. “How’s your rhubarb?”

My rhubarb is my pride and joy. It never lets me down. I ignore and abuse it, but it keeps coming up, year after year, back for me. It is Rhubarb Who Loves Too Much.

“Flying,” I looked across at my hardy plants – pushing up from their unmade bed of old leaves and bits of escaped miscellaneous plastic from the miscellaneous bits-of-plastic dump behind the composter.

“I love my rhubarb,” I said wistfully, and for a moment, it seemed possible to garden.

“Do one thing now,” she said kindly, “then come back again tomorrow.

I walked over to my dried out lavender bush and shuddered at the state of my herb garden. It seemed like only last week that I was down on my hands and knees clearing leaves off the ground beneath these plants, weeding through to the black soil, crumbling it with compost, mulching it, for goodness sake. And now look at it! Of, course, it wasn’t a week ago, it was a year ago but surely, surely, it’s not possible that I have to do all that work again? Of course I do because – newsflash!- stuff grows in the garden. It’s not fair. Novels may take ages to write and longer again to edit, but once they are published you’re finished with them. With the wretched garden you have to keep coming back and doing the same thing, over and over, year after year, again and again and again. It’s not just a question of making it look nice. You have to go out there and keep it nice every day. For a completion junkie like me, somebody who likes to get the job done then wipe her hands and be done with it, gardening is a hellish occupation. And yet, for some reason, I am drawn to it.

I reached into the lavender and broke off a crisp flower head and rolled it between my fingers. It smelt exquisite and sweet. “Just do one thing,” Sheila had said.

I went into my office and found an old, cloth evening bag, then went out to the bush, stripped it of it’s dried flower heads and made myself a huge, luxurious lavender pillow. Then I sat with the scented package on my lap and contemplated a summer full of fresh air, and falling petals – some of the rewards of my labour would be enjoyed this summer, and others not until the next year. It takes work to renew a garden, but, as with everything else in life, it’s worth it. 

Fond Memories of the Farmers Market

It must be middle age, but the things that make me salivate with excitement these days are almost always to do with baking and/or bunting. In my 40s I feel much the same way about farmers’ markets as I used to feel about getting dressed up and going to discos in my 20s or hanging out in posh hotels in my 30s.

So the prospect of contributing to the inaugural Killala Farmers’ Market one Sunday nearly sent me into a mummified coma of pink gingham. Thankfully, I have a number of good friends involved who managed to persuade me not to give up my job and devote myself to making preserves full-time.

“Contribute to a community stall,” Una said, staring at the confused co-ordinator as if to say, “Do not give this woman her own stall. I know her – she will take over.” She’s right, of course. I’m not a half-measures type. “No, we are not getting hens,” my husband has had to assert to me at least once a week since the new River Cottage hit airtime. “Or a pig!” “But it will dig the field next door,” I argued, “then we can eat it and grow vegetables in the muck!” Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has a lot to answer for in this house.

Despite only contributing to a community stall, I still went mad. Elderflower cordial, nettle pesto, brownies, lemon drizzle cake (I’m showing off now), mountains and mountains and mountains of stuff – and my four fellow ‘stallies’ the same. We co-ordinated by phone in the morning and agreed, we’d be taking most of it home again but it was a learning curve and better too much than too little. My neighbour Bernie had a dozen pots of her delicious cucumber pickle that improves with age, so she was happy to sell it over a few weeks.

In any case, it was lashing rain and the market would have to be held inside the community centre instead of outside, as we had planned, so that was sure to affect numbers. Chairwoman Maria was disappointed that the beautiful stands she had ordered wouldn’t get an outing, but then it was decided to put them up inside instead and by the time we arrived, our cars laden down with produce, there was a little “café” set up with the animal rescue people doing tea and coffee and the hall was transformed.

They came in their droves. Niall Byrne had set his fresh fish stall at a side door and my sister and her husband bought it out – stunned at his fantastic prices, they rushed off with their chunky swordfish steaks fearful he had undercharged them. There was a beautifully laid-out organic vegetable stall – where my mother was able to buy garlic “actually grown in Ireland!” Sue’s home-made Chinese ice cream and dumplings went down a treat, and every child in the place was baying for her delicious pancakes. Local artists at last got the chance to show off their work and our talented chef Derek sold about 50 litres of his legendary soups.

And as for us? We were cleaned out. Una’s scrummy biscuits, Aideen’s hand-tied fragrant herbs, every pot of Patricia’s chutney, Bernie’s relish and my pesto disappeared into the kitchens of our neighbours and friends.

At a time when so much of what we know as community is crumbling, the Sunday morning farmers’ market is a place where everyone can come together and enjoy the fruits of each other’s labours. It’s a pretty wonderful feeling.

The Call of Community

“Community” is the new lifestyle buzzword. We are all living too independently of one another, tucked privately and pod-like in small family units. I cottoned on to the whole “social capital” thing a few years ago and moved to a country village where, along with a great view at a great price, you get instant “community”.

I was telling this, rather smugly, to a lecturer aunt of mine. She scoffed at my claims saying, “You live in a village and have a bunch of interesting friends. That doesn’t make it a community.”

“Yes it does, “ I said, stupidly, seeing as she is an academic in the field of Community and Youth Work.

“No,” she said, “that makes you part of a circle of friends. Not the same thing. A community is born out of a collective act or need.”

“What if we babysit each others’ kids and meet every Sunday for drinks?” I said, feeling my ‘village community’ fantasy slipping away.

“Lovely, “ she said, “but it’s friendship… not community.”

Stuff it, I thought. She’s wrong. My friends and I are a community … we are, we are!

When my son started school, I came to understand the distinction my aunt was making. It is the choice thing. You can choose your friends, but you can also unchoose them. You can’t unchoose a community. A community is what it is and you can either be an active member or poke around at its edges, but you can’t fundamentally alter it. Within the boundaries of the children my son went to school with, the parents of those children and the staff into whose care he went each day, I was trapped. I was lucky in that St Joseph’s, Killala was a fabulous school and, admittedly, I am one of life’s sandwich makers. I always laugh when people say they are “too busy” to involve themselves in community projects. In my experience truly busy people will always find the time to design a parish pamphlet, help tidy up the school art room, butter a platter of scones, run the youth club… because they are the people who are invigorated by doing. They are not doing it for the praise or the thank-yous… and they are partly doing it because it is what they do.

The week my son’s school had its official reopening after a major refurbishment, Damian, the headmaster, called a meeting for parents to help prepare. Within days we had formed a supportive network of parents for the head and his team. I found the whole experience uplifting.

Marian, a lovely mum I’d never met before, came around with a picture she had found of the school choir in 1966 for the prayer book cover. Sam drove me into town in her big car and we wandered in open-mouthed awe around the cash and carry. I went into my neighbour Maria’s kitchen for the first time for a brown-bread buttering marathon.

These social interactions are adventures for me- new people, new stories, learning about where I live and who lives around me.

When the day was over we sat around the school staffroom: a disparate group who had come together on that one day. We had no other reason to have gathered as a group and I thought this is it- this is a community. What we had in common was that we had answered the “somebody’s gotta do it” call to community, which is like a dog whistle- some hear it and some don’t. I felt pleased with myself, not just for the day’s work, but for marking myself as someone who is a willing and proud member of my wider community… a sandwichmaker.

A Foray into the Land That Sense Forgot

When Image Interiors magazine came to photograph my house, I had of those weeks where any semblance of denial about not caring what other people think of me was well and truly eradicated. If there is anything guaranteed to send someone with a mildly neurotic nature into a tailspin of ferocious house cleaning, it is the imminent arrival of an interiors magazine.

In all honesty I lost a week of my life gathering every vaguely aesthetically unpleasing object (which amounts to some 50% of my household goods) and hiding them in various cupboards, including the cavernous horror of our already piled-high attic. The toaster was, possibly, under an old duvet with a nasty avocado-coloured polyester cover in the linen cupboard. My husband was near nervous breakdown looking for important paperwork like tax discs and their like in Lidl bags. These bags contained everything from filthy make-up containers to kiddies’ crayons to family portraits in bad frames and cheap shampoo bottles… in other words, anything that would have given me away as a normal person living in a normal house as opposed to a glamorous domestic goddess living a life of rarefied perfection.

“Why do you keep arranging to do all these things?” pleaded my frazzled mother as she watched her eldest child sob her way through cleaning out an anciently encrusted cutlery drawer just in case there was some test I had to pass beforehand. “They are not going to send somebody around to check your cupboards,” said my sister. “Surely not,” my mother said, but the two of them exchanged glances that said, supposing they do? What will she do then?

“I do it because it’s fun!” I said, and they both looked at me like, “Yeah, right.” They didn’t say it out loud because they could see I had crossed over to the other side, into the place I went as a bridezilla and a first-time expectant mother: the Land That Sense Forgot.

The thing is, I love my house, and I have interesting bits and bobs and it’s nice to celebrate them by having pretty photographs taken and sharing all my hard work. That should be enough. Deep down I knew I didn’t have to put my life on hold and my child into care so that I could rearrange curtains and commission coordinating throw cushions, and rearrange the books by my bed so that it looks like I read Balzac and Banville… but I did. Because while I pretend it doesn’t matter, I care what other people think of me. I want people to think I have a nice house and a great life. It’s not enough to just have a nice house and a great life… where’s the fun in that? It’s pure vanity, but believe me, one week of high-end neurotic cleaning is punishment in itself. In the end the Image Interiors team came and they were lovely people.

I needn’t have worried, but worry I did. Passionately. Olympically.

When they were gone and I realised that I had expended mountains of far more valuable energy than I needed to have done, I collapsed in front of the telly. On the news I saw that a man had just been sentenced to four years for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.

And my bedroom curtains aren’t properly pleated? Isn’t the world a funny place?

http://www.amazon.com/Recipes-Perfect-Marriage-Kate-Kerrigan/dp/1447213122/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334313979&sr=1-2