I dislike that the clocks fall back to winter time. I absolutely hate the dark evenings. This is the time of year when I try to clean up the garden for the spring. I’m hardly home from school by the time the evenings start to close in. Roll on that decision to cease this practice. If you agree or disagree with me go on the Department of Justice website and have your say. It only takes a minute to answer three questions. On a positive note, my brother Phil and I agreed that it was much easier to get up at this time of year.

I was in Tipperary with Dad over the Halloween break. Halloween has escalated out of hand, with houses being spoilt with zombies and skeletons. My sister tells me that the little ones had loads of Halloween parties to attend. What was a welcome break from school has turned into several days of work and expense for parents as costumes and make-up have become so sophisticated. In Cork city there were several dedicated shops for Halloween.

In Tipp, I was awake early so I got up. The silence was uninterrupted, save for the ticking of the clock. I went up to the kitchen hearing the familiar creaks of my childhood as I went. The kitchen door is a bit tight and gives a sort of a gentle pop. It was not quite shut. “Good,” I thought “I won’t wake Dad.” I pushed it gently. It popped. The sound reverberating down the hall just as it did when I’d come home from a field evening many moons ago. It would be followed by my mother’s voice: “Is that you Kathy?” I’d have to present myself at the bedroom door and oftentimes sit on the bed for a chat. It was a subtle way of knowing that I’d “conducted myself properly” during the night.

Cartoon by Clyde Delaney.

Steaks-a-growing

I sat at the kitchen table. Dawn was breaking. The new cycle has begun on the beef farm. A bunch of fresh weanlings have been getting used to their surroundings. They are robustly handsome animals. I can visualise the beautiful steaks and lean mince that will come off them. Yet, we live in a changing world where some people would find that thought abhorrent. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, is advocating for the rearing of animals for meat to be hugely reduced to decrease methane emissions. She told Sean O’Rourke on RTÉ 1 that Irish people need to be “at least aspiring vegetarians”. Beef production is under threat from many angles.

The bulls get up as silhouettes in the dimmed light and begin to walk to the corner of the plot. They graze for about five minutes and the walking begins again; slow, easy, determined. It is obviously exercise time. The light intensifies and now the animals are red, roan and mahogany. One or two are pushing the others around, as leaders of the pack are being defined.

Memories

I remember the Halloween games we played here. I’m sitting beside the double doors where the ‘snap apple’ hung. The basin of water would be filled and we would fish for coins. My most precious memory of that time is of my mother’s wet head with a coin between her teeth, laughing uncontrollably. Roll on the years and I did it with my own lads. Tim would come in after milking and dunk all their heads in the water. There would be bawling, especially from Philip. It would quickly be replaced by determination and fun. They were fabulous times for the price of a few apples and a bit of mess.