Kilkenny 2006 January 13 19:52
Posted by diamond in : Random , add a commentI’m originally from kilkenny. My father is from kilkenny, born into a farming family. My grandfather split his farm in two and gave half to my father, and half to my uncle trevor. My first 5 years were spent on our farm until we went bankrupt and had to sell it off and ended up moving to mullingar. During my childhood, we went back to kilkenny frequently, probably every couple of months, and during the summer we’d spend a lot of time down there. I loved it. I’m not sure if i ever wanted to be a farmer, but there are certainly aspects of the lifestyle that have a really strong emotional attachment for me. I used to spend hours walking around the farm, coming back to the house covered in mud, to the eternal ‘joy’ of my parents -)
Most of my father’s extended family is in the kilkenny region. In fact, the surname Shirley is even commonly recognised there, not something i’m used to elsewhere ,-) The last significant amount of time i spent there was 3 weeks over the summer when i turned 15 (i think). I spent half my time driving a land rover that was as old as i was around some really steep fields as fast as possible with a cousin of mine. It was great fun. Some of the neighbours, across the valley, rang up my uncle to ask was anything wrong. They could see this 4×4 tearing around in circles on the hill and couldn’t figure out what was going on. Getting the jeep started was… exciting. When we wanted to park it it was important to leave it at the top of the field. This was so we had enough space to ‘push-start’ the vehicle by letting it roll down the hill and then engaging 3rd gear. And then there was the time i put the jeep in a 6ft ditch and almost ended up underneath it. *cough*
Anyway, that’s not what i’m writing this. I’ve only been in kilkenny once since my grandfather died. It was only for an hour or two, one winter evening. Can’t remember why we were there. I couldn’t stay in the house. It had been 3 or 4 years since my grandfather’s funeral, but being back in his house just cut me up. I went out and walked up and down the lane until my father was leaving.
That was about 4 years ago. I’ve been wanting to go back, with my father, for a couple of years. Go back, see our relatives there, see the farm, and walk the land again. I know part of it is just silly romanticisim, but it’s something that i feel really strongly about just the same. I’ve been trying to drop the hint to my father about this for a while, i’d somehow gotten the impression that he wasn’t keen on the idea so i didn’t want to be too direct about it. Last night this was all weighing heavily on my mind so i sent him a txt asking would he come with me to kilkenny for a day or two. He replied this morning saying he’d love to. It means a lot to me. Dunno if i’ll have anything interesting to say when i’ve gone (and equally have no idea if any of this is even vaguely interesting to the fictional you), but at least i’ll have done it.
There were other things i was going to write about here but it doesn’t feel like they’d fit. Next time.