On the first day of Spring

ONE of the funniest thing which was pointed out to me lately was how people complain about the Irish weather.

Their line is that of course we have weather, we have wind, rain, snow, sunshine, cold, warm, we have weather.







How boring would it be if it was only sunshine? That is not weather that is sunshine.

Great. And while it would be lovely to be warm all the time, it is also lovely to have rain, snow, and sunshine on crisp winter days.

We just need to learn about wearing the right clothes.

So here’s one for weather, seeing as how it is the meteorological first day of spring, and here’s how you can have every bit of weather in one day in Ireland.

These pics, the first I posted earlier, were all taken within two and a half hours of each other. Don’t you just love weather?





And on days and evenings like this, this is the best way to end the day.



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That didn't take too long

WHILE not as quick as the bloggers and flickrers on the ground on Saturday's riot on Dublin's O'Connell Street, these photoshop hacks have done well.

Some of these pics are already doing the rounds. Check out more at Creative Ireland here.



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Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

I LOOKED out the window earlier and there was lovely snow falling all around. I grabbed my coat and camera and by the time I made it out to St Stephen’s Green, it stopped.

Back at work, it started up again, so I tried to snap something, anything.

On a different note thank God I have the living room heater on a timer for when we get home. Bbrrrrrrr.







And for all you people who actually get snow, like real heavy snow, which lies on the ground for weeks and weeks, this is nothing. Yet are we prepared when we do have bad weather? not at all.

Here’s a pic from Smitten’s Flickr photostream aptly entitled People have seriously more fun than us.



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Love Ulster top tag on Flickr

JUST one last note to pat on the pack everyone in the Irish blogosphere for their excellent coverage today or yesterday I should say.

'Love Ulster' was the top tag on Flickr and riot and riots were in the top bunch. (Link takes you to most interesting love Ulster pics.)



Considering an estimated 50,000 pictures are uploaded to Flickr each day, it says something for those who tagged their pictures with this and for those who were searching for pics with the tag.

*round of applause*

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Recap on the Dublin riots

FLICKR members were out in force during the riots today, Back Street Driver, Phibsboro, O6scura, Voss, Blue Tit, and check out the discussion in the Flickr Dublin pool.

I am so impressed by the coverage (both bloggers and Flickrers) in the Irish Blogosphere, well done to you all. Between all the first hand accounts and pictures you kept me informed all afternoon and well done to Newstalk for its afternoon coverage.

And here’s some screen shots I took from the 5.30 TV3 news earlier.









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Dublin Riots

If you go into town today, you're sure of a big surprise

THAT riot was something else in town today. I've been checking all the news sites, Flickr, Irishblogs and I'm seeing some bloody awful pictures.



Pic from O6scura. See more here.

It would appear to me from the coverage that the counter protestors were organised and probably have little to no links to Republican Sinn Fein. Looking at their age profile I wonder if this matches the age profile of RSF who I would put down as a lot older, but thats just my first impressions.

Either way it was dispicable behaviour.

And is it easy to say in hindsight but why on earth wasn't all this building material secured? Seriously a contentious march is planned to take place down O'Connell Street, a building site, and protestors are able to use this rubble, paving stones as weapons because it is lying in abundance at their feet.

The mind boggles.

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Redmum column February 23

YEAH The Echo received a letter about the article on blogging last week from another blogger and fellow nominee in the Irish Blog Awards 1169 and Counting. Nice to meet you!



And here is this week's column concerning teenage fashion.



The dangers of being a fashionable teen.

Back in the olden days when I was a teenager (1980s), the more you covered and the more layers you covered with, the better and cooler you looked.

Whether it was a reflection of the general downbeat and depression of the time the fact is, there were no bare midriffs, no belt-miniskirts (not without thick woolly black tights anyway) and there was certainly much less skin on show than there is now.

And this is where I sound old, but times have certainly changed.

I suppose it is mostly a sign of the times and the generation gap, well mini-skirts did raise more than a few eyebrows in the 1960s, but the get-up of most teenagers now makes me want to run home and get them a big warm coat to cover themselves up with.

Mostly I think it is great that the young people have this busting and over-brimming confidence, after all life knocks so much out of you, isn’t it better to start off with bucket-loads?

But I do worry about the sexual messages being sent out by the fashions and trends.

Those of you who saw the newspaper pictures of the teenagers going to that Southside disco will know what I mean.

One of the pictures that I won’t forget is the one of the girl in a very short mini skirt kneeling having a drink and it looked like she had no underwear on.

Maybe she didn’t, but I prefer to think that she was actually wearing something, however small.

It is hard to get the message across to your teenager that respect for yourself and your body is one of the most important values we should have.

Particularly when you are confronted by opposite from this from when you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night.

Over Christmas we were out shopping at a Dublin shopping centre and a new nightclub was opening up and that non-celebrity Abi Titmus was plastered twice across a 30-foot wall in nothing was tiny knickers and what can only be described a soft-core pose.

How can we as parents compete with that?

Sexuality is used to sell more than ever. And of course it has always played some role, but it absolutely prolific from all directions nowadays.

Our young people are hearing one message from us their parents, another from the music they listen to, another from their own peers, from television, from newspapers, from all corners of life.

We have had chainstores selling sexy underwear for the under 10s, music videos that leave nothing to the imagination whatsoever, the fact is our children are exposed to too much too soon. And other than hiding them away from the world, there is very little we can do about it except to try and teach them well.

My daughter is smart, gorgeous and will be an absolutely amazing woman and I have to trust that the moral messages I have tried to teach her have had an impact and will help her make good decisions most of the time.

Of course she will have her mishaps, haven’t we all. I once did go out in flat orange shoes bought for about 50p by my Nanny. Come on give me a break it was the 1980s. But the most important thing for me is that my daughter keeps herself safe.

When I see the scantily-dressed teenage girls out and about I can’t help thinking ‘uh oh’. Never mind being drunk off your head and not aware of what is going on around you.

Yes I am probably getting a bit prudish and yes at the end of the day if anything happened to those youngsters I’d defend them to the hilt. But I do believe we need to take precautions to keep ourselves safe where possible. And it is just so much more dangerous out there than even when I was growing up.

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Rag Day

STUDENTS are having a blast all over the city today. Damn this growing up malarky.





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The Blog Widow

IT'S just not fair. Whoever said it was a dog’s life was obviously not a dog.

Take for example morning times in our house. I barely have time to do my morning ablutions before I am whisked back in and out the humans rush for the day.

After a long day away from me, they come home and I do all my tricks in what is usually a vain attempt to get some loving and possibly some of their dinner. Rarely works though.

The Young Wan is great with scraps. Sometimes bits of lovely delicious things come flying off her plate and fall on the floor, she thinks I am like a vacuum cleaner because I swoop in and eat them before they notice anything has even happened.

So as if not having company during the day is bad enough, or not getting the same dinner as them is bad enough but then the leader of the pack turns on her computer to ‘blog’.

Bloody great, what do you have to do to get played with here.






All taken with the leader of the pack's mobile phone.

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Redmum column February 16

Teenagers become dimmer

I READ an article lately that made me laugh out loud and reaffirmed something that has been puzzling me for quite some time now. Apparently due to hormones teenagers really do get dumber. So it is not a figment of parents' imaginations! Thank God for that.

Research carried out by University College London has shown that puberty disturbs teenagers' ability to recognise their parents' emotional state, among other things.

I could have told them that. But it is reassuring that scientific evidence backs this up.

I suppose I knew if I did the research that some academic or scientific-type would provide me with the evidence to back up what is bloody-well apparent in our household.

It explains how there are times when I speak to the Young Wan who seems to lose IQ points as we speak.

Apparently this is because during puberty the brain rewires itself and social intelligence diminishes during this time.

The tests were conducted to find out why boys are 10 times more likely to be autistic than girls and involved three tasks.

These were recognising facial expressions such as fear, anger, sadness and surprise, remembering faces; and telling whether someone is making eye contact with them.

600 children between the ages of 6 and 17 took part in the study performing tasks associated with social intelligence by testing their ability to recognise certain social cues.

All the children were able to remember faces and recognise eye contact but the study also revealed that children find it hard to understand facial expressions.

So between the ages of 14 to 16 for girls and 15 to 17 for boys, teenagers are much less able to recognise the meanings of facial expressions such as fear and anger.

So that explains why when I am absolutely livid with the Young Wan over something and despite the obvious anger she will still try it on.

If my mother fired me one of the looks that she sometimes gets, you can be sure I would be the best child in Ireland, for a while anyway.

Not in our house, that’s an alien concept.

Apparently this dip in intelligence diminishes leaving boys and girls able to respond normally to facial expressions as older teenagers.

But wait a minute this particular phase lasts for two years. That’s a long time, a really long time. There are exams during that time, thankfully none containing tests on facial expressions.

This also explains the three most-used phrases in our house ‘I dunno’, followed by ‘no’ or the shoulder-shrugging ‘harumph’. I still do not know what ‘harumph’
means.

That is a long time particularly when you ask your child a question and they look at you blankly with an expression that is very similar to what cows adopt when looking over hedges. Two to three years of this is torture for parents and I am sure it is no picnic for the afflicted teenager either.

But at least I am not the only parent to notice this and at least if it is a phase then it is a phase that can be grown out of at some point in the future, even if it takes two to three years. *Takes a deep breath.*

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Twilight in Dublin

EVEN though it is throughly brrrr outside, it is also fantastic weather for taking photographs. Just make sure you wear a hat.

I love the lengthening evenings and brighted mornings. I also love twilight. We are very lucky in Ireland to have our daytime linger and linger into twlight. Twilight is also a lovely word.

In some places night falls quickly like a curtain, one minute its bright and then it's night time. I'd hate that.


You can view a big version of this here.

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Setting up a photoblog with little success

USING my limited techie experience I have been looking for a while for a blog template where I can show photographs large and lovely and link to it from here.

I managed to find one, though it is basic and none too pretty. But I don't mind that so much, however this is too plain. You can see it here.

I have also been unable to allow comments so I am left scratching my head going 'mmmmm'. Havent a clue what to do to fix it or whether I scrap the whole thing altogether. The comments apppear to be there but once you try it goes a bit awol.

What I would like is a photoblog where I can easily post pictures big, where people can leave comments, with handy archives and maybe even thumbnails of previous and next pics.

I am going to have to pay for one, arn't I? Where do you even look? Back to rubbing my chin thoughtfully and scratching my head going 'mmmm'.

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The shortlist for Irish Blog Awards is revealed

I SAT Sunday night hovering/lurking around Awards.ie after Damien said the results could be posted after midnight, well it was 12.02 then. I finally went to bed after popping in again after 12.30ish and no sign yet of the shortlist.

So I then discovered in work that I was lucky to be nominated in the personal blog category and judging by my fellow nominees I am absolutely delighted to be included. Check out the other nominees in the Personal Blog category. There is MacDara's Lebanon an Irish Experience through the bottom of a glass orRTE's Rick O'Shea, GUBU and Thinking Out Loud.

You can also check out all the other blogs up for various awards here. Thanks to everyone who voted for me and to those who nominated me in the first place. And a big pat on the back for Damien for all his work.

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Clontarf-ish by the sea at night

I WAS out at Clontarf earlier, well more at the end of Fairview going into Clontarf and took these pics, in the freezing cold by the way.

I was hunched where the big rocks are beside the lovely walk and cycle route and received more than one strange look from the cold evening walkers, sorry if I scared you lads.





Here is a picture of what used to be my late night life line but it has been closed since last June and is up for sale.

It’s closure is strange, it was a lucrative business. But it is on a sizeable amount of land and will probably be turned into apartments.

At least the anarchists are happy.



And hopefully this will give you a smile, I spotted this on a train journey during the week, a strange personal ad… The close-up is at the bottom, I removed the actual number but maybe the young gentleman would be happier if I hadn’t!!!





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Echo article on blogging

THE Echo ran an article this week on blogging and talked to me, you hopefully will be able to read it here.

I hope I represented the art of blogging well. You can click on the pic to see a larger version.







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Please, please, please

I’M going to be wild busy over the next few days so here is one last shameless plug in a bid for votes for me in the Irish Blog Awards. Please, please, please. Hey if Twenty can do it so can I.

Voting ends Friday the 17th Feb at 23.59pm (Irish time) so get along and if you think Red Mum is worthy against the fantastically talented competition maybe consider me for a vote in either the Best Photoblog, Best Personal Blog or Best Blogger categories or all of them… (Well chancers go further don’t they?)

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The Google Video Experiment

I SHOULD have posted already about the google video experiment but the truth is over bad behaviours overtook the untidy room, the week, my life. Urrgghhh.

So videoing her room and posting it on the Internet is more than I can take at the moment. (Although it is very much a live and ongoing threat.)

The source of that parental angst stopping the google video experiment is a post like those cheques which are ‘in the post’. It is working away in my head at the moment but so far refuses to come out completely.

It’s not ready to be aired yet. Soon though.

Anyway the result is that her room was the least of my annoyances this week.
She has been doing her penance of tidying to work off a €50 debt, unsuccessfully I might add.

Some things have been done twice and if they are not done better will be done a third time.

The worst thing about it all is that I told her if it wasn’t done right, it would be done however many times until it is done, right.

So that is what happening, until it is done right anyway. I have no idea at what point she will cop onto this. What a great way to spend half-term.

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Funny Liveline programme on now

TUNE into Joe Duffy on RTE now with John Waters complaining about his song entry for the Eurovision not being acknowledged by RTE. It is like April Fools and Valentines Day all wrapped up in one funny package.
Nonsense.

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Redmum column February 9

Help, is there a translator in the house?

It is funny how communication with your child changes completely and utterly a multitude of times over the years.

And nothing can prepare a parent for the whole new level of communication which is inherent for teenagers; things have taken on a whole new slant in our house anyway.

People (ie those who have no children) are under the misconception that newborns cannot communicate; oh they can, even if it is just crying it is still communication. Or toddlers who cannot speak but they can point at a biscuit yelling ‘arrrggggggggg’ and we know exactly what they want.

The point is if people are willing to listen, children can make themselves heard. Well until the young children become teens that is! Then miscommunication seems to become a standard weapon against anyone who isn’t, well isn’t a teenager and is usually used against the horror of all horrors – parents.

Okay that’s a slight exaggeration but over the last year communication for the Young Wan has gone from speaking at the top of her voice, about whatever, wherever. We did have the ‘what are tampons for’ at the top of her voice in Tesco once or twice.

But in the last year or so this has evolved into indecipherable mutterings, grunting and monosyllabic answers.

Of course this is sort of balanced out with the teenage girly long-winded ‘she said, then he said and THEN she said, I mean, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT’ conversations of day-to-day teen-dramas. Most times if I knew what she was talking about then I might not believe it too.

Unfortunately I often struggle to keep up with the stories of grudges, bestest mates, romances or boring/smelly teachers because of the excitable disjointed renditions of a young teenage girl.

All this is typical and normal, really it is. As hard as it is to handle particularly when a moody, grungy teenager flounces by you looking less than happy saying ‘nuthin’ when you ask what’s wrong, this is all part of growing up.

But once again communication has taken another turn in our house into mispronunciation where what she says takes on a completely different meaning to what she intends.

Here’s one example:

Young Wan: ‘I left my buck in school.’
Me: ‘Pardon.’
YW: ‘I left my buck in school.’
M: ‘Sorry excuse me’.
YW: ‘My BUCK.’
M: ‘I asked you to repeat yourself because I thought you said ‘I left my buck in school’.’
YW: ‘I did.’
M: ‘You left your adult male of some animals, such as the deer, antelope, or rabbit in school?
YM: *SIGH* ‘My booooooook.’

And here’s another:

Young Wan says pointing: ‘Luck.’
Me: ‘Luck??!!??
YW: ‘Yes luck!
M: ‘Luck as in good luck, luck of the Irish, better luck next time luck?
YW heaves a big sigh: ‘Looook.’

This has extended into her friend’s names too which has caused no amount of confusion.

She recently spoke of Een. ‘Een’ I asked confused. ‘Yeah Een’. It turned out she was actually talking about Ian. Or there was Ilia who was actually Jenna, explain that one, maybe that’s just old age and deafness.

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Looked what popped up overnight

OVER the weekend I posted about my forays into window box gardening. I posed this picture to show the progress of my Christmas planted bulbs.



That was on Saturday evening, on Sunday afternoon I checked them again and look.



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Growing stuff

FOR the last number of years I’ve enjoyed making a window box, sometimes from seeds and sometimes from bedding plants. It doesn’t beat having a garden but it’s the next best thing when you do not have one.

I’ve branched out a little this year and spent part of my Friday night planting sunflower seeds (what will I do with them when they grow!) and herbs.








I bought these bulbs in the Christmas sales and they’ll be ready to come out of their dark cupboard in a week or two. The Young Wan and I are having a race with two of them one is hers and one is mine. At the moment it is a dead heat. Maybe the race should be for which one flowers first.





But of course none of these are for the window box, I have lavender seeds for that. I need to get them sorted in the next week or two so I get my window box of lavender for the summer.

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Every parent's dream - a solution to untidy rooms?

I HAVE discovered how I may be able to ensure a certain level of cleanliness and tidiness in the Young Wan’s room by using technology.

Did you know that you can now download videos (maybe you have been able to for a long time- I just didn’t know) to Google Video where once it has been verified as non-porn you can either grab a html code to put onto your site or some one else can download it or just watch it on Google Video.

I experimented with this last week with a clip of Des Bishop’s ‘Joy in the Hood’ and more than 70 people have viewed it and one person has even downloaded it - check it out here. Google Video disallowed another clip probably cos it had cursing in it. I think the accents knocked Google off from discovering that there probably is cursing in the allowed clip but how and ever.

This brings me back to my grand plan of blackmail… Are you still following me?

Consider this clip below which was taken on Saturday, uploaded to Google on Monday, I inadvertently did not include information on it so it only became live today (Thursday), but it would normally be a shorter time. If your system cannot handle this here maybe this direct link will work.



You are watching the Young Wan and the little doggie do their version of Van Morrison’s ‘Brown-eyed girl’. There is another clip which isn’t yet live called ‘Yo momma’, if you fancy seeing this one search for it on Google Video from tomorrow (Friday).

Are you getting the possibilities for this yet.

If the Young Wan’s room is not tidy by Saturday evening I am posting a detailed and no-holds-barred video of her room onto the internet, onto this site and everywhere I can think of.

I am more than p*ssed off at the state of it at the moment and the fact that nothing has been done to change it.

I have already resigned myself to being shamed on the internet as the mother of someone with a room like this. How and ever I know from the visitors to Red Mum alone who came here searching for a ‘description of an untidy room’ and the like that I am not alone.

Will this change things? Who bloody well knows, I mean this is the child who is content to being friends traipsing through this bastion of filth so maybe the internet will not scare her at all. It would me. She appears suitably horrified at the thought anyway. So here’s hoping. You’ll either see the video next week or you’ll read a happier Red Mum on Monday.

I am going to have soooo much fun with this, apologies in advance if I bore you all too much with it.

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Momia Roja: Looking good en español

BROWSING through the visitor stats, as you do, it is so bloody addictive. I discovered that a Spanish visitor used Google to translate my Come Away Everything’s A-Okay post into Spanish, and it looked lovely (you can see it at this link), Momia Roja liked it.

I also liked ‘Shitty First Draft’s’ translation to ‘el primer bosquejo de Shitty’ or ‘Most Sincerely Folk’s’ translation to ‘lo más sinceramente posible la gente’ and The Irish Times ‘los tiempos irlandeses’. Slugger stayed Slugger only it was probably said in a beautiful accent.

Gracias a mi visitante español por caer cerca.

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Some pics from Flickr

I HAVE ranted many times about Flickr and how great it is, even in terms of inspiration and ideas. And after the honour of being nominated in the Irish Blog Awards Best Photo blog category and realising that it has been a while since I did a purely photographic post here goes.

I haven’t used my camera as much as I have over the last year for work and also for me and it’s great, I’m loving it. I was once told that most photographers work to take the pics they want, very few work taking the pictures they’d like.

And while I agree with this, digital has made it a lot easier. Unfortunately I need to do some serious archiving, but Flickr is helping me with that too.

One of the projects I gave myself was Travels on the Buses. Being one of those countless commuters in Dublin I find examples of interesting things to photograph all the time.

Here’s some from that set which is a project in progress.


Parnell Square reflected on the back of a bus









Another thing I love about digital cameras is the ease with which you can carry them about, take out of your bag, pocket, snap something and off you go again. I do this all the time, there is something exciting about from the hip photography.

Here’s some examples.







Course developing your own film and prints is still absolute bliss and something I haven’t done in a long time. I must hunt out all my old negatives and book into the Gallery of Photography’s dark rooms (just a thought I hope digital hasn’t knocked that facility on the head!).

Here’s three oldie but goldie pictures from about 1997.







And because I am from Belfast, here’s some from home.











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