a good deed deserves a good story
Yesterday we passed an elderly lady walking along a lonely country road laden with shopping (this is not a fairy tale and does not feature gingerbread houses!). I stopped the car, wondering out loud where on earth she could be going to and how far she had to walk. When I say I stopped, I just stopped, there was nowhere to pull in, except maybe the ditch, so I expected Rob (quite reasonably) to say “you can’t stop in the middle of the road woman!” .
But what he did, was get out of the car and go get the lady. So in she gets, on top of the kids and the dog. She had a cooked chicken in one of her bags so Maggie was particularly delighted to see her and we suddenly remembered we hadn’t had lunch yet
There’s an unwritten law of hitch hiking and excepting lifts which is that if someone is good enough to give you a lift then you should be entertaining and offer a story for the road. Lucy was a master!
Her story launched off once the girls told her where they went to school. She had been educated in a school nearby that was built by Lord and Lady Meath (of Kilruddery house) for orphaned children of solders of the British army. She then became an under-maid in the big estate house (she even discribed the uniform and the “silly” hat she had to wear). When she was a little older she married one of the gardeners and they lived together in a cottage on Rocky Valley Drive until his death some years ago. She still lives in their little cottage (which has its own field she told me) with her sister to this day and that’s where we left her.
That’s the short version of the story! When we left her we felt like it was she who had done us a favour.
kenny’s
This is Kenny’s in Lahinch, a favourite pub of a friend of mine. As it offen happens in irish towns it belongs to a family that owns other bsinesses in the same town. In this case the Kenny’s Wollen Mills and Kenny’s Art Gallery which exhibits some of my paintings.
Kenny’s 7×7 inch oil on gesso bord
