Dear L.N.R...

A few days after this blog was created. A post about this event here - http://apostrophe-rules.blogspot.com/2010/01/ive-been-very-sad-recently.html 

At Musings' first birthday, November 2010. Forgot to get any cake.

In which I get the knack of smiling in photos. March 2011.

Insert photo of present self here.

Dear L.N.R...

This is the moniker you like to go by, isn't it? L.N.R. - Eleanor! If I've done this right, you should be reading this just as you're starting your blog, Musings of an Undiscovered Genius in November 2009. It's your birthday soon, isn't it? You're going to be fourteen. Wow.

You're probably wondering who I am, right? I'm Eleanor Roscuro. Sixteen. February 2012. I know, that seems so far away, but it came, and we're here. And I'll be eighteen next year and everything! I know! Amazing! But anyway. 

Listen. Between where you are and where I am now, things are going to change. Huge changes for us, and for the country. I can't say too much, but here's just some tips.

• Twitter's fun, isn't it? You know that American girl who's followed you for some reason, The Vintage Vixen? She has a blog too. Read it.
• When was the last time you re-read Harry Potter? When you're done, go onto that website Tumblr and search it. Also: Have a little think about Slytherins. Just because there was a really bad batch of them during Harry's years doesn't mean they're all... evil.
• Start going to more plays. Even if it looks really serious and boring. That usually means it will grip on your heart in a way you never imagined, and there's nearly always some funny bits. 
• There's this young theatre company in Kilkenny, Devious or something. When mum asks you if you want to see the play with the poster in green, pink and orange, go. For fun. Also: Just because they're so big and older than you and everything doesn't mean they're scary. Only at first.
• There's absolutely no need to be some kind of martyr. I know you want to seem professional and everything, but not being a martyr will make you more professional. Funny how that works.
• If you are unsure about telling mam (or dad) something, it is probably best not to tell them. Imagine it was your daughter.
• No one's out to get you, not anymore. If you are extremely patient, they will flock to you, but for now, be the kind of person that has loads of friends already.
• They're not bitches, they're dizzies. It's nicer.
• Keep writing. On Musings, in your diary, poems and stories, everything. Keep it all for when you're my age and even older.
• You may have heard of a man named Michael D. Higgins. He's a TD, a really arty one. He's got a few books out too, read them. Remember him.
• When people laugh at you for boycotting Penneys, don't mind them. Research sweatshops and child labour more.
• Don't seek out romantic entanglements. Let all that stuff come to you.
• I know you're secretly in love with that other youth theatre, but they don't mean to upstage you. You'll  get to know them in the end, and you won't even have to leave KYT to do it.
• I know you love Paramore, but don't let them be your favourite band. Explore. There's a whole world out there (on the internet) you still have to discover.
• There's nothing wrong with how you look. Keep experimenting with your hair colour and cut, and you're going to lose that weight. How, I have no idea, but it happens.
• You're going to love blogging. You're going to love theatre, not just acting. You're going to love Kilkenny even more than you do already. You are worthy of all the good things that have happened and are going to happen to you. 
• Be your own best friend. I know it sounds silly, but you have to enjoy yourself. I'll say it again, it's that important: BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND. That's the secret.

I know I'm only sixteen, and I still have loads left to learn, but I feel much happier than I have since primary school. Things are going to be brillliant. 

The most love in the world,

Eleanor Roscuro

A Day - Friday the Seventeenth of June, Two Thousand and Eleven

I woke up at four o'clock, then went back to sleep again and woke up at half eight-ish. I didn't need to be anywhere until two in the afternoon, so after a lot of tossing and turning I went online. @Evy_Lynch tweeted about the new Deathly Hallows trailer so I went and saw that.



And then, I can't remember how, but I came upon Pottermore. OH MY GOD POTTERMORE ONLY 3 DAYS 20 HOURS 31 MINUTES AND 45 SECONDS

And that's all I'll say on that matter.

Then I went onto J.K. Rowling's website and concentrated on finding the last two easter eggs that I hadn't found yet. I know, I'm so slow, but I don't go on it very often. Then it was half past eleven and I had a shower then put on my school uniform because I had to do my last exam of the Junior Cert, Home Economics. I had breakfast, then I went into school and did the exam. I finished at half four.

When I left, I went back home with my mother and my brother and I changed into normal clothes, had some food and showed my mother the new HP trailer and Pottermore. Then the song I Am A Rock came onto the radio by Simon and Garfunkel and me and my mother danced to it. My brother didn't dance to it because we were embarrassing him.



My mother told me that when she was my age, she sang this at her school concert and danced. She still remembered most of the words. I liked the story.

After a while, my mother and I got in the car and drove up to Abbeyleix in Laois to go to a cemetery mass. Before that we went to my grandfather's house, my mother's father. He and my mother's sister were there, and we ate some sweets and talked about the exams until it was time to go to the cemetery mass.

My mother and her sister and I decided to walk down to the graveyard from the house. We brought umbrellas. Halfway there, I tripped and stained my white trousers, but I didn't mind really because stains means adventures. Usually. I was just surprised.

As we got nearer to the graveyard, we met the cars. Oh, the cars. The traffic jams. We tip-toed in between them to get to the top. Cars were abandoned in the middle of the road. My grandfather was in a black jeep driven by my mother's other sister, who owned it. A minute into the service, it drove in and parked at the back. My grandfather isn't a great stander.

So me, my mother, my mother's sisters, their husbands and my cousins all stood around my grandmother's grave as the priest at the far end of the cemetery gave the service, from microphones and speakers. Ten minutes in, it started to rain. Umbrellas ballooned simultaneously and those who had forgotten theirs got drenched. The rain didn't stop until there was only two minutes left into the service, at which point the priest said 'If it's raining at quarter past seven next year, we can assume the cemetery mass will take place in the church...' It was so long since I'd been out in the rain with an umbrella, and it was fun.

The mass ended and it promptly started to rain, at which my mother and aunts yelled at me to get into the black jeep as it was driving away, so I did. We had to navigate through all the cars again, and the people walking navigated over us. A forty second journey to my grandfather's home took fifteen minutes at least. Eventually we got back.

My cousins had brought with them lemon cheesecake, chocolate biscuit cake, and rhubarb tart. These were devoured over wonderful conversations. I cried from laughter.

At quarter past ten o'clock we left for home. We got back at half eleven. In the last five minutes of our journey a very good short story was read on RTE Radio One. It was called 'Don't Start Listening To This Story' by Patrick G. O'Connor, shortlisted for the Francis MacManus Short Story Competition. It was excellent, but hasn't been put online yet.

When I finished listening to the story, we had returned home, so I dropped my things in my room and went into my parent's room. My mother was there, and we lay on the bed and started talking. Then I went into the kitchen where my dad was and he asked me about the HE exam. Then I went to bed.

I see lots of posts on lots of blogs describing a day, and I don't do that. So I thought I'd try.

Vanishing Ireland

Joe McCabe & Mick Lalor
Born 1919 & 1931

The Hurler & the Diviner

Abbeyleix, County Laois

Mick Lalor is anxious to set the record straight. His daughter is married to Joe McCabe's son. And Joe's father was Mick's schoolteacher in Clonad. And yes, okay, Joe's father did have a wee romance with Micky's mother. But that was a long time ago, before anyone was married. Above all, he and Joe are neighbours - and always have been.



It is clear that Joe and Mick regard the ongoing link between their two families as a happy coincidence. They are great pals. Joe swears Mick is 'one of the best water diviners in Ireland - bar none'. And Mick says Joe's record as a hurler speaks for itself. The two were taking afternoon tea and cream buns when we called in to the McCabe house in Ballyroan outside Abbeyleix on a wet spring afternoon.



The two men sit in opposing armchairs chuckling at the old times, at stories they've heard a hundred times before yet which still carry an essential lightness of being. There is the story of the kindly fool who accidentally donated the entrance fee for a vital hurling match to the parish priest. Or the scoundrel who had the monopoly on bicycle tyres and wireless batteries during the war. Or the hurler who kept all his money in a matchbox but accidentally lost the box while making haycocks 'so he had to unravel all his cocks with a pitchfork and start over again'. Then there was Jack Lyons, a massive lad who had to get a bypass. 'Doctor, a bypass is no good to me - I need a roundabout.' Sometimes it is hard to grasp why stories are funny. It's like trying to make sense of long gone currencies. And, as such, it is inevitable that older men look down in brief dismay that such wonderful memories can possibly lose their sheen over time.



But much of storytelling is about the way it is told and, eighty-seven years on, Joe McCabe's endearing tales are as hypnotic as they ever were. Joe is the first of his McCabe line for four generations to not become a teacher. 'I have sisters who were teachers. I have a daughter teaching - and a grandchild teaching too! But I was too thick for teaching!'



Instead, he evolved a passion for hurling. As a child, his native county still echoed with the roars of those who had carried Laois to victory in the 1915 All-Ireland Hurling Championship. The weather had been so wet that day the two teams played the second half in overcoats. One of his many colourful tales involves a midnight raid on a prosperous farm to pinch a lump of ash to make some new hurls. Luckily, even at the age of twelve, Joe could clearly run.



In the GAA's Jubilee Year of 1934, the fifteen-year-old Joe McCabe, clad in short trousers, played for the Laois Minors in a match that saw them become Leinster Champions. Next up was Tipperary in the All-Ireland final at Croke Park. What an astonishing prospect for any fifteen-year-old.



'None of us knew Dublin,' he says of the team's arrival in the city. 'We had nothing only our boots, tied together and thrown across our backs. And we carried our hurls in our hand. We had no cases, no pyjamas or anything at all. We walked along the quays and then up to Barry's Hotel. We went to the pictures that night. The Plaza! I remember it was four old pence. We came out of it after and there was a chipper. We never had chips before but by jaysuz we got a tray of them and tucked in. I only had half a crown when I came to Dublin to play in an All-Ireland final. That's all I had and there were lads who hadn't even that! We ate the chips and went back to the hotel and we went to bed. We got up the next morning and went to mass and went on to Croke Park.'



Laois lost by a point after a second half that lasted forty-five minutes and Tipperary brought on nine substitutes. With teacher blood thick in his veins, Joe swears he took the train home straight after the match so that he could finish off his homework for the Christian Brothers in Portlaoise by the Monday morning. 'We had a great big clock on the wall. I remember it was twenty-five to nine when I got home for dinner. My mother said, 'You didn't win today?' - the hurling was on the radio or something - I said, 'No.' My father gave me a note for the Brothers in the morning.'



Joe is the only player to have been on the Laois minor team for five years in a row - 1933 to 1937. He continued to hurl until 1960 and says he got a welt from a hurl every time he went out. 'We didn't mind welts. We were working hard. That time we'd walk twenty mile and we'd work and walk home. We got so hardened. People were much tougher. There was nothing to eat only bread and butter and the bacon that hung above you. We'd eat anything, carrots or turnips or cabbage.'



After he left school, Joe's father paid a welder to employ his son as an apprentice. Joe went without pay for the next three months - 'to see was I any good!' He got a salary of five shillings a week afterwards and 'got up to fifteen shillings by the time I finished!' His career path was set. 'I welded all my life - the whole life I'm welding.' He claims to have invented a crank shaft that cannot be broken - not even by a steam engine - but vows that he will take his secret recipe to the grave. In the end, he had a business of his own outside Abbeyleix, lately sold to make way for a residential estate.



Mick is a quieter man, one of six children born into a farming family from Portlaoise. At seventy-six, he has survived a bypass, a hernia and the complete loss of sight in his right eye. His gift for water-divining was revealed in his boyhood when his teacher - Joe's father - asked everyone to give it a try. Mick was the solitary success, although his anxious father insisted someone was 'codding' him. After school, he tried it again while checking on the cattle one evening and sure enough the magic sticks crackled over a source of water. 'I don't know is it a gift or not. It just works and that's all. I've seen hundreds of people who say they can do it but I've only met two or three who actually can.' He has four daughters and two sons but says none of them can divine. 'It just doesn't work that way.' When Mick married, he gave up farming and bought a machine for well-drilling. 'Every new house built around the country has to get water - and Mick is the man to find it,' asserts Joe.

This is the story of my grandfather, Joe McCabe, and his best friend Mick Lawlor. They were interviewed for a book called Vanishing Ireland: Further Chronicles of a Disappearing World by Turtle Bunbury. Our family call Joe 'Fafa' and have done so for the past twenty years. Fafa is the man sitting. This is the full interview from the book.