Island thoughts

There was a day years ago when I  stood, with  a friend from the US with two of her grown granddaughters, in a Kerry layby. gazing over fields at the white farmhouse I was renting then. Nothing but fields.... Miles from any shop.

One of the girls asked, " What do you do if you run out of coffee?"

Truly and sincerely an appalling thought!

And as I replied, if I did it would be entirely my own fault...

A remote house is in many ways an island. The basic difference is that you can drive out rather than by boat. You still need to be organised. Take full responsibility and authority.

As it is, I carry at  least two months of foods in. Pasta, rice, ingredients for cooking, Yes coffee!  Dried milk... Tins   too, Frozen foods.. oh and cat food in bulk of course. Mine are fed half raw chicken, half tinned and    in need would have tinned only.. 

Always two cooking gas bottles and one replaced as soon as the second one goes on. Only once have I erred in that and then as I was unwell and had forgotten the spare was the part full one from the old place. And that was soon remedied.   
And I still have a small camping stove 

It becomes second nature and no burden.

Now the car has gone, and cannot be replaced, my list goes by email to a supermarket with island links, and to my door every two weeks. And as in previous places, I use mail order, Holland and Barrett have excellent foodstuffs and delivery is incredibly swift by An Post, with free delivery over E20, and a Dublin hardware firm have similar services.  Internet shopping!

Internet is the best I have ever had; a small local firm . The dish is on the gable end facing north right on the ocean and never a flicker in the fiercest of gales. ESB are grand and power cuts are rare.

Some folk who have to come out here .. " If anything goes wrong YOU CAN'T GET OFF !"  Whereas in fact we have a fine helipad and an excellent Air Ambulance service.

The only time I have ever been really cut off was in Kerry when a gale knocked my satellite dish sideways; I was using an IP phone.. So I set out to drive to town to find, on the narrow private lane, that a huge tree had fallen across the lane.

Left the car and sat it out; family would call alert if they did not hear for 48 hours. Poor landlord was shaking when he arrived as he saw the car and thought I was in it...

Always arrangements and precautions; and when I came here I invested in a  basic cell phone. 

Like more and more rural places, no post office, but we get our mail,,
   No resident Garda, but at need they would be here. No resident doctor or nurse but in real need they would be here. And in emergency our wonderful Air Ambulance service.    No resident priest but mass  every while.  There is nothing new about any of this. Just the easy practicality of experienced folk .

And the peace here.. a safe and restful place. Of beauty. The ocean to some isolates; to others  it protects. Encircles...

My days are slow and full. But then I am old! Never was one for eating out etc or city lights. And I have lived deep rural and island for literally decades now.  The life here is perfect for my needs. Nothing I miss by living here and everything gained. Last year when my dog was still alive, watching her run free on the lanes was bliss for both of us. 
.