I was planning to go to Elphin to do my couple of hours busking. Asking around about what sort of place it was, nobody seemed to have been there though it’s only a little down the road from Strokestown - which is only down the road from Roosky. Other business though brought me to Carrick on Shannon and quite early. The Thursday country market there will be a regular busk but Tuesday was cold and windy and I thought I’d be setting a new world record by playing for two hours and not earning a cent. I would have if, in the last 10 minutes, three ladies leaving a cafe hadn’t decided that I was worth a euro or two.
When I’m organised enough to register my live performances with IMRO, I’ll get a royalty four times a year and Wednesday’s good news is that one arrived into my bank and so I’ll be fine for this months rent. Today, is discover Elphin day thought it got off to a late start as my new friend, Martin, invited me down to have a look at a jetty on Lough Boderg where he was doing some work - and this before breakfast.
The trip to the jetty took us along a beautiful winding road with the hedgerows showing early signs of blossom and early signs of daffodils approaching their end of life for this year. Eventually we turned into a field and drove along a track punctuated with no less than five gates which, following the country code, we needed to open and close behind us. When we got to the lough, once again I was in awe of the beauty of the area I’m now living in and the sound of birds singing in the trees.
Back to a brunch of homemade Chinese beef and vegetable dumplings - the best I’ve had and then on to Elphin. As I said earlier, Elphin is just up the road from Strokestown but, coming from my house - according to both Google and O.S. maps - there’s a shorter, if infinitely more complicated way of getting there. Yes, that’s the one we took and, while it was a quite spectacular drive with hardly another car in sight for most of the way, and while we did actually get to Elphin without asking for directions or consulting the map - it was definitely not the quickest way and I suspect it was pure fluke that we arrived.
Elphin has a lot of history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elphin,_County_Roscommon) - even connections with St Patrick but no obviously good places to busk but I did about an hour to a sparse and, for the most part, disinterested footfall and found I wasn’t particularly enjoying it so moved on out and headed back for Strokestown and Eurospar - taking a dog swim break on the way.
I will write more about Strokestown in another piece and just say that today, it turned our day around. At the end of the busk, a walk around the grounds of Strokestown Park House ( http://www.strokestownpark.ie/house ) saw to Clara’s needs - with a bonus as Liam from the cafe was closing for the day and spotting the dog, gave me the left over cooked sausages - about 2 pounds in all - most are in the freezer and, though she thinks I’m a meany, she’s rationed to two a day - chopped up and put in with her morning and evening meal.
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