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Irish Times
28-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Irish Times
Ripeness by Sarah Moss: A captivating novel about the unwritten codes of Irish social interaction
Ripeness Author : Sarah Moss ISBN-13 : 978-1529035490 Publisher : Picador Guideline Price : £20 Have you no homes to go to? The line once used by Irish bar staff to clear a crowded pub at the end of an evening has a more unsettling ring in the modern age. What if you have no home to go to? What if you are not overly keen on going home? What if 'home' gets defined by someone else and not by you? Sarah Moss's latest novel, Ripeness, is, among other things, an extended meditation on what home or belonging might mean in a period of disruption and displacement. The narrative shifts between 73-year-old Edith, who has settled in the Burren, and her 17-year-old self, who ends up in a villa near Lake Como dealing with her sister Lydie's unwanted pregnancy. Edith and Lydie are the daughters of a French Jewish mother married to a northern English farmer. Edith inherits from her father an acute sensitivity to the changing moods of the landscape and from her mother – lost in the aftershadow of the Holocaust – an innate scepticism about the permanence of any form of belonging. Moss perfectly judges the prickly absolutism of the younger Edith, on her way to Oxford, a bookish teenager dealing with events in a foreign land that fast-track her to adulthood. Some of the most affecting pages in the novel describe the burgeoning sense of care she feels for her newborn nephew in the days before he is taken away for adoption, the carefully orchestrated outcome of the catastrophic circumstances surrounding his conception. READ MORE The older Edith memorably combines a clear-sighted forthrightness with the sarky petulance of advancing years ('we had a wireless at home but no record player, none of us feeling a need for music. It was only later that everyone started to have a taste in music, as if it were food or clothes, no opting out'). As an English woman in Ireland, Edith is continually aware of the trip wires of reproach, the random observation that is chalked up to colonial condescension or the accent that potentially makes any critical comment a hostage to the high-horsiness of empire. Forty years of married life in south Dublin and her subsequent move to the west of Ireland make for a long apprenticeship in the unwritten codes of Irish social interaction, where she notes 'friendliness isn't friendship'. Continually navigating the uncertainty of home and belonging is, as Sarah Moss's beguiling tale reminds us, an important skill Edith's northern English plain-speaking continually runs aground on the island shores of the unsaid and the unspoken. Questions around assimilation and integration come to a head when Méabh, Edith's closest friend, becomes involved in a local protest against the provision of accommodation for asylum seekers. This event coincides with the imminent reunion between Méabh and a newly discovered half-brother from the United States, another victim of an unwanted teenage pregnancy, having many years earlier been spirited off to the US for adoption. Edith contrasts the ready acceptance of the half-brother – who has never set foot in Ireland – as being of the place, with the rejection of the young asylum seekers – who actually live on the island – as having no right to be there. [ Sarah Moss: Irish dog-walkers are kinder than English dog-walkers Opens in new window ] Lying in bed with her German lover, Gunter, she wants 'another immigrant to agree that national identity isn't genetic, that blood doesn't give you rights of ownership'. To an ageing Edith, the malign legacies of blood-and-soil thinking are evidence not only of the dangers of forgetting but also of the foreclosure of possibility, the denial that newcomers have the regenerative capacity to 'belong by caring for people and places'. Moss's writing has always been characterised by its range, and the latest novel does not disappoint. Whether describing the shift of the northern Italian landscape from summer to autumn, the granular changes of light on a wet day in Clare, or the brittle exchanges between two damaged siblings, Moss's prose is unfailingly spare and alert. The images are often arresting: 'a bowl of brassy dimpled pears'. Equally, they are telling in their unfussy accuracy, such as when she evokes spring in the Burren, 'its tiny flowering in the crevices and rain-cups of sedimentary rock, in the pinprick markings of the planet's bone'. Part of the attraction of this captivating novel is Moss's curiosity about different ways of knowing. How the world looks through the lens of a different language – French or Italian, in this instance – and how you try to build another version of yourself in that language while foxed by the snares of grammar and idiom. Or how differently the world is felt and understood when it is measured out in steps, twists, turns and leaps, as is the case with Lydie and her ballet-dancer friends. The ripeness of the title comes from Edith's reading of King Lear . She contrasts Hamlet's insistence on readiness, on the triumph of the will, with Edgar's 'ripeness is all', which stresses how much is out of our hands, how much happens 'regardless of agency or volition'. Continually navigating the uncertainty of home and belonging is, as Sarah Moss's beguiling tale reminds us, an important skill if, in our fractious age, last orders are not to give way to last rites. Michael Cronin is Professor of French at Trinity College Dublin
Irish Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Sarah Moss: ‘I'm a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic'
How agreeable are you? You'd have to ask my family, but I think I'm fairly agreeable. I'd like to think I know which battles are worth fighting. What is your middle name and what do you think of it? My middle name is Kelly. It's actually my grandmother's maiden name. She was of Irish descent. Her father came over to Yorkshire in the late 19th century ... Nobody has ever called me Kelly. What is your favourite place in Ireland? The Burren. I encountered it for the first time when I was speaking at the Ennis Book Club Festival in March 2020, before we moved over to Ireland. Somebody came up to me at the book signing and said, 'Have you ever been to the Burren because from reading your books I think you'd really like it.' I said I hadn't, but that I'd always wanted to. She looked at her friend and said, 'Well, my friend and I go there every Saturday. Are you doing anything this afternoon?' I said I was flying out of Shannon at around six, and she said, 'Ah, sure, we'll get you back to Shannon by then.' So I just went off in a car with these two women I'd never met before, and we had an amazing adventure in the Burren. We did some hiking, they showed me a holy well and a ruined hermitage, and that amazing limestone landscape. As I was flying back through Birmingham that evening, lockdown happened, everything shut down, and that was the end of that for another few years. So it was absolutely the last moment I could have gone off in a car with two strangers and had a wonderful afternoon. I go to the Burren as often as I can – and those two women are now two of my closest friends in Ireland. Describe yourself in three words I was thinking about this. In the first piece I wrote for The Irish Times, I described myself as a bike-riding vegetarian feminist. So, yes, a bike-riding vegetarian feminist. I think they can put that on my gravestone. READ MORE When did you last get angry? A very long time ago. I'd have been in primary school, although I don't think I was much given to tantrums. I don't really do anger. Except when I'm on my bike and drivers nearly kill me, and then I get very uninhibited. I think I get angry only on my bike. What have you lost that you would like to have back? The confidence of my 20s. I think quite often, and probably as we get older, we become less sure about things. There's nobody so certain as a teenager, and I slightly miss that absolute conviction. I'm sure that I'm a kinder, gentler, and better person for not having that, but it made life very straightforward. Quite often, teenagers are right about things, albeit in a completely inexperienced kind of way. For most people, we've discovered the world is a bit more complicated than we thought; things aren't quite as black and white to us. What is your strongest childhood memory? Climbing mountains, mostly in the Lake District. I grew up in Manchester. My parents were very enthusiastic hikers, so they would collect us from school on a Friday, drive up to the mountains, and then we camped wild over the weekend. More than once, we woke up very early on Monday morning and were dropped back to school straight from the hills. Where do you come in your family's birth order, and has this defined you? I'm the oldest. How has it defined me? I'm a classic first child. A driven overachiever. Slightly neurotic. What do you expect to happen when you die? There's a Yorkshire folk song I used to sing with my grandfather – On Ilkla Moor Baht'at, and a line from it goes 'then the worms will come and eat you up ...' It is best belted out in a Yorkshire accent with your grandfather while driving across Yorkshire. Nobody knows what's going to happen, do they? When were you happiest? I'm pretty happy these days, but there's no absolute measure of happiness, is there? I now live in a place I really love. I have good friends within walking distance, and my kids are doing well. There is a reasonable level of contentment within my life. Globally, clearly not, but I'm turning 50 later this year, and I think that could also be a good time. Which actor would play you in a biopic about your life? I was going to look up actors, but I forgot. Morven Christie reads my audiobooks so beautifully with the right accents and tones, so let's go with her. What is your biggest career/personal regret? It's not really a regret, but I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't gone straight into academia, because at this point in my life, I've been on one end or the other of full-time education without a break since I was four. I have a strange idea that I might have been quite good in the emergency services, as I'm very good in a crisis. Personal regret? No, because you always learn from it. Have you any psychological quirks? How long have you got? I like rhythmic things – running, knitting , sewing, walking. Anything that's involved with iambic, heartbeat footsteps, I find very comforting. In conversation with Tony Clayton-Lea Sarah Moss's new book, Ripeness, is published by Pan Macmillan
Irish Times
22-05-2025
- Science
- Irish Times
What do changing rainfall patterns mean for the world's nourishing grasslands?
Grasslands are more than grass. Meadows (mown) and pastures (grazed) supporting orchids, daisies and the edgily named devil's-bit scabious are looking at their best right now. Less intensively managed or semi-natural grasslands include Ireland's most diverse ecosystem in the Burren and support populations of many species of rare and beautiful insects and birds. Visiting a gorgeous bit of grassland near you has never been easier with the launch of The Grasslands Trail , including 27 public and private sites, many of which are publicly accessible. More than 40 per cent of the world's terrestrial surface, and 60 per cent of Ireland, is covered by grasslands. But the word 'grassland' doesn't do justice to the massive diversity of different kinds of grass-dominated ecosystems. Grasslands range from the sparse and spiky deserts of Australia's red centre, supporting huge flocks of budgerigars, to the lush green rain-fed grasslands of Ireland. A recent study of grassland responses to rainfall published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows the global importance of what every farmer in Ireland going through this spell of dry weather knows, rain is critical to grassland productivity. READ MORE The study also shows the response of grassland productivity to rainfall changes depending on whether the critical nutrients of nitrogen and phosphorus are added. Adding both nitrogen and phosphorus to a grassland boosts productivity across the whole rainfall gradient from deserts to the soggy west coast of Ireland. In a wet climate such as ours, adding critical nutrients means the grasses that rapidly use those nutrients, together with the available water, can grow quickly and dominate. This explains the different kinds of grasslands we find here. Burren flowers. Photograph: Burren Ecotourism Network Irish grasslands range from the fertiliser-dependent monocultures of a single-pasture grass species, perennial rye grass, to the massively diverse Burren grasslands, which support more than 1,000 plant species, three-quarters of all the plant species in Ireland. This grassland diversity gradient is governed by how naturally fertile the soil is and the type and quantity of nutrients added through chemical or organic fertilisers. The higher the nutrients in the soil, the fewer species of plants are found in a grassland. This has knock-on effects for the animals that use grasslands for food and nesting. The recent launch of the butterfly atlas of Ireland shows there are ongoing precipitous declines in the abundances and distributions of our most common butterfly species. Many butterfly species are dependent on a diversity of grassland plants to support the needs of caterpillars for the right kinds of leaves and adult butterflies for nectar from flowers. Grasslands have supported human civilisation for millenniums. Breakfast porridge, our daily bread and the rice that sustains more than half of the world's population are all bred from grasses that naturally occurred in the wild. Wild relatives of these cultivated grasses are still a critical resource for providing additional genetic material that is used to breed new cultivars, adapted to our changing climate and soils. Grasslands underpin Ireland's livestock industry and the production of meat and milk. Permanent, unploughed grasslands provide carbon removal services by locking carbon from the atmosphere away in soils, and the grasslands of the Shannon Callows provide space for overflowing rivers to spread, saving downstream towns and cities from flooding. Flower-rich grasslands like the dunes in Derrynane or the winter-grazed pastures of the Burren support important tourism industries and, if managed sustainably, can jointly benefit local economies and biodiversity. A changing climate will disrupt the pattern of rainfall across the country, changing when and how the grass grows. Reducing the emission of fossil fuels and methane from livestock into the atmosphere will reduce the impacts of climate change worldwide and here in Ireland. However, a better understanding of how rainfall and nutrients together affect grass production will be critical to adapting to new conditions for farming and conservation over the next decades. The global study of grasslands, which included the Burren was funded by the US National Science Foundation, an agency that is facing extreme cuts in funding for work on biodiversity and climate. Ireland and Europe will need to step up research efforts to fill this gap in understanding how grasslands can be managed under an uncertain future climate. Yvonne Buckley is professor of zoology at Trinity College Dublin and co-director of the Climate + Co-Centre for Climate, Biodiversity and Water and director of AIB Trinity Climate Hub
Irish Times
19-05-2025
- Irish Times
Escape from the city to a rural refuge in the magical, mystical Burren
As a transplant from the country, long living in Dublin , I find my mind wandering every few weeks across the Shannon and further westwards to the Atlantic coast. As often as possible my body gets to follow my imagination west to Sligo , Connemara or Clare to reset, prepping me for another stretch in the city. During one of these trips to the west last year I heard about Summerage, a 1930s Land Commission cottage on a high plateau in the Burren , in the throes of a transformation into a 21st century self-catering retreat. I followed Summerage's progress to completion on social media over the past few months, vicariously living my own dream to restore a house in this part of the world one day. After a seemingly never-ending winter, my horizon needed expanding and a booking at Summerage was just the ticket. My wife, son and dog have a similar hankering for the west, so off we set, and a couple of podcasts after hitting the road, the lights of Kinvara come into view. Tales of badly behaved Roman emperors are swapped on the car stereo for Declan O'Rourke's sublime The Stars over Kinvara. We roll down the windows to see actual stars, after an 11-day stretch of endless cloud cover. In Ballyvaughan we hang a left and follow the winding, mountain road through endless fields of rock, before navigating a final farm road to Summerage. Alighting from the car, we are enveloped in darkness. Kinvara's stars are no match for the theatre of the skies playing out above our heads; with craned necks we pick out constellations and galaxies we've never seen before. READ MORE The blackness of the night is swapped for the cosiness of the cottage interior. An A-rated makeover has swathed this refuge with underfloor heating and insulated walls, and warmth radiates from every corner. We light the stove and the rest of the night is spent on the couch with Manchán Magan's 32 Words for Field , a book about the etymology of the Irish language, that suits this setting perfectly. The idea that the Irish language is at least 1,000 years older than English is a fact we all need to be reminded of constantly. The wind howls outside and we will the weather to do its worst. Aoibheann McNamara bought this house on 32 acres of hazel woodland a few years ago, and has worked hard since to bring it back to life. We follow her instructions to wake up for sunrise. Out in the rocky fields in our pyjamas, we're rewarded with a Turner-like brightening in the clouds. McNamara's Mercedes estate soon draws a line across the landscape before pulling up before us in the driveway, which is surrounded by stone walls. When not restoring Summerage, McNamara runs ArdBia, the much-loved restaurant and community hub located in a stone building behind Galway's Spanish Arch. With her costume designer friend Triona Lillis, she also runs the Tweed Project, a clothing company based in Galway that uses exclusively Irish fabrics. All the beautiful yellow and red cushions and throws on the couches and beds in the house have been made by the label. She leads me through the hazel wood with her dog Puffy in tow to find the ruins of a famine village in a hidden dell. She explains that these limestone hills absorb heat in the summer, holding on to it throughout the colder months and warming the pastures for the cattle in a process known as winterage. Hence the reverse-naming of her house. Hundreds of oak trees have been planted here in the last year, along with an orchard of apple trees and a vegetable garden and green house to supply the restaurant in Galway. I'm in awe of all she has achieved. Summerage: 'It's gorgeous to stay somewhere where every single thing has been selected because it brings joy' Summerage: The windows all frame views of the Burren Summerage: Living area with wood-burning stove. Photograph: Shantanu Starick Summerage: Kitchen and dining area. Photograph: Shantanu Starick Summerage: All the yellow and red cushions and throws in the house were made by the Tweed Project. Photograph: Shantanu Starick Summerage: The property also has a vegetable garden and greenhouse. Photograph: Anita Murphy It would be very easy to never leave this house. It's set up so beautifully that six days could be spent here among all the books and bespoke furnishings, gazing out at the Burren, the views framed by every perfectly placed window. But a lunch booking at Michelin-starred Homestead Cottage near Doolin manages to lure us away temporarily from this refuge. Chef Robbie McCauley and his wife Sophie set up their restaurant in this charming 200-year-old cottage in 2023, using vegetables from their own garden and other ingredients sourced or foraged locally. We're seated by the wood-stove, and soon plates of home-baked sourdough and brown bread appear, followed by a parsnip velouté and a starter of local oysters in a champagne sabayon. A beetroot and St Tola cheese salad sets us up for the fish course with delicious halibut, and our carnivorous son is delighted when a beef dish appears soon after. The 'build it and they will come' maxim is very much in evidence here today with a full house of diners, all equally amazed as we are that food at this level is increasingly available in Ireland's hidden corners. Robbie McCauley, head chef of Michelin-starred Homestead Cottage in Doolin. Photograph: Brian Arthur The Michelin-starred Homestead Cottage in Doolin. Photograph: Brian Arthur We follow the steely grey coast road home through Fanore, where giant boulders have come to a stop between the clints and grikes of the limestone pavement above the sea. The Aran Islands are just about visible in the distance and then Black Head Lighthouse comes into view, awaiting a cameo in a Wes Anderson movie. The lights of O'Loclainn's pub in Ballyvaughan beckon, and as we squeeze through the front door we're immediately caught up in an Irish music session so oversubscribed that we never actually manage to cut through the throng to order the whiskey that this beautiful little bar is known for. Even without a drink, this is exactly the scene you always hope to experience when entering a pub in the west of Ireland. Back at Summerage, the clouds have descended and there's no repeat performance of the celestial display from the night before. We light all the candles in the cottage instead and crank up The Gloaming on the speaker: the ultimate soundtrack for this barren but intensely beautiful setting. Waking the next morning, no scroll through Instagram could compete with the view from our bedroom of stone walls, cattle on their warmed pasture and rock-covered hills. We arrange to meet Triona Lillis in nearby Ennistymon. Many of the soft furnishings in Summerage have been designed by Triona and Aoibheann's label the Tweed Project and I'm interested to hear more about their process. Triona leads me up to the studio in the eaves of her riverside home, explaining as she goes how all the linen they use comes from Wexford, and their tweed comes from Molly & Sons in Donegal and from the Kerry Woollen Mills. The colours and textures of the Burren are a huge influence, and we admire tassled grey blankets shot with metallic threads. Triona asks us to bring a suit back with us to Dublin: as it turns out, the Tweed Project make all of the suits Tommy Tiernan wears on his RTÉ chatshow. I decide to visit their showroom the next time I'm in Galway. Open-air Wild Atlantic Seaweed Baths, Doolin Before leaving Ennistymon, we call in to the wonderful Market House Food Hall. Triona tells me that half of Clare keep their winter colds at bay with Moss Boss Tonic and we stock up with a few bottles of this elixir made with sea moss in Ennis. More seaweed awaits back at Doolin. Wild Atlantic Seaweed Baths operates an open air spa on the foreshore near the pier, looking out at Crab Island with the Cliffs of Moher in the distance. A cloud of steam rises from a line of oak barrels filled to the brim with seaweed and piping hot water. A rope of festoon lights is strung across the site. We spend a very happy hour soaking in the iodine-rich sea water, taking in the panorama of the cliffs. Who needs Bali? We continue the day's ocean theme by driving over the hills to Linnane's Lobster Bar at New Quay for dinner. Seamus Heaney advised visiting these parts in September or October in his poem Postscript, but the wind and the light are still working off each other at the Flaggy Shore in early spring. Linnane's doesn't feature in Heaney's poem, but the seafood being served up here is just as breathtaking as the wild ocean that we look out at from our table. Plates of Flaggy Shore oysters soon appear, and we feel it would be a shame not to try the lobster, given the location. Linnane's Lobster Bar in New Quay, Co Clare The tiny fishing village of New Quay in the Burren It's our last morning in Summerage and I repeat the ritual of lighting the stove and the candles before breakfast. We're envious that our house in Dublin can't compete in the cosy stakes, and we make mental notes about how to bring extra warmth into our own habitat. We eat our breakfast from orange-flecked plates; a local potter was commissioned to design a bespoke set of tableware to match the colour scheme of the house. It's gorgeous to stay somewhere where every single thing, from the bone-handled cutlery to the J Hill's Standard crystal glasses, has been selected because it brings joy. The walls are dotted with framed photographs of British film-maker Derek Jarman's famous tar-black house in Dungeness on the Kent coast. McNamara made a pilgrimage there last year to take these images, and draw inspiration for her own house in a similarly austere landscape. It's very hard to leave, but Summerage is now available for short-term stays and I'm sure we'll be back. [ Mysterious sweathouses were used widely in Ireland until late 19th century. Now sauna culture is making a comeback Opens in new window ] Poulnabrone Dolmen has presided over the Burren for more than 5,000 years from its perch on one of the highest spots in the area. It's just up the road from Summerage and we drop by to pay our respects before heading for home. This is arguably Ireland's most famous dolmen and for me, the unofficial symbol of the Burren. With all the turmoil we seem to be living through at the moment, it's grounding to spend some time with an ancient structure that has weathered many the storm, and survived. Fergal McCarthy was a guest of Summerage, see . For help planning your own trip to the Burren, see
Agriland
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Agriland
Young Fine Gael calls for urgent action on ‘ACRES failings'
The Young Fine Gael agricultural and rural affairs committee has called on Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon to urgently address major flaws in the rollout of the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES). The committee claims that the scheme has left many farmers unpaid, and others unfairly disadvantaged due to structural failings within the scheme's design. The organisation believes that the current tranche inequality has created a two-tier system that is undermining trust. It said: 'While farmers in Tranche 1 received payments on schedule, those in Tranche 2, despite fully complying with scheme requirements, have been left in limbo. 'This is unacceptable, particularly for young farmers who rely on timely payments to manage cashflow and plan investments in sustainable practices.' The committee has also questioned the decision to open Tranche 2 of ACRES while Tranche 1 participants are yet to receive 'any payment or meaningful communication' regarding their entitlements. It has also claimed the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) accepted far more applicants into Tranche 2 than the administrative system could support. According to Young Fine Gael, this over-subscription has deepened the payment backlog and left compliant farmers waiting months without income or clarity. Young Fine Gael The committee also highlighted the 'damage done' to former locally led, results-based agri-environmental projects, such as the Burren programme, Hen Harrier Project, and the Pearl Mussel Project. It said: 'These initiatives, once praised across Europe for their farmer-led approach and measurable outcomes, were subsumed into ACRES under the promise of scale and improved delivery. 'Instead, many of their participants have seen a loss of income and a dilution of the results-based ethos that made those schemes successful. 'There should now be serious consideration given to back payments or compensatory support for those farmers who have lost funding and flexibility as a result of being moved under the ACRES umbrella' The committee has called on Minister Heydon to release a a detailed report into the shortcomings of ACRES to date. The committee believes the report should include an explanation of the tranche payment discrepancies, the impact of absorbing successful results-based programmes into a centralised scheme, and a plan to ensure equal treatment and timely payments across all participants going forward. Young Fine Gael's director of agriculture and rural affairs, Dean Kenny said: 'While we recognise there has been a marked improvement in the area of farming payments delays since Minister Heydon has been appointed, there are still many unanswered questions. 'These delays have affected the agriculture sector in many different ways, and young farmers in particular, who rely on payments such as ACRES to cover the ongoing costs of running their farms and businesses, we believe have been disproportionately impacted by these failings.' 'We believe that these can be rectified somewhat, but only with clear messaging and commitment from the government. If this is not done, there will be many more young farmers that will consider alternative career opportunities,' Kenny added.
