How to survive Valentia without moving there permanently

I would love to see other ways of life and yet see them from here - if you see what I mean - rather than land myself in the middle of India or Spain and try and grasp what's going on. Or Ireland for that matter. I got a chance at a friend's party in Westport last Saturday. It feels like a lifetime ago but there were some interesting people there. Not one of them minded where they went next and when. One guy from Spain who had just been to climate camp in Tyrone. Why do I always think of Snatch when I hear that county? I think its Tyrone who's hopeless but is supposed to be driving the getaway car. Anyway, there was also a couple from England and France who'd been travelling together for a couple of years. They really got on well and were the personification of aliveness and relaxation. They were only about twenty but I learnt a thing or two. Like 4 breaths per minute is really plenty.

Sort of as a result, I've decided to concentrate on making this place a retreat centre, keep it cheap and let people come and wind down and be well however they want to. Just offer the space. Energy healing, silence, music, sleep, food, outings and a help exchange to keep the house, woods and stream maintained can all be options. Wax on, wax off as they say in the Karate Kid is a totally valid spiritual practice! God knows, I've been two days solidly doing it; painting my windows in the sunshine.

After the party, I was just coming back to Kilkenny to a clearing and suddenly it wasn't happening so I was free again. I found myself driving south listening almost exclusively to Bruce Springsteen Tunnel of Love and The River albums. It did occur to me that only the boss really can refer to people as Baby and to himself as Baby too in certain circumstances. I just couldn't see it through. A friend of mine did once but it was nipped in the bud! Maybe one needs the drawl. I can imagine obviously calling a baby Baby but then once one is in charge of a baby one should really know its real name, no? Anyway, at the moment I'm not, so it hasn't cropped up. But I have been thinking I'd like a star baby since the Inter galactic conference. How would you know what you're getting though? I suppose you hope for the best and then can be happily surprised if it starts to show very mild super powers. So, to be absolutely sure how much I love Valentia, I went down to the island again.

So many people are missing parents already it was a moving time to see mine. To be precise, to be surfing with my Dad and Mum and all my family on St Finians for two days. My Dad is probably 82 this year and I can't think of anything I love more than looking across and finding him on the same wave. My sister's more dangerous as she makes me laugh and then I can swallow water and drowning becomes imminent. Couldn't go under this time though, as there were so many children to count and make sure they hadn't been dragged out on the rip tide. My brother's children were there too and other friends. People getting married and people addicted to chocolate and people who'd rather be on Glanleam Beach but fitted it in before dawn or after dark so as not to disrupt the wider plans.

I heard there was a derelict hotel and airport on Reenroe Beach nearby and hit on the idea of restoring it with fractal energy and sacred geometry and making that my centre. It was a right red herring once I saw it. I'd be clearing for years the vibrations there and having back to back torturous Wuthering Heights moments on the windy cliffs. Probably not make it. So I gave the lads a lift to the ferry in Cork and came home. Is it ok to jack it all in and just float around in the sea all day? I have reached a temporary compromise and am swimming a mile in the gym every day. 76 lengths and for each length I acknowledge the equivalent dimension and melt back in to reasonableness and productiveness for the rest of the day. I have also worked out 'You are an ocean wave my love' or whatever its called on guitar.

Thanks to Ivan Kelly for the african art detail in my room, Phil Blackman for the cranial osteopathy that has got me back to centred, Stef for the beautiful bird table and Eric Dowsett and co for the clearing when I was knackered. Its all back on with life now and I intend to sing my soul mate in - which is an interesting idea I got from the film Australia. Think I might get some lessons in or it might just have the opposite effect!

Tetrapods, tetrapaks and tetra hydral lights formations

We’re back in County Kilkenny for the moment, pretty delighted with progress. We’ve been trying to review what we actually did, what we’ve made so far and what will happen next.

Counties
1) Kilkenny
2) Carlow
3) Laois
4) Kildare
5) Offaly
6) Wicklow
7) Dublin
8) Meath
9) Westmeath
10) Cavan
11) Louth
12) Tyrone
13) Down
14) Antrim
15) Fermanagh
16) Derry
17) Donegal
18) Leitrim
19) Sligo
20) Mayo
21) Galway
22) Connemara
23) Limerick
24) Clare
25) Kerry
26) Longford
27) Roscommon
28) Tipperary
Then there’s Cork, Waterford, Wexford still to do and can’t think of the last one.

The plan was to raise money for the welfare charities in each county and to generate extra funds by doing the healing work for who ever was up for it.

It turned out everyone was up for it and made us very welcome. Although, as someone pointed out, who wouldn’t be if you just show up and say I’ll help you with whatever you, your family and business are going through?! There was no need to overcome any fear or even acknowledge there’s anything going on! What came up for me was that I was hoping that people would make a donation in exchange for the work. What actually happened was that after sometimes ten hours of personal clearing, people didn’t end up giving even a fiver. Plus we ended up saying endless thank you’s for giving us the use of a field for the horses. It made us laugh eventually as we realized that as we’re not great earners at home, we were never going to rake it in for the charities. All the money in the charity account so far is from about 8 max generous people. We don’t know what to make of that!

The way we approached healing the energy of the country was:
I’d start with the county - many square miles - and clear the environmental, historical, financial and health issues. To be concise, which is not my speciality, I phrased this ‘chaos to clarity’, ‘conflict to peace’ and ‘lack to abundance’ Goodness only knows what the repercussions of the work will be. Hopefully widespread and miraculous.

Then we also did some healing for whatever animals we met. These were also grouped into specific areas - traumatic memories, predispositions to illness and re-alignment which seemed to wrap up the past, future and present. Sometimes we just cleared pain or whatever the animal was blatantly dealing with. Sometimes there were umpteen animals. The most was 70 horses in one day at the IHWT, then clearing for all the staff individually and the premises, including a depressing derelict house. But there were all the battle sites, with thousands of spirits to clear and many cultural histories, including Newgrange. The spectrum of time we acknowledged went back as far as 385 million years ago, when tetrapods first walked out of the sea and breathed air as opposed to oxygenated water. Pretty epic, they looked to all intents and purposes like crocodiles but not quite so aerodynamic. More meandering than loitering dangerously, I’d say, from the drawings. The fossils are in situ on Valentia Island, which itself they reckon was on the equator at the time. Presumably that means we were all on the equator at the time. How lovely would that be?

There were so many people and spirits to clear, it got a bit mad at times. There would be a clearing arama, then five minutes pause in the lorry and then an unrefusable invite to dinner...which slightly meant to me another 3 hours clearing for me.

Suffice to say, we made our way home, completely shattered, needing to process the vast amount of information that had passed through my system. I lost my voice and coughed myself to exhaustion. Susi lost her livelihood and another set of challenges.

Strangely, it was the tetrapaks that sent me packing again. Dairy ones, meaty ones, bird carrying ones.

After I'd been holding a space for resolution to take place in the bigger picture of Nationwide, I came back to find the smaller picture had gone downhill bigtime! An animal loving, hard liquor drinking person with a possible eating disorder had moved into Harmony Hall. . . and surely there’s only room for one of those in any household.

After sorting through the remains of many chicken dinners and other debri in the recycling and up and down stairs, I at last got the place back and replaced the smell of TCP and cigarettes and litter trays with all the lovely incense and candles I’ve been given down the years, for exactly this type of emergency it turns out!

To really recover, I headed for Kerry again for three days amongst lovely people, old friends (some cross over there) and family (some cross overs there as well)! Instead of clearing, I really recommend surfing and swimming and re-surfacing in a supported environment. This can be beautiful, bedecked with montbretia, dinghys and views that drag one’s perspective from the immediate to the eternal. . .

Talking of which,
I went to a conference on extra terrestrial engagement with human beings. The disclosure of all the evidence is imminent, in fact already happening. The likelihood is that they have stepped in at different times in history. I have had one sighting myself, when the planet Nabiru was in view, a couple of years ago and am also very interested in crop circles. Once or twice, when I have had decent internet reception, I have gone on the Lucy Pringle website and downloaded a recent one and sleep with the image under my pillow. Try it some time! Maybe I shouldn’t mention some of these interests and practices but anything I can do to raise awareness and activate extra brain cells and faculties, dammit I’ll do it!

Some people are interested in 2012 and think the evolution of consciousness will peak then. One thing I heard is that there may be a supernova - which I think is an explosion at the core of a planet. The way to survive this is to let go of your attachment to the way things are (shouldn’t be too difficult as I haven't heard anyone totally pleased with how things are recently! but I mean really let go of your ideas on reality. Like, imagine looking out the window and seeing a caleidescope of colours rather than your usual landscape) and learn how to get into a tetra hydral stance and hold it for upwards of three hours. I think martial arts training is the way to go for this. Michael Rice might help, he’s a black belt many dan in Karate and coincidentally the architect of this place. If I have any easier survival tips though, I will report back. Maybe we should all meditate at once on what’s in store for us. If we concentrate hard enough, we might achieve a subtle shift of the earth on its axis, just enough to get us back on the equator again. Growing avocados and apricots would be great. I came back to just one solitary sunflower and 82 black currants. Self sufficiency is going to take a bit more practice I think!

So, in the meantime, if you have friends with disturbed houses or histories or any other trouble, inner or outer, please let me know as I’m looking for work and, after that trip, I would say that I am ready for anything. Any problems or illness will be a tea party to heal after what I’ve witnessed and Windy’s carried me through...and Susi of course. I was on energetic duty and she was on practicalities. Now we’ve actually done it, she’s hoping that more people will make a donation to the cause and we can divide up the winnings in September, so they can do some good.

A river ran through it and so did we

Since the Burren and Limerick, we have travelled through counties Roscommon, Offaly and Tipperary. Everywhere we’ve been, we’ve been given such a brilliant welcome. Great food and the prime spot for the horses to put their feet up. There hasn’t been much grass growing all over Ireland and people are still feeding hay and hard feed all summer long. This must be pretty expensive and it means many horses haven’t got that great summer condition you’d want them to. We rode out with the intern students working at Derek O’Byrne’s Western riding Centre. He and his team were just back from winning several trophies at the championships in Germany. He had several gorgeous stallions there as well, one white apaloosa called Don Juan which was like a picture postcard or straight out of the Silver Brumby.

As soon as Rosie’s hooves hit the grass, she was immediately in the mood for a blow out. In the end it was just a little stroll in the sunshine. Both horses got their opportunity the next day in Birr Equestrian Centre who kindly put us up the following night. Two helpful youngsters said their stables were ready but we could put them out if we wanted ‘in that field, there’s no one else in it’.....famous last words. They then mentioned that the mare in the next field might come to the hedge and say hello. There was in fact no fence between the fields and so off they all went. Then a trek passed through. 4 peaceful ponies on lead rein with tiny children on board. Windy led the herd at full tilt between trekking pony two and three. I was watching on mortified and helpless. Then six or so more horses spotted them and jumped the car tyres that separated them and suddenly there was ten horses on the horizon going flat to the boards over endless fields with Windy at the head. At one point he took on the cross country course. Up the biggest bank and down over two jumps, just for the sheer fun of it. As I texted Susi for help, it turned out she was ringing me from across the fields at the same moment. We met half way to try and extricate our two before a) they got injured or b) before we were kicked off the property for disturbing the peace. Noel Cosgrove, who’s place it is, was in the arena showing ponies to two small children and their parents with a view to maybe selling. I dread to think what happened to that plan after the stampede and the resulting bucking and running amock of the two ponies, one child being briefly run away with!

Again the young helpers there were great; finding us tonnes of hay, a lamp and electricity and generally taking care of everything. And of course loving and admiring Windy and Rosie who are huge in comparison to many of the horses we’ve met, especially the pintos and other colourful western breeds. The next day we had a lovely ride in the arena and along their avenue.

That was quite enough though of sleeping in the lorry and travelling around with the horses, so we made a break for home and went to Susi’s near Goresbridge. The horses had a deep field of grass to play with for their last night together. We rode up to the local woods and it was heaven. Miles of wide grassy tracks in between the trees and the horses flying it.

All too soon after, it was like heart break hotel. We were loading Windy up to return to a field up here. He’s on his own again now, except for the goats who were pleased to see him. He looked at me a little askance as I left, as if to say, where did I go wrong? Know the feeling!

Day 30 something; Co. Kerry

There were so many highlights to the Kerry leg of the journey, I can't begin to tell you.
On the first day, we went to the brilliant health food shop, Hemp and Things in Cahirciveen on the Iveragh Peninsula. They had said from the start that they would sponsor us but I had not anticipated such amazing generosity. They had the postcard I'd written up behind the counter and Suzan the manager brought me out the back to the organic vegetable room and gave me a crate. I tentatively was deciding on one or two items - probably avocados because life is really about them - when she said something like, 'please, knock yourself out, I'm not counting' Talk about heaven on earth. Then we went to the grains section and, as I looked for the rye flour in my slightly frugal way, she suggested I pick another ten items! Quinoa, Tartex (happiness in a tube), oat cakes, almonds, wild rice, vegetable mince and liquorice . . . I felt we did need chocolate but I couldn't see it and it seemed a bit frivolous. Then I was on to the vegan cheese and tofu. Count me in basically.

The next night was the quiz on Valentia and just a few guys came from the sailing school. We decided they probably had such a nice attitude as they know what's involved in getting something like this mission off the ground; as they teach summer camps and keep kiddliwinks alive on the water all day long. It was a classic night.

Now we are in Offaly heading out on a hack by the canal.

Reflecting in pictures now we're back on the road

The horses have had their well earned week's rest and so have we. These are some of the increasingly ancient places we were frequenting and probably why a pasuse was needed - A wonderful side saddle lesson at Castle Leslie, the castle itself, then Markree Castle in Co. Sligo and Newgrange, Co. Meath.