Junction 7.06

Lately I have been doing interesting bits and pieces for the Clonmel Junction Festival. This is a newspaper article I wrote that was published in 'The Nationalist', the local county newspaper. Didn't ever imagine doing this kind of thing! It has been a great experience and meeting the international artists and swapping contact details etc... who knows what possibilities this has for the future...in Korea, in NZ??
The festival starts next week, even more fun to be had.... the first show we can take Temo to is Korean drumming, Dulsori, the second show we are going to is Liam Clancy and Odetta from the U.S - Bob Dylan's mentors - Liam Clancy is famous here and is from Carrick on Suir, a town just down the road. There is also a circus in the style of Cirque de Soleil but without the bling bling and many more interesting shows of theatre and music..... Talking about circuses, the most bizarre thing last week, I was at work and then looking out the window saw elephants walking down the road right in front of our office (they had nothing to do with Junction)!

S U G A R

The story goes that all my life up until about 1 year or so ago, I was a complete sugar junkie. The pure white stuff. I remember eating packets of "lollies", sugar laced, hard jubes for lunch when I worked at a supermarket for NZ$3.14 per hour gross behind the checkout as a 15 year old.
Before the age of seven, I had more than 5 fillings and when those baby teeth were gone, the new ones were quickly refilled with amalgam. By the age of thirteen, I pretty much had no teeth in their natural state left. At the age of four I had my first root canal treatment, I have since had two of them. I believe that acute tooth pain is 50 times stronger than the pain of giving birth!
Since stopping eating sugar I have had no tooth pain or teeth issues at all. I have more even and constant energy and my brain works better. I go to sleep within minutes when I want to. My mind is clearer and I am more physically flexible. Life is generally better.
An old friend once blamed eating sugar for nearly divorcing her boyfriend. I thought she was being silly. Now I believe her!
Michio Kushi says you should enjoy yourself if you want to eat an extreme food such as something containing sugar on a special occasion.
Well I did, I enjoyed eating some Ben and Jerry's double chocolate fudge brownie icecream. I was fine immediately after but the next day I felt absolutely hungover, worse than hungover. I was tired, yawning all day and my body felt robbed of its natural goodness. I started to panic at the thought of cooking. All because of that stuff that I see other little babies eat every day....
And why I write about it now is that I STILL feel slightly terrible and it has been nearly 3 days! Although instead of feeling like there are 10 layers of mist clouding my eyesight and squishing my brain, I only have 1 so it's getting better.
nb, for myself. Remember this.

sourced from the jaiatipi.com website, we figure this would be an interesting way of life to try for a while. We may try tipi living at an upcoming womad festival either in Reading, UK or the Canary Islands, Spain.

An aerial view of South Island, NZ. Photo was taken in the last few days. We've been thinking of living in a tipi or 3 when we come back to NZ....

Temo's first watercolour painting.

Temo and Ross reading together on the doorstep.

Art Exhibition Opening

Clonmel hosts some really great exhibitions. This particular exhibition opening was for Mercedes Helnwein. This is her first exhibition ('Last Chapter of Dreaming') in Ireland. It was particularly appealing to me after I talked with her because she has never had any formal training. She is the daughter of Gottfried Helnwein.

Gottfried Helnwein

This guy is a very famous artist. Along with Mercedes, I met her brother Amadeus and you should see their family home! Click here to check it out, it's the most magnificient family home I've ever seen.
Here are paintings by Helnwein. The landscapes are of Death Valley and typical Waterford country.

The weather!

I just had to say that this weather is amazing. It has suddenly turned into summer and it happened overnight! Up until 3 days ago we were in woollies and now we are in singlets and shorts! Temo is playing with the neighbouring kids. Next door there are 5 kids with the 6th on the way and the mother is my age! All the neighbourhood kids think Temo is actually called Tino, it's quite funny. When Tas told them "it's Temo", the kids replied, "yeah, I know, Tino". In their little Irish accents, it's very cute.

We are family.

With Killarney NP in the background. 

Stradbally part 2

And after an exciting time at the beach, Temo falls asleep on the couch. 

A really old fort at Kinsale, Co. Cork. 

stradbally beach

We were picked up by friends and their camper and headed to the beach. Suddenly, summer has arrived! Temo had so much fun at the beach. He spent the whole day running around and playing and often playing with strangers and 50m away from myself!