h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm off on Saturday for my annual family holiday to Wexford. Most of the family, anyway, as daughter El is still in China. Mrs G and daughter Iz will go return home after a week, but I'll stay there for a few more days, returning on Wednesday 20th. Then on Thursday 21st, El is coming home from China so I'll drive up from Wexford to meet her at the airport.

I'll be without the internet, more or less, for the whole time, so I won't be paying much attention to Peer Review etc. Last year there was a limited wifi connection available but it's not there this year. And the mobile phone coverage is so bad in that corner of the island that I can't receive mobile data either. I considered getting a satellite broadband connection, but that costs €20 a month for the whole year even though I'll only be using it for a month or two, so probably not worth it.

Didn't you have wifi in China?

Just saying...

Yes, but I was staying in a 5-star hotel.

Obviously, you need to build a 5-star hotel in Wexford.

We all live in 5-star hotels, 51 weeks of the year. Our homes cater for our every need. We only measure hotels by how much they fall short.

Amen.

Gnomon, it's your fault. I'm stuck with a song in my head. It starts, 'There was a woman in Wexford, in Wexford she did dwell, she loved her husband dearly but another one twice as well...'

Okay, it's also the Clancy family's fault.

Is that with or without Tommy Makem? I rather liked Tommy Makem,
so I hope he's not in trouble, too.

I always loved Tommy Makem, too. We used to go over to Carnegie Hall to hear them all play and sing.

That's Car-NEG-ie Hall. In Pittsburgh. Not that pretentious venue in New York.

It's great to be out of reception for a little but I have never had that problem in Gorey (County Wexford), so cherish your off-line nook

I was lost at the "annual family vacation" point. I've never encountered one, as a kid or adult ...

I spent my youth Clancy-bashing until the Beatles happened.

By which I mean bashing out all the songs of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem on a beat up guitar.

Later I met the woman who had introduced Tommy to he Clancys, Diane Hamilton. She had been a folk song collector in the days when a portable tape recorder (or at least its batteries) took two people to carry.

Wow.

I loved their renditions of "Whistling gypsy," "Finnegan's wake," and "Jug of punch."

I remember the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem from the 60s. Then in the late 70s, Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy started touring again. They came to Piltown, County Waterford and I was at their concert there. It was a great night, although I could have done without Tommy Makem singing his Nationalist songs.

The highlight was Liam singing "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda".

Long ago, we used to have a cassette tape of the Clancy Brothers' wives and kids singing all sorts of little songs, including nursery rhyme-type ditties like 'I know what Liam Clancy wants...pudding in a saucer.'

The one about 'There was a woman in Wexford, in Wexford she did dwell...' was on there. It's a variant of 'Eggs and Marrowbone'.

I learned all kinds of Irish cultural baggage from them and David Hammond.

I remember "The Old Woman from Wexford".

David Hammond was another friend of Diane's. At that time (50s-70s) folk songs in Ireland generally went along with politics, either extreme nationalist or extreme unionist (The Old Orange Flute). We sang them all indiscriminately, politics being considerably less heated in Dublin.

We were at a lecture/concert given by Hammond for the Ancient Order of Hibernians, I think it was, in Pittsburgh back in the 1970s. (The Ancient Order were truly ancient, and boy, could they ever not sing...)

During the Q&A, somebody asked Hammond, 'Are you Catholic or Protestant?'

He replied, 'None of your business.' I liked that.

Was Pastafarian an option?