End of an era

Miles 151
Carbon footprint 44kg
Expenses 15 euro hardware 150 euro on food for the pub night

Well, it's all over. I can't say I am sorry - it was such a strain really in the end on family, work, domestic life in general.

Anyway we arrived on Friday morning, en famille (it was the start of our holidays). A few people turned up with stuff, including Michael O' Brien with some amazing implements.

Clive and Sally turned up to finish work in the Handball alley with the graffiti project, looking a bit hassled and distressed. It turned out that some of the youngsters who were not signed up had been giving them serious grief and stealing paint cans and graffiting on the back of the handball alley.

To be fair to the youngsters, they did it out of sight. They could have sprayed somewhere really public and caused a lot of trouble for us, but I think they just wanted to have a go.

I had to talk to them about their disrespect and ask them to behave, basically. They only kind of listened to me - not really. Sally and Clive agreed to do 20 mins with them after the project had finished painting over the bad language stuff by showing them how to do something a little more cool.

At 2 pm Robin Wallace came by and took me down Shallee mine - so that was terrifying. 2 billion tons of unsecured rock over your head, water running and dripping everywhere, it was like something out of a nightmare really. We went on a circular route through some really dark tunnels and then had to clamber over a deep rushing river and around the edge of a bottomless pool. And as we got close to the entrance (luckily we could see daylight at the time) we heard a sound like a low-flying aircraft except it remained constant. I thought it must be a machine of some kind, but I couldn't think what machine would be operating so close. Then the two of us suddenly got really nervous that what we were hearing was the collapse of the entire cliff! I made a bit of a dart for the exit, but then it seemed to stop. Later I talked to a man who had been a miner and told him about it - he said 'oh you heard the rock creaking'. I asked him if it was really rock creaking and he said he didn't know, it might be water or wind in the tunnels, but that's what they call it.

We went to Nenagh in the afternoon to stock up on food and wellies for the kids, in preparation for an entirely wet summer holiday.

Saturday dawned and I had a lot to do, putting up the new stuff that had arrived. The marquee came at about 3.15 (cutting it fine!) and Melanie arrived - we went over some stuff in advance of her speech and it's possibly the first time I talked with her about the actual nature of the project from my perspective as an artist.

I think the important part was distinguishing between this stage which I see as an encounter and the final stage which is where I will interpret the encounter and create an artistic product, that is the publication.

So, everyone arrived, tea and buns arrived. It was a good crowd, a nice local mix. Of course I didn't manage to talk to loads of people but that's always the way.

Just as the speeches were beginning, my 4 year old who had been complaining of a pain in her tummy puked violently all over the place, and partly on the county manager. Andrew whisked her away and the speeches went on. I hate that part, I always want the ground to open up and swallow me.

In the evening I went to the pub with Andrew for the story and song night. We had arranged a local girl as a babysitter she was great. The evening was not really what I was hoping for but I met some people I had not really spoken to before and that was great.

Next morning we had to rush the 4 year old into the doctor as we started to get really worried about appendix. It was kind of inconclusive and the doc suggested we go back in the evening. I opened up just before mass ended and there was the most amazing gathering in the museum after mass, all the 'heavyweights' as Andrew called them, talking over the photos, the contents of the museum and so on. I was kicking myself that I had no recording gear set up. It was a great conversation.

Anyway, I took everything down and closed up and we rolled out of town. A bit like the circus really.

I think it worked. I think there was trust generated and good discussion and a real sharing of thoughts, memories, stories, ideas. Looking forward to starting work on the book.

And to top it all off, the sun came out for the whole week of our holidays. I felt like I had never seen the sun before.