To follow up just a bit with the previous entry where I was caught out as an undercover CIA Agent in Ireland…. (you got to laugh eh…) Yes cleverly disguised as drama teacher and part time ukulele player….(is there nothing sacred!!)
I later went to a play rehearsal for a show I’m directing. Just to bring you up to speed if you aren’t living in Ireland and reading this…. Every parish in every town land throughout the country has a GAA club ( Gaelic Athletic Association)
The GAA plays Irish football and hurling which is like lacrosse but without the net on the end of the stick. Everyone plays in the GAA in the summer and autumn but in the winter and spring they do something else ( its spring now in Ireland in case you didn’t know !)
They have these indoor games called Scor. ( The name is actually longer and its in Irish and I can’t spell it nor pronounce, so this will have to do.)
It’s a huge country-wide, predominately rural, variety show. People join forces and become a ballad group or a set dance company or recite poems or sing songs or put on very short comic plays ( with no swearing or drinking involved)
Soooo… the next parish over from me is Kiltuburt and this is the second year that we have worked together mounting a new play written just for them. And we have our performance on March 6th in Drumreilly Parish. ( wish us luck)
When I told the group the rumour about me being a CIA agent, one bright spark in group pipes up and says ” You’re not CIA- you’re ICA”
Translation: ICA ( Irish Country Woman Association) Pre- feminist but truly rural feminist organization that looked after the interest of woman- beginning at the turn of the century. They encouraged women to do things like…keep up traditional crafts, cookery skills and other stuff like insist that if a man wanted to marry a girl, he had better make sure there was water and electricity in the house! Now that was a big deal. The Electrification of Ireland is still talked about…It happened in the late 50′s early 60′s. Same with water pipes,baths and toilets,washing machines dryers (I know only handful of people who even today use a dryer and for the most part its a family that would get one. And you know, its not so bad. The dryer uses a lot of electricity and they are the cause of most home fires…. though secretly I miss fluffy towels)
I remember when we were children and we would return to Ireland to visit our grandparents and one year my mother bought my Nan a fridge. And two years later ( early 70′s) we visited and discovered how much my granny loved the
fridge- its keep things cool, kept the rats out and we discovered the fridge outside beside the old cold box. She hadn’t realized that you could plug this in…we laughed , we cried,,, we lugged the fridge inside.
Oh yeah….. ICA not CIA..
thanks for clinking in…
always
eileen