[Good guy]

Silvers and greys predominate - Gartan Lough, yesterday morning.
Two days without rain. Halleluja!

[kindredspirit]

Lovely photograph

(but the rain never stopped here all day!)

[Ado 2]

Well captured !

[Sue Deacon]

Lovely photo, but it would not have looked so calm if our Katie was the dog in the picture. She would have been ploughing through the water with a small tree in her gob!

Is that your doggy?

[Good guy]

Yes Sue, that is Alfie. He's currently lying at my feet gnawing on a piece of beef shin bone that has been amusing him for the last week. He loves walks (gallops and splodges) at Gartan. When I turn down that road I see his ears prick up!

[Sue Deacon]

I know what you mean, If we didn't stop off at Ely Lodge on the way back from Enniskillen, Katie would leap up and stare at you through the rear-view mirror. She always knew where she was - that's why we called her Spooky.

[Good guy]

Ely Lodge - there's a name from my youth! I used to sail past the entrance to its bay and note with amusement that someone, yet again, had been taking pot-shots at the Duke of Westminster's notice warning potential trespassers!

[Sue Deacon]

Ooh, that set off a chain of memories! In England we used to go fishing at the Michelin pool. There was a big sign in the middle warning of deep water - dur! It was all dented where folks had tried to remove it. The pool had Tench, Rudd, Perch and some old, very large Carp. If you caught one of those they swam straight to the sign and around it's posts, put the handbrake on and spit out the hook. In hot weather, when the levels dropped you could see loads of line, hooks, weights and lures wrapped around the post. You HAD to cut the line, which then became a hazard to wildlife. So every so often someone would swim out and cut all the lines free. Thus totally defeating the purpose of the sign.

Your remark has set off so many happy memories for both of us. We used to take OH's children down there on a Sunday afternoon. His son got so good, he is now sponsored by a fishing magazine!

[Good guy]

Thats a lovely story. I can imagine all the generations of children who learned a lot around that pool - about nature and about officialdom!
Why the Michelin pool?

What p***ed locals off about the Dook's notice was that it was about shooting and fishing, rather than about trespass, now that I think about it. He may have owned the land but he had absolutely no rights to anything above or below the waters of the lough, despite being the (then) 2nd wealthiest man in the UK. Locals liked to remind him of that!

[Sue Deacon]

OH worked at Michelin for 25 years. In those days they looked after their workers. They had an athletics club, gym, squash courts and social club as well as the pool. Life long membership of clubs and gym for workers AND their families, happy days

[Good guy]

The world before Thatcher et al!

[Sue Deacon]

Yeh, in it's heyday they had 10,000 employees. Think it's now about 200-300! Many of our neighbours worked there. Good jobs to get, the down side was the carbon black - deadly stuff.

What between lung/throat/kidney cancer (Michelin), pneumoconiosis (pits) and silicosis (potter's rot) I'm surprised any of us survived - Tagwex has a point, it's grim up north.

[Good guy]

When I was a baby in Oldham, my mother used to wheel my prom by the open windows of the cotton mills when I wouldn't sleep. Apparently the white-noise racket from the looms would send me off in no time!
The expression "Cloth-ears" for someone who doesn't listen derives from the noise-induced deafness common amongst textile workers. Another industrial disease!

[tagwex]

How do you transport that big hairy slobbery wet mucky dog back to the hills of Donegal (where it is grim up north) and then let him suck beef shin bones at your feet, unless of course you are living out in that newly swept shed?!!!

[Good guy]

And good day to you too. I thought maybe you had succumbed to the plague.