Keane’s Kingdom You can call it whatever you want but it’s just not cricket – whether that’s free range or bottle-fed
THE ad on the window of Larry Buckley’s excellent butcher’s shop here in Listowel read “Large Free Range Crickets Only €7.99”. Or so it seemed to me. I go in and ask Larry for a couple of the famous Listowel Mutton Pies. Crickets are not for me, even if they are free range.
The pies are usually eaten at Listowel Races but have now become an all-year-round delicacy.
Listowel pies are oven-baked and then dropped into a mutton broth to soften them up a bit.
The mother who won a cup for her version at the Listowel Food Fair gave the recipe to Darina Allen. I was there to welcome Darina to John B’s. The matriarchs got on very well and I spent an hour running errands. Never in my life was I bossed so much. Darina put the recipe in her beautifully produced book Irish Tra- ditional Cooking. The mother was very proud.
I had better not pass by Stylish Eilish, so named because of her excellent fashion sense. Stylish Eilish Stack makes lovely pies. Would my mother have won that cup if Stylish Eilish was a pie maker back then? I suppose it’s a bit like comparing Gaelic football teams from different eras. They beat what was in front of them in the times that were in it. We filled mom’s cup in the pub that night and it was as if the Listowel Emmets had won the North Kerry Championship for the first time since 1931.
I prefer stewing the pies in a packet of oxtail soup. I was reared in a time when it was considered to be a sign of getting on in the world if you ate out of a packet. Now it’s the opposite. This was the reason why so many of my generation were formula-fed when breast feeding went out of fashion. The formula milk companies charmed many of the mothers into bottle-feeding their babies.
I am not sure which I am. I was too embarrassed to ask the mother but I do prefer draught beer to bottled, which may be a sign. I am a bit on the small side though.
The misreading of the sign for the free-range crickets might have been down to the state of my glasses. They were smudged from eating chips which I cooked in beef lard.
I asked Larry if he did Chinese food. “No,”hesaid,“Idonot.”
“Why are you selling crickets so?” I ask.
It was chickens, not crickets, Larry was selling.
I’m making mistakes lately. I left the door of the pub on the latch, thinking no one would bother to try to get in to a pub.
A man did come in and he didn’t steal anything, other than a large whiskey. But that’s not really stealing. More like tasting. He left when asked to do so, which was immediately.
On the way out he said: “Your father barred me.”
“For what?” I ask.
“For telling the truth,” he replied. Dad was right. Pubs are no place for telling the truth.
I have no idea when we will be allowed open. None.
The best thing for now is let it be. You could go off your head worrying about the when. I agree with the continued closing of pubs. The Government has no choice right now.
Justice Minister Helen McEntee proposes to extend Sunday night closing time. Up to now it was last drinks at 11pm, everyone out by 11.30pm.
There were lads around here who were only getting up at 11 on Sunday night after making a day of it on Saturday.
One of their number said to me there would be no fun on Sunday nights anymore. He maintained lock-ins were far more enjoyable than legal drinking.
The man who got up late on Sundays told me about the time his uncle was cooking a feed of bacon and cabbage. The uncle of the late riser was one of the old boys who ate the hard, yallah, home-cured bacon every single day of his life.
And if he didn’t eat every bite at the dinner, he would eat the leftovers for the supper.
The late riser was giving the uncle a hand milking the cows and he was invited to stay on for the dinner, which was eaten religiously every day when the Angelus bell was rung at the parish church, just over the fields, in the village.
The uncle was slicing the leaves off his own head with a hay knife.
There was a stowaway slug curled up snug inside a leaf. Theunclethrewthe leaf and slug into the pot where the yallah bacon had been boiling away.
The late riser shouted out: “Uncle Mikey, Uncle Mikey, you’re after throwing a slug into the bacon.”
“Sure ‘tis all mate,” said Uncle Mikey.
Mate is meat and yallah is yellow. Funny isn’t it that you never hear anyone use yallah in North Kerry other than in reference to bacon and cowardly footballers.
The late-rising nephew waited on to eat the dinner with the uncle. He ate every bite. The nephew was very sick after the boiled version of a mixed grill, but he still managed to take a sip of brandy and port for his stomach.
Yes, I did ask him why he didn’t pass up on the slugfest.
Uncle Mikey never married and didn’t have any children. The farm was willed to the nephew who would have eaten a feed of free-range crickets if it meant keeping in with the mercurial and eccentric uncle.
The late rising of a Sunday nephew inherited the farm.
The only downside is the nephew has to get up early every Sunday to milk the cows.
The formula milk companies charmed many of the mothers into bottle feeding their babies. I am not sure which I am