"LOOSE chippings: 50 mph". The words stood on about half a dozen roadside notices over a few miles of secondary, often winding, roads in county Meath. The chippings were not continuous, but in about four sections. And, of course, the notice did not say 50 miles per hour, but 20. Yet nearly all the cars met were certainly nearer to 50 than 20, some it may be, even over it. Those who put up warning signs on our roads, and those who paint the lines on the same, should be among the most frustrated people in Ireland. Hardly anyone takes a blind bit of notice of their work. Another instance: a couple of miles short of Navan, coming from the Dublin direction, there is a long continuous double white line, which day after day you see flouted. You'd swear some of it for pure divilment.
Is Meath among the worst of counties for driving? Justice Brophy was quoted in The Meath Chronicle as saying that on his way to the court he had been "tailgated" by a car for three miles of his journey. Unfortunately he had not obtained the offending motorist's registration numbers. No way could such a driver manage to stop had he (the Judge) been forced to make an emergency stop.
Now back to the loose chippings. The couple in the car marvelled at the roadside hedges, but above all at the height and grace and quantity of the white-flowering cow parsley. In places, too, it climbed up high banks leaving the car six feet under the display. A long, long corridor of white and green. One of the Wild Food books warns you that while it can be used for garnishing, this wild parsley can be confused with "many poisonous species". As always, stick to what you know.
Biggest surprise in this book Wild Food by Roger Phillips is that ground elder, the scourge of many of us, yes ground elder or goutweed (agopodium podagraria) was introduced into Britain by the Romans as a culinary plant and has been used as a spinach-like vegetable. He gives a recipe. No thanks. No quarter: for ground elder. And what fool or knave brought it to Ireland?