Everyone Needs a Robot Hoover
‘Everyone Needs A Robot Hoover’ is a soundmap of an area near Kilworth in County Cork known locally as ‘The Camps’. It is a public amenity overlaid on an area owned by the Irish Army. Part of this area is used as a firing range resulting in a rich tapestry of history full of contrasts and contradictions. The accompanying slideshow drifts from one image to another, it is not intended as a direct representation of what is audible at any point in time but more as an impressionistic representation of the area throughout the year, a memory or dream.
The landscape is windswept, open, covered with grasses, bracken, gorse bushes and a few stunted trees.
A Little History… Kilworth Firing Range was opened in 1896. It had been identified by General Davies of the British army as being an ideal place for a major army training camp 3 years earlier. He made recommendations to the Duke of Wellington, (then Lord Wolsley) to purchase the 14,000 acre site from the local landlord, Lord Mountcashell and from a number of freeholders who were served with the equivalent of modern day Compulsory Purchase Orders.
It has remained a firing range ever since, passing from British control to that of the newly founded Republic in 1922. The landscape has been shaped by military need over the years, a couple of small forests were cut down and two villages levelled in order to improve sightlines for the range. Massive earthworks were erected to guard against stray rounds passing out of the range. But in more subtle ways too…Yellow flowering gorse bushes dot the landscape, but there are two varieties of them due to seeds being inadvertently introduced from England by cavalry during the Napoleonic era. It results in there being flowering gorse bushes all year round. Kilworth Army Camp, which is next to the firing range, was used as a refugee camp in the 1970s, accommodating people fleeing Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’. Many of these refugees settled in the area, the current First Minister and leader of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, was born a few miles away in Fermoy, her parents having relocated from Tyrone. There are also stories of the refugees rioting due to their accommodation being sub standard!
An oddly regular pattern of roads is located just off the current main road, they form a triangular shaped loop 4km long. It is in constant use by people walking dogs, training for marathons, couples taking a stroll. Though all the land is owned by the Army, the public are free to walk on these roads, and so, they do! Young parents with prams and sometimes slightly older children in tow (one imagines the parents saying “The fresh air will do you good”) Almost everyone has a dog or two. People stop and chat, usually about their dogs. Tips are exchanged about diets, boarding kennels, the best veterinary practice for small animals and so on. All the trials and adventures of pet ownership; the time someone’s dog ate the Christmas turkey or the new car interior ruined after a day at the beach, how to keep your dog from sneaking onto your bed when you’re not looking. A whole range of cheerful and ultimately very homely conversations. People get to know regular visitors. Runners passing are offered words of encouragement “fair play to ye” , “ You’ll be back before the rain” and so on. Occasionally someone passes by with a radio playing a football or hurling match. It would not be unusual to have comments /questions relating to major sporting events such as All Ireland finals, Six Nations games or the Olympics. On feast days such as Christmas and Easter people come here to walk off their meal. The area is rich with bird life; Starlings, Robins, Wrens, Wood Pigeons and on occasion Crows and Buzzards. Every year the Cuckoo heralds Spring. Occasionally a murmuration of Starlings can be seen wheeling and twisting in the sky overhead.
And the Gunfire.
On an ongoing basis there is the sound of gunfire, single shots, short bursts, lengthy clatters of machine gun fire. The occasional unnerving boom of artillery. Every so often there is a wild minute or two, as numerous guns are firing together. Then silence, the birds, the sheep… Halfway around the loop there’s a kind of watchtower with some trenches and bunkers around it and a metal fire escape-type stairs for access to the lookout at the top. This is where grenade throwing is practised. On certain days, when the wind is blowing from a particular direction there is an eerie howling sound emanates from the metal stairs. The title arose from a comment in an interview audible towards the end, where a woman advised her friend to ‘get a robot hoover’ to clean up after her dog. The original ‘Roomba’ robot vacuum cleaner was designed in MIT by a company called iRobot. They also make military robots, mainly for clearing minefields. It’s interesting to observe how we can effectively make ourselves blind and/or deaf to the elements of our surroundings that we wish to ignore.