Mary Crimble

Our Christmas tree.

Our Christmas candles.

Merry Christmas everybody! Here's wishing that the festive season and the New Year bring you everything you want.

Not Long Now

Only a week to go until Christmas Day. And the end of the week can't come quickly enough. Luckily I finish at about 3pm on Friday and then I've got a week off.

I finally sat down and wrote all my Christmas cards last night and got them into the pillar box this morning. With any luck they'll all be delivered before Christmas. Fingers crossed!

This year the whole palaver has bored me more than ever. I'm just not excited by Christmas like I used to be - not just as a kid, but even 4 or 5 years ago. Nowadays it seems to be just a reason to spend money we don't have - and I can't stand the crowds of people in the shops. I think I get more and more claustrophobic as I get older...

The best thing about Christmas is the fact that I don't have to go to work. I can get down to some planning for the play and spend some time relaxing and sleeping late (if my creaking body and the noisy kids next door allow me to).

This is all very miserable. Sorry. I promise to cheer up next week!

Baile Átha Cliath - Part 2

In which I tell the 2nd half of our "we went to Dublin for a few days" tale. Yes, it's riveting, isn't it?

[In other words, you need to be stuck in place with hot metal nail-things or you'll wander off and do something else...]

So Sunday turned out to be a glorious sunny day. How appropriate. After buying some fruit for breakfast and unsuccessfully trying to find an open internet café in order to check-in for the next day's flight home, we wandered down to Eden Quay to catch the bus out to Blessington in Co. Wicklow.

Once there we meandered over to the In-Laws residence where MLYSIL picked us all up in her shiny motor car. Poop, poop!

Now, Angela's recently learned to drive and Ireland's learner driver laws are a little idiosyncratic. For the first year on a provisional licence you have to have a qualified driver next to you. Just like over here. But for the 2nd year, you don't. Apparently. Which worried MLYW a bit. Not to worry though because MLYSIL is a very good driver indeed.

We drove up into the Wicklow mountains and along winding roads where MLYSIL bravely kept us on the road so that we didn't plummet to our deaths in a ravine.

It was chilly up on the mountains, so I was glad to have brought a jumper, but worth it as the views were spectacular (and not very well captured in the camera, unfortunately). Landscapes I need to work on.

We continued on to Glendalough, which is a gorgeous part of the world. There are plenty of long walks to be taken around here, but we didn't have time to take them. It's the sort of place you need to go camping for a week to truly appreciate.

Then on to Roundwood. The highest town in Ireland, apparently. And a lovely meal and a refreshing Guinnes (again!) in one of the pubs there. Oh, and an indoor market was happening in the local church hall, so we bought homemade biscuits, fruitcake and soda bread. These last two were consumed for tea recently and were indeed fantastic.

Drove back to Tallaght where MLYW and I said farewell to the rest of the family and caught the LUAS back to Dublin. The LUAS is a great tram system. Dirt cheap, fast and efficient. I'm at a loss as to why other countries manage to do good, affordable public transport, but we in Britain manage to balls it up most of the time.

Monday was our last day in Dublin and after packing and checking-out of the hotel we didn't have a lot of time or inclination to do much exploring.

Over at Temple Bar we discovered a great free exhibition of photographs by ... and then we noticed that the Irish Film Institute was showing Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. It's a film with a huge reputation that I've never seen (though I thought I knew it from having seen the myriad homages and spoofs). Noting that it started in just 10 minutes time and that it ran for a very lean 96 minutes we decided to watch it. So we did. And I think my review of the film will have to be part of another post.

After that it was time to head off to the airport on the bus. Aer Lingus check-in was remarkable. No queues. Efficient. And the security people were not the humourless drones that you get in other airports. They actually conversed and joked with you. What a hugely refreshing attitude. These human beings have realised that while their job is to stop terrorists and idiots smuggling banned, illlegal or dangerous items onto planes, they also know that 99% of the people they meet are law-abiding and, for the most part, sensible. So they treat us with good humour and dignity, unlike the humourless, surly drones you get in most international airports (particularly Heathrow and most US places). A very refreshing end to our stay in Ireland.

Baile Átha Cliath - Part 1

As I noted the other day MLYW and I have just returned from a long weekend in Dublin for some R&R and to visit MLYSIL [My Lovely Young Sister-In-Law].

We flew out on Thursday evening on an Aer Lingus flight which was only slightly delayed. Then from Dublin Airport onto the fast airport bus direct to the city. Well, I say "fast", though the driver never seemed inclined to go at more than 30 mph, even on the motorway... However, we were soon dropped off in O'Connell Street, a short case-dragging amble from our hotel.

[More news on the accommodation in a future post when I shall extensively document the long list of complaints...]

By the time we'd unpacked it wasn't too late to hot-foot it down to a bar for a refreshing pint of Guinness. Ah, lovely!

Up early-ish the next day - Friday, my birthday - and stumbled bleary-eyed to Temple Bar in search of breakfast. This we found in the highly agreeable Maisons des Gourmets in Castle Market, where we also spied The Bistro (at which we breakfasted the next day).

After some window shopping (I now have some new sash-cord and several panes of glass) we walked down to the Guinness Storehouse in the west of the city.

[This is a great thing about Dublin - it's got lots of things to see and do and they are all within easy walking distance of each other.]

You can easily spend 3 or 4 hours at the Storehouse. The advertising exhibition itself could while away a few hours on its own, as it contains several multimedia screens which allow you to watch any one of the TV and cinema ads for Guinness shown in the last fifty years or so. Believe it or not, I would also recommend spending 15 minutes watching the fascinating film of a cooper making Guinness barrels back in the mid-1950s.

After our fill of Guinness we repaired to the Porterhouse in Temple Bar for more stout and ale and a light tea (bread and houmous for me, oysters for MLYW).

The next day we again went to Temple Bar to meet up with MLYSIL and the PILs (parents-in-law) who stay in Co. Wicklow over the summer months. Then a quick walk over to the Smithfield part of the city for a tour of the old Jameson distillery. It's no longer a working distillery, so I found it less interesting than the Scottish distilleries I've visited, and the films they show are more advertorial than informational, but it was still entertaining for all that. While I do like smooth Irish whiskey, I prefer a peaty, smokey Highland malt any day.

Fortified by our whiskey tasting we stretched our legs for a historical tour of the Ard Righ Road and the surrounding area, as this was where Bill, my father-in-law grew up. Despite spending each summer in Blessington, just outside the city, he hasn't visited the area of his childhood for over 30 years.

A long, looping walk back to the city centre and we found ourselves back in the Porterhouse for some substantial food and even more substantial stout, brewed on the premises. It's not Guinness, but it's mighty fine. We can recommend the Plain Stout or the Oyster Stout particularly.

In the evening MLYW and I took ourselves off to the Project Arts Centre to see Fewer Emergencies, a play by Martin Crimp. Only 45 minutes long, it was a very powerful triptych of scenes in which 4 actors played out the thoughts and emotions of 3 different characters. Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that, but it's the sort of piece that you really have to see... It was played in a very small space and there was an incredible connection between the actors and audience; often you found youself being addressed directly by one of the actors - an experience which was both disconcerting and thrilling.