Today Marks the End of a Day and the Beginning of an Exciting New Adventure

The smell of sunshine and summer blue
An endless ocean in a sapphire hue

Sunscreen melting sticky on one's skin
Chilling to beats that stirs the soul within

Frozen margaritas oh how divine,
Glasses rimmed with rock salt and lime

Lips crusty with ocean salt
Fish and chips with a splash of malt

The many shades of summer brown
Alfresco dining while out in town

Juicy watermelon all so cool
Lazy afternoons lying by the pool

Hair in tangles in the sea and breeze
Time is endless, put yourself at ease

Run a finger across my lips
Another hand around my hips

Summer's for the taking.........

Farewell, Little Car

Dear Little Daihatsu,
You have served me well these past 22 months in Ireland. You had only done 1600km when you came to me, and I really drove you everywhere, handing you back to the garage at 42000km.

I hope your next life is with a little old lady who's had a hip replacement, and drives you (ever so cautiously) to the local shops every few days.
xx
Closetblonde

A Guide to the Occupational Terrorist's Basic Initial Assessment

The Physical & Sensory Setting:
1) Do you struggle climbing stairs/getting out of bed/on and off the toilet/on and off your chair?
2) Do you have difficulties bending and reaching to tie your shoelaces or when wearing your socks and shoes?
3) Do you have a history of pressure sores or discomfort on your bottom?
4) Have you had any recent falls or near misses?

Versus......
The Mental Health Setting:
Do you hear voices or have any magical or super powers?
How are you feeling today?

The Girl Who Cried Wolf

This is getting a tad repetitive to the point where I swear people are going to think I'm making this all up - like the girl who cried wolf too many times. But then, life is a series and a pattern of events - or at least mine has been so far. There was that group of guys actively pursuing me in my earlier twenties (all whom I thought were actually gay - "Oh, you mean this is a date? I thought you were gay,") and then the whole debacle of married men (and then R. not believing me for months on end - "Are you sure he was married? Were you on drugs that night....? Are you making this up....?"). And now, I seem to have a PROBLEM with fucking Irish guys coming into my room unannounced at UNGODLY hours, and ATTEMPTING TO GET INTO MY BED. Before anybody else says that these are isolated incidences, let it be on record that it's happened to me THREE times (well, two times, with the third one being a knock on the door and attempt to get into my room by saying, "I love Australia," crap). I have one other friend and a colleague who have both encountered the same thing (although theirs were more of random people wanting to "have a chat"), so there's definitely something awry in the Irish DNA.

Call it in breeding.

Let this blog entry be evidence in case something happens to me in the next three weeks. Housemate DANNY (there, I've named and shamed,) comes back on a Sunday night totally out of it. Definitely too much to drink and DEFINITELY on drugs. I am already wary, and I'm already sensing that something might happen so I try to avoid him and disappear off into my room. I already sense that he may try to come in, (always trust your sixth sense,) but also realise that I don't have the fucking key to my door. I then tell myself that I am just being paranoid and then head to bed around 11:30pm. Then, I am woken by a huge figure IN MY FUCKING bedroom and there he is, trying to GET INTO BED WITH ME. What he was saying to me, I have no idea, as in the best of times, I can't understand him as all he does is grunts, (think: somebody trying to talk with six slices of white bread stuffed in their mouth, and there you have it). You'd know if it was a case of somebody being totally out of it and thinking that they were in their own bed ("Uh. What are you doing in my bed?"), but trust me, this wasn't one of those situations.

At this stage, I am scared. I would have been ruder and have yelled and probably would have attempted to push him out of the bed, but I didn't know how he'd react and what.....he would do to me. So this is what I said instead:

"DANNY. I. WANT. YOU. OUT. OF. MY. ROOM. LEAVE. NOW!!!!"

Tonight, we're ignoring each other and I absolutely hate him. HOW DARE HE BE SO DISRESPECTFUL. I am sleeping with a pair of scissors by my bedside.

Postscript: 2 weeks later.....
Okay, we're officially ignoring each other which is fine by me. I know that once May is over, I will never see him again, and I really couldn't care less.

I told a few people at work what had happened, and after initial hilarity with everybody rolling on the floor in partial disbelief and laughter, (the social worker looked at me in amazement and went, "That's unbelievable. That's never happened to me." and then I pointed out that he is a guy), one of my colleagues made a very good point. She said that if you're in your 30's and sharing with strangers in Ireland, and not sharing your friends or with your partner or have a house of your own, there must surely be something wrong with you. (After all, the "normal" men who are single and in their 30's would still be living at home with his mum.) My colleague continued to say that house sharing in your 30's become less of a viable option as most people generally hook up by that stage, and your choice of sharing with people who are decent and "normal" become increasingly limited. Hmm, she has a point there, but where does this leave me......?!!? I refuse to consider the thought of sharing with a boy (it's just his excuse to have a replacement mother,) and then I look at some photos from a thirty-something year old friend and have another horrible thought: women in their thirties are limited to middle aged men as the thirty-something year old men are chasing after the twenty-something tail. How depressing. Stupid boys.

Driving Miss Daisy Crazy (in Ireland)

As the people in Ireland already drive slow, one must drive "slower" around dangerous bends.


The Irish version of the slow 80km - Road speed changes from 60km to 80km, followed by a dangerous T junction ahead some 30 metres ahead.

Road speed changes from 80km to 100km - some 10 metres before a T junction. (What they mean is that the following road after the junction has a speed limit of 100km.)



Paddy decides to put two additional stop signs just in case you can't see the T junction ahead.

"That will do, it'll be grand," says Paddy as he hurries down to the pub.


How to spell "Gougane Barra" as per road signs seen on the way there:
1) Gougane Barra
2) Gougan Barra
3) Guagan Bara
4) Gouggane Bara
..............

Guess Who is Going to be the Next 100 Million Euro Winner?

The long weekend started out okay. I park my car on early Saturday morning near the statue of Mary and talk up to the train station to catch the train to Dublin Heuston at 6:52am.

My entertainment for the next two hours are old episodes of The Chasers (oh how I love thee!) loaded onto my new (and extremely high maintenance) touch. I don't find many shows funny, but these people are hilarious. I'm in Dublin by 9am.

The sky is grey and starts to spit as I head into Cornucopia (19/20 Wicklow St) for breakfast. This cafe is vegetarian and has won numerous Best of Ireland awards. The produce is wholesome but my vegan sausage and potato omelete with red onion bland, and is nothing to write home about. I do some aimless shopping for the next few hours feeling smug that I've come prepared with my wellies, raincoat and umbrella as it is bucketing down. Plenty of people have clearly forgotten that it's never summer in Ireland. Shopping in Dublin is very high street chain and boring. The UK obviously has a bigger influence in the "Big City" as there are plenty more streaky, orange Irish women. (By this I mean their skin and not their hair.)

The Londoners finally arrive around 12 noon. We rendezvous at The Exchequer (Exchequer St, Dublin) for a decent and sophisticated gastropub lunch. I tell the boys that the food at the Exchequer is not typical of Ireland, and that they really need to find a pub that serves the boiled bacon and cabbage with the enormous side of potato in three forms (ie: mash, baked and fried).

We don't make it in time to go and see the Book of Kells (Trinity College), but we stand outside and pose to make it look like we have.


We also spot the ever elusive leprechaun, but nobody seems all that keen to catch it for that pot of gold. (It's recession time so I guess maybe the pot of gold runs dry.)

We then aimlessly wander around Temple Bar when M gets stopped by a pregnant woman asking for money. E & I (the hard-nosed cynics) carrying on walking. I spy M taking out his wallet and make the mistake of yelling, "M!!! NO!!! YOU DO NOT NOT GIVE MONEY. IF YOU WANT TO GIVE HER SOMETHING, GIVE HER FOOD!!"

M looks petrified, and the lady starts saying, "That's a good idea! Thank you, God bless you!"
It turns out that M was planning on giving her two euros, and instead, ends up paying 20 euros worth of groceries for this lady. Oops. I start telling M that people here get 200 euros in unemployment benefits per week, PLUS get an additional allowance for utilities such as rent, money for a phone........which doesn't help make M feel any better.


We have dinner at the ever popular Elephant and Castle cafe in Temple Bar, and I'm back on the train at 21:00 and home in bed by midnight.

SUNDAY: D DAY

The weather is shit. There's no question of that. But then, it's all the same whether it be spring, summer, autumn or winter. (Refer to my previous "The Wonderful Seasons of Ireland" post.)

I think my lucky streak with sunshine and road tripping has officially ended until we drive into Galway where the sky miraculously clears up to reveal sunshine and blue sky. I keep on having to stop myself from commenting on the weather and about how lucky we are as I feel like I am going to jinx it.


We have a nice cafe lunch at Ard Bia when all the trouble starts. What do you get when your friend asks you what your roadside assistance is like? A. had been doing some digging and discovered that her basic roadside assistance was defined by her car insurance (coincidentally my car insurer too,) as assistance so long as she has broken down within 1km of her driveway. She asks me what I have on my policy, and I tell her that I'm not sure, but I thought that I had full coverage.

"Maybe you better check," A says. "Although you're leaving so it probably doesn't matter anyway."

Last famous words. Into the initially wonderful wilderness and coastline of Mayo, I then spot my engine light on the dashboard blinking. "OMG! What does that mean?!" I say. A. looks up my car manual which basically says to stop driving and to go to the nearest garage to have to car looked at. The "Wonderful Wildnerness" reminds me of that HSBC ad with the two different perspectives.

How quickly the connotations of image can change from:
Beautiful (in that soggy way) to frightening when you don't know what the hell is wrong with your car.

Beautiful Frightening


The result, car having to be towed from the middle of nowhere. The guy driving the tow truck was initially going to leave us in location until I said, "Wait a minute, you're going to just leave us here.....in the middle of nowhere....?!!?" The next thing we know, we're inside the tow truck on our way back to Galway. Too much of a coincidence it was with timing from A. asking me about my roadside assistance to me needing to call on it that we stop off at the nearest news agent to buy a lottery ticket before catching the bus back to Limerick.

We're going to be the next euro millionaires by next Saturday.

Postscript on the car:
An oxygen cylinder needs replacing. The mechanic reckons that I could have continued driving it around Mayo no problem. He's currently ordering a part, and I'm driving the car around with the engine light still on.