We’re off to Dublin on a mini-break for the next 3 days! Yipee!

I’ve been working really hard, and, with the ongoing situation of the house renovations, find myself quite tired and a bit stressed. So a break from it all is a very welcome prospect.

Our visit to the capital city co-incides in part with the Dublin Film Festival - I hope we’ll be able to see some of what is on offer.

So this will be my last post here until next week - unless I get to an Internet Café that is, which I doubt.

A belated Happy Chinese New Year or Kung Hei Fat Choy in Mandarin(?), or, as some might still say in Macao, Feliz Ano do Porco: we are now into day 2 of the Year of the Female Fire Pig.

As a Dog in the Chinese system of Astrology, I have mixed feelings about the passing of my 4th Dog Year. It’s been an eventful year for me - earth-shattering in some respects. The theory is that whatever you do, whatever foundations you lay, during your animal year will have positive or negative repercussions down the line. So I can look forward to reaping the benefits of all the effort I put into many aspects of my life during my just extinguished Dog year, all the while continuing to work at them of course. For, to misquote an oft-quoted saying, nothing comes to him who sits back idly and waits.

One very positive thing is that my life-partner is a Pig, so this is her year! And Pig years are generally OK for Dogs.

So here’s to all the good things that will ensue during this very special Year of the Female Fire Pig!

It’s Friday again and another fleeting weekend beckons. Another illusionary pause in the mad mad rush that passes for living in 21st Century Ireland. Another bottle of wine consumed - imbibition = inebriation = inspiration! Bacchus be praised! Dionysus too in agaricus sabius est or some such - but Dionysus goes too deep right now! Na capaill draíochta - n’fheadar a dtuigeann tú?

It was very very disappointing to see France score that last minute try in Croke Park against Ireland today to steal a scarcely deserved 3 point victory.

I must say that the standard of refereeing from Steve Walshe was pretty poor as he was plainly biased towards the team in blue. In the first half when he was playing advantage to France and no advantage accrued to them he quite rightly gave them penalties. In the second half when Ireland were in the same position and no advantage accrued to them, he did not on two occasions give them penalties. Which to my mind is unfair bias. The referee is supposed to referee the game without fear or favour to both teams. Walshe clearly favoured France today. His bias was most spectaculary shown in his failure to give Marcus Horan a penalty in the second half when he was illegally held back while following up on his kick forward towards the French try line, and in the first half when, with advantage being to Ireland, Geordan Murphy broke the French line and raced all of 60m to the try line only for Walshe to disallow it. So much for Kiwi fair play! It’s about as fair as the infamous spear tackle on Brian O’Driscoll in NZ by another Kiwi on the last Lions Tour.
To my mind, Walshe has brought the game of Rugby into disrepute, first by his slurs on Ireland’s performance in Wales last week, and now by his despicable refereeing in Croke Park today. He should be fined heavily for what he has done (as a player would be), and never be given another international match to referee.

That said, Ireland have only themselves to blame for losing, as they did not function in the first half and were very lucky to be trailing by only 2 points at the break. This is not the first time Ireland have failed to start against France either - last year they gave the French a 40 point lead before getting their act together.
You simply cannot afford not to start against France and hope to win.

In the wake of an uncomfortable night spent in a sleeping bag on my livingroom floor, I’m a little the worse for wear. I slept little and badly due mainly to feeling cold most of the night. I couldn’t face climbing out of the sleeping bag to snatch an overcoat, so I put up with it. What, you may ask, was I doing sleeping on the floor?

Well, when we went to go to bed at 00:15, having watched The Last Samurai on TV, we discovered that the ceiling above the bed had a long bead of heavy water drops which were busily saturating the duvet, sheets and mattress beneath, rendering us bedless and sending me into the attic in my pyjamas armed with a torch that didn’t want to stay on in search of a solution. It turned out that the recently installed Velux window in the still partially-slated roof was not properly sealed, and the deluge (which MET Eireann had totally failed to predict - what’s new?) was doing its best to imitate the Niagara falls through the resulting holes. I spent nearly an hour chasing drips of varying flow-intensity with pots, pans, plastic containers of all kinds, and a casserole dish in an attempt to stop the mini-waterfall onto our bed below.

Fortunately, there was a large sheet of flooring ply just under the Velux in the otherwise floorless attic. Balancing on the cross beams in my cork slippers was a challenge at times, and I slipped once and very nearly drove my foot through the ceiling below. Having chased down all the drips and chastised them with a growing army of kitchen utensils and other vessels of a vaguely household nature, I went to sleep on the floor of my living room.

Needless to say, I rang the roofer at 07:15 to apprise him of the situation, and he appeared soon after to tackle the mess.

I’m delighted to announce the launch of The Serpent in the Shrine (vol. 0 of The Amethyst Dragon Archives) here and now.