I noticed yesterday morning that the Whitethorn (also known as Hawthorn and May-tree) has come into flower. The lovely white blossom sprays are appearing from under the freshly sprouted green leaves all over the countryside. The Whitethorn (Crataegus monogyna) flowers from May to June every year, so it is little bit early this year.

The Whitethorn is not to be confused with the Blackthorn as they are different genuses though they both belong to the Rosaceae family. The Blackthorn flowers from March to May every year and has nearly always finished flowering before the Whitethorn blossoms. As its scientific name - Prunus spinosa - suggests, the Blackthorn is a relation of the plum, its fruit being the Sloe.

I’ve now completed the second coat of paint of the main colour in the attic. That should do it for that. However, the accent colour at each end needs another coat because the parts where the paint was applied by brush are darker than the main areas where the paint was applied with roller. Another coat in the main areas with the roller, leaving the edges where the paint was applied with brush alone, should suffice.

We’ve decided to paint the outsets around the velux windows with the accent colour as well. Need to get 2 more litres of paint for this and the ends.

Once that is done, the electricians will need to install the lights and sockets. And then the floor will need vacuuming, mopping and at least one coat of eco-varnish. Oh, and the carpender needs to make the access door to the rest of the attic which we will use for storage. So there is still some way to go before we’re ready to start furnishing it.

It’s the start of another fine weekend - yipee! - when I plan to get lots of things done to make up for last weekend. The dose I’ve been suffering from for the entire week is almost banished though I still have an annoying cough. The second coat of the main colour is going on the attic walls this afternoon without fail, and I might get some programming done as well.

Tomorrow morning my son is taking part in a Tae-Kwon Do competition in Shannon, so we have to be up early. This means we’ll have lunch out, which is nice for a change.

Right now, though, it’s time to gather ourselves and head for Ennis to do the remainder of the shopping, drop the kids at various classes and go to CMM Orchestra practice. I’ve been unable to practice any oboe since last Saturday, however, due to the head cold. Blowing into an oboe reed is not really possible when the sinuses and everything else is stuffed up.

At 15:50 this afternoon, I heard the cuckoo for the first time this year. I don’t remember if it’s earlier or later than previous years as I didn’t record the date before. So just for the record, I heard the first cuckoo of 2007 in Kilmaley on Friday 27 April. Wondering if anyone else has heard it already?

I’m back to work today. Though nowhere near being fully recovered, at least my head is clear and I can concentrate for more than 10 minutes at a time!

Curiously, the weather has also recovered from its bout of rain, and the sun has been “splitting the stones” here all day. I’m going around wearing the lighter of my two winter jackets as I don’t find it hot by any means (though others seem to given that they’re walking around in short sleeves) and I will not risk the dreaded relapse.

As we’re still in April, going around in short sleeves is not recommended. There is still a hint of ice in that breeze and we had frost last night. The proverb says it all - “Don’t cast a clout ’till May is out!“. Interestingly, there is a proverb of identical import in Spanish - “¡Hasta el cuarenta de mayo no te quites el sayo!“, which literally translated means - Until the 40th of May (ie 9th June) don’t take off your cloak!

I’ve added all but one of the notes to poems and texts to The Serpent in the Shrine. I’ve used the same JavaScript technology (text inserted in title attribute of an anchor and called up in a custom JavaScript tooltip built on the fly) that I used for the footnotes.

The one note that’s still outstanding is just too long to fit in an anchor title attribute. So I’m working on including it using an iframe instead. Though I’m not so sure it’s going to work the way I want it to. We’ll see. But don’t hold your breath!

For the record, I have today (Wednesday 25 April 2007) applied the following Creative-Commons license to The Serpent in the Shrine: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

This heavy head cold with sore throat and racking cough is proving to be more resistant that I expected at the weekend. I’m in no fit state to go to work - the head is feeling so stuffed up that my concentration levels are not primed for anything more serious than sitting at the laptop (as I’m doing right now in the kitchen) and typing away (very little effort required for this) in marked contrast to wrestling with multidimensional arrays in PHP or the ins and outs of xmlhttprequest objects in JavaScript which is what I would be doing if I were in the fullness of my health. Another good reason for not going to work today, if one were needed, is not to spread this nasty little dose to any of my colleagues in the Kilrush Adult Learning Centre where I tutor every Wednesday and Thursday mornings. My students have plenty to do in any case as they are completing their FETAC projects for submission in the first week in May, and probably won’t miss me at all!

I know this may sound a bit odd but I suspect that my body is behind my catching this nasty little dose as it wants me to slow down. I’ve been working too hard in recent weeks and months, and have had little time to relax and take stock. I’ve been driven by my single-mindedness (which can be quite bloody-minded when it wants) and have ignored my stressed out body which was giving me plenty of warnings in the form of sore knee muscles, the odd backache, and the odd hit-and-run ‘nerve pain’. So with the advent of this present dose I decided to ease off, and take all the time my body needs to recover.

I’m still waiting for a call from IFA Telecom to put in the wireless broadband connection I applied for a few weeks back. They told me about 3 weeks but that was more than 3 weeks ago. So I’ll give them a call this afternoon to see if I can speed things up.

I’ve now added a bibliography to The Serpent in the Shrine as planned. I don’t have some of the publications’ details since I no longer have the books as they formed part of my second library which was partially lost when I moved back to Ireland from Spain a decade ago.