Dublin and Dingle 2016

Its Tuesday 27^th December and having had a lovely Christmas we head for Ireland and a two-centred holiday. Gatwick is eerily quiet, as is the flight and Dublin airport. Apparently, according to the Eurocar rental bus driver it was “bedlam in Dublin Airport the previous day”. Peter, being the chatty person that he is, asks the driver so was the people coming or going? Ah no says the driver, that was people leaving and arriving… we put it down to a misunderstanding of accents, Peter’s that is.

Yet again we had another “little incident” with car hire. This one did not involve hitting a wall or barrier in the airport but rather a mistake in the booking. Himself takes on the task of booking the car hire making this reservation back in October. Then a few weeks back after much discussion lasting days – you know how it is when one of you will not make the decision – we decide to upgrade and get a vehicle that we could use to transport a TV unit + coffee table and other pieces of furniture between 188 and Carrigeen.

So on the morning of our flight on the 27^th, I turn to himself and say right have you got the upgraded documents for the car hire, I’ll put them with the air tickets. Oh sure says he, let me get them. I don’t need to make this into a tense Agatha Christie drama but many minutes later and many comments such as “I definitely did the upgrade booking”, “they must be here somewhere” it turns out that it had not happened. Thankfully Eurocar have a car that we can upgrade to and off we head to 188 and a peaceful evening.

The main task of Wednesday 28^th was for Peter to get my Christmas present. The present is a Powercaddy what every high society gal should not be without. After hours of research and viewing in the UK we’ve narrowed it down to two and both American Golf and McGuirks have them in stock. Both have showrooms about 10 minutes away so off we head on our shopping expedition.

We choose American Golf because that’s on the main road with easy parking while McGuirks is situated within Dundrum shopping centre which is the mecca shopping for South Dublin girls so much so the traffic jams regularly featuring on the news. The sales person spots us immediately and is over to help. The first decision appears to be whether I’d like an 18 or 36 hole battery. After much chat about how it knows how long one takes to play 18 holes I understand the concept of how the batteries work. And also the sales guy now has an understanding of how my mind works and looks at Peter with sympathy.

The choice is between a Powercaddy FW7 at 759Euros or a shop display caddy from Motocaddy with a lot less features at 430Euros. Features on the FW7 include a calorie counter, why? And a feature that tells you how far you’ve hit the ball. To be fair sometimes I can work that out for myself since its only gone a yard. But still the FW7 is looking the favourite particularly after himself says buy the one that will do you years, since you’ll not be buying another for a while. What he really means is you are not getting another from me!

The shop assistant at this stage senses the sale if he can close it out. But we are still humming and hawing about it all. Peter says well I am off to look around while you think about it – in other words can you not make up your mind. So I do what any savvy shopper does and check the McGuirk website to see how much they are selling it for. 629Euros no less!

Wondering back to the till the sharp sales guy is now in for the kill by offering me the 36 hole battery for no extra charge. So I says to him, well that’s not going to swing it for me as I’ll never play two rounds in one day and in one fell swoop dismiss his strategy. To give him is due, he keeps going and say well there could be some movement on the price creating an opening an elephant could walk through and allowing me to say the winning sentence “well McGuirks are selling this very powercaddy for 629Euros” to which he says ok we’ll match that. 3 minutes later the Powercaddy is in the car boot.

And I think how lucky Peter is to be married to someone who negotiates the price on her Christmas present. 

Other Voices weekend in Ballyferriter.

Apologies that this rather long blog is coming two weeks after we did a quick weekend jaunt to Carrigeen but I forgot to write it up – short term memory loss or else the weekend was so fabulous that I did not have time. I am going for the fabulous weekend option. But I did want to record the highlights of the weekend so here goes.

It was our first “proper” weekend to the house and we’d chosen the weekend to coincide with the music festival in Dingle called Other Voices. Other Voices most famous claim to fame was an amazing session in the church by Amy Winehouse. For those of you who may have missed it, click here to see the set:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aatZ9VSF7Mc – there are more videos but this is incredible.

Other Voices itself has been going ten years and is a showcase of the best up and coming music around, not only Irish but worldwide. Over three days, there are normally 3 sessions taking place at any one time, in pubs, churches, museums & the courthouse. The sessions last about 30 minutes and are free to attend. Beginning at 11am each day and ending sometime after 1am, you could pack a lot of music in if you had the stamina – which we do not. An incredibly bad web site tell you a little about the weekend: http://www.othervoices.ie/

Anyway back to our weekend, flying from Stansted to Kerry on a full flight we arrived on time. Himself sprinted across the carpark to the car hire office and within 10 minutes we were zooming through the Kerry countryside although not without having a little “incident” in the carpark... what is it with hired vehicles and airport carparks? Thankfully this time it was not me and so far we think the rental company has not noticed that himself rubbed the alloy wheels alongside the ticket barrier…. Because Dingle is nearly 25 minutes behind GMT – only time wise of course we were able to make the journey all the way in daylight.

A quick at Garvey’s Supermarket – yup we have a loyalty card – to pick up the makings of a meal for Friday night. It is basically the last shop for us before we arrive at the house – so a stop is vital. Although breaking news, we heard a shop might have opened in Ballyferriter..

The house was fine on our arrival and the key task of the evening was to assemble the spare bed as we had a guest arriving about 11pm. AE was attending after an event locally which might have involved a glass of wine and did not want to drive back home so bedding down in Carrigeen made sense.  It did mean that it was about 2am when we all hit the sack = wiped for Saturday night.

Saturday

Up bright and early with a cooked breakfast of local sausages, rashers, black/white pudding and we were set for the day. Hands up who knows what a rasher is… himself is now calling them that.

Despite the late night, Saturday turned out to be a fantastically productive day.  Bookcases were assembled, boxes were unpacked,

shelves were erected and generally a major organisation project was completed. The place was beginning to look ok.

And the new office for ORMA was set up in the most westerly part of Europe but not too close to America.

But that’s enough DIY, what about the music we said. With Roisin O 

playing at 5pm in town we headed in to meet the gang and hear her sing. We’d not see her live before and oh wow what a voice. This was her first gig at Other Voices and the packed marquee at An Chonair pub had a fantastic session with her.

Coming from such a talented music family, her mammy is Mark Black and her aunt is Frances Black and her brother is Danny O’Reilly – no relation sadly – but lead singer with The Coronas she was very comfortable with the audience, played several instruments and belted out the songs brilliantly.

For those of you who want to listen to her, click here http://roisino.com/ 

Sunday

However the night before & the day all caught up with us, so no more music but an early night. The upside of an early night is that one wakes up bright and energised the downside it that it is 6am. But with jobs still to be done we had plenty to keep us occupied.  

 Including the erection of a new house sign, to complement the letterbox.  I am told it’s not quite straight but I didn’t go out to look at is. I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the locals spot the sign. It’s just as well yer man has a surname with a mc in it, sounds Irish enough that locals might assume he is Irish.

With the Other Voices coming to an end there was nothing for it but to hop into town and catch a few more sessions before the Christmas lights were turned on by Walking on Cars. Never heard of them? Shame on you, they are Dingle’s latest band and a lovely bunch of lads – particularly if you are under 15 http://www.walkingoncars.com/

The turning on of the lights was preceded by the most wonderful and sweet lantern parade. Hundreds of children turned up with lanterns of every shape and size made from milk bottle, cola bottles, you name it, it was made into a lantern. Honestly though, we’d not seen so many under 7’s in one small town for many years, as himself said, it’s a long winter, dark nights and not a lot else to do!

The highlight of the lantern parade for us was meeting our neighbour, the ban garda. In case you

don’t know what a ban garda is, that’s the local police in this case a woman and what a wonderful person she is. Really very friendly and chatty, great to have on your side and plays a mean game of golf.

Monday

We were meeting our surveyor to talk through the work we want done on the house. Having established the list of things with him and his mate Derek we headed off for Tralee and the local Currys/PC world – well who wouldn’t. We were in search of a cheap 50cm free standing cooker. What we can now tell you is that it is not possible to buy such an item that gets any okish reviews, never mind good ones. So it looks like there is nothing else for it but to thoroughly clean the current cooker and make do.

It was a fifteen minute hop from Tralee to the airport, an on time flight with Ryanair and before we knew we were back on the Stansted Express hurdling towards London.

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