the madness continues...

So as has become the norm lately I sit down on a Monday evening and write my post for the week, this week was no different, except that I was suddenly chin slapped with an enormous case of writers block, I sat there for quite some time but came up with nothing, so I decided to just ramble on about the last weekend and hope none of you would notice.

Many times over the last five months the weather has come up in conversations with various people, one of the questions I always ask is whether or not they have a decent summer and I’ve been assured that Ireland does in fact have a summer. It’s illusive like the "tokoloshe", is illusive, but it does exist. Now For those wondering, the tokoloshe is South Africa's very own version of the Yeti, but more sexually deviant, and more like a midget zombie with a bad attitude. One of the more witty chaps id asked said that last year’s summer was great; it was on a Wednesday afternoon, in July.

All jokes aside we have been told that when the sun does shine and it is warm all the people suddenly come out of hibernation, eat ice-cream and go to the beach or barbecue at home, I truly thought this was an overstatement, it wasn't, because low and behold on Sunday the sun stopped being busy elsewhere and made an appearance in Ireland, the population instantly doubled, our sleepy village became a city in a matter of  minutes, you'd think these people have "go" bags ready for this type of thing. Several ice-cream trucks with the accompanying throngs of beach-goers invaded the foreshore.  It was like Durban north beach on Boxing Day.

It was such a big thing, Mondays headlines read “Yellow object spotted in the sky"

The happiness was infectious, people were out walking, cycling doing all sorts of normal outdoor activities, one of our neighbors threw caution to the wind and had an impromptu barbecue that carried on well into Sunday night, another neighbor took it upon himself to single handedly mow all the grass in the estate, cowboy hat and all. Utter madness I tell you.

We would have been silly not to take the opportunity of a sunny day and squeeze every single thing we could from it, and you would be right, we did and loved every minute of it. fortunately for us our local is an award winning restaurant called the Lime kiln,  it’s an eclectic mix of old Irish cooking with modern techniques and flavors, they also stock a wide range of ciders and craft beer, this ensures a few visits at the very least. it was only once the sun had gone down that things started to calm down and the throng of people returned home, So in preparation for the next warm days I’ve purchased a proper Weber charcoal braai, I decided it would be criminal to go with gas it’s just not South African,

What I found amazing is how a bit of sun can be cathartic, it can wake up the soul from its winter slumber, and takes the freeze out of the bones, it puts a jump in your step and a smile on your face although I think that it might just be, because of me. I was driving home on the motorway the other day and as I do on a nice afternoon, plug in my iPod, open the sunroof and sing at full volume to the tunes that come on, now on the aforementioned afternoon myself and Alanis Morissette were full tilt into a duet of her song Ironic, what I hadn't noticed in my reverie was the car load of young girls id sent into a state of absolute hysteria when the traffic had come to a stop, fortunately REM came on next and that seemed to recover a shred of my dignity, not my manliest moment I’ll admit, but at the very least I had brought sunshine to someone else's  day

     GT