It’s like a never ending nightmare. Just as you think you’re out of the madness a new demon enters the arena. Like the crazed German terrorist crawling out from under the rubble at the end of Die Hard for one last stab at annihilation of the protagonist hero – Coronavirus has mutated and it’s ugly. Why does it always have to be at Christmas time. It could have done it during the World Cup, or even better the Cricket World Cup…. But no. Let’s go for fucking Christmas. That’ll really piss them off. Oh well. Time to Barton down the hatches and put on another seventeen kilos.

Oh the fun we had the day we did. As the saying goes “Friends are the family we choose.” And boy what a family I have. Looking back through the pictures and videos from our weekend in Vienna fills me with joy. Too much happened to post in the blog so go over to the news section for a full page spread on our Viennese antics. Needless to say a good time was had by all.

Buys this bottle of fresh pressed fruit juice. Standing in kitchen with furrowed brow reading the label complaining that it has no instructions. 🤣🤣🤣

They say you should never meet your idols, and that’s probably true, but today I managed to get to see some teenage idols. New Order at the O2 and they were pretty awesome. Okay so the voice is not as strong as it used to be but musically they were on top. To get to sing to the classics live was amazing.

I’ve had a lot of laughs over the years back in Ireland and you can’t beat the Irish sense of humour. But this morning I heard a right classic on Newstalk radio while they were talking about the soul of Dublin being ripped out by modernisation. One of the radio hosts referred to the temple bar area of Dublin as a ‘Begobs & Begorra theme park’ lolol absolutely made me scream laughing.

I’m not gonna lie. I thought I’d come over to Ireland and spend two days tiling the porch. Here we are four weeks later and I’m still not done. Tiling is a bitch that creeps up behind you and bites you in the arse every single time. So I get to the final stages where I need to do some special cuts with my wet blade cutter and the blade dies. Can’t get a replacement for love or money. Jesus Christ on his bicycle of love. So I’m gonna have to wait until I get back in December to finish the job. As I said… tiling sucks!

it was a spectacularly clear morning yesterday so we headed off to Grange Crag to climb the hill. The views across Kilkenny, Tipperary and Laois are unparalleled. It delivered as we made it to the top to this spectacular vista. It never ceases to wow me. The viewing tower was built by one of the Earls from Kilcooly as a celebration of the duke of Wellingtons defeat of the French at the battle of Waterloo. What I had forgotten from my school days history classes was that the landed gentry of the time were actually very pro Irish independence  (as was the Earl) but the French Revolution scared the pants off them so they voted for unionism instead. And hence the troubled history of Ireland began. So I guess you could France is equally to blame for our troubles.

Benson found many freshwater streams to drink from (although I’m sure he’d have preferred to find a skanky oil slick covered pool).

Anyway a great spot for a walk if you have an hour and a half to spare. Some challenging hilly bits but only for the really unfit ones amongst us. Lots of the walk is under deep forest cover and has a pretty magical quality to it.