Some nice things

I made some iced cupcakes this week and thought that's what the country needs to cheer itself up - some nice things, preferably edible and highly calorific. As I can't put my cupcakes on the blog I decided to do the next best thing and find some nice headlines from the papers instead. Here's the best I could come up with......not great but you should see the ones I couldn't include because of general depressingness..

BT lifts spirits with colour and optimism

Decrease in number of murders and rapes

Downturn means CO2 targets now achievable

Boy escapes injury as car crashes into house in NI

Re-formed Britpoppers Blur to play Oxegen

30% fall in homicides and rise in burglaries, CSO data reveals

Wanted: a maverick gunslinger to save us from the cowboys

Several online services offering free access to music and videos

New Government insulation scheme to create four thousand jobs

Penguins enjoy snow in Dublin Zoo

Spring is in the Air

Hurrah! February has finally arrived! To celebrate the official beginning of spring I am making a conscious effort to enjoy the small things in life. The following exciting things happened today:
-Three brilliant songs played one after the other on the random play on my MP3
-All the traffic lights went green as I drove home from work
-It stopped snowing long enough that I could go for a cold, but bracing, walk at lunchtime
-I’ve officially created a nickname for the recession/economy: It shall be known from now on as the Duck.
I’ve also managed to get roped into signing on for tag rugby and salsa class. I’m not sure how as I’ve no idea of the rules of one, no rhythm for the other and at the moment feeling less than enthusiastic for either of them. Maybe if I practice hard enough I can dance my way around the tag team and avoid being tackled? Onto a more familiar topic, I went to my first gig in Dublin since Australia, “The Streets” in the Olympia. It was fantastic; the band were full of energy, spitting out the lyrics and stage diving, the audience grinned and bounced up and down inanely, vodka red-bull raining from the ceiling – magic! Great antidote to the general misery generated by the media here talking non-stop about Ducks.

January Blues

I’ve always wanted to start a blog entry Sex and The City style; “I couldn’t help but wonder” but until now I never had an appropriate first sentence worthy of wondering about. Until now. So here goes.
I couldn’t help but wonder this evening why January is such a damned mysterious month. A phenomenon in fact that’s at least worthy of a book by Stephen Hawking. Because the question that’s puzzling everyone at the moment isn’t did that guy make Obama fluff his oath on purpose, or will the Irish economy be saved by axing some Dublin Bus routes or even how do Ryanair flights for a euro still manage to cost 70 euro in total. No the question is, how can 31 January days last for such an incredibly looooooong drawn out time? I read somewhere about a theory that an expanding universe is linked to weakening gravity; I don’t understand what that’s all about but I suspect it’s linked to why a January that appears to expand indefinitely causes a severe weakening of the general population. I have observed this weakening effect has a more dramatic consequence in people who have recently been acclimatised to daily walks by the sea, sun bathing and regular consumption of vanilla lattes. I’m not sure how to counteract the effect, indeed no-one does except to wait in feverish expectation for February when we can all breath a sigh of relief and tell everyone, “Thank god January is over. It’s an awfully long month.”

Weather Girl

I’ve become a vampire Monday to Friday since January hit. I am back to work and only see daylight at the weekends; if I’m lucky that is and it leaks through a deep pile of clouds. Having spent the best part of 6 months in bright sunny climes it’s weird driving to work at 8.15 am and admiring the full moon still present in the sky. I’m trying hard to reactivate my weather optimism gene that takes years to develop but about a second to lose when you go to a bright, sunny country. It’s the gene that enables you to say in January when driving home at half four, full headlights on that: “you’d notice the evenings are getting longer,” or causes the whole country to see signs that anticipate a long hot summer: “The birds are flying on the diagonal, and did a back-flip before landing; that means summer will be here in April,” or “The sheep are grazing backward up the east face of the hill. Surely be to God we’ll have 40 days of sun in June.” In Australia it took a while to adjust to the literal nature of the weather forecasts, eventually realising that a showery spell actually means it will be a lovely day with a short, light shower of rain and there’s no need to bring wellies and a rain mac to the beach. In Ireland it’s the opposite. Showery spells mean mainly rain with a cloudy period when it stops and everyone searches the sky optimistically for a glimpse of the sun. In fact “so long as it’s dry” is the main criterion for a good weather day here, winter or summer. Below zero and frost, no problem. “So long as it’s dry” it’s ok as the sky will be blue and the roads won’t freeze too badly. Cloudy and overcast during the summer, well “so long as it’s dry” it’s acceptable as a cloudy and overcast and wet day would be simply awful. By the way, good news as I’m writing this; my cat has stretched twice and yawned at me so it should be sunny in May.