louphoria

I took a bit of a nose dive yesterday when I heard what had been said to a colleague about people being let go. Then I picked myself up, shook myself down and decided that I just don’t care. I’d like to keep the job, I don’t want to have to go through the upheaval etc. and if it comes to it we’ll manage, we really will. We’ve done our sums and we’ll be okay.

One of the nice things about last weekend, with our trip to Achill and that beautiful beach Murvagh, was the conclusion we both reached while chatting about our adventure here in Sligo. Last year, when we first came down, it was almost all like a dream, like a holiday that would surely end soon. This year, going back out and exploring again now that the long evenings and good weather are back, we find it hasn’t changed, the charm hasn’t disappeared, it has probably increased if anything. We don’t want to be anywhere else. While that may change for whatever reason in years to come, right now, we’re exactly where we want to be, and we’re just one little lucky break away from being really settled in and happy. And we’re prepared to wait until that lucky break comes, to tough it out for what we know will be the life that we want.

We love our house here, rented as it is (not that we’d be buying any time soon one way or the other), we love it’s location in terms of adventuring up and down the coast, heading to Cavan/Dublin at the drop of a hat, and we’re as comfortable as can be here with the kitties, the deck, the Sky (which requires a satellite dish), the broadband (the combination of which might be very difficult to find in another rented property).

I said up there that “we’re just one little lucky break away from being really settled in and happy” - I suppose I mean, from being really settled and happy. We are actually very happy considering the wishy-washy lack of stability of my job and Benny’s still being out of work. It’s all about the perspective, and we’ve worked ours out, hard as it was at times to see the positive side, I have it in my sights now and I can’t be shaken from it.

Anyway. Them pair can’t make a f*cking decision to save their lives, I may be saved by that alone. Or maybe the three cars I sold this week and the two more I have stacked up for next week before ever I meet another customer will keep me shifting metal. Ce sera sera….

…of the good weather. We sat out until it was pitch dark tonight, the cloud cover kept the temperature from dropping to uncomfortable levels. The tealights twinkled, the beer flowed, and flowed… and I’m off to drink some more pints of water before bed.

Work is going arseways again, the words ‘laid off’, ’sacked’ etc. are back on the agenda. I’m not too phased, but it’s irksome. More tomorrow

21 degrees today, not hot by some reader’s definitions no doubt, but by Irish standards, that’s just about perfect. I drank a bottle of wine on the deck after work, I’m off to drink copious pints of water. Hot weather is gooood…

Millie just clambered up on the (white) couch, right beside Benny’s shoulder, heaved (in that bizarre click, thunk, suck, zonk sort of way), and promptly vomited all over the arm of the couch. Benny jumped about two inches into the air, Millie sniffed her vomit, knocked it to the ground, and Sasha ate it.

I’m still wiping away the tears of hysterical laughter and by turns, nausea. Living with cats is fun.

Thanks for the kind comments about yesterdays post guys, reading back over it briefly in work earlier I must apologise for the lack of commas. I would edit it, but I’m more inclined to pour myself onto the couch and recover from a busy and hot day in work. Big glass windows + suit + running around = zzz.

A commenter reminded me of this photograph (taken in the Liverpool bar, St Petersburg), please don’t ask why…

What a wonderful two days we’ve just had, like being on a short holiday but getting to come back to your own bed in between outings. We just capped it all off with a night on the deck, tea lights flickering, few beers, watching the sun set and the swans grazing on the river.

We started day one a little later than planned, our favourite musician was playing in the local the night before and we held out until he played ‘The Lonesome Boatman’, his version is just magical. So, the next morning, with surprisingly little in the way of a hangover we packed up our tuna salad sarnies, a flask of coffee, some juice and an indecent pile of crisp packets and drove to Achill via Westport and Newport, taking a little detour by a section of Clew bay.

The weather has been unseasonably, and un-Irishly fabulous this past two days. T-Shirt weather is always a celebration in Ireland, and you could genuinely feel the mood on the roads. There were reams of motorcyclists out, happy to wave as they went by, couples, families, people in classic cars, the whole shebang, and everyone smiling and happy to move over or let you pass with a smile and a wave on a tight country road.

I got a ‘Wibbly Wobbly Wonder’ in Newport, Benny had pulled over to check the map and I spotted a real ye-olde-worlde newsagents across the road from us and said ‘oh, you’ve stopped to get Nolly an icecream!’ in that happy, innocent tone that invites no argument. I haven’t had one of those particular ice creams in a long time, and if you have occasion to get your hands on one, go for it, memory does not do these things justice.

Achill is, is, Christ, it would take me several hours to really find the words to convey how beautiful it is. I mean, I’m from Ireland, I’m used to the beautiful scenery on offer in this country, I’ve lived in Sligo, with all it’s majestic natural beauty for this past year, but Achill, it’s mythical.

Up on the cliffs to the south of the island, looking out onto the Atlantic, the horizon was so much further away than usual, the sea seemingly bowed and so full, so much of it, because you could see so far. And the sun glittering on it, glittering is not even the word - every tiny point in the water was a star, a crystal with it’s own sun spinning within it. I told Benny it looked like tinfoil, digital tinfoil, a vast vibrating twinkling exploding sheet of metallic sparks. It was mesmerising, the heat on my face, the menthol cool of the ocean air currents whipping up and into the car, my hands and legs hot in windscreen filtered sunbeams and the sky so high and so blue it felt infinite. To the right of us was barren tweedy pink-and-browns land, curving around hills and broken ridges of bog land, to the left, sea, sky and magical little islands, further north the cliffs and hills we were yet to drive over.

One of the most spectacular moments of the drive was climbing the 400 meter mountain on the south coast of the island which looks out over, well, everything. We were beside clouds, not under them, and the views were like those you see on holiday aeroplanes, sun drenched fields, towns, ocean, rivers, roads - the whole island spread out underneath us. We picked a nice spot on the road facing back down the slope, with almost 365 degree views and ate our sandwiches in a state of awe and snuggly-comfort - comfort because the air outside up there was significantly cooler at that height than in our sun heated car.

We discovered on the way back, with some slight corrections to our route, that we are only actually two hours away from Achill, something we’re both pretty pleased with. We decided on the way home, before we’d even left that we have to come back and explore the rest of it and stay the night in one of the numerous little B&Bs we passed by.

We had no such high hopes for today’s outing, we just thought, ah sure, we’ll go for a walk on the beach, make the most of the amazing weather. We reached Rossnowlagh after a detour out to Creevy Peir, and Kildoney Point, the first of which has a beautiful little hotel with the nicest smelling food wafting from it’s outdoor benches. It was a day for chips in the sunshine outside a nice little hotel with amazing sea views, but we pressed on, coolbag full of goodies, in search of Rossnowlagh beach.

Rossnowlagh was a revelation for me. I’ve never been on a beach full of cars. Apparently if you’re from Meath, which Benny is, and have been to Bettystown, which Benny has, this is nothing new. A whole, flat, golden sanded beach jammed full of people, and cars. Now, that probably sounds awful, and in a way, it is, but, if you choose to embrace the zaniness and the noise, it’s quite a cheerful sight. Groups of lads playing football in various states of undress, girls promenading in bikinis (it was warm, but dear Jesus not that warm), and hordes of everything from pimpmobiles to granddad cars cruising up and down beeping cheerfully at just about everyone. We parked up on the beach and people-watched, and enjoyed our sandwiches, laughing at what a pair of old farts we were for having sarnies and flask poured coffee when all around us the tension of half naked teenagers on a sunny beach could almost be tasted.

We took our own little cruise up and down the beach in the car, and it was disportionatly amusing and smile inducing to how it looked, or might even sound. There is something highly amusing about crawling up and down a wide flat hot beach at a snails pace, arms out the window, all laid back like, joking about running people over. Perhaps you had to be there

Our next stop was Murvagh beach, quiet possibly the complete antithesis to the costa-de-la-boobies gung ho’ness of Rossnowlagh. This beach, just as wide and expansive, long and beautiful, is bordered by a forest, and I don’t know if that’s why, but I’d wager the incredibly calm atmosphere and beauty of the place had a lot to do with it.

We worked out afterwards in the car, hungrily attacking our tuna pasta salad, that we’d walked seven kilometres at least. Seven of the most restorative, peaceful, sun-soaked and calming kilometres I have ever tread. We talked, drifted off, ambled, strode, picked pebbles and shells, and took a rest on a piece of drift wood, soaking in the sun and salt air as if into our bones. I couldn’t possibly be any more chilled out this evening.

I promise, next time we go to either Achill or Murvagh, my camera will be back in action. It’s a crying shame I didn’t have it with me, but, on the other hand, some adventures are nice to keep in the minds eye only.

Achill was out of this world, and when I come back down to earth later after another day out today, I’ll write about them both. Today it’s up to Rossnowlagh beach, somewhere we haven’t visited before either, and we’ve just finished packing a tuna pasta salad, sarnies and a flask of coffee

It’s scorching! wooowhooo!

Byeeeee!

Early in the morning on a quiet bank holiday Saturday, and it’s so silent and so dead in here. The quiet is soothing, church-like because of the high ceilings and large tile and glass emptiness of the showrooms. The problem with that is this stillness, when you get lulled into it, it’s difficult to summon up the happy bubbly stuff needed for meeting members of the public and selling them cars. I’ll draw my bubbly inspiration today from the knowledge that I’m off from four this evening til nine on Tuesday. There’s a lot of happy bubbly to be gleaned from that.

I don’t know what we’ll do for the weekend. We did the cavan thing last weekend, and with the cats I think one night alone the odd time is no harm, but twice in a week isn’t fair. Bringing them with us, with the amount of knick-knacks and precious things in the wee house, would be a headache at the very least.

We have high hopes for tomorrow to be hot and sunny. If it is then a long drive is on the cards. Maybe Achill, maybe up into Donegal, get up early, make a picnic, fill the flasks and hit the road with all our favourite cds, sharing the driving there and back. Actually, that sounds like an excellent plan. We can put our little cooler bag and gel freezer packs to use. I got to use my new plastic ice cube jobbies that I bought in Woolworths in my Martini last night . Martini, with apple and mint juice (from the Polish isle in the supermarket, my god but they do good juice in Poland), is heavenly. They’re actually quite tasteful little ice cube things, half of them a lovely fresh pale blue, the others a juicy apple red colour. They look well in our new coloured glasses, obviously I picked the green one last night. It’s the little things, ay?

I love that the air conditioning has been turned off, it’s so much less stressful not to have that constant grating whirring behind me. It feels like the knots in my brain that are usually all tightened up are all loosening and unfurling as the lack of constant noise registers more deeply by the minute. I’m very sensitive to noise, like my mother, like Benny, we all of us feel harassed in buzzy-noisy surroundings. I can do crowd noise, out doors, and I can revel in music noise at a concert etc. but the monotonous drone of machinery, yuck.

I’m going to post this before I get caught again - started it at half ten, and only getting back to it now at 13:26! Not so quiet anymore

Just cannie do the blog thing at the moment guys. Flat out in work, flopped and wrecked in the evenings. Not unhappy, just, can’t do the writing thing. It happens, I’ll probably be back on track soon. Thanks for your patience.

A long tough day with a completely deserved hang-over. A late night in work too, I’m half dead. I’ll leave you with the picture that I’m currently using as the wallpaper on my desk top, I love it.

No, as it turns out I wont be able to do that, the upload box for adding a picture is refusing to cooperate tonight - the buttons I need to access are blocked from me because it’s rigidly positioned so that half of it is off the screen/in the toolbar. It can’t be moved. Typical of my day today.

I’m done with today, bed please…

Certain mad nights I reach down and remember the matrix of things that make me who I am now. Things bubble up to the surface and surprise me, tears well, meanings rise, tides flow over and I’m me again. I can’t imagine how this song might bring you there with me, but if you can…

If, understandably, that still doesn’t get you there, try this:

and failing that, cup of coffee, close your eyes..: