Weblog

A week late in my update but we had Naomi and Neil to visit last week and took a break from house hunting. Quite took a fancy to this little pied a terre – Castle Howard, north of York. Bit of a hike but worth it. They filmed Brideshead Revisited here, which I’m glad to say I’ve never seen.

 

 

 

Not earthshaking news but my favourite Irish artist Cathal Coughlan has just updated his website with some great news. “Foburg” – his first album since 2002’s The Sky’s Awful Blue – will be released on 21 September.

This is an evolution of the songs originally performed in the “narrative song cycle” (opera to you and me) Flannery’s Mounted Head, as part of Cork City of Culture. I missed it for whatever reason – lack of a Ryanair route from Humberside to Cork being the most likely one. Seems that FMH will be performed in Dublin in November so I have no excuse.

Here is a copy of the Gravel Road song from Spitz 2002.

And another lost Cathal track, from the sountrack of Mapmaker – Any Dwindling Side.

Owen just sent me some great pictures from our trip home a couple of weekends ago. Sophie reminded us just how much we need to get a garden again by watering Owen’s garden from one end to the other and having great fun with the water gun. She does look like one of those garden fairies. We are still house hunting – every weekend a trip back to Harrogate – and it’s beyond frustrating.

Had an unfortunate incident last week with a fiendishly concealed concete bollard! It was hidden behind a big concrete planter which I carefully drove around. I felt the car stick but because the music was up loud, concealing what I assume was a screeching sound, I thought the car was down in a gutter and just needed a quick rev to climb out. Et voila:

 

Looks pretty much like the time I had a run in with a fiendishly concealed multi-storey car park with my old Laguna in Germany - I blamed the wrong side of the road thing for that one. (Must dig out the picture I have of that). These things keep sneaking up on me.

I can never complain to Jean about dings on my car again – although she did do a nice job on the door of my old Irish Laguna as I recall. Broke the wing mirror while reversing past a tree, and then in a panic (I’m guessing) swung open the door to better assess the situation – and bodged the door from top to bottom along said tree.

Oh well off to the body shop again.

Now that normal service has been resumed it is about time I uploaded a few pictures from Italy. We spent two weeks in a carvan south of Florence. OK fancy mobile home. At least it had aircon and a proper bathroom. I got a good slagging from Ronan about it in advance but now I hear he is hiring an RV which is a fancy name for a motor home!

We had a great time in Italy. It was my first time there and I’d love to go back when Sophie is old enough to be dragged through the Uffizi gallery – which we had to walk past – and spend some more time seeing the sights, rather than the sites!

Anyhoo, here are some pics.

See all those archives over on the right? My old posts from 20six. Unfortunately without the images attached – which kind of renders them pointless. Will keep at it! Once that’s done I’ll focus on defining a theme for the site which is in its out of the box state at the moment. Off to bed for now though……
Adam

Update: Yay – images restored!