Marty

And one story is that an Irish monk, now known as St Brendan the Navigator sailed to America and back over three years around the middle of the 6th Century, apparently 500 years before the Vikings got there. He sailed there in a tiny currach, a traditional Irish boat with a wooden frame wrapped in hides of leather. https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2013/05/16/did-st-brendan-reach-north-america-500-years-before-the-vikings/ https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/others/saint-brendan-first-america In 1976, adventurer, writer, and historian Tim Severin decided to build a traditional currach and see if it could match the accomplishments in the St Brendan legend. Using traditional design and building techniques he fashioned a modern currach, christened it Brendan and set off from Ireland to reach North America. Successful in showing that it could have been done, Severin published a book and an article in National Geographic Magazine, and a 1500-year-old tale was given new life. Here's a link to a video featuring Tim Severin describing the Brendan Voyage in 2005 in a free public lecture at Gresham College, London (it's nearly an hour long and only has Tim's voice).

No, the Irish. It was a Norman-English town, built in Ireland.

I'm assuming that central air you are talking about is what I would probably know as air conditioning. If that's the case, I assume that's very necessary to you at present. We don't get the sort of temperatures here in Ireland that would normally require air conditioning to be installed in the home. More important would be that we have central heating! I am rested, thanks. But I'm still going to go to bed soon (it's about ten minutes to midnight). Have to be up early - meeting a friend for breakfast in the morning. Wouldn't want to sleep in and arrive late.

It's a stunning place as well, Val! It's around 50 miles from me, and the feeling of history that I get just looking at all of it, is palpable. As an archeological site, it's probably one of the most important medieval sites of its type in Europe. Strange thing is, so few Irish people even know it's there.

Here's a photo I took at the beginning of the week of Rindoon Castle, a ruined Anglo-Norman castle that was built on a peninsula on Lough Ree, County Roscommon, Ireland, back in the early part of the 13th Century. At its height Rindoon, the town that grew up under the protection of the castle, had a population of around 1,000. London only had a population of about 20,000 at the time. The town and castle were protected on the landward side by a 20 foot high stone wall,1,640 feet long, with towers and gates, that ran from one side of the peninsula to the other. Most of that wall is still standing today. There is also the remains of a 13th century nave & chancel church near the castle. The harbour in front of the castle is known as Safe Harbour, and there are the remains of jetties and wharves, where boats using the Shannon waterway (Lough Ree is one of the large lakes on the River Shannon) would load and unload cargo. Safe Harbour was the main landing point for the town’s trade which, in its heyday, was highly profitable. Records show that in 1259, the town paid 8 pounds, 5 shillings, and 8 pence in annual taxes, and by 1285, when taxes had risen to £320, the town was importing corn, cloth, and wine from Bordeaux. For a while Rindoon thrived as a trading post strategically located on the Shannon. However, with the Gaelic resurgence of the late 13th and early 14th centuries the town was sacked and later completely abandoned. It remains abandoned to this day.

Gary, my friend. How's it going?

Well, Pride was fun. The day was cloudy to begin with and I was worried that rain would spoil it all. But it kept away, and there was actually a bit of sun for the parade itself, which made it all that much more fun. It did rain a bit on the drive home in the evening. I managed to take about 200 photos. Hopefully some of them will be really good, but before I left Castlebar, I quickly downloaded them all onto my laptop, and then used PhotoShop to batch resize them all down into a separate folder. I copied that folder onto a memory stick, which I gave to one of the Pride organisers before leaving town. They may already have some of them on their FaceBook page but, just at the moment, I'm too tired to go check. In separate news, I uploaded Chapter 6 of my The Charmed Life of Danny Murphy story to GA early last night. Although it hadn't got past the Moderation Queue before I left home early this morning, I saw it had done by the time I got home tonight. Hi all, by the way!!!

I think in certain parts of continental Europe, when separating groups of three digits in decimal numbers, they use the comma and full stop the opposite way round to the way they are used in the UK, Ireland, and many other parts of the world. So when clo typed 4,590 kg, I immediately guessed she meant 4.590 kg. I've some German friends who left me confused initially when I saw the way they wrote decimal numbers...

Just you be careful of that shoulder of yours if you're thinking of going over the top, Gary!

Correct, Xan! One and the same.

I woke the next morning with a slightly queasy stomach, probably as a result of the cider I had drunk the night before. Mrs Moseley had decided that, as it was the weekend and therefore we didn't have to be dashing out of the door to get to lectures on time, she would prepare us a cooked breakfast. She bustled in from the kitchen carrying two breakfast plates, which she plonked down in front of us. "There you go, boys," she said cheerfully. "Tuck in. I'll be back in in a minute with the toa

I actually had fish and chips, with a side salad, for lunch...

Off to bed. Goodnight, all.

Hi, Page! Sounds idyllic.

Mental note to self: Chips means potato crisps in North America. What we call chips in Ireland and Britain are known as fries over there. Quick change of subject: I've just been reminded that, seven years ago yesterday evening, I was in Dublin for an open air concert featuring around three and a half hours of non-stop music and song by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Interestingly, a few evenings earlier, Bruce had had his microphone turned off by the concert organisers in Hyde Park, London, when his concert went over a curfew that had been set by Westminster City Council. Perhaps more interesting is that the then Mayor of London, a certain Boris Johnson, was upset by the microphone having been turned off. He apparently said that they (Paul McCartney was on stage with Bruce at the time) should have been allowed to "Jam in the name of the Lord." https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jul/15/bruce-springsteen-microphone-switched-off

lol !! Happy dreams, B

Well, it would be difficult to get photos of the participants, the onlookers, and shots looking up and down the parade, if I were part of the parade itself. Easier to do that if I were on the pavement, moving up and down the parade to frame suitable shots, than if I were simply marching in the parade itself. And those are the sort of shots the organisers were talking about.

I am likely to be a bit busy over the weekend. Pride parade to attend in County Mayo tomorrow afternoon. This one should be far more enjoyable than the big one in Dublin last month, mainly because it's a community event, and not been hijacked by big business and international companies like Facebook, Google, PayPal, Intel, etc, etc, etc, like the one in Dublin has been. Not sure yet if I shall actually march in it. Some of the organisers have suggested I should take photographs instead. I'll bring Trusty Nikon with me, and make a final decision when I see what the weather's like.

I dunno... I think if the weather became too predictably the same every day, I would soon get bored by it.

Hi, Gary! Thanks, and I did have fun. Back home for a while now. Keeping an eye on the sky. If the sun looks as though it may put in an appearance eventually today, I may head out chasing light with Trusty Nikon.

Yup! As the old saying goes: "If you're not in, you can't win". Tonight's estimated Euromillions jackpot is €108m, and tomorrow night's Irish Lottery jackpot an estimated €6.5m. I definitely can't win either of them.

And if you wanted to work in Ireland as a non-EU citizen you would need an Employment Permit, which can be difficult to obtain. https://dbei.gov.ie/en/What-We-Do/Workplace-and-Skills/Employment-Permits/

Basically the same as my Friday. I hope yours turned out as much fun as mine has so far.

Yea, Val. The west of Ireland, in particular, does enjoy a fairy mild and moderate climate, due mainly to it being on the eastern edge of the Atlantic and under the influence of the warm Gulf Stream that sweeps up from the the Gulf of Mexico before crossing the Atlantic to travel up the west coast of Ireland (among other places). The one thing I don't like about it, though, is that it tends to result in warm moist air, which means that we do tend to get a lot of wet days, some of which seem to go on and on for days or weeks on end.

Good morning, all ! Another rainy day. 15°C/59°F. Hopefully, like the past few days, the sun will make an appearance in the afternoon/evening. I'll be heading out soon, and may be gone for much of the afternoon. Lunch with a friend first, followed by a visit to a cross-border heritage event for which a young friend of mine did most of the video work, including editing.