Dublin and ever after

Somehow, once again, the summer is nearly over - not quite though, I shouldn't be too pessimistic - still a month until the teaching term begins.

Dublin was fabulous - what a splendid city. And what better way to visit a city than in the company of great friends? And we kicked the whole vacation off with a fabulous wedding in the countryside. I would have to recommend the self-catering option; Dublin is ferociously expensive. Besides with the wonderful cooks amongst us, the food was better than our budget options in the city centre. Is it childish to visit the zoo in every city in which it's an option? Actually, I'm not particularly concerned - the Dublin zoo was a grand day out. It's small and remarkably compact and the animals were very obliging with antics: frolicking elephants, fighting rhinos, and a hilarious sea lion pup had us in stitches for the whole afternoon. Do you know how sea lions sleep? With their front flippers tucked into their back flippers. Watching a just-fed and clearly rather cranky pup try to get comfortable for his afternoon kip was the funniest thing I've ever seen. In all seriousness, the look of absolute frustration was very human. It was clearly a good year for the breeding program at Dublin as there was also a young gorilla and orang-utan, two sumatran tiger cubs, baby giraffes, a young rhino, and a little chimpanzee - oh and the elephants!

The wedding in Trim was gorgeous - weddings are much more fun when I'm not the involved party. And the wedding entertainment was a ceili - my first in 32 years of carrying this name. Alas, none of us were experienced ceili dancers - though some of our friend's family and family-friends were - but we gave it a go. The late-night disco was more our style and the even-later-night singing and whiskey drinking even more suited to our musical and thirsty group. My offering was a shakey rendition of 'Northwest Passage' ...

And then home and back to work with the rain and increasing numbers of students. Luckily we broke back into routine slowly with a weekend of watching The Shield.