Dirty old town

The family and I headed out to Bray on Monday evening. We figured it was such a beautiful evening that it would be nice to head out there for a walk along the promenade and our 4 year-old could have some fun on the beach.

Bray is easy to get to now the M50 motorway is finished. This is such a long story that I won't go into it here. Anyway it took maybe 10 minutes to get there from our home.


The first thing that struck us was the presence of a huge array of amusements right there next to the beach. It gave the place a really good festival feel. It wasn't too crowded.

It's amazing how kids have such selective senses. We were walking from the car towards these huge amusements and our 4 year-old is shouting "look! that car is parked on the grass!". Not sure he even saw the massive silver amusement ride thingy in front of us.

On evenings like this you could almost forget that you are in Ireland. The temperature was really pleasant and the sea was so calm, per my photo below.


I mean this could be almost anywhere on a night like this. We kept walking along the promenade and you know there is something kind of strange and interesting about this town called Bray. It is like no other town in Ireland.

People who are from Bray are fiercely proud of it. I'm not from here but I worked with people from Bray for 8 years and boy do they talk about it a lot.


Anyway, as I said it has this nice promenade (above) that you can walk along. Being a nice evening a whole pile of people had the same idea, meaning that invariably you can expect to bump into people you know.

We met the parents of a friend of the family and we met a family that lives right next to my mother. The guy in this particular family living next to my mother thinks I am my brother if you know what I mean.

He calls me all the time by my brother's name and do you think I have the sense to say "actually you're confusing me with my brother". Nope. This is about the 4th or 5th time in my life this has happened to me.

Oh the pain of the "Marcel" incident. He was calling to me on the beach and I was wondering what the heck is that sound. Then I realised it was him. I just brushed it off, again. What am I like?

Our 4 year-old had a great time on the beach, mostly chucking pebbles into the sea. I overheard him shouting "here comes another grease-ball" and had to double-check with him that he was actually saying that.

I mean that's not something he normally says. It transpires he learned that from an episode of The Simpsons called "Lard of the Dance". He was delighted with himself.

I had to keep explaining that it might be better to throw the stones further down the beach where people were not swimming.

We went for ice-cream and it was kind of the cap on the evening for me. I have to admit I had it in my head first-and-foremost to get the ice-cream. Nice.

Bray is not a bad little town but it is a bit dirty at times like these. All around the place there was rubbish strewn on the ground and spilling out of rubbish bins.

Nobody had emptied these bins in a while by the look of it. There was a fair bit of litter here and there.

To cap the thing off our little man stepped in doggy poo and we had that to contend with in the boot of the car on the hot drive home. He was sitting in the back seat calling out "I can smell poo".

As we left the sun was setting and there were still plenty of people sitting about enjoying the last part of the day. Evenings like this tend to be rare enough so it was great to get out and enjoy it.

I was snapping away with the camera. I'm kind of in experimental mode at the moment and might be finally starting to figure the damn thing out.

Be sure to tell me if you like any of these photos. I'm doing my best to keep the camera level and my thumb out of the way of the lens. Hope you managed to get a sense of the kind of evening it was.

Thanks to everyone who commented on the barbecue. If Friday's weather is good then that might be the next phase of "adventures of a grilling novice".