Babies and Black Sabbath

I picked the boys up from their grandparents this evening and was driving home happily listening to my ipod through the car stereo.

On the ipod was Black Sabbath Paranoid.

I like that record.

Then I had this thought that maybe my kids had been momentarily exposed to the dark side and would forever be cast out.

But then I remembered that Black Sabbath (from the hard rock capital of the world, Birmingham, England) cited various jazz musicians among their list of musical influences.

I guess I just need to avoid playing the Jimmy Scott stuff that Liam introduced me to. Look what that Jazz stuff did to Ozzy Osbourne's head.

Canal walk in the rain

I was working in my company's city centre office today and travelled in on the LUAS tram from my home. It's great to work in the city from time to time especially now that I don't have to bring the car. The drive into Dublin city centre during the rush hour in the morning, and again in the evening is just painful.

It was a glorious morning so I set off from the house with all I needed, delighted to be able to travel a different commuting route today.

The only down side was that I was leading a meeting and that required me to bring some extra equipment that I'd need to ensure that everything would go well.

So heading from the LUAS to the office I had a laptop in a backpack and my box of tricks with all the stuff I'd need.

It was an interesting morning and it went pretty well by all accounts.

When the meeting was over I came out of the office and immediately saw that it was pouring rain. The exact same thing happened the last time I was in the city office but that time I had an umbrella and just the laptop bag.

I didn't really have any option but to head for the Tram as quickly as I could in the rain.

The walk from the office to the LUAS station follows the path of The Grand Canal. It has some nice paths on its tree-lined sides and the walk offered some shelter under the big trees. On better days the banks are packed at lunchtime with office workers eating and chatting on their breaks. Nobody seemed to have ventured out to enjoy the scene today.


There are some hotels on the banks of the canal and it's a popular place for tour companies to place people visiting the city. The sight of tour buses parked along the canal is common enough.

The canal has a healthy population of ducks, swans and all kinds of other life. The canal was cleaned up really well a few years back having previously been the kind of place in which drowning was the least of your worries if you fell in. There are still canal barges that use it to go up and down the canal. I'm not sure how deep it is though.

There are a number of nice bridges over the canal, with the one in the shot above at Leeson Street.


In the long grass at the edge I noticed a woman throwing breadcrumbs into the grass. There in a little huddle was a mother duck and a number of tiny ducklings and the woman was attempting to feed the group. Just beyond that a group of adult ducks paddled away from the bank into the canal. They were not remotely bothered by the terrible weather unlike me, at this stage absolutely soaked to the skin. Did I mention I was wearing a suit?

Is there anything worse than being soaked, in a suit?

The property in this part of the city is extremely valuable. Some of the properties are really impressive with many converted into office space by small companies.

From time to time you pass little places like the one above. You can imagine what the canal area must have been like when this place was built with no traffic and no worries about parking etc.

This is the view from Leeson Street bridge down towards Leeson Street Lower leading to Saint Stephen's Green. This is one of the "madness" bridges in Dublin where there is 1.5 lanes for cars and a cycle lane. It creates interesting scenarios between car drivers and cyclists at busy times.

There is a canal lock just beyond this bridge and I have memories of crossing this lock with my Father and brothers when I was younger. I never was much of a swimmer and the thought of edging across the canal represented a very courageous act on my part at the time. Nowadays people sit on this lock on sunny days and probably cross the thing drunk without any great difficulty. I'm still not that keen on walking across the narrow planks to get to the other side. Then again there is a bridge about 20 feet from it so I don't need to.

We have a general election coming up on May 24th to elect a new national government or Dáil as we call it in Ireland. There are posters everywhere of the various candidates. In the west of the city yesterday I noticed a few posters had been burned by passers by holding their lighters up to the corners of posters placed too low on poles.

Today I noticed one of the candidates floating face down in the canal. Well not the candidate but their poster. If you believe in voodoo dolls and all that then it might be a bad sign. A few others had the usual moustaches added, teeth blacked out and so forth.

Right next to the LUAS station I noticed a line of Garda cars and a little Garda station house. The Gardaí (an Garda Síochána or guardians of the peace) are the Irish national police force. They have a big national headquarters near here but in all the times I walked this way in the past I can honestly say I never noticed this building before. The cars parked outside are typical of the modern force.

I climbed the stairs to the LUAS station and just 2 minutes later I was on the way home. Trams are great. Hard to believe we a similar service in Dublin many years ago but decommissioned it only to discover decades later that it was exactly what the modern city needs.

Being a Dad is great

Last night I was bringing my oldest boy up to bed. We climbed the stairs, all the while he was messing and demanding that I carry him up the stairs.

He's 5 so he weighs a fair bit. The idea of carrying him anywhere on level ground is difficult enough, so carrying him up a flight of stairs is not so easy.

He was messing like crazy. Of late he has been doing this fake crying routine, pretending to be crying about just about anything he chooses. Two lego bricks won't stick together... WAAAAHHHH. He doesn't want to go up to bed.. WAAAAHHHH. And so on.

So he was at this lark last night as I was bringing him up. We made it to his bedroom, put on his pyjamas and then across the landing to the bathroom where the final pre-bed challenge nightly is the brushing of teeth.

He was there at the sink, Cars toothbrush in hand and randomly swishing the brush around in his mouth. He starts swinging his arms and giving me a random thump here and there.

I started out giving him that whole parental line about not thumping his dad when all of a sudden he caught my eye and we both burst out laughing.

That was the end of any thoughts of going to bed calmly and quietly. He laughed all the way through the rest of brushing his teeth, all the way back to his bed, and all the time while I was reading him a story.

One day on I just wish every day we ended up bursting into laughter. It's great.

Right now he's lying on the sofa in the next room shouting to me "Dad, can we hug each other".

It's great being a Dad.

I'm off to get my hug.

Bank Holiday weekend in Dublin

My family and I all took the LUAS into the city centre of Dublin on Saturday. My wife had some things she needed to do in the city and when she suggested that we might all go in on the LUAS I thought it was a great idea. Our 5 year old loves travelling on trains, while our youngest boy has only been once or twice.

It was a nice day in Dublin, warm but overcast. I think the lack of blue sky takes the edge off what would otherwise be a fantastic day with temperatures near 20° C and a little warmer out of what little breeze there was.

The first place we went was to the Joke Shop. This shop is just next to the LUAS terminus and it's been here for years. Our 5 year old likes practical jokes and tricks and we've been promising to take him here for a while now.

We went inside and he was astounded by all the stuff on display. He did what most kids do in that situation, namely shouting "DAD, LOOK AT THAT MASK! AND LOOK AT THAT ONE! AND THAT ONE" and so on. So excited and so funny. He chose this. Let's move on.

It's popular on days like this to make for Saint Stephen's Green, a small urban park right in the middle of the south side of the city so that's where we went next.

Aside: If you didn't know it, right through the centre of Dublin city runs the River Liffey. It has had the effect over the years of dividing the city into the Northside and the southside although in truth the city layout is now much more complex than that.

Anyway on days like these Saint Stephen's Green is pretty much packed with people sitting on the lawns essentially spending the afternoon watching the world walk past.

Inside The Green as it is known there are some lovely walks with tall trees and gardens everywhere and a nice lake in the middle.

The people who maintain the park maintain some pretty impressive flower displays in the various beds at the centre of the park.

In common with many other urban parks The Green has pigeons. Loads of pigeons. They are everywhere. We often bring bread for the ducks and end up having to fight off a flock of pigeons who want to grab the bread before the ducks can get it. Some of these pigeons are pretty brazen and keep coming back at you. Yesterday I spent most of the time at the lake's edge trying to prevent my 5 year-old son from accidentally following the bread into the lake. He puts a lot of energy into his bread-throwing action and forgets where he is.

The lake is the centrepiece of the park and it's full of gulls and bread. The ducks have the good sense to sleep in various quiet points along the side of the lake or to fly to other nearby waterspots until the crowds have died down in The Green. The shot above is from a nice little humpbacked bridge that spans the lake right in the middle of the park.

A wedding party sauntered through the park coming from a little church at the corner of the park, passing through on their way to a nearby hotel I suppose. They struck a lovely contrast with the rest of the people in the park, with hats and bow-ties standing out among t-shirts and jeans everywhere.

Foreign accents, tour guide books and european styled shoes were everywhere, suggesting that many many people are touring the city this weekend. It's great to see so many visitors to the city and so many people enjoying this lovely little park on a day like this.


When we were finished walking through the park we sat down on a bench just inside the entrance of the park (above). I then noticed a dirty finger print on the camera lens. Blast! If you go back and look at the previous pictures above you might notice a bit of blurring, a little lack of sharpness perhaps. Typical!


Sitting there on the bench I thought it was interesting how all kinds of people end up in the green. Businessmen and students side by side, discussing the trials and tribulations of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears perhaps?

We jumped on the LUAS and headed out of town with two tired little boys. The tram ride home is interesting as it passes up Harcourt Street with all the distinctive Georgian doors.

Once home the fun and games with the fake poo (with flies) began in earnest.

A sigh of relief

Well I can breathe a partial sigh of relief.

I got the results of my business school finals and I passed.

I'm thrilled and relieved.

I'm now on the final leg of the journey. I have to write my dissertation and submit that by the end of the year. I still don't have a topic but that probably just requires me to sit down and come up with an array of topics and then start rating them for suitability. Or something like that.

For now I am delighted to have that part done with. I spoke with some of my learning team yesterday and today and the ones I spoke with all passed too. There are two others in my group I haven't yet spoken with. I'm confident they have passed too.

It's a bank holiday weekend so this kicks things off nicely.