It’s been over two years you know, my old friend

Nobody blogs any more. Everyone’s on twitter cramming their exciting lives into 160 characters or fewer. I would struggle to seem interesting these days without any restrictions let alone in a short sentence or two.

I got a permanent job, moved to Dublin, got married and acquired a cat.  I live a stone’s throw away from Rosie & Andrew and Back Pedal Brakes who are now bona fide ‘real friends’. We mind each others’ cats and have dinner parties. Our cottage is a sneeze away from Safari Kent and Annie. Safari Kent and I lend each other bottles of wine and invariably drink them together. He ensures I don’t go too insane and I encourage him to allow us both to become more eccentric. So you could almost say that my blogging life has turned into real life.

And nobody blogs any more. Right?

Wrong.

I spent more than a good few days reading Coffee Helps and became so immersed in her world that she woke up all sorts of dormant feelings and ideas in me. So much so that I wrote her a fan letter. It doesn’t really matter if nobody else is blogging – the best of the best is still at it.  

Her superb writing made me so nostalgic. For the days of living in a foreign country, constantly meeting new people, travelling to new places, learning new languages…

I still travel a lot, just these days it’s for work. Which is great, but it’s still work. I usually cram in an extra evening or day to do a little discovery but I have a busy job so it’s never the same. Still, I won’t complain. This year I’ve been to India, Japan, San Francisco twice and have New York and Vegas coming up. All for work. It certainly beats twiddling my thumbs in Tralee looking forward to the arrival of the postman so we can chat about the weather.

I stopped blogging because I had nothing to say. Or when I did I was afraid to do it. Too many people I know read my blog and as I work in a very tech savvy environment it would have been clueless to write about my adventures in the workplace.

But reading Coffee Helps brought back all the reasons I loved it so much. The friends I made through blogging, being able to look back at a unique record of my days and looking at the world through the frame of ‘how could I write about that?’.

Plus My Very Own Newfoundlander and I are going back to The Netherlands for a holiday soon. It seems like a good time to start again. Maybe. I don’t know.

Summer is ready when you are

It turns out that trains to Paris are only sophisticated when they’re not cancelled and when you don’t end up doing a Tour de Netherlands to try and score an international train with some space to take you to Brussels before begging a ride on yet another train to France. Well, I suppose all good things are worth fighting for and Paris certainly made up for the difficulties in getting there.

Our hard work was rewarded by a glorious show of greenery. All the trees there are already proudly displaying their full leaves whereas here they’ve just begun to show their heads. Can’t blame them really what with our yo-yo weather.

So I walked the length and breadth of the city taking it all in between munching on scrummy French food and Kirs galore.  Musée d’Orsay became my favourite museum in the world. Not just because of their impressive collection of art or even the stunning building but the fact that ‘kids’ up to thirty years old get a reduced rate. It’s been years since I’ve been in an age category that benefited me – I felt like Le Spring Chicken and bounced about the museum in my newly discovered youth.

Saturday night saw me on my own in the big city as my travelling companion developed a questionable attachment to the hotel room. It’s notable how often I’ve needed to rely on my own company recently – a syndrome of singledom I suppose. Having thus lost my interpreter and considering that French waiters don’t really believe I’m vegetarian and seem hell bent on hiding little surprise cubes of pig under salad leaves I thought it safer to have a more liquid evening meal. This of course led to a most …. interesting series of events. Armed with only a map and a whole lot of Dutch Courage I marched about town trying to find the friendliest locals in the cosiest pubs. It’s amazing how social one can be armed with gallons of beer and the realisation that you don’t live there and never have to see anyone again. I kept on returning to the bar to order more drinks under the pretence of perfecting how to do it in French. This also made the irritating tasks of direction and map reading close to impossible. Strategies such as to keep walking in a straight line (easier said than done at 4am) with the hope that the hotel would miraculaously appear proved not to be the wisest. I will be eternally grateful to the taxi driver who took pity on me and brought me safely back to the hotel in the wee small hours.

The humungous hangover on Sunday morning was softened wonderfully by a lazy brunch with the most charming of everyone I had met the evening before. Strolling around Paris with him in the glorious sunshine was the perfect close to the weekend. I am definitely ready for Summer. 

Octopus’s Garden

Autumn officially began in The Netherlands last Thursday. Ok maybe not officially but at about 3.30 in the afternoon I looked out the window and noticed that the light had changed. I can always sense the seasons changing here quite clearly. Usually it’s a subtle change of light and difference in temperature. Not that the temperature necessarily goes up or down, the air just feels slightly different. Mainly it’s to do with the light though.

Well that marks the end of the most unsuccessful show of summer in recent history. It’s hard to feel down though because Autumn is wonderful here. There are so many trees about, even in the cities, that before long the streets with be decorated will yellows and reds and browns. I may have reached the grand old age of thirty but I still can’t resist kicking through the leaves on my way home scattering them all over the shop.  Also the Dutch love their candles and the long nights are a perfect excuse to set them all alight (the candles not the Dutch).  There is something incredibly cosy about wandering about the streets of old Dutch towns and cities and seeing the flickering warm light shining out of the houses.

I decided to celebrate Autumn’s arrival by using a present my occasionally sane sister gave me over a year ago. Basically it was a great big lump of seaweed that you put in your bath so you reemerge looking like Brad Pitt. It may just be seaweed but it was packaged in a fancy colourful paper bag so it probably cost 20 euro. I could never find the right occasion to turn my bathroom into Banna Beach – until this week. It was a change of season warm up bath.

I have to say I was more than sceptical as I lowered myself into the brown smelly water. I was just as sceptical as I lay there holding my nose and trying to relax as I brushed against the slippery weed. Would it have killed them to add a lavender scent and a couple of bubbles I wondered. When I eventually got out I rushed to the mirror to see the results of my marine bath. No Brad Pitt I’m afraid just a goofy looking Conortje with bits of brown slime dotted here and there and some brown oily residue forming a puddle on the floor – very attractive. Test failed I decided to return to the more conventional way of greeting the season change. Lots of candles and perhaps the odd pumpkin and mulled wine.

The problem now is my bathroom smells like a bucketful of barnacles that have been rotting for a week in the belly of a whale. I think I need to get some bathroom air freshener – it certainly won’t be Ocean Fresh scent though that’s for sure.