Les cartes.

Greetings, islanders. I write to you from the wonderful French west coast, where I have spent the past week. It's all been sun, sand, sea and, er, Breaking Bad until today. The weather has taken a turn for the Irish and it's been lashing since 6am. I woke up this morning to raindrops slamming off the roof, sounding like thunder. Not one for the sun, I don't mind too much, but my mum and my sister are distraught, particularly Eimear. She came here, it seems, for one reason only: to tan. Hilariously enough, my brother has tanned, but not her. I have freckled terribly and chunks of my shoulders are considerably pinker than others. My main gripe with the holiday has been the fact that I can't sleep - thank American Psycho and tin rooves for that.

Rain, rain, go away, you're ruining my sleeping pattern.

Unlike many things, La Palymre is considerably less fun when wet. My family and I have spent the afternoon in our mobile home, eating crackers and coaxing the shitty wifi to work. Shockingly, it's not that much fun in a mobile home, particularly when there are five people in it. Two of which are over six feet tall. Anyway, Enda's and my solution to the boredom was a deck of cards. Cards on holiday seem to be a quintessentially Irish thing. To me, it conjours up images of a Father Ted-style caravan holiday, with seven kids yelling snap at each other while the parents do shots of whiskey and make ham sandwiches. My mum spent her childhood holidays playing cards together because it was too wet to do much else, in Galway, Cork, Kerry and Wexford. Thirty years later, history is repeating itself - Enda and I spent a good hour playing twenty-fives. We played five or six games, one of which I managed to win.

The problem with me and cards is that my brain is...just...not...that logical. It's okay for social logic ("YOU CAN'T JUST SHIFT SOMEONE ELSES FELLA, GODDAMN!" etc.) but when it comes to any kind of numerical logic, I really, really fail at it. Of five. Maybe Enda has a gift for these things, I don't know. It was pretty embarrassing to lose that badly to a 14 year old, though.

It got me thinking about ~the simple things~. I've got a laptop with a bunch of movies on it with me, but it was just as enjoyable to play with a few bits of paper with Enda. I'm not remotely patriotic, but maybe the rain brings out the, eh, Irishness in some people. Or maybe I was just sick of the laptop. Either way, cards are great. I can't say I understand their logic (or even half understand it) but it beats walking on a beach in the rain by several country miles.

A bientot.