See you next Tuesday?

I haven’t been out much since I moved to Dublin, at least not in the conventional sense. Last night I decided to break that streak by heading to Dublin’s Lost Society, a tiny, tiny venue that hosts different nights a week. I was there a few months back when I finished my Leaving Cert; I was unimpressed. The club was crammed to the rafters and I spent most of the night trying not to think about the Stardust tragedy. Seriously. In all the photos from that night I just look concerned. However, I’d heard seriously good things about C.U.N.T., the Tuesday night extravaganza. So I went along, trying in vain to drag my History class with me but ending up mixed up with an entirely different course in my college. Nonetheless, you can’t always get what you want.

A bottle of wine and a long walk later, I arrived at the venue with my lovely friend Conor. On first glance, Lost Society seemed just as tiny as ever. Not so! Tonight, there was an upstairs – but the place was still mobbed. My God. I’m used to the giant nightclubs of Kildare, where there’s always room not only to sit, but to nap if you feel like it. C.U.N.T was absolutely jammed, but then again, there’s always room to dance!

Sometimes I forget how much I like to dance, to just go for it and pretend no-one’s looking at you. This is what I did last night, actually. So much fun, particularly when I knew the songs being played. Unfortunately, this was pretty rare: it’s not like me to be totally clueless regarding music, but I knew about one song in ten last night. Perhaps the music in the place is just not what I’m used to. It’s funny, though: music that doesn’t suit you really messes with a night. It’s not a night-ruiner…it just makes it weird. Dancing to songs you don’t know with people you don’t know. Weird.

My friend Kate has always thought that on a night out, you have a fifty per cent chance of having a good time. While this is probably true, I feel I ought to experiment with going out more. I don’t do enough of it, and if you do it right it’s not too dear (last night cost me four euro in total!)

 

So, dear friends: where do you all club at? What nights can you recommend to someone who is admittedly clueless? God, I’m a class rep and a half.

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.

Madeira cake and a length of copper pipe

This is a blogpost brought to you by two things: my stress and my brother's taste in music.

I get stressed because I'm doing my Leaving Cert. When I'm stressed, I like to bake - but I'm not good at baking by any means. My best friend Zoe makes the greatest cake in the world - it's science - but I'm more of a "sure toss it in, it'll be fine!" kind of person.

This has occasionally gone very, very well (cinnamon and chocolate cupcakes, anyone?) but more often than not ends up in me feeding the mixture to Marley, our dog. I don't bake for the cake, though - it's a wonderfully de-stressing experience, like taking a bath or going for a walk. The mixing, the scooping, the measuring, and the deliciousness of a warm cupcake are just brilliant for chilling me out.

Madeira buns are the single greatest thing to make when you feel like something sweet and you've got feck all in the house, which I nearly always do. Sometimes, I make my granny's wonderful marbled madeira cake: it's plain madeira with chocolate swirled in and it's absolutely to die for. I'd give you the recipe, but I'll leave that to part two of the post...

My younger brother is quite the accent whizzkid, and lately, he can't stop singing songs by The Rubberbandits Spastic Hawk ("Spastic Haaaaawwwk") is his most recent find, and he will not stop singing it...at dinner, doing homework, playing football, he never stops!

He also showed me this recently enough, and I was in stitches laughing at it! I never normally go in for Irish comedy - particularly novelty-ish acts like these guys, but my god, this is perfect. Though it's ten times funnier when Enda does it.