unironedman

The first fire of the season smoulders in the grate. My brother is over for the week, neatly coinciding with our Mum’s birthday, and he and I made short work of the last few logs which needed sawing, splitting and stacking. It’s next year’s firewood (unless we have a horrendously long Winter!), and the best part is that it was free to a good home (from a friend up the road who owns a farm). All I needed to do was a little chainsawing and load up the large boughs onto his truck.

After the previous week’s decent run along the canal, I changed tack and did ten miles, taking in the park and some of the back roads around Lucan (Tubber Lane, to be exact), hooking up with Castletown Demesne. The weather was perfect for running; crisp and clear, and more in keeping with the time of year. But since the gym has been taking precedence, the runs are roughly one a week for now. I do plan on changing that, but of course, the best laid plans, and all that…

Most of my running colleagues are gearing up for the Dublin Marathon, which always neatly coincides with the witching season of Hallowe’en, and more prosaically, bookends the typical running season too. It has often been my focal point, and it certainly means you squeeze the most out of the last of the reasonable weather and light to get your training done. Of course, this year, I did my long run back in July, so I rather peaked a bit too soon.

The rugby has been entertaining. Alas, Ireland kept with tradition and decided they had had enough and went home at the quarter-final stage, as is our wont. A tough game, of course, and credit to the All-Blacks. It went down to the wire. Fortunately, by vicarious circumstance, I still maintain an interest in proceedings (and not just because I love rugby). My country of birth – England – are into the semis, and our late friend Ciaran’s home country of South Africa are very much in the running after a nail biter against France.

Ciaran’s wife, Fiona, and her brother and some friends went over for the Ireland v Scotland game, and brought an Irish tricolour that had been on a tour of various stadia since the tournament began. They had emblazoned ‘Lotzy’ in large letters across the flag, which was Ciaran’s nickname. I admit, with his surname being Lotz, that it’s not the most imaginative of names. But it stuck and remained with him. As they gathered at the airport to catch their flight, a photographer snapped their little group and once the editor learned of the story behind the flag, it made the front page of the Irish Independent, Ireland’s biggest-selling daily.

In the picture below, you can just about see the flag hanging from the stands between the two Scottish players. Officials made them take it down in the end, as apparently, writing over a flag is deemed ‘political’, or some such nonsense. Not to worry; it made it to the papers and onto the big screen, and Lotzy’s team did him proud and may well go on to win the whole thing again. I will, of course, keep a weather eye out for England, who I suspect will get well spanked by the Boks, and we shall no doubt have the dream Southern Hemisphere final. For the record, esteemed referee Nigel Owens, MBE, predicted a clean sweep of Northern nations in the quarters, so, what does he know!

I shall finish my ramblings with a few odd pictures of dogs and a couple of funny items that came my way this week. At least the ones that are safe for work. And if anyone’s passing my local this Saturday, I shall be rocking out with my buddies. All welcome!