unironedman

“Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat”
“We smoked the last one an hour ago”
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field…

America
Simon and Garfunkel

That song was written the year before I was born. It’s an absolute, certifiable classic, and for many, describes a country that was rapidly fading from memory at the time. And do these places really ever exist in the first place? That said, we all have our rose-tinted view of our own country. Certainly, recent events in Ireland have shown that the gloss of the thousand welcomes is well and truly tarnished, and our forty shades of green label is really the worst kind of horse-shit marketing ever. But that’s another story; another gripe for another time, perhaps…

It’s a beautiful number, and one I play after a couple of pints with a modicum of encouragement.

And so, let me explain my absence, as I am sure you were all worried about me (!). I was navigating the third part of the EMT course, which was the exam (multiple choice, one hundred questions). As fate would have it, it landed on the same day as Dad’s one-year anniversary; 24th January. The exam went fine: it was in the city centre, in an exam building – rooms full of banks of computers in little cubicles – with lots of nervous-looking students. So there is just one more test to complete next month, and then I will be qualified, fingers crossed.

My brother had popped over for a few days, and we took a trip out at the weekend to have a look at Three Rock mountain, which is where we will scatter Dad’s ashes at Easter time. We were joined by Rob’s youngest son, Oren. The trip up to Ticknock is quite different these days to when Dad would have experienced it as a youngster. The M50 motorway (the country’s busiest) runs past the end of Ticknock Road where once this tiny cluster of houses on the edge of the Dublin Mountains would have been pretty much the end of the known universe for Dubliners on the southside of town.

The old granite cottage the family lived in is still there, but it’s been absorbed by new buildings each side. Nice that it still exists, though. We drive on past to find the new car park into Ticknock Woods. These woods would not have been here either, as they are a relatively new spruce plantation. Within the trees are mountain bike trails. We park up and begin the leg-stretching hike uphill to find the place. Three Rock gives a fantastic view over the capital and the Irish Sea; sadly, this also meant it was the ideal spot for telecommunications masts, and the area all around Three Rock is all but surrounded by these metal triffids.

On the day we visited, it was very windy (the tail-end of yet another Atlantic storm), and the main mast was practically howling in the wind – all but ready to set sail off into the sea on a great adventure. But clearly the engineers have thought this out, and the masts have not budged an inch since my last visit. More’s the pity!

The photo above is from the approach to the hilltop. The ones below are from the top itself, plus a nice view of the city through a gap in the trees.

We drove around to a lovely pub called The Blue Light, and had some toasted sandwiches. We will use this as our rendezvous point for family and friends come March, and retire here after the event for some food and a few drinks.

In keeping with the Dad theme, I have been doing a bit of work next door in the old place, for my Mum. It’s a sort of open-ended project. Each time I finish a task, a new one seems to pop up and wave at me. It started with a short section of flat roof that had rather come to the end of its days. It was leaking badly in places, and rotten in enough parts to mean it could not be saved. So down it came. It meant a rethink on that little area that was once covered and attached to a conservatory-style room that my Dad built. So all those exposed timbers had to be weather-proofed and sealed up, and then a new gutter fitted. And the render on some arches he had crafted had to be sealed up. And then it meant resolving some electrical problems that had dogged that space for years… and so it has gone on from one job to another. Each one is different and presents a different challenge. Wiring, plumbing, painting, roofing… I guess he handed down enough skills over the years to let me have a crack at most things. And his workshop was normally a treasure-chest that keeps on giving. But, I note with a degree of sadness, that a few items that would have thronged the place (4x2s for door frames, for example) once upon a time, are finally exhausted. And so I have been tripping down to the local hardware stores for supplies each week. Clearing out that workshop is going to be tough, and I have been postponing the task for some time. Though I might add I won’t be emptying it, or re-purposing it; it just needs to be really overhauled. And for that, some stuff needs to go.

The work has been fun. I had to rip out the whole gable end of the greenhouse he had fashioned from windows and glazing bars he had purloined from some job or other (which was his speciality!). I had to rebuild the entire end and put in a new door. The innards of that space will also need a serious clear-out, and then a repaint. But it will be a great space in a few week’s time, and it can be used for planting up lots of Spring flowers for window boxes and hanging baskets.

The jobs seem to roll in like waves onto a beach. There is perhaps no end to them, but at some point I will have to call a truce, even if that’s a temporary one. No matter. It will get done. Or, at very least, enough will get done to make it all look presentable. Hopefully we can properly celebrate Dad once more with a grand family barbecue in the Summer. And for that, we need the place looking fabulous. Dad’s family barbecues were the stuff of legend.

The last piece of the EMT puzzle is in about three weeks’ time, so I will be keeping the head down for much of February. And feet down too, as I rather foolishly signed up for a 100-mile challenge in the same month, to help fundraise for the Mater Hospital. Here is the link to my Facebook page (it’s the pinned post). I am not famously good at begging for money, but if you can spare a fiver, that would be great.

I was doing my ambulance placement at the time, and for three of the four days, we were transferring patients to and from this hospital. And I figured it would give me the kick in the arse I needed to get back out and doing some serious miles again, in the build up to the Connemara Ultra (which is about 40 miles), in April.

There has been a little bit of running since we last spoke, but not nearly enough. Gym too took a bit of a beating; it was all down to January being a bit of a crap month, but that was to be expected.

So, to finish off, here are some random photos, plus a few silly things gleaned from the Interweb of Silliness.