Enchanted Ireland

Living in Ireland is always an adventure for sure. They should issue hard hats, worry beads, and ear plugs at the every airport. Just when everybody has been fretting to death about the economy, the next pint, and maybe global warming if they are good at the long face, we have had weeks of unprecedented freeze alternating with sudden thaws topped by torrential rain and then the shakey-bakey with  soggy oozing from the motherland of bogs toppling whatever annoyed it up above and chewing roads to pot-hole journeys to hell. We had our car flooded here in Cork on a road with a roiling two feet of water and no warning signs or Gardai to wave you away -- but that was small change compared to the havoc played throughout the city when the electric monopoly of ESB decided to open their damn dam floodgates in the middle of the night without telling nearly a soul beforehand.

Then it was back to the deep freeze and two nights later the pipes burst in our Waterford cottage in Ballyduff and what a mess. The winds whipped up the next day and twisted the TV dish around on our roof so that it wouldn't stop broadcasting pictures of people I was trying to avoid. Then it thawed, and with renovations going on next door in Cork beside our 130 year-old garden wall, it fell the day after. I got talking to an insurance guy, and his take was unique: "This could be the stimulus we need to jump start the economy."

Holy Mother of Johannes, and Mary and all the saints, it is indeed dangerous to "travel beyond this point" -- and such a step is not advised lightly. But oh yes, life remains interesting on the enchanted isle.

Posted by David Monagan.