My Dublin Life

I can cook!!! The hard-hearted might suggest that I'm stretching the truth a little here, but so far as I'm concerned, getting dinner right three nights in a row without burning anything is a major achievement. When Bepe first suggested I pick up some work in his restaurant, I felt as though he might as well have proposed I go out and become an astronaut or something, but now I think I might be in with a chance to score a... well, a minimum wage job!

Joking aside, my head is just so full of facts and literature right now I think a spell working in the real world and getting my hands dirty is just what I need.

I wanted to say "thanks" to Bepe for all the time he's been spending helping me learn how to cook, so I was thinking I might take him to this. It's a show in the Dublin Dance Festival which is starting soon, and it's an Irish-Italian collaboration so I think it's apt for an Italian guy living in Dublin. It's true that he's more into sports and stuff than this sort of thing but we all need to try new stuff, right?

I've already talked on here about the Gay Theatre festival that started yesterday. I'm ashamed to say that I actually dropped into The Dragon on George's Street last night to see if it was full of gay theatrical types. I'm going to stop going in there, although I do love the decor. It's just too sad sitting among some of the handsomest men in Dublin and not being chatted up by any of 'em!!!

Anyway, I got text from my Uncle Joey who tells me that he's coming up to see a show with his, eh, buddy,this weekend and can they stay in my apartment. I'm really glad the whole out-of-the-closet thing is working out well for him, but when he originally came over what now seems like ages ago, he stayed in a hotel, but now that he's actually living in Ireland, seems he wants to stay in this EXTREMELY TINY apartment. Meanwhile, he's asked me not to tell anyone back home that he's living with another man, in case they "jump to conclusions".

[Rolls eyes]

Anyway, the prize for the best-named show in the Gay Theatre Festival has just got to be Oklahomo from the London Gay Men's Chorus, and I've just gotta go.

Interesting news: My greengrocer, fount of all useful information about Dublin, is going to a show starring a close friend of his daughter, a successful milliner. "I got an awful shock when he came out of the closet," he said, "but I'm after getting used to it now, and I always tell him whatever anyone does, so long as they don't do it on the streets and scare the horses, it's none of my business."

I so love that guy, and I would so miss him if I ever leave Dublin. He's such a poet!

Got to run -- my flatmate is teaching me how to make "osso buco" (spelling?) tonight.

Cloudy skies are back! And just before the weekend, too! However, I'm choosing to see this as a good thing; I've got loads of work to do in the final stretch of my masters degree plus, even if the sun doesn't decide to break through this weekend, there's actually a lot going on. Anyway, it's been so nice and sunny lately, there's really nothing to complain about.

Now that summer's coming, I'm hoping to spend a little more time in the Wicklow Mountains and maybe the Mournes. It's so beautiful there. But this weekend I'm staying right in the city. I went on camping trip last summer, and it was fantastic!

This weekend, though, I'm staying right here. There are posters up all over the city centre advertising a festival in "SoGo" -- the South Great George's Street area. That's one of the main areas where I go out anyway, so I think it'll be fun moseying about over there. Also, and I feel a little shy mentioning this, I've started writing some poetry. Although literature is my subject, I'd never been a big poetry person. Maybe it's being here that's got me started, but I've written a few things. I bet they're actually awful, but there's a pub in Wicklow Street that has a poetry evening on Mondays and I was going to try and get some courage together and check it out.

So far as picking up work, any work, to keep me here a bit longer when I've finished my MA goes, I've got some inside information re. my flatmate Bepe's restaurant. There's going to be an opening for an assistant chef in a couple of months as one of the boys is going back to Italy. When Bepe told me that, my reaction was "But I can't cook." It's true; all I really know how to make is soup. So he's teaching me all the basics of Italian cooking one recipe at a time!! Last night we did carbonara, and I burned it, so fingers crossed that tonight's puttanesca works out better. Even if I don't get the job, at least I'll have learned a few recipes.

The first one, the "puppet ballerina" actually was mesmerising in real life. This photo doesn't really do the show justice.

These other guys are puppets "waiting in the wings." The one with the beard is looking very patient!

Almost despite myself, I'm actually getting quite fond of the little urchins I've been taking care of on Saturdays. I'd never go into child care professionally, and the jury's still out on whether I'd ever actually want a rugrat of my own but, like moss, these two grow on you. And that's not all. This weekend the annual national puppet festival was on. Now, I'd almost certainly never have gone to anything (maybe one of the adult shows, but maybe not) in this, because I'm not so much the demographic they're going for. But wow! Puppet shows are fun! It's amazing how easy it is for us to suspend our disbelief. I mean, we go to the cinema and watch things in 3D and yet, although we know there's a man behind the curtain with his hand inside the puppet, we find ourselves caring about the characters. I went to a "paid" show with the kids, but there were also a lot of free shows. Sweetest scene of the weekend -- two very menacing looking teenage boys with scary hair and scowls breaking into enraptured smiles as they watched an Italian puppetteer. At the end they sloped off telling each other, "That was f****g brilliant!" "Yeah, f*****g deadly, man!"

Maybe they weren't the demographic the puppet show was going for either, but, aw, they loved it.

If you're coming next year, check it out.

On a completely different note, once I'd given the kids back to their Mom, I met my New Friend and went to the National Photographic Archive in Temple Bar. Despite the great location, this place is quite discreet about what it does, but it shouldn't be. Once, for college, I had to read Susan Sontag on photography. Seeing the current exhibition, which is about the Irish Civil War . Seeing images of actual people makes it all so different than just reading about it.

Today, I'm telling my folks that I'm not coming back to Newfoundland or even Canada when I'm done with this course. I just don't feel ready to go. It's as though there's something that's keeping me here and I'm going to have to stay until I find out what it is.

I'm actually positively looking forward to my Saturday job this week. For one thing, it will be great to get away from endlessly editing my dissertation and to get my head out of a book. For another, rather than just watching the kids, I'm going to be taking them to not one but two puppet shows in the national Irish puppet festival!

Dublin actually has its own dedicated puppet theatre but this festival is on all over the place and the venues I'm attending are in the city centre.

Speaking of the city centre, last night I went for a drink in a new place I had never heard of. And it's not surprising because this is a bar with no name, no sign and no light outside. There's just an enigmatic snail hanging up. Apparently, this joint is known as "the bar with no name". So you go up some rather grubby stairs, wondering vaguely if you're going to end up in someone's apartment or maybe an opium den or something and then, presto! You're in a New York-ish loft sort of a place with scuffed sofas and handsome waiters serving chilled drinks and it's like, "What the..."

I've told several people about this place, and they've all said, "What you'd never been there before! I don't beliiieeeve it."

Apparently, it opened last year and is now officially one of the coolest places in town. I guess I didn't hear about it because I'm just not cool enough.

Anyway, I'm not going out tonight; staying in with my flatmate, a DVD and a bottle of wine. He's chosen the DVD and I've gotta say it's an odd choice for a boy; Bride Wars.

It's a beautiful spring day here in Dublin's fair city, and it might seem a little macabre under the circumstances to talk about anything dead but I was reading the paper and I found out that Dublin's very famous "dead zoo", which has been closed for three years, is about to open!

What's that? Well, it's a Museum of Natural History, and loads and loads of people have told me that I have to go and see it, but I haven't been able to because it's been closed for renovations for a few years. Apparently, it's very beloved by all Dubliners and as Dubliners like to give everything a nickname, it goes by the name "The Dead Zoo." It's going to open back up on April 29th.

As usual, my local greengrocer has been a fount of information. He tells me that he used to take his kids there, that he credits this as the reason why his daughter the milliner chose her profession (the exotic birds' plumage, you see) and that the museum is justifiably famous for not having been updated for something like 150 years. He says, "Sure they never did it up because in them days there was no money in the country and for once it was the right thing to do, because when you walk through the doors you're stepping back in time."

As it all sounds more than suitable for a lover of all things to do with the ninenteenth century, I'll be checking it out, for sure.

If I've been writing less about bars and going out than usual, there's a good reason for that; the end of the academic year is fast approaching, and with it the deadline I've given myself for telling the folks back home that I've decided to chance my luck in Dublin for another little while. Against all odds, I might even have a little good news on the job front - but I don't want to say too much in case nothing comes of it. Anyway, wish me luck, OK?