My Dublin Life

I got an email this morning from the lady who posts my blog on the Dublin Tourism website asking me to mention that they have some new videos on there about upcoming festivals in the city. It's a good idea -- festivals are back-t0-back throughout the year in Dublin and it can be all too easy to let one slip by.

Case in point: The Dublin Soul Festival has just ended, and I hardly got to anything. At least now that I've decided to stay on, there's always next year. Anyway, check out the videos of festivals. There's one on this very weekend, the Maritime Festival in the docklands! I'll be babysitting Saturday and I'm going to ring the Mom tonight to see if she'd like me to take the kids. They're nice kids, but they're the sort you have to keep exercising, like dogs, or they get wound up and start to make a lot of noise.


It's crazy, but I sometimes forget Dublin's on the sea, despite the fact that I can see the tidal Liffey river from my apartment window, and the seagulls that are always wheeling over the buildings. But it is, and just a couple of bus stops or a brisk walk from the city centre, there are beaches and people swimming and dogs chasing sticks on the sand. If the weather's good this weekend, and it's supposed to be, I'm off to the sea. I might even swim. Some folks claim the water's too cold, but not for me -- I'm from Newfoundland! It's practically a bath here compared to our water.

Under my bed, I found the cheap tent I bought last year from Lidl. Know what I'm thinking? If I can get someone to come with me, I just might go camping on Sunday!

It's clearly fate: Since I decided to stay here, at least for another year or so, things have been falling into place. I've been writing blog for over a year now, and it's a non-paying gig -- I get free tickets to things sometimes, but that's it. But now, Dublin Tourism has offered me a little work as a "meeter and greeter", at least over the summer. As I've already got 25 hours a week in a restaurant and a babysitting job on Saturdays, I think I'm doing OK! At first I thought it was a little odd to hire a foreigner but then -- who better? I've seen and done things in Dublin that most of my local friends haven't, and I think I know the city pretty well now.

Exciting!

Well, that's it; my college days are over. All bar the results. I feel strangely numb. I guess it's a rite of passage of sorts but in the end it wasn't really celebrated. Different people wandered off at different times so that's it, here we are. I have a few days off and then I'm starting my new job. My instinct is to just sleep until I've got my head around the new circumstances, but life is intervening to keep me busy.

My friend Saoirse's gone away on a vacation so her Mom has roped me in to attend a big garden festival in Phoenix Park with her. It's called "Bloom". I don't know if the overtones of Joyce's Ulysses are deliberate or not!

I can't say I know anything about gardening but I'll be sure to take some photographs. Back home, my grandfather used to use fish for fertiliser to grow potatoes for the family. However, I think this is more along the lines of gardening as art than survival! It's been lovely and sunny of late, so hopefully it'll be good. Sometimes I think I get along with Saoirse's Mom better than she does. I guess there's always a little tension between parents and their adult kids. Anyway, as I'm so far away from my own family, it's nice to have someone older to talk to sometimes. Anyway, I guess I'll take her out to lunch to say thanks for the day out. There's going to be a big food market up there. I wonder what the herds of deer in Phoenix Park will think of all the people coming and going? I guess they must be used to it by now, but I've never gotten used to the idea of a huge flock of deer living wild in the middle of the city. I tell everyone to go to Phoenix Park -- honestly, I think it's one of the nicest things about Dublin in the summer.

My housemate, Bepe, is expecting another visit from his family soon, which will make our place seem really small. I remember dreading them coming the last time, but then really liking them -- plus his Mom kept cooking up delicious meals for everyone, so a little chaos is a small price to pay. It's funny; when I came to Dublin I didn't really like him all that much and now, I don't know, we're like brother and sister, or cousins or something. It's a very easy place to live and I think I feel more at home in this tiny apartment than I did for the last couple of years I spent with mom and dad. I have to remind myself sometimes that it's not really ours and one of these days one or both of us will have to move out. He hasn't had a girlfriend for a while, which makes it easier -- there really isn't room here for more than two people for more than a few days.

Ooh -- I just Googled Phoenix Park and found out that they are now doing Segway Tours! Wow, that does sound like fun. I wonder if anyone would like to come with me?

I'm just about due a visit from someone from home, I think. I love having visitors. It's too easy to get in a rut and not do stuff when you're on your own. A friend to show around would be a lot of fun right now. I'll have to see if I can persuade someone to take a trip...

Something I love here are the markets, and I think they're worth visiting for anyone coming to Dublin. They're not about big fashion labels, generally, or about pretentious dining, but they are about seriously good food, clothing that encompasses everything from vintage to new, and all sorts of things you didn't know you just had to have until you found 'em. Like a fantastic book I picked up, published in 1908, that explains how to be a housewife, including (get this) warming your husband's slippers while he enjoys the meal you've prepared for him.

There's the easy-to-find, like the one in Temple Bar, there's my personal favourite, the Flea Market at Newmarket Square (not that easy to find, and it's a shame, because it's a great secret), the slightly odd Meath Street Market, various chichi markets in places like Dun Laoighaire and now a new one out near The o2, the Point Village Market. I think it's just opened recently. Certainly, I haven't been there yet, but I'll be putting that right this weekend.

As of now, I'm no longer a student. The real world awaits. I'm starting my minimum wage job in an Italian restaurant next week, hoping that I'll be able to keep up with the cooks (until recently, all I could make was soup), and feeling very grateful for having a job. I've done the math and between this and the babysitting-on-Saturday gig I should be able to make ends meet, just about. Fortunately, I'm a low-maintenance sort of gal! :-) My parents are still horrified that I'm doing this instead of getting my teaching diploma, but life's short, right? And we've all experienced teachers who hate the job and are just putting in time because someone told them "Go on, do a teaching diploma, it's something you can always fall back on". Maybe I will decide to be a teacher -- but not yet.

One thing that I'm a little worried about so far as the new job goes is the fact that I'll be working with my housemate, Bepe. We get along fine at home -- but we don't see all that much of each other. Now we'll be working together too. I hope it's not going to be all a bit too much. Also, as he's a professional chef, won't it be kind of weird, being a junior person in his restaurant? Well, time will tell.

Have a great weekend.

I got the urge to go to the cinema last night but, honestly, just couldn't cope with all the Sex and the City posters in the bigscreen place. I HATE SATC.

After browsing the options at Cineworld for a while, I just couldn't take all the posters of those four awful women any more and fled to the nearby Lighthouse in Smithfield. It's a more artsy sort of a place and while I like a good blockbuster as much as the next woman, Sex and the City is just a step too far.

OK, the rant is over.

Today is a very important day in the Irish calendar. Guess what? It's National Fish and Chips day! This was set up by the Irish Traditional Italian Chippers Association!! So, apparently, we're all celebrating 125 years of fish & chips in Ireland. Apparently, this food of the gods was actually introduced by Italians. Amazing. Well, it all sounds good to me. I have two main favourites for fish and chips. One is the incredible Burdocks, and the other is Beshoffs. But then again, I also like the Borza fish and chips. Well, what to do? I guess we're spoiled for choice in this fair city!

But isn't funny that fish and chips, beloved of Dubliners everywhere, was actually introduced by Italians? I bet most of the Italian tourists I see with their paper bags full of greasy treats don't know that!

I know, it's a cliche to talk about Dublin as a city of literature, but like so many cliches, it's true. Whether it's all the pubs celebrating the fact that James Joyce or Brendan Behan used to drink there, or the former Taoiseach's daugher writing best-selling chick-lit (not necessarily my sort of thing, but if you like that stuff, I've heard its good), or the arts student scribbing on his ipod, it's all there. Basically, everyone in Dublin is a writer or wants to be a writer or at least goes to the pub with a writer.

Which is a long-winded way of introducing the Dublin Writer's Festival. I might have mentioned it before, but it's coming up next week so I thought I'd say it again. Writers in English from around the world will be presenting talks and it's all very exciting! Even though I won't be a student for much longer (just a week now) I do like the thought of being able to sit at the feet of all those great, famous people and listen to their words of wisdom, not to mention the prospect of maybe, just maybe, splitting a round of drinks with Ian McEwan!! Or Yann Martel.

The weather has been amazing in Dublin over the last few days, turning it from an attractive city to the MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY IN THE WORLD!!!

I'm sure it's bad for the buildings, but there's a sort of a tree in Dublin that likes to grow on chimney tops and out of walls. It looks like a lilac, but it seems to favour very improbable spots and to be able to grow just about anywhere. The flowers are starting to come out now. You won't see this on the big, fancy squares, but turn down a side street and there it is; living, beautiful proof that if you give a plant and the process of evolution long enough it will come up with a smart way to grow in an invisible crack in the most inhospitable wall.

And I'll leave you with that thought. If you're coming to Dublin soon, keep your eye open for 'em.