Trip to France

I should have posted this earlier but better late than never. The weekend before last I decided to travel on what was the last return sailing of the "Val de Loire" in the service of Brittany Ferries. Cork people might remember the Val as the ship which served France before the Pont Aven arrived. So off I flew to Gatwick and from there got a train to Portsmouth. While waiting for the train it was announced that the first 4 coaches were for Portsmouth and the rest for Littlehampton -trains don't split over here. Gatwick station is interesting as it is on the mainline and from it you can see planes taking off - a bit of a change from Ballybrophy. Anyways after a mundane enough journey in comfortable Southern stock I arrived in Portsmouth and met up with my fellow travellers. Before being bussed onto the ferry we had to go through airline type security - car travellers had no such issues so whilst a guy in a Megane could bring along a canteen of cutlery, four blowtorches and a hatful of machetes , the poor foot traveller was searched. First stop after getting on board was the bar for a traditional cidre. The first thing that struck me was that the Val was in perfect condition and much much better than the Irish ferries Normandy which is a floating rustbucket and which costs as much as the much better Brittany Ferries offering. After a good while in the bar we got to go on a bridge visit - the bridge is massive with loads of room and was an interesting experience. Its a far cry from the bridge of the LE Roisin. Later on we had dinner - the lamb was excellent as was the starter and the desserts. The crossing was smooth as well. When we got to Caen we got off and had a quick walk down a totally closed town... A bottle of champagne was opened on the departure from Caen to toast the occasion and it was a nice experience steaming out the channel marked by the red/green lights. Lovely and quiet. For me it was a change not having the children around. back to the bar where the DJ was the subject of good humoured banter and then to bed. Arrival in Portsmouth was at 6am - it was bitterly cold and wet. The Spinnaker Tower was visible from afar. Unloading was quick (not many onboard) and next stop was the station where I got a train to Waterloo. In Waterloo I had breakfast and amused myself by counting the policemen - the place was swarming with them - there were around 20 down at the end I was at. Off into town with me and eventually made my way back to Gatwick for my EasyJet flight home - 1 hour late due to earlier issues with the seats.

EI-DES my personal reg

EI-DES my personal reg
Originally uploaded by despod.

Luas

Luas
Originally uploaded by despod.

Covent Garden

Covent Garden
Originally uploaded by despod.

You're a star !

You're a star !
Originally uploaded by despod.

Arrival in Portsmouth

Arrival in Portsmouth
Originally uploaded by despod.

Goodbye Caen

Goodbye Caen
Originally uploaded by despod.

Me in Caen

Me in Caen
Originally uploaded by despod.

Arrival in Caen

Arrival in Caen
Originally uploaded by despod.

Quatre desserts

Quatre desserts
Originally uploaded by despod.

Shoulder of lamb

Shoulder of lamb
Originally uploaded by despod.

Bridge of Val de Loire

Bridge of Val de Loire
Originally uploaded by despod.

The wake of the Val

The wake of the Val
Originally uploaded by despod.

Cabin 806 val de loire

Cabin 806 val de loire
Originally uploaded by despod.

Worthing : train splits

Worthing : train splits
Originally uploaded by despod.

Waiting for the 11.55 to Portsmouth from

Waiting for the 11.55 to Portsmouth from
Originally uploaded by despod.

DSC00166

DSC00166
Originally uploaded by despod.

O'Leary Air

O'Leary Air
Originally uploaded by despod.

Cork airport mornings

Its a lovely morning - frost and clear skies. I'm up at the airport waiting for my flight to Gatwick. After Gatwick I'm on a train to Portsmouth and getting a ferry to Caen.

This evening is the last full return sailing of the Val de Loire with Brittany Ferries. Cork people may remember the Val when it did the cork - Roscoff route in the years prior to the arrival of the Pont Aven in 2004.

So I'm having dinner on board which is a first as we usually eat in the self-service. It will be a quick turnaround in Caen and back to Portsmouth where I will have a lot of time befor heading back to gatwick . Ill either visit the submarine museum or head to the Isle of Wight depending on the weather which is forecasted to be wet.

Hello to the Vatican !

I use Statcounter for my traffic logging and I think it's a fine service - it has helped me see what is driving traffic to this site (and some of that is a bit amazing). Anyway from the logs I see that today I had my first visitor from the Vatican City who arrived via Irishblogs. A hearty welcome to you. I also notice that UTV users are regularly tagged with the Union jack due to UTV using Uk-registered blocks of IP addresses I presume - bit of a bummer but we are used to it. Also hello to the latest Indian visitor - hope you fared better than the person who arrived here after doing a search for parsi clothes...

No.1 in Google

Today I noticed that if you search in google for "Breakfast roll song" this site is no.1 - this hasn't happened before and I doubt it will happen again so I may as well enjoy it while it lasts.

Curabinny plaque

Curabinny plaque
Originally uploaded by despod.

Cork Blogs

Anyone who still has heard of Corkblogs should trundle over there (after having looking fully around here of course) and see what real Cork Bloggers have to offer (rather than blowins like myself..). It is a fairly comprehensive list of sites all of which make interesting reading.

Vodafone MMS to email

I use Vodafones MMS service to send pictures to Flickr and then this blog. It's not infrequent for the service to not work very well on a Sunday - it'll try and send and take yer money but the message may never arrive. The normal MMS to a phone number works fine but the MMS to email is dodgy. It's a pain because you can't be sure the message arrives and VF are the only ones who offer MMS roaming.

Driver ran in to get a pizza ..

Driver ran in to get a pizza .. Originally uploaded by despod.

Speed Traps

On the way to the creche to collect No. 2 son at lunchtime I noticed that the guards were setting up their traditional "fish in the barrel" speedtrap at the Bloomfield Interchange where the Carrigaline Road meets the Rochestown Slip and then splits east and west. Coming back I saw that the boys had stopped two cars - all in the 10 minutes or so since they started. This browns me off a bit. In September No.2 son will start school in Boreenmanna Road. For the two years the school has been there the Corpo have refused to put up "Caution children" signs. And many is the day that No. 1 son and I were nearly knocked down trying to cross what is supposed to be a 50KPH road. In fact on one day cars had stopped to let us cross and some moron in his white van decided to overtake the cars .... Are the Guards ever on Boreenmanna Road at lunchtime ? No. The last time I saw them there was on a sunny Saturday morning at 8.30 So rather than put speed traps near schools where they might catch langers driving dangerously they prefer to put them on dual-carriageways where they can be sure of a nice easy result....

Circus vegas

Circus vegas
Originally uploaded by despod.

Munich

Just back from "Munich" in Mahon Point. Its a long film and deals as everyone knows with the aftermath of the hostage crisis at the 72 Olympics.

Avner is the man chosen to lead a team of 5 whose job is to seek out the Palestinian masterminds behind the atrocities. For most of the film is was your basic smart Israelis kill stupid bad guys but overlaid with a sort of "this is for the right reason" veneer. Whenever there was a firefight it seemed Avners guys couldn't loose.

Up to here its a case of terror being reprised with terror and you wonder will it ever end. Then Avner begins to think the same way especially when his guys start to get assasinated. And it ends up with him going back to Israel , getting sweet all thanks and then he legs it to the good ole USA where the missus and his daughter - who he has never seen - are waiting.

The psychological effects on him are shown to be hard and whe he questions the sense of it all with the dead bring replaced, his control says "I cut my fingernails and they grow back".

It ends up with a pan of the New York skyline and this being 1973 the world trade center is visible and the onscreen text says that "nine of the eleven Palestinians.." and it may be my imagination but those two numbers seemed to stand out.

I had high hopes for the film but in truth I got bored in parts as it seemed to be formulaic and I wonder if some of the races reviews were influenced by the subject matter rather than the film itself.

Cruelty

I was watching a massive attack video last night and it showed a young woman drinking herself into oblivion and the thought struck me that if an animal was involved there would have to be a notice that "no animals were harmed during the making" but this doesn't seem to apply to humans.

Breakfast Roll song

Pat Shortt's breakfast roll song has been getting a lot of airplay on TodayFM and in truth it was a song waiting to be written - the Celtic Tiger has been built on the backs of the 2 egg 2 rasher 2 sausage that is the breakfast roll

Fw: Nelly the ...

Fw: Nelly the ...
Originally uploaded by despod.

Today's update

I notice that I haven't posted in a bit. Nothing much happening at the moment. We hit Currabinny again on Sunday and the boys (including Joe) really enjoyed running around like mad men. One thing that struck me was that people still like to chuck their empty bottle or wrappers on the ground rather than bring them home with them. In fact last week I was walking with Kevin to the school and rounded a corner to see a binman (hello "Country Clean Recycling") finishing his fag and throwing it on the ground. I don't know which of us was most surprised when I yelled at him to pick it up and put it in the bin. He wasn't a fluent english speaker so he didn't catch my drift initially. Walking on Kevin said to me "I know why you told him to put it in the bin - it's to keep Ireland tidy, keep Ireland clean" - this was a song Diarmuid had learned in Juniors so he obviously taught it to his younger brother... Coming home from Currabinny we drove via Monkstown and caught up with some local Passage girls team celebrating something or other (loads of detail here..). I was thinking that all they needed was to meet some odd Guard because they were hanging out of sunroofs and windows for the whole drive !