Out of the way

Well, I normally spell it craic. But Christy Moore, a man with some experience, spells it crack. Anyway...

I spent a weekend in Dublin. I went to a friend's wedding celebration, and after an evening in his brother's pub (the oldest and my firend who is the youngest of this family of 13 are both publicans. I don't know what all the others do, except that they all sing) ended up at his mother's house, singing a song or two. Everyone sang. Even Nick, who really tried hard to get out of it. At 6 am when I had to get a taxi back to town or lose my luggage, and my friend went to bed, his mother was just starting to get going again. With a beautiful Irish singing voice, and a family of people who sing it was hard to tear myself away even at that time, with the sun coming up over the Irish countryside.

I went to Galway to visit some visitors there. We went to a dance show - get a modern spanish dance group to do Mother Courage and her Children in Purgatory - a mix of two literary classics. I should have read them, but I thought the piece was actually great. It definitely justified sitting outside in really heavy rain for the first half-hour. Sharing a cloak with a stranger for an hour in weather like that is a good way to increase the overall happiness in the universe, but it turns out that you get a lot more of the freezing wind. So the only sensible answer is to go find a quiet pub, have a quiet pint, and sing a song or two. When I sang the parting glass and they quited down to listen, when they asked for an encore, I was actually pretty proud.

I bought a tin whistle book. I have a tin whistle, and with a bit of practice I can actually play a few tunes. But I don't seem to get around to practising :-( A long list of things I would like to do better, and don't. But little by little I get better at singing. Which is one thing I am famous for being dreadful at. Well, I only get better slowly.

And I found the local craic - a qiuet pint, a group of people sitting around playing and singing to rival almost any that I know. Some great musicians, some dreadful, but an evening down the road is a lot easier than heading across the seas again.

On the other hand, this introduces a reason to change my regular. And that's sort of odd. I spend a lot of time moving, and have waht seems to people a relatively unstable life. Mostly that is by choice. And yet...

and yet, I can put down long hard roots surprisingly fast. I guess it is the flip-side. I actually like family, friends, regular places. I just have them scattered around the world in a sort of vicious circle, or a happy continuous home, depending on how you look at it.

It's a life. It's got a bit of both.