'To Ireland in the coming times'

In an event somewhat reminiscent of my Regionals experience in Tasmania, Monte managed to get himself left behind by his part of the group last night, so came back to our hostel with Albertus at three in the morning. (See, it's not that hard to do!) Apparently they'd all gone home without him (sound familiar?), and although he knew where his hostel was (which is more than I can say for myself in Tassie) he had no key to get in. But there was a spare bed in our room, so he just slept there, although managed to wake every single one of us up in the process of stumbling into the room. Ha, and as it turns out, Zoe and Nathan managed to break the wooden slats of one of the beds in a moment of heated passion,* so there wouldn't have been anywhere for him to sleep even had he found his way back to his own hostel.

We covered a lot of ground today. I was actually pleased to spend so much time on the bus, because I had a lot of thoughts running round in my head, and there's no better way to wander through one's own mind than when staring out the window as the countryside rolls past. I really can't go into detail about what I was thinking about here sorry. That's just not what I do. But there's so much else to write about anyway that I'm sure you have no need of the extra detail.

We stopped at a little church where William Butler Yeats is buried. Seeing his grave wasn't particularly important to me, but it was a nice quaint area. I went into the church and someone was playing the organ. It was beautiful. Made me think of you again Jimma. Not because it was beautiful, just because it was an organ. It was only a small one, four foot pipes or something, but they were painted with the most lovely intricate designs. The lectern was a carved wooden eagle, which I thought was pretty cool.** Really good accuracy on the detail. Although the basic shape was a bit flattened, presumably to make it an adequate stand. It was broken though, which made me sad. The lower part of its beak was snapped off. The door of the church had two gorgeous swans framing it, which I'll draw you a picture of once I get around to it.

From there we moved onto Sligo. We spontaneously decided to stop there for lunch as they had a surfing competition going on. We even managed to convince Grant to enter (as it was an open comp.) but although he signed up, the only spare board they had for him was too big and he couldn't get past the break. If you look at the first of these two photos, and zoom right in (which you can't really do but I'm telling you anyway) you can just see a surfer on a wave. The second photo is Zoe and Pru sitting watching the comp. Although it was overcast, it was actually a pleasant day.



*Ok not really. It was purely accidental. But the story is much funnier when I'm allowed embelish it a little.

**I have since discovered (while at Christchurch - 10/08/07) that the eagle represents St John the Evangelist and was commonly used for lecterns in that period.