Cnut in a Kelp Chair

Christmas and New Year have necessitated a wee break from the blogging. But today I re-entered the real world (work) and for my sins I am back online.

Was very happy with my little excursion. Trips with a large group are always a little testing, and some people tested my nerve more than others with their ever increasing obliviousness to the outside world and their own flaws. But all things considered it was a success, and beat most shitey New Years celebrations by a country mile. Highlights:

• Raucous night out at the local pub, which involved me getting picked up and twirled round by a big drunk guy (under duress I might add). A memory that would be slightly more amusing if Pedro hadn't insisted on videoing the incident on his phone. To my utter annoyance Pedro seems intent on videoing every single shameful drunken incident in my life, and entertaining every mutual friend we have, with the resulting "film". Utter git.


• Trip to the Giant's Causeway. Have actually been twice before, but this was the first time it was done on my own timescale. The weather was choppy but clear, the light fabulous, and every part of the stunning landscape highlighted by it. We all happily wandered about, wasting the hours, taking it in. Sat on a column, watching the waves crash over the end of the causeway, I was as near to content as I could be (without someone whispering something meaningful in my ear, and the rest of the world disappearing). Finished off by the pre-requisite cup of tea and doughnut in the National Trust tea room (the others think my love of NT tea-rooms is hilarious, and are convinced that I will end up as that hunched old coot that you see sitting in every NT tea room).


• Quiet wanderings along Cushendun beach, which is a proper winter beach, windswept and covered in kelp, with a rolling hill at one end, and a smart row of tall pastel coloured apartments at the other. We were all impressed by this new-build architecture. Good sense and good value tends to triumph over beauty in rural Northern Ireland (where stained pebble dashed houses sit next door to humble crumbling crofts - the kind English yuppies would walk across hot coals to own and restore) but not in this case. A finer (new) sea-front I haven't seen in a good while.


• The journey from the village to the cottage (about a mile) which was half boggy copse, half country lane. We all enjoyed fumbling our way through the trees as the dark descended, before risking our lives on the road, as the local boy-racers drove their souped-up mini in a loop round the village. Best moment, though, was catching a lift back with Pedro, and honking the horn as we passed Didcot, who dutifully half jumped - half fell into the verge in a fit of fright. Sorry Didcot.


• And finally (after years of vowing to to visit it) me, Monky, Schwesty and Choc-Chip dropped into the the Crown Liquer Saloon in Belfast for a quick lunch, before catching our various flights home. It was good as I imagined and better, with a staggering decorative ceiling, stained glass windows, and that impossible-to-top Victorian flourish. We sat in a closed booth, and I day-dreamed about getting locked in one evening, supping whiskey in the half-dark, with some handsome gent (common theme of holiday day-dreaming).

Anyways enough of all that. I'm sitting surrounded by boxes, as am moving house tomorrow, so computer will be off-line for a few weeks, and probably electricity and hot-water knowing my luck. Hope you enjoy my one lonely holiday pic (shamefully stolen from Monky's website, though taken with my own fair hand). This is Choc-Chip in her flotsam chair. Have a most prosperous New Year bods!