The Old Country

Off to Ireland tonight for the bank holiday weekend, and even though we're staying with my parents in their new-build home, you have to pack as if you're off camping -  oilskins, sou'westers and a primus.  

They live in the west of the country, not far from the Atlantic coast, and weather there is famously volatile and violent, like Mad Frankie Frazier.  Even getting from the house to the car requires a change of shoes and distress flares when it's pissing down.  You don't know rain until you've spent a weekend in lockdown with two pensioners in a bungalow in rural Ireland.

It doesn't help that there's nothing to do when you can't leave the house.  Irish radio doesn't matters any either.  It's so bad and bleak, it's resembles one of Samuel Beckett's less accessible and least successful stage pieces.

Where have you been all my life?

Well, hello there.  Sorry, I've been a bit slack for the last six months or so, but I had a tumble from (one of) my bike(s) and felt disinclined to jot whilst recuperating.  Still, I've mostly cupered now, a little impressive scar tissue notwithstanding, so here goes nuttin'.  Again.

Without wishing to sound like a broken gramophone record, I'm still in the midst of the middle-aged ennui doldrums.  Still in the same lacklustre job and still in the same house.  The house is part of the problem actually.  It's lovely and in a lovely street in a lovely area.  It's perfect for our needs, comfy and well-appointed.  So, we won't be moving again - well, not for a while anyways.  And this has thrown my life, or rather what's left of it, into sharp relief.  I can't continue to plough on like this until they cart me off in the back of a private ambulance and start liquidising my meals.  I need adventure - spiritual, sexual, intellectual and actual.

But where to find it?  For years I thought the classified ads in Private Eye might provide the answer, but never had the nerve to answer any.  I assumed, probably rightly actually, that you had to have been to Oxford and come down without a degree to do so without looking like an upstart.