Clontarf Lion

We had a great meeting of the Music Group today. It was my turn to do a presentation for the final 30 minutes, and my choice of music by three sadly neglected Russian composers (Arensky, Taneyev and Weinberg) went down well.

We went on afterwards to the nearby Clontarf Castle hotel for a chat and food and drink. I've blipped this spot twice before. It's guarded outside by a number of stone lions like this one, it's been very tastefully done up as a blend of old and new, and it's a very pleasant spot to meet for a civilised chat like we had. One of our number didn't come along because he was concerned that there'd be noisy crowds there on account of the Ireland-Scotland rugby international, but the place was actually very quiet. We half-watched Ireland begin to beat Scotland (sorry about that, all you scottish blippers), but left before the match finished.

Back home, I took a break from work to watch our National Song Contest, just to see if the great unwashed Irish public would really be so stupid as to vote a turkey puppet through to represent us at the Eurovision Song Contest in May. All six songs were excruciatingly awful, but any of them would have been better than Dustin the Turkey's ridiculous offering (how the original panel of judges let this through the national final I'll never know (though one letter writer to a national newspaper, reacting to the news of Dustin's win felt that it was all a deliberate ploy to con Europe into letting Ireland win one more time, after which, having proved how ridiculous this annual fiasco has become, we'd bow out gracefully and ride away into the Euro-sunset, never to participate again.

Ah well ... thankfully I had work to return to and some semblance of reality.