Wii

A long-standing invitation to a house-warming dinner party finally resolved itself tonight after several postponements for one reason and another. I'd originally intended to use public transport all day, including getting to the music session, but the weather changed that plan by dumping loads of rain on us overnight and continuing to dump it all day long. So I drove over to Ranelagh and from there to Carl's place before switching to DART and Luas for the evening.

We checked train and tram times before we left, and should have been on target to get to our hosts closer to the arranged time of 8:00 pm than we did, but the Luas arrival times indicator board at Connolly Station confused us and it was only when the 5-minute countdown ran out and things switched to Due and then we'd have to wait another 11 minutes for the next Tallaght tram that we spotted that the board we'd been reading applied to the stop around the corner rather then the stop we were at. So we got on the Saggart tram instead, intending to get a taxi from Belgard. We phoned our host to explain how things stood, but he strongly advised us to switch to a Tallaght tram and get a taxi from Tallaght hospital instead. It worked out okay in the end, but it was just as well that we had umbrellas.

We had a fantastic night, the highlight of which was the wonderful meal (thanks, Alan). Spicy Thai soup, Duck with plum & port sauce, apple crumble - all utterly superb. Chat was non-stop around the table, and then out came the Wii. I was a bit unsure at first, but we all quickly got into the swing of things and had a thoroughly enjoyable time making fools of ourselves. Pictured playing our first game are Trevor, Alan and Carl. Fortunately, I didn't hand over the camera, which means there's no embarrassing shot of DS in action.

A taxi from Tallaght to Glasthule at 3:00 am or so cost a whopping 40 euro (which was actually a discount courtesy of our friendly taxi driver from the metered charge of 48 euro 50).