Under one's feet

I'd had a bad night in sleep terms on Wednesday, waking often and feeling exhausted when I finally got out of bed, and things began badly again last night. Rather then face another bad night, I took a sleeping tablet. Still I woke before the effects had fully worn off, and was quite groggy for a while downstairs. As the morning wore on, though, things sorted themselves out and I began to feel human again.

Counting in the Presidental election began at 9:00 am, and it quickly became apparent that Michael D Higgins was polling strongly everywhere, right across the country. The official result won't be know until some time tomorrow, but by the middle of the day it was perfectly clear that Michael D's lead was unassailable. I didn't watch the count on TV, just checked the headlines on the internet web sites, but that was enough to get a good feel for what was going on.

I listened to a fair bit of music during the course of the day, went back for a little nap in mid afternoon and then got ready to go in to town to meet a group of my musical friends for a bite to eat before moving on to the National Concert Hall for tonight's concert by the National Symphony Orchestra. The big draw was a performance of Zemlinsky's rarely performed 'Lyric Symphony' with big-name soloists Wolfgang Holzmair and Amanda Roocroft, but it the was the first-half performance of Sibelius's 3rd Symphony which stole the show.

We retired to Houracan's pub in Leeson Street afterwards for a couple of pints and a grand old chat about music and presidential elections and lots of reminiscing about the good old Music Group days. I'd fully intended to get the last bus home but let the others persuade me to share a taxi instead. It was very, very close to midnight as I walked home after been first to be dropped off. I already had a usaeable blip from earlier on, but almost stumbled over this highly decorative manhole cover as I came out of a little laneway, and this seemed to have better possibilities. I spent far too long tidying it up and doing away with the tarmac street background, and it was after 2:00 am by the time to I got to bed.