Hospitality

It's become something of a tradition for today's music session host to throw a bit of a bash around this time of the year when the music finishes. Another part of the tradition is to eat outside if at all possible, and to base the food around different types of German sausage. Today was the day for this year, and it was all very enjoyable.

I'd already had my usual breakfast at 9.00, and had met one of the music group members at noon for a bite to eat in Bram's Café in Fairview. Our grand plan had been to catch the bus to the music session, but we just missed one and would have had to wait twenty minutes for another. So we hailed a taxi.

I'd arranged to go over to Carl's place after our sausagefest, and one of the guys was kind enough and gave me a lift to the DART station at Clontarf Road. I had to wait fifteen minutes, but was still over to Carl before 7.00. Carl rustled up a delicious chicken supper, after which we settled down to watch The Constant Gardener. Carl had seen it before, but I was new to it. We gave up after forty minutes of confusion and decided to watch something on Carl's Kino instead. The film of choice was Rachel Getting Married. There was no question of not watching this mesmerising film all the way to the end. The documentary-style approach works wonderfully well, the characters and script are utterly believable, and the cast is superb.