Tropical birthday

After the Hollyoaks omnibus (it's a shame it's gone all serious now, unlike the good old days when it was generally good for a laugh and concentrated on more light-hearted shorelines) and brunch we retired to Carl's Kino. Carl had mentioned yesterday that he'd watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and had been pleasantly surprised. I was even more surprised when he suggested that we watch it now, but he was quite happy to watch it again. Since it was his birthday, I was prepared to say I liked it even if I didn't, but there was no need at all for such subterfuge. It's great stuff. Top-notch animation, terrific characterizations, a wonderfully quirky storyline - but, most of all, a non-stop visual feast of in-jokes and multi-layered incident. I can fully understand why Carl had no trouble watching it again, since there's so much going on that it would take several viewings to catch it all. Highly recommended.

All the time that we'd been cooped up with TV and DVD the weather had been doing amazing things outside, with bright sunshine, clear blue skies and ridiculously high temperatures. We finally decided that it was a shame to waste it, and I needed a bit of a walk anyway, so off we headed for a walk along the seafront and what was originally intended as a relaxing walk down Dún Laoghaire pier perhaps and back to Carl's place. It was when we left Easons after getting a Father's Day card for Carl's dad that I mentioned my still-ropey stomach and wondered out loud if a Jemmy-and-pep would do me good (that's Jameson and Peppermint, for the uninitiated - a great stomach settler). So we stopped of at the Forty Foot bar for medicinal reasons. Unbelievably, they didn't have peppermint cordial, so we had no choice but to opt for large bottles of Bulmers cider instead. We sat outside at a nice table on the roof-top terrace, soaking up the sun and having a good old chat. The clock in the Town Hall tower advanced inexorably as we sat there, beginning at 2.30 or so and somehow progressing to 4.15. After that it seemed like time to head back to Carl's place, and we made our way there via the Royal Marine Hotel grounds, busy with some sort of fund-raising event. After that we stopped off at the Kingston Hotel for a toilet stop and left there at about 5.15, having marveled at how what looks like such a small outside space under normal conditions can be transformed into one of the top venues for the annual Festival of World Cultures. We were far from the only ones soaking up the afternoon sun. In fact, the whole thing had a real holiday atmosphere about it, and an almost tropical feel thanks to the wonderful weather.

I didn't linger long in Carl's afterwards, but came more or less straight home. The rest of the evening was uneventful, spent mainly in front of the TV or listening to radio online.