so today i thought i’d dress up for work a bit. usually i do the whole “smart casual” look, unless i can’t be bothered, in which case, i wear cargo pants resembling pyjama bottoms. but i’ve recently done my annual ironing (no, i’m not kidding. i drag all my clothes out of the closet and iron all of them in one go, these usually occurs about once a year and comprises the entirety of my ironing experience.), and so had a lot of freshly pressed office clothes. I put on this bright blue button down shirt and some black trousers, and have been getting compliments on the shirt all day. then i make my annual ironing joke, and say thank you. anyway, i now remember why i don’t wear this shirt very often, and it’s not because i don’t iron. it all came to me in an instant when i took off my jacket going into a meeting, and realised i was a little chilly. one of the buttonholes is a bit too big, and one of the buttons a little too loose. yep, you guessed it – i flashed my boss.
realised i haven’t told you about the dublin trip yet. last Saturday, j and i went to dublin for the day, as a belated birthday present. we left early in the morning, and came back late at night. you can do that when you live in the uk.
our flight was scheduled to depart at 7:30 am, so were up and out of the house by 4:30, thinking that would give us plenty of time. big, big mistake.
i don’t know why i always think it takes exactly an hour to get everywhere. for example, ask me how long it takes to get to the airport, and i’ll tell you an hour. how long to get to siberia? oh, about an hour. in reality, of course, it takes an hour just to get out of london. this does not include the extra twenty minutes needed to wander around clapham common 3 times trying to find the sign for the 205 south circular heading east. sometimes the uk is just dumb. add a 50 mile stretch of motorway to your journey *after* you get out of london, and what you end up with is two very late boys and girls.
we made it to the airport by the skin of our teeth, made it to the plane (after the security guard asked j to remove his baseball cap so he could “search his sunhat”. now, to my mind, a sunhat is a big floppy straw thing with a bow that ties under the chin, so who calls a baseball cap a sunhat??? someone over the age of 80, that’s who. this poor man could barely see over the xray machine.) and arrived safe and sound in the centre of dublin by 9:30. after wandering around for some breakfast, we ended up in a coffee shop, where as we were lazing on the couch, i opened the drawer to the giant coffee table and found some lovenotes between strangers in the drawer – two ships that pass in the night kinda thing. it was cute and romantic, and i took it as an auspicious omen.
unfortunately that auspiciousness did not extend to the weather, which was intermittently spitting on us or blindingly sunny from one moment to the next, the entire bloody day. j will never again make fun of my pink umbrella. it also meant we spent a good deal of time indoors, immersing ourselves in the local saturday culture, namely hanging out in pubs drinking guinness. which is not a bad way to spend a saturday, all in all.
anywhoo, we wandered around some more to see the castle, (which looks not at all like a castle, but more like a castle mashed with a 60’s office building) and the churches (lots of tourbuses full of old age pensioners trying to work digital cameras with shaky hands), and the shopping district (no surprises there) and settled down for the afternoon in the temple bar district, starting off at the aptly named temple bar. which was actually quite cool, until the hoardes began to arrive, and we found ourselves surrounded at our table by a group of indeterminate europeans (polish? flemish? we never could quite figure out what language they were speaking) who were drinking wine directly above my head whilst ashing over my shoulder. in the end, it didn’t matter where they were from – turns out “rude” is the same in any language.
we decided to go for lunch (irish stew, natch) and then wandered around a bit more, before ending up back at a bar. we were seated outside people watching, and there was a young blond southern woman seated at the next table. the panhandlers were getting pretty annoying, working up and down the street multiple times. and each time, this woman instead of saying “sorry, no” and turning away, kept telling them she didn’t have any change, or going into this elaborate discussion as to why she couldn’t help them out. the bigger mistake was continuing to talk to them after they made her for someone who, if they harrassed enough, would hand over bills. she just had that look about her. anyway, this was all very entertaining to watch for several minutes, but then an old mother, teenage daughter, and baby came over. i’m not going to call them gypsies, but they were pretending they didn’t speak english, and the blond lady was trying to explain to them that she paid for her drink with a credit card, and didn’t have any cash. after watching her struggle for a while, i *had* to do something, because even i am not that coldhearted. i came over to her table, put myself between her and the beggars, and put on my firm-confrontational attitude with them, telling them to leave. they just would *not* go, kept pretending they didn’t understand, but it’s amazing how quickly the lightbulb came on when i said i was going to get the manager. she watched me go into the bar, smiled at me through the window, then skipped off down the street. ha!
this of course lead to a conversation with the blond, who was a law student from Louisiana. Typical spoiled “travelling on Daddy’s money” kinda girl, but more liberal than I expected, and we somehow ended up talking about politics and the war on drugs, when suddenly it was time to go catch our plane home.
strange things about dublin:
it’s not very big. we walked the whole downtown about three times during the course of the day.
it’s chockablock with americans. i swear i heard more americans in 24 hours there, than i have in my entire 2 years in the uk.
it’s not very old. for such a historic city, there was amazingly little old stuff around. or maybe there is if you look for it, but we didn’t really have the time.
it doesn’t have nearly enough atms.
anyway, it was a fun day, and nice to visit a new place.
view the pubcrawl here.
Like this post
