Little Tern Benefit Concert, Spirit Store Dundalk I

We hope you like these 3 YouTube video clips of the brilliant Irish Trad gig we went to the other night (there are 3 blog updates in a row here). This was The Little Tern Benefit Concert at the Spirit Store, Dundalk on Sunday 06 July 2008. The very best of Irish trad music! The first clip features Patrick Martin (on pipes) & Cathal Johnson (of the French Fiddles).



Here are the artist bio's:
Patrick Martin is a full-time musician specialising in Highland Bagpipes and Irish Uilleann Pipes. Having studied both these instruments for most of 28 years, he can offer live music of the highest calibre. Patrick is also in demand for recording work by a number of bands and singers desiring some pipe or whistle music on their arrangements. His business is called Ground Bass Music which refers to the sound of pipe drones. Also of Riverdance fame, he is prize winner in the European and 6th in the World Championships in 2006. He is also involved in the Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland who undertake a series of concerts each year both in Ireland and overseas. Their soul-stirring performances have been described as 'inspriational', 'astounding' and 'ranking at the very top of orchestral brilliance'.
The name French Fiddles is derived from Louth local dialect meaning mouth organ/harmonica. The band started up about 2 years ago in 2006. Since then the band has developed a steady organically grown set that has evolved and continues to evolve along it's journey. Cathal Johnson on vocals, guitar and harmonica, Isabel Nic Chuireann on guitar and piano accordion, Jacque Faure on clarinet and sax and Andrew Grafton from Eurostar fame on guitar and vocals are the main members. But the band tends to expand or contract at times adding the likes of Eamon Doyle on bluegrass style fiddle. Their influences range from traditional music from around the world to contemporary, to local styles from around Ireland. French Fiddles play original music augmented with essentially traditional Irish, country folk, blues and jazz, old-timey, contemporary and bluegrass styles. An eclectic bunch who are in the process of making a commercial CD and hope to have it finished soon.

Little Tern Benefit Concert, Spirit Store Dundalk II

French Fiddles playing at the Spirit Store, Dundalk on Sunday 06 July, 2008.



Hope you like it...

Little Tern Benefit Concert, Spirit Store Dundalk III

French Fiddles playing at the Spirit Store, Dundalk on Sunday 06 July, 2008. Sorry, this trad piece is cut off after 3 mins, 5 secs. I need more memory cards!



Bye for now...

Latest News & Dublin Airport

Here we are again. Just enjoying a little smoked salmon breakfast on a Saturday morning, and looking out at the Cooley Mountains. As much as we love the "North End" of Dundalk, with it's abandoned pubs & cracked windows, our view will be different from next weekend, as we've secured our new 2 bedroom apartment at Annagassan! So we'll be loading the DHL Jumbo Boxes back into our cars, and heading off for our new home. Please email Joe at jf1969@optusnet.com.au or Clare at straddiegal@optusnet.com.au if you'd like our new address/phone details. We'll also have a new phone number, etc. Eircom have promised to connect our phone & broadband straight away, so we will see! And, much to contrary belief, Annagassan isn't a stomach complaint, it is in fact a tiny fishing village with 1 shop and 1 pub, where we hope to become "locals" over the next 2 years...! So, again, we extend the invitation to anyone heading this way at any time - you are most welcome to come and stay at Annagassan any old time. We will post some photos when we're all settled.
Clare is off to Norway for work meetings tomorrow, on a boat cruise (yeah sure, they call it work!) The latest temp there is minus 12... That's why they drink vodka over there. Better wrap up warm Clare!
On a completely different subject, I'm still being an aviation geek over here, and have discovered that Dublin Airport is a great spot for aviation photos. So, this will still be my hobby every now and then. Here are some of my photo results from last weekend... Enjoy!

Christmas in Ireland

It's 10.40am and the temperature is 2c outside. Yes, that's 2c, with a freezing pea soup fog that's been hovering for more than 24 hours. It was actually blue sky on Tuesday morning as I walked through the streets of Dundalk, but as I spoke to recruitment agents on the phone from our apartment, the thick fog rolled in over most of Ireland & the UK. You could hardly see out the window! Slightly concerning as we’re flying to Germany on Saturday morning, and a lot of flights are disrupted right now, but it’s supposed to clear by then. So it’s well and truly winter here now. No snow, but the fog has given Dundalk quite a mystical “Christmas” look with the lights shining through the haze and the church bells ringing, really quite lovely. People are very, very into Christmas here. Loads of lights in all the towns (Dublin’s are amazing), all the ladies in town are getting their hair done, and people are buying turkeys. Even the Aldi supermarket about 200 metres from our house sells frozen turkeys, ducks and goose!

So, I've made the big move, and I'm settling into daily (jobless) life in the emerald isle with Clare. Yes, I'm an unemployed bum, but it's not that I haven't already looked for jobs. In fact, I was offered a job today, in a vast call centre on the northern edge of Dublin, but I might be a little more selective and make sure I find the right one. I will have to decide. Until then, Clare can keep me in the lifestyle I'm accustomed to. I've already discovered the cheapest supermarket (Aldi), and found an IKEA lookalike computer desk (made in France) that's almost impossible to build. That's how I'm spending my days in the lead up to our cold Christmas in Germany.

We leave here on 23 December, over to Dusseldorf on Aer Lingus, then spend Christmas with Gerald & Sandra and his parents in Braunschweig, then on to Berlin on 27 December for 3 nights, then back to Ireland on 30 December with Ryanair. Not sure what we're doing for New Years - might be a quiet one, but there's always opportunity for a quiet drink or two in this neck of the woods. Cheers everyone, and all the best for Christmas & Happy 2007!

An update from Clare...

Front view of Newgrange with white quartz facade

Hi all,
Sorry for a long time since I have emailed (or blogged!) Mainly due to the combination of travelling with work again, assignments (MBA) and more visitors. Sailing finished the weekend Mum came over. Hopefully I will be able to get some photos of the last race around the Kish lighthouse for the blog. I haven’t done any Hash walks since Paddywack in Dublin in Aug - those pics are linked here. But may get to the Belfast hash on Wednesday night. Joe has been updating our blog that I still haven’t learnt how to blog yet (so Joe has updated it!)
Mum has been and gone as has Joe (Joe will be back soon though). So now I am sick and collapsed in a heap on the one weekend between visitors and assignments/exams (still crawling along with the MBA). I have been listening to various BBC radio shows and have heard a summary of Irish history from 1690-1790 and now understand why the Orange order was formed and how the really bad stuff against the Catholics started around 1750 and really got under way when they could send them off to Sydney. May have to learn to podcast from MMM in case I listen to far too much intellectual stuff on BBC.
Joe fixed: the radio (now on BBC), the TV (now on BBC), the car radio (Now on BBC), the dishwasher, washed the car, made all the lap tops in the apartment be able to pick up Wi-Fi wireless internet, put a mirror up in the bathroom and fixed the light bulb. I have the phone on at home and everything working now.
I have work in the north this week and then 2 weeks in the office and then a week in Texas, USA. Went to Poland a few weeks ago for my EU salmon project. So lovely and sunny and warm, blue sky like Australia, but a killer of a winter. I also have an animal welfare course for salmon farmers to design and then design a new seafood auditor course, and input all the data for the EU salmon project.
So the weekend Mum was in town I had to finish the last fish economics assignment (MBA) and do 2 work reports. Luckily the weather was terrible and Mum was sick of touring (across Russia and Italy), so she didn't do much and I typed drivel.
I went to Tipperay last week for work. The song "It’s a long way to ..." is actually a British Soldier song, as there was a big base there before 1922. I saw what is left of the barracks. I went out to dinner with Chris and Shay the night before going down and Shay was singing the song until he stopped and said "I shouldn't sing this as it’s a British soldiers song." And promptly stopped. The people I was with also told me that, and showed me the old barracks. The town is really small actually. We need to do a weekend around Tipperay as there are so many castles and ruins on the banks of rivers and on top of rocks around there. I would say that the castle at Cashel is more striking than Edinburgh.
Joe went to Belfast International airport to take plane photos in the laneways near the farms. But a car came up and parked right next to him, watched him until he left. Joe told Peter (my boss) this story - who lives right near there. And Peter laughed and said it was MI5. Apparently there is a RAAF base right there too and as my car has County Louth plates and is registered to the company in Dundalk, the Brits have cameras in every lane and would have been watching Joe especially with his camera and Dundalk car. Plane watching isn't big in Belfast!
Joe came over just hours before our actual anniversary day and we had a lovely leisurely breakfast and then Shay (Chris was still in Minsk) came up from Dublin and we went to Carlingford and did a token walk towards the top of the Tain trail mtn and then a side detour to a minor forest and back to the pub as it was pissing down and Joe didn’t have the gear and was soaked. So not like Straddie a year ago. We met a black and white sheep dog on the way up the Tain mtn. He was sitting in the road up to the “wee gate” where some kids were picking blackberries for jam. And he took us up to the wee gate and waited for us to let him in, and took us all across the trail and then down again and only vanished when it got really wet and we let him out of another gate onto a laneway where we assume he ran home. He was really scared of sheep. Wouldn’t walk near the sheep until Shay has shooed them away. Fascinating. He must wait at the road waiting for people walking up to take him thru. He also got some chocolate from Shay, which he really liked.
Today has been magnificent after pouring rain all night. You can really see all the different colours in the Cooley Mtns - red bracken and green grass patches, dark green forest and white houses against the pale blue sky and fluffy grey clouds. Joe has taken loads of great pics (coming soon!) Earlier this week I got a phone call from the people who run Newgrange (5000 yr old druid temple) saying that I had won a place in the lottery to see the sunrise during the winter solistice on the 22nd of Dec. Which is good because we fly to Germany on the morning of the 23rd of Dec for Christmas with Gerald and his family. As I can take another person, Joe is a winner as well! (Joe says - am I, REALLY?) He didn’t get to visit Newgrange this time as he came on audits with me and saw parts (most) of Nthn Ireland. We went to Cork City on the weekend (and ate and ate, it's a serious gourmet town) and he went on the bus to Dublin and took the bus tour and visited the Guiness brewery, etc.

Was hoping to get tickets for Lansdowne Road Wallaby match in Nov (19) but at 150 Euro on the terrace to stand in the rain, I was thinking that I would just go to the Aussie pub in Dub with Chris and Shay. And then a friend of a Tracy's found that the Aust Rugby Union website had special tickets for Aussies residents living in Ireland for a third of the list price. Must have passport details to buy and collect tickets. So we have been rounding up passport details to get Carol (Kiwi) and her Pommy friend in. So now we have a mob flying in. We have Tracy coming in from Baghdad, her ex flatmate (Darwin) coming in from Scotland and another bloke from England. The Wallabies are playing Ireland for the last match at Lansdowne Rd before they close it for a refurb. This will be the last game played there as the Gaelic Footy people won’t let any “British Games” be played at Crowe park (the other Dublin Stadium) because the British murdered a whole bunch of people at a Crowe Park Gaelic Game in 1919 or so, I don’t think much Rugby Union will be happening around here for a long while. And it will be a big Aussie fest.
For the Catholics: Dundalk even has Novenas!!! Mum had to explain to me what they were, so you ask your Mums. About 10,000 people (really - no exaggeration) turn up to pray to some obscure saint (Mum couldn’t even tell me about him) 10 times a day for 10 days. Has clogged the town up traffic wise. No car parks anywhere. They even have the Angelus on TV twice a day. And end of the night prayer on TV.
Am officially sick today. The sore throat has progressed to a chest cough. But it all explains why I've been so tired in the last few days and had achy pains which seem to have gone now. So have done very little today. Unfortunately I have three back to back audits this week in the north. I think I will go on the Belfast hash walk on Wednesday night at Lisburn if I am feeling okay by then.
Cheers, Clare.

Drama in Dundalk...

Some amusing updates from Clare over the weekend...
There was a severe flood warning issued to coastal Ireland/UK over the weekend due to the combo of very high tides and a low pressure system sitting off the coast in the Atlantic. But luckily the low pressure system has stayed away until tonight. The river out the front has got very high but hasn't burst its banks. Loads of fish swimming around. I am not sure if they are just mullets or salmon!
But the two big dramas have occurred each at 5am. Sat at 5am, bloody fire alarms. Checked the flat, checked the hall for smoke and then went downstairs with Brian from no 32 (again). The alarm screen said fire in stairwell on floor 6. So we went up to check. But as we were reading the screen 3 young Polish kiddies sped down the stairs to the car park. I said "movement at the station" and thought they were evacuating. A lot more people woke up and checked things this time compared to last time. Met some more neighbours (Irish who blame the Eastern Euro types for all this disruption - I think she is right). Brian and I went to the 6th floor and found 4 shoes left on the stairs and cigarette buts. The smell of cigarette smoke was so bad I started to get asthma. And we could hear music from that level when we went outside. So we concluded that the Polish kiddies were having a party and smoking in the stairwell and that set it all off. But once the alarm is on, only the firemen can turn it off and they don't seem to have turned up. The main alarm stopped after a while but there is a low level alarm on the first floor that was still going yesterday arvo. Must drive the 1st floor mad. I got up at 11am and then the bloody alarms started again at 11.35am or so. Even I am hardly checking for smoke now. And if you turn the smoke alarms off in your flat then the alarm downstairs is triggered again. That's what everyone did last time. So if we have a real fire everyone will die in there beds with pillows over their ears.
It's getting cold now. Fog completely covering the Cooley Mountains and the river at the top of its banks and the temp is dropping and I have the ugh boots on for the first time at 3.30 in the arvo. I guess the Atlantic storm will come tonight...