FROM BISTROS TO HOTELS

I went for lunch with three friends yesterday in a nice Italian Bistro close by. We're all blow ins to this one street town and the talk soon turned to house prices, schools and clever ways to off load the kids for an afternoon. Mothers, Fathers, getting older, renting out aston martins for 40th birthday weekends, fathers-in-law being ex British ministers of defence and feeling paranoid because you're Irish and he might be checking up on you, commuting, moving house because of the commuting, opening a gallery and having to close it because it was unprofitable, places we've all lived in in the UK, places we've travelled to around the world and taking calls from the school to say one of the kids is vomiting. Come get her.

After lunch I made dinner and drew a map of Ireland to try and make Audrey understand that the drive to Limerick, where we're going to spend St Patricks weekend, does not require a Ryan Air Flight return trip around the world and that just because it's on the opposite coast to us doesn't mean we can swim a circuit of Ireland with our suitcases strapped to Daddy's back.





My younger sister and her husband have bought an hotel, as you do, and that's where we're off to. I'm really looking forward to seeing it for the first time. It will be a clan gathering minus the siblings abroad. The Husband plans to visit Limerick City Centre, an old stomping ground of his, with the older kids. I plan to bring the younger ones out into the country side, maybe take in some good old Irish Heritage Sites and the kids, well the kids will probably have fun throwing sheep pooh-balls at each other and seeing who can juggle the best, as they do.