Lugnaquilla, Co. Wicklow

Ken writes:
I went walking yesterday with Michael Gallagher and Izzy Jack from UCD and Niall Connolly, Gwen Murphy and Pål Antonsen from Trinity. We climbed Lugnaquilla, the highest mountain in Wicklow and the highest outside Kerry. I’ve already climbed Slieve Donard in County Down, the highest in Ulster, so with Lugnaquilla that makes the highest [...]

Parliamentary expenses: the obvious solution

Ken writes:
You only have to hear the outlines to think our representatives are living like hogs in the fat house at the tax-payers’ expense, and frankly, it is starting to wear a bit thin. The problem seems to be equally bad in Britain and Ireland (a new UK scandal hits the headlines here).
The UK case [...]

Health debate

Dot writes: The Biopsy Report has an interesting post on the debate over access to health-care – should people whose problems can be attributed to ‘lifestyle choices’ (e.g. smoking) be bumped down the queue? The majority of the commenters say no and at first reaction I am with them, but I think this blogger puts [...]

Accumulated news, variously trivial

Dot writes: this is a post for jotting down a few recent events that otherwise will probably not get mentioned. It won’t attract many hits from lively net-trawlers looking for controversy and intellectual stimulation, but I will enjoy looking at it next year and thinking ‘oh – so that’s what we were up to’.
—
On Wednesday [...]

Addict

Dot writes: I’ve had a lot of headaches recently. Yesterday I got a stinker. I’d gone into work early in the hope of getting lots done before meeting Ken around four to resume Prawn-duty, but by lunchtime my headache was of the machines-slowly-tunnelling-through-my-skull variety and I had to come home. I snatched a nap before [...]

Dot escapes/ Dot in exile

Dot writes: I’ve gone away without Hugh and without Ken, and it feels very odd indeed. Nobody woke me at 5.30 (I woke spontaneously at 5, turned over determinedly, and eventually managed to doze until 6.48). Nobody wanted milk and cuddles in the dim light of dawn (I was offered champagne at breakfast but refused [...]

Bad and getting worse

Ken writes:
The Dublin metropolitan area university at which I work has, I’ve found out, declined to offer a promotion to an ambitious and prodigiously talented young scholar which would have retained him in the face of a counter-offer from a university in Canada. This is just so typical! Obviously the universities are at the heart [...]

Ready, steady, cook

Dot writes: Hugh loves cooking. Or, rather, he is desperate to get involved in it but his mean parents insist on doing it at adult level and are inexplicably reluctant to let him poke his little hands into the pans. However, yesterday Ken, my mum and I did a grand toy-shopping trip and bought him [...]

Hugh goes upwards, possibly outwards and backwards

Dot writes: you may have noted the rather nice stripy blue dungarees Hugh was wearing for the purposes of sitting the wrong way in his high chair. We bought those three weeks ago. They are already too small. The poppers between his legs constantly unpop so that he ends up wandering around in a sort [...]

2nd anniversary of this blog

Happy Birthday to this,
Happy Birthday to this,
Happy Birthday Ken and Dot’s Allsorts,
Happy Birthday to this.
Two years of blogging today. ‘Allsorts’ still rather an overstatement. Nevertheless, we regularly crack 50 views a day now and we’re quite pleased with that. A fair number of our readers aren’t even related to us.
Thankyou for visiting and please keep [...]