Found this picture of the new sideboard in my camera and thought it deserved an airing.

( Pity we will have to lose the distressed wall)

This is the question people keep asking me since I have come back from France to Waterford just four days ago.

I find myself dithering confusedly in the answer, I have been in France a lot but in Ireland a lot too.

Being at heart a total nerd I decided that the only answer to the question was to find out which country I had spent most time in in the last 12 months.

I then got out a pencil and paper and with the aid of the filing of the photos from my camera (I take photos most days and they are a real tell-tale as to location) and various notes on the calander I was able to establish the amount of trips I had taken between May 1st 2008 and April 30th 2009.
The answer was that I had made nine trips to France in that time, amount of time spent in France was 145 days.
Then it was just a matter of finding out what percentage of 365 days 145 was.
The answer comes at just a breath short of 40%.

So the answer to the question;
Where are you living now Martin ? Is : Still in Waterford.
(but that will all change once July comes )

From this weeks New Yorker

Colm has been going through his family pictures and came up with this shot of Sheelah and Con, the Mother and Father-in-law, in Glengarriff in their courting days in 1943.

Funerals always have a silver lining – they get people together.
At Mamós funeral on Saturday her grandchildren met all togther for the first time ( well as nearly adults at any rate ).
My brother-in-law Martin had the inspiration to take a group photograph.

I think their Grandmother would have been proud.

Fionn and his Grandfather have a laugh in.
(Well we hadn’t seen each other for three weeks)

Photo by Síle

As we are going home tomorrow our friends Barry and Mary who live here in the village have kindly asked us to dinner tonight.

As I will be gone for a while I picked most of the Irises in the garden for Mary.

Beautiful aren’t they?

Some more pictures of the main room in the house in France

It will be a kitchen/living/dining room

This is the kitchen with the counter behind which I will work at my stove

The view from the kitchen which shows the sofa and chairs around the Godin and with the new sideboard to the left and our old limestone table which now just needs chairs.

We need to sort the lights and the extraction and paint the shop still but the hour is fast approaching………….

It started very early with a call from Sile to say her mum had died during the night.
A sad moment.
Sile’s mother has had Alzheimers for a few years now so in way she had left us already.

I spent some hours trying to change my flight home with Ryanair only to discover that the funeral wasn’t going to be until Saturday when I would be home anyway.

She was a great lady and always a terrific mother-in-law.

Slán Mamo.