Reading my friends' blogs. I thought I was bad? Some people haven't updated since...August...July...May...April... Come on, guys!

I see Ebeth is burbling about the webzine she's putting together with Leah and Carol. Pet, Editorial Mystique comes when you post on the workshop lists explaining what you like and don't like, as an editor. Believe me, you will find yourself doing it! And then those not In The Know will think you are cool and editorial. Heh.

Mekka's got the prettiest picture on the latest incarnation of her blog.

Remarks in the chat room remind me of my stint in the North Dublin Youth Orchestra. I have no idea if this thing is still going; I certainly hope it's defunct! For those of my Dedicated Readers who have read "Archer's Goon" by Diana Wynne Jones (I know of at least one of you; the rest should go find it and read it, now!), think of the school orchestra in that book.

The NDYO had a few idiosyncrasies of its own, though. For a start, it consisted almost entirely of violins. Badly-played violins, I might add. There must have been about thirty of them. Then there were four celli - when they all turned up. Usually it was me on my own, or maybe with one other who played even worse than I did. And, on good days, we might have a trumpet, a french horn, a flute, and/or possibly some drums. Add to all of this a conductor who couldn't, and the fact that, AG-like, almost no-one could count. You can imagine what a horrible noise we made. Now you know why I hope this thing is defunct.

And I'm maundering, so I'll stop.

Hoom. I should be critting. I've got nine crits on "Angel of Music" already, and it hasn't even been up a week. I did four or five last weekend, but I feel I should do more. Maybe this weekend; I never seem to feel capable of critting during the week. And I must never, ever, crit a rescue sub again; I did one last Sunday and it took me three hours. Three fucking hours! It wasn't even all that long. Or too terribly bad. The author had got past the stage of basic mistakes, and was in the stage of...well, just dull writing, really. I found it much harder to crit either than something full of basic mistakes, or something rather good.

I'm getting some good advice on "Angel of Music", anyway. I knew it wasn't right - that's why I put it on the workshop! So it's good to get feedback, even if some of it disagrees. Larry produced me a terribly fanboy-ish crit; I have a theory that the only urban fantasy he reads is mine, so he doesn't really know about the genre, and just thinks whatever I do is cool. Which is very good for the ego (thanks, Larry!) but not terribly helpful always. (That sounds like he never tells me anything useful, which is not true, but he didn't really this time.) Rather to my surprise, Pen got almost as fanboyish as Larry; she more usually pokes holes in things in a most considerate manner. And Melinda gave me the funniest crit I've ever read, which is stunningly helpful too.

So thank you, everyone who's critted the story, whether I've named you here or no. I have a bunch of ideas for the rewrite already, but I'm going to leave the thing up for another week or so before I touch it. (I dreamed last night that the story got an Editor's Choice. Ha ha.)

So what else is new in the skewed version of Ireland that I inhabit?

Nothing wildly exciting on the political front, minor things like the government shamefacedly admitting that they're going to have to borrow (for the first time in some years) to get through this year hardly counting. Ray Burke threatened a few days ago to dish out some dirt of his own, but he hasn't yet. Pity; it might have been amusing.

In England, they're getting all het up about John Major (ex-Prime Minister) having had an affair with Edwina Currie (member of his party). Mildly amusing, if only for the apalling lack of taste shown by both parties. But seemingly she sold her diaries to "The Times". How vulgar! (Though not, admittedly, as bad as selling them to a tabloid.)

The buses (for those of my Dedicated Readers who may have been worrying - yeah, right!) have improved a bit of late; the bus home has been on time most evenings this past week. The bus to work, on the other hand, hasn't managed to get me in before nine o'clock once this week. Ah well.

My finger is still not well. How stupid is that?! It seems to have settled down to remain (forever? I hope not!) ever-so-slightly swollen, and sore when I curl it right under or try to, say, spread rather tough pate on toast. It is, in fact, being rather tedious. Just for good measure, yesterday my right leg decided to ache.

I'm prone, occasionally, to getting a "tired-feeling" ache in the backs of my knees. I can't describe it any better than that. But it persists, no matter what way I have my legs/knees. Usually it goes off after a night's sleep. Yesterday, said ache started in my right knee, but also in my right ankle, and in a vague fashion in my right calf. Annoyingly, the ache was still in my knee this morning. In fact, it's still there now, if only mildly and intermittently. Bah. Maybe I have rheumatism. Maybe I just have weird knees.

Dear me. Another blog already! What am I coming to? Oh, I just have this urge to rant on about stuff.

Tonight I want to rant about Dublin Bus. Dublin Bus, as you might guess, is my local public transport (we have a rail system too, but I live two miles from the nearest railway station, so rarely use trains). I do not own a car - or a driving licence - so I am reliant on public transport. Actually, even if I did have a car I doubt I'd take it to work, parking being the problem it is. So, I bus.

I finish work at 5.30pm. There is a bus from Malahide (where I work) to town at 5.45pm. At least, that's what the timetable says. (And we all know about timetables and fiction, don't we? -Hm, there's a thought! Could one tell a story in the form of a timetable?) Anyway, this 5.45pm bus is pretty handy, since it leaves me time to finish up stuff at the office, or do a little shopping, or whatever, before catching said bus. Mostly.

At this point, we have to factor in the bit where the bus has to come out from town, full of people wanting to get on and off, in rush-hour traffic. It gets to Malahide, gets to its terminus, and then turns round to bring people back in towards town. Mostly, this system works pretty ok. Some days, it all goes skew-whiffy. Like today.

I got to the bus stop at 5.40pm. Nice time for a cigarette before the bus would arrive (me waiting at a stop maybe half a mile from the terminus). By 5.50pm it was clear that the bus had not even come in to Malahide yet. I would have seen it going past. Or it would have arrived. Or both. Sigh, snarl, pick up bags and move to stop up the road. Just for confusion's sake, there are two termini in Malahide, between which buses alternate. And the 6pm bus goes from the other one, and thus does not pass the stop outside the library where I normally wait. So up to the stop opposite the RC church I go, past which all buses go, regardless of terminus.

At 6.05pm, a 42 arrived in from town. And headed out towards the Coast Road terminus. This was the bus that should have picked me up outside the library twenty minutes previously. At 6.07pm, another 42 arrived in from town. And headed up to the Seamount terminus. This was the bus that should have left Seamount at 6pm.

Now, the problem that arises at this point is that very often, if a bus is late getting into Malahide, it will simply turn around and go back into town empty, presumably in the hope of then being able to leave town punctually on the next run. So I began to have Bad Feelings. They were justified.

At 6.12pm, the Coast Road bus came back, numberless, and declaring its intention of going to Clontarf Garage. At 6.16pm, the Seamount bus came back, also numberless, and declaring itself Out Of Service. "Now this," I said aloud, "is just getting ridiculous."

Meanwhile, at 6.15pm, another 42 had arrived in from town and headed on out the Coast Road. I began to entertain vague hopes that this (which should become the 6.20pm bus back in) might actually return and pick passengers up. By 6.30pm I had given up these hopes, since it does not take even an FAS driver quarter of an hour to get from the village to the Coast Road terminus and back again.

At 6.31pm yet another 42 arrived in from town and headed up to Seamount, ready to become the 6.35pm bus back in. I had quite strong hopes that this one, at last, might actually do the trick, since it should get to its terminus only just after its leaving time. But lo and behold, much to my astonishment, the Coast Road bus appeared at 6.32pm. With a number and a city centre destination, and the obvious intention of actually carrying passengers! I really do not think that I want to know how it managed to take the driver seventeen minutes to drive a mile. But I finally got home shortly after 7. Cross.

I think it's time to talk about my Bus Theories. I have a few.

The first Bus Theory I came up with, some years ago now, divides bus drivers into three categories. Those who suffer from FAS, those who suffer from LFS, and Maniacs. FAS stands for Fragile Accelerator Syndrome. Bus drivers with this condition are apparently frightened that if they put too much weight on the accelerator pedal, it will break. So they drive very, veeeerrrrryyyy slowly. LFS stands for Lead Foot Syndrome, and I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how they drive! And as for the Maniacs...well, they all have LFS, but they are also prone to doing insane things like flinging a double-decker bus at 50 miles an hour into a gap that would be small for a Mini. And making it through with no damage, except to the nerves of their passengers. (I had the interesting experience of sitting upstairs at the front the day the driver did that little trick.)

I have, I believe, already mentioned in these pages the temporally unstable black hole at the Clare Hall terminus of the 27 route.

Then there is the Bus Drivers' Olympics. I came up with this theory a couple of years ago, after they built the "traffic calming measures" on Talbot Street and turned it into a slalom course. This was, of course, the obvious one - many bus drivers use Talbot Street to practice for the slalom event. But the theory can be taken much further. All bus drivers are in training for at least one event in the Bus Drivers' Olympics.

There are those practising for the slow race, of course. How slowly can you drive a bus without it stalling? (Pretty damn' slowly.) There are the Precision Drivers, who pull up with great exactitude at traffic lights and bus stops. There are marathon runners, who travel at a steady, uninterrupted speed. Judging by the way some drivers screech to a halt at the lights, and then take off again like a bat out of hell, some of them are in for the Hundred-Yard Dash. And the Maniacs from the previous theory, of course, are all in for the steeplechase. Believe me, if these guys could get the bus to jump over things, they would.

I wonder how many of my Dedicated Readers I have bored stupid, rambling on about buses? I don't care. I like buses. I even have a website about Irish buses bookmarked. BusTravelIreland-EnthusiastSection, for those who may be curious. I find it comforting to see pictures of buses I just remember from my childhood, and to be able to identify the year of manufacture of a modern bus before it gets to within 20 yards of the bus stop. Yes, I am sad. Stop me now, before I buy an anorak! (This is my first attempt to make an actual link in this blog. I hope it works...)

Anyway, that's enough about buses for now. On to...stuff.

The interim report of the Flood Tribunal came out today. I can't actually recall, now, exactly why the Flood Tribunal (named for the judge chairing it) was set up. I think it was the one about abuses in the area of Planning Permission. But it's been going for several years now. And will be for some time longer. The news today, anyway, is very entertaining for someone like me, who takes gleeful delight in political scandal. Particularly when the muck is firmly stuck to politicians whom I always thought were slimeballs.

Hence, I gloat over the fact that Ray Burke (once a TD for Dublin North, in which constituency I used to live, and no, I did not ever vote for the creep) has been publicly named as a man who took bribes, and not only that, but threatened (both legally and physically) the journalists who tried to expose him.

Meanwhile, Bertie Ahern is frantically trying to clean his face; it must be very embarrassing to have so publicly expsoed as a blackguard someone you appointed as the Minister for Foreign Affairs! Particularly when rumours were already circulating more or less openly about his corruption at the time he got that post... Not to mention one P. J. Mara (known to everyone in Ireland of my age and older as "Ma-raaaaa", from the old "Scrap Saturday" political satire show on the radio); once Charlie Haughey's aide-de-camp, he's now the Fianna Fail Director of Elections. He's been named as "non-cooperative" with the Flood Tribunal, which will not do his reputation any good, and may well do the government harm as he tries to encourage a Yes vote in the referendum.

Oh, I do like political scandal! And I want to say publicly, fair dos to Mr. Justice Feargus Flood, for not bowing down to political pressure, or being afraid to say what he means. Corruption, he says he has found, all over the governments of the past ten years and more, and corruption he bloody well means. Egg decorates a few faces today, and certain people will be facing a lot worse than that. Well-deserved, too.

From work earlier today did not in fact work, but a little concerted poking this evening found and solved the problem. I was getting a template error, which proved to be sorted by changing my template. Which is why you're reading this in a nasty shade of blue instead of my normal pretty purple.

So...My finger is still not well; it aches when I bend it right down. But I can deal with it, and do most things. So I don't really care.

My brother phoned me yesterday evening. This is actually an event of note; we are not particularly close, and rarely contact one another unless we have some reason. We fought bitterly for most of the first 18 years of his life (he is eighteen months my junior), before finally discovering that we get on pretty well as long as we don't see one another too often.

His reason for contacting me in this instance was to find out if the company I work for (and for which he used to work) is currently hiring, as he has a friend whom he thinks might do well there. He then mentioned, as an afterthought, that he was househunting, and planned to view a house in my vicinity at the weekend. Couldn't remember the name of the estate, of course. "Castle something," he said vaguely. "Castle Elms," I suggested. "Yeah, that's the one."

It's only the new estate of townhouses and apartments that they've been building behind my road ever since I moved in here, three years ago! (Not, I should point out, that there is actually a castle or an elm tree anywhere in the vicinity!)

So I may have my brother for a near neighbour soon. Which would be quite amusing, really.

One of the guys at work asked me recently how my brother was getting on these days. He seemed a touch taken aback when I said, "Well, I haven't seen him in months, but as far as I know he's fine. I assume someone would have told me if he'd died or anything." But that's how we are. We don't hate one another or anything, but we just don't move in the same circles, or particularly want to.

The referendum is beginning to gather steam. The No side have loads of posters on lampposts - I'm still trying to figure out the one that says "Save Irish Jobs - Vote No!". I don't see what the Nice Treaty has to do with jobs here. But jobs are a Big Button here; for all of my childhood and teenage years, unemployment was a Major Problem, so people still get very worried at any percieved threat to employment. The Yes campaign have managed about one poster on a bus shelter (that I've seen), which seems to be saying (albeit more subtly) "Save Irish Jobs - Vote Yes!". Very strange. I still have no intention of changing my vote from last time.

Oh yeah. The BertieBowl. My Dedicated Readers may recall that I mentioned this piece of idiocy some months back, during the election campaign. Well, it seems that...I'm not sure who. Possibly our Glorious Leader, possibly the FAI (Football Association of Ireland), possibly both...would like for Ireland to co-host, with Scotland, the European Cup (or whatever it's called!) in about 2008. This, you understand, will only be possible if we can provide at least two large stadia. Currently, we have one definitely available stadium; Landsdowne Road. Which is actually a rugby pitch, but the rugby people seem happy enough to let the occasional soccer match take place there. (Last one I recall was a friendly against England in the mid-90s, notable mainly for a bunch of English hooligans coming over and starting a riot at.)

Then there is Croke Park. This is a GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) ground. The GAA will not let Evil English Games (or, in fact, anything but Gaelic Football and Hurling) be played there. Despite all pleas, arguments, negotiations, etc. They remain obstinate. The Sacred GAA Ground will not be Profaned by Alien Games.

So, remains the BertieBowl. Which has cost many millions of Euros already, and still does not even approach existing. The government has recently told Bertie that it is not going to give him any more money to build it (presumably, they finally copped on to the "throwing good money after bad" notion), so he is reduced to touting for industry sponsorship - he really wants to get this thing built. He's been offered some already, which raises corruption spectres. We're good at bribery and corruption here. See some of our recent and on-going tribunals. Not to mention the antics of one of Bertie's predecessors in the Fianna Fail leadership seat.

Anyway, the Football Head-Buck-Cats (whatever they call themselves), came over here the other week to see what we had in the way of stadia to host a European Cup in. They were shown Landsdowne Road. They were shown Croke Park (but told "um, er, well, actually we may not be able to use this venue"), and they were shown plans of what the BertieBowl will look like if it ever gets built (they were not, I think, told that it's looking iffy). Why do I get the feeling that the bid is going to fail, and certain people are going to look rather foolish?

One of my housemates is having a Crisis. So, at least, I am told; I have not seen Charles (as I will call him) for a while. Charles is American, but has been living here for some years. He was going out with Joanne (as I will call her) for several months. She became pregnant by him, but for various reasons, it was decided that she would go home (to a non-EU country) to give birth, and the child would be adopted. So, she went home, and then decided to keep the child. And then decided not to come back here. Meanwhile, Joanne's sister, Leah (as - you guessed it - I will call her) is living and working here. Charles is working in the same place. Can you see where this is going? I did, long before it got there!

So, Charles was, as he says, "doing the dirt" on Joanne with her sister. And not telling anyone. (Though it wasn't hard to guess when he was working then, now, and everywhen, and never coming home.) Somewhere in amongst this, he and Joanne broke it off. Then, apparently, he discovered that Leah was screwing someone else. And she is now pregnant, I'm told, and says it's by the someone else, but the timing is seemingly all wrong and it's probably Charles'. *shrug*

Anyway, Charles is now having a major attack of the guilts. Over, of all things, the fact that "I lied to everyone about my relationship with Leah"! Uh, hello, you didn't say anything to anyone about it! When I finally get my hands on him (and seemingly he's broken it off with Leah, so he may come home more often), I shall be having a few severe words to say to him. Silly boy.

The nice people in the chatroom helped me sort out some of the plotting of the library story. Thank you, Kat, Ebeth, Carol and Wendy. I may actually start writing the thing soon.

In the meantime, I finally wrote a draft of the angel story that I can live with. Plan is to edit it on Saturday and then workshop. We'll see if that actually happens! This one is worrying me a little because it's in 1st person present tense, from the POV of the angel. A new departure for me, and I'm not sure if the format works. But hey, that's what the workshop is for!

Thursday. Trying from work...

It's now Tuesday and I haven't persuaded this idiot thing to post last Sunday's remarks yet.

I had something I wanted to say, but I've forgotten what it was, now. Oh well.

Ho hum. It's Sunday evening and I should be at training. Well, no, actually, training will be over by now. But I should, then, be on my way home from training, or possibly in the pub after training. But I am not. Why not, I hear you cry. (Actually, you don't care, do you? But I'm going to tell you anyway.)

Last week, at training, I was injured. No, I did not do a Brian and break a bone. It was a pretty minor injury in fact, but has caused disproportionate inconvenience. I was happily Incanting at someone during one of the exercises, and pointing at my target, as I am prone to do. When another person came running by, hitting randomly at people - and hit the end of my pointing finger. Quite hard. I muttered curses, and at the end of the exercise, requested him to be more careful about pulling his blows. I thought the finger would stop hurting in a minute. It didn't. It continued to throb in an annoying and persistent manner, like rain or a telesalesperson.

I did the next exercise, and then decided to give up, as finger was getting no better and not gripping my sword terribly well. Spent the rest of the afternoon getting chilly and bored watching the others. By the end of training, finger was swollen and beginning to turn interesting shades of green and purple. Next morning, it looked like a fat, blue-green-purple-magenta mottled sausage. And would not either bend or straighten. (And before anyone starts saying, "well, it could have been broken" - it wasn't. I checked at the time, and got a second opinion off Patrick. It was just badly strained.)

Now, a week later, my finger is almost back to its normal size, though still blotched with bruises down the inner side and over the top knuckle. And still not normally usable. It is amazing, the number of things that suddenly become Very Difficult to do when your dominant forefinger is out of action. Stupid things, like brushing teeth, lacing boots, cutting cheese... Naturally, it was the day after it happened that we had a CCB at work and I had to (hand)write the minutes. Painfully, and less legibly than normal.

I can do most things now, but the finger still doesn't grip reliably and twinges painfully if I bend it too much - which happens frequently, as I try to use it normally. Sewing is still out, which is annoying as I have a handful of projects waiting. So I felt it better not to go to training this week; I don't know how well I'd do hanging onto a sword when another sword hits it. And I really don't want to reinjure it! So I stayed at home and cleaned the fridge instead (ugh!).

So there you go. That was the Saga of Dorian's Finger. Not very interesting, really.

What else? The referendum date has been announced. Idiot government.

For the benefit of my non-Irish Dedicated Readers (i.e. most of you!), I should explain that, in order to deal with the planned expansion of the European Union (a bunch of Eastern European countries want to join), they drew up something called the Treaty of Nice. This contains a bunch of changes to the current structure of the EU, and all current member states have to ratify it. In most cases, this consists of the foreign minister or whoever bringing it home to his government and saying, "here's this nice treaty; let's ratify it" and the government saying, "yes, let's."

Not in Ireland. In order to ratify it, we have to change the constitution. And that means we have to have a referendum, and let the populace decide on the matter. We had the referendum last year. The populace (or the 30 or so percent who turned out to vote; EU-related referenda always get a low turn-out) said "No, we don't like this." (Not, I think, that terribly many people object to letting Hungary, Poland, and the rest join the EU. More that (a) half the voters didn't understand the Treaty and (b) the rest objected to the loss of influence that Ireland will be subjected to.)

So, you'd think the government would go "oh look, the people don't like this treaty; maybe we should find out why and then nag the EU to do something about it." Fat chance! We are now being asked to vote, again, on the exact same treaty we already rejected. As a friend of mine said, "Dear Mr. Ahern, which part of "No" did you not understand?"

But I anticipate some entertainment from the matter; with any luck, the vote will be "no" again, which will make the government look very foolish (Ireland is the only member state which has not yet ratified the treaty), and with a bit more luck will bring them down. I'm not sure if we've ever had a government that only lasted four months...it's possible, actually, given the three General Elections we had within eighteen months, back in the early 80s.

And here we are again. Let's see...

Well, the permit application - for both Iveagh Gardens and the Phoenix Park - was refused. This is actually old news, but I don't seem to have said it here. My friend Michele, who is a solicitor, says that we should re-apply, and if it's refused again, threaten them with a judicial review. Given that the main reason for refusing seems to have been that we're a bunch of weirdos. (Not, of course, that they said that directly, but it's readable between the lines.)

Anyway, that's on hold at the moment, and we went to St. Anne's Park on Sunday. Found a good spot, only slightly discommoded by the three local skangers who watched us for an hour or two, occasionally asking stupid questions. And the family party wandering through; a small child was heard to say, "Mammy, can we watch the film?"! But we had to stop early when Brian broke his leg.

Nothing to do with the rubber swords, by the way. It could, as my mother says, have happened to a bishop. We were divided into two teams, fighting against one another. Brian (he of the chain-mail, not my bodyguard) wanted to avoid the melee in the middle, and so ran around the side and jumped over a log that was there. When he landed, he says his foot went down rather further than he'd expected, while the rest of him kept going. He turned a bee-yoo-tiful somersault and landed flat on his back in the mud. Of course, we all ran over to see was he all right. He lay there in the mud and said matter-of-factly, "I've broken my leg." He was, in fact, so calm about it that none of us believed him!

But he insisted, "No, seriously, I've broken my leg." So I - being the first first-aider to move; I think there are one or two more with some training - went to check. Checking for a broken leg on someone who actually has broken it is very different from practicing on a perfectly uninjured person. I was very worried about hurting him and, of course, I had not previously actually felt a broken bone. I was a bit nervous. But at the spot where he said it was broken, I could feel a lump on the bone where no lump ought to be, so I was fairly sure - given that he'd heard the crack when it snapped - that he was right and it really was broken. I gave instructions to call for an ambulance, and treated Brian for shock.

I did consider strapping the leg up, but once I'd explained to Brian what a natural splint is (strapping the injured limb to a convenient uninjured part of the body - in this case, it would have been tying his legs together), he seemed very unhappy with the idea. Since he'd remained very calm up to that point, and since he showed no inclination to move the leg, I decided not to risk upsetting him by insisting. I just covered him with someone's cloak, requested something to lay his head on (got a nice quilted bag that Andy and Darren carry their swords in), and gave him water to drink.

Cillian was rather upset, and was dealing with it by trying to be mondo helpful. He was helpful in such instances as getting Brian's armour off (he was wearing the infamous chainmail, as well as heavy leather greaves), but I had to restrain him from giving Brian sweets or crisps to eat. (As it later transpired, Brian wasn't operated on until Tuesday, and was not given a general anaesthetic anyway, but you never know!)

Then the heavens opened. Fergal eyed the rain and then said thoughtfully, "I think this is what you call a pathetic fallacy." Luckily, the cloak over Brian was wool, and Rory crouched to hold an umbrella over his head. But it was a very wet group that finally greeted the ambulance. The first reaction of the ambulance guys was, "It couldn't have been one of the smaller ones of you, could it?!" (Brian is not much taller than me, but quite fat - though he can still run faster than I can!) It was vaguely gratifying to see them directing some of our largest lads in helping them to lift Brian onto the stretcher, using a lift I learned in the Civil Defence.

So, Brian was carted off to Beaumont Hospital, complaining that it's miles from where he lives. It subsequently transpired that he'd snapped his tibia and had (we think) also a hairline fracture of the fibula. They decided to operate and put a metal pin in, but since he suffers from sleep apnoea, they couldn't use a general anaesthetic, and gave him an epidural instead. And he kept getting pushed back down the list by emergencies, so it was Tuesday before they operated, and they only let him go home yesterday. He spent the week complaining of boredom, I gather. Don't blame him.

Anyway, he's home now, and fine, but won't be back to training for a while, since getting from Tallaght to Raheny on crutches is liable to be a monster pain. Meanwhile, he's using the list to berate those people who had an attack of the guilts over the whole episode. It's not anyone's fault, just a stupid accident, but one or two of the lads are rather upset. But we're back in St. Anne's tomorrow.

In happier news...

My dad came over today with cuttings from his rose hedge; he has three different rambling roses making a hedge between his back garden and the next. Having successfully grown roses that I bought in the supermarket (just bung them in, water them, and hope - they grew!), I've become ambitious, and want to try to grow roses from cuttings. I like roses. They're pretty, and many of them (certainly Daddy's) smell nice, and they will cover our ugly concrete block wall, and they seem to be easy and non-messy to grow. I don't like gardening in general, because it makes me all dirty. But roses just have to be pruned every now and then, and I can do that! Well, I hope... Anyway, we put the cuttings in, and watered them, and now we wait and see. One of them is one that Daddy grew from a cutting that he took from a wild rose on his honeymoon. It's lovely, and smells utterly gorgeous!

The rain on Sunday caused me to start thinking of all the things that fantasy writers seem not ever to have done themselves. I have read more than one book in which characters shelter from the rain under trees. Anyone who has tried this will know that trees merely concentrate the rain, so that it lands on you in great dollops, usually down the back of your neck. But there are other things.

Some fantasy writers seem not ever to have ridden a horse, been bitten by a flea (odd, when you consider how many of them keep cats!), tried to light a fire with flint and steel, been in a battle, slept on the ground, or done a great many other things that their characters do and that they could do if they bothered to get off their arses. I have done all of the above, for instance, except the fire lighting, and that's only because I'm not sure where my tinder box is just now. I do actually own a tinder box with flint, steel and tinder. But even without trying it, I know that you do not strike the flint off the tinder (as I read in one book!). And I believe it's an extremely lengthy and frustrating procedure.

Anyway, I'm firmly of the opinion that all fantasy writers should go to the Gathering or some similar event. I know what it's like to sleep on the ground - not as uncomfortable as sleeping on a flat floor, but colder than you'd expect. I have been in battles - they're very noisy, very confusing, and even worse at night. I know what it's like to hang about for hours before the battle begins, wondering what the hell is going on. I've had everything in my tent get damp from condensation (possibly, admittedly, more of a problem with modern tents than the ones your fantasy characters would use). Now, if I only wrote High Fantasy rather than Urban Fantasy...

Again, my Dedicated Readers are peeved with me. And with good reason. But truly, people, I've been up to my eyes preparing for the Gathering, being at the Gathering, and recovering from the Gathering.

Now I'm going to tell you What I Did On My Holidays...

It really got moving on Wednesday last week. Uh...the twenty-first, that would have been. I put in a full and stressful day's work - most inconsiderately, there was a major project meeting at the end of that week, when I was going to be away, so everything had to be ready for said meeting by the end of Wednesday. Then it was straight off up to my parents' house (they live near where I work) to use my mother's sewing machine, mine having thrown a wobbler the previous night, with Patrick's costume only half finished.

I'd never used this particular sewing machine before, and nearly threw a fit when I saw it. Knobs, buttons and dials everywhere; I swear, this thing looks like it ought to be in the cockpit of a 747! And naturally, my mother wasn't there to hold my hand and explain it to me (though she subsequently told me that for a Bernina, it's a simple thing. Wibble!). So I had to search her sewing room for the book of words, which I eventually found, and was able to stop panicking.

I got most of Patrick's costume (robes, with separate hood) done, but had to go home to do the hem, him not being there for pinning purposes. I was fully expecting to have to hand-hem the thing, but when I finally got round to it (had to stop and relax a little and have a beer, first), I was able to persuade my own machine to co-operate. I think the problem was in my threading of it; its tension wheel is a bitch to deal with. The hem is still uneven, but since he wears the robes belted, it doesn't show too much. More of a problem was the seam on the sleeves; they're dagged to show the lining, but unfortunately, that means the inner seam shows, and done the normal way (neatened and pressed open), looks crap. So for the first time ever, I used something I learned in school Home Ec class, and made them French seams.

So by the time I'd got all of that done, it was half past one in the morning. We needed to be at the ferryport by five, so that meant leaving at half four, which in turn meant getting up at half three. There didn't seem much point in going to bed. So I didn't. Instead, I indulged in an hour or so of e-mail and on-line chat, then went and packed my rucksack and had a shower.

For the benefit of those of my Dedicated Readers who are not gamers, I should perhaps point out here that gamers in general tend to be a highly individualistic lot, not usually amenable to being organised. You may now appreciate the magnitude of the task that Patrick had undertaken: to get 19 gamers, mostly aged 16 to 22, from Dublin to Derby and back again, without losing any of them or their possessions. (He says he is now going to take up herding cats as a hobby.)

Anyway, the start of this task was getting everyone onto the 6.15am ferry from Dublin to Holyhead. He had told everyone (several times) to be at Dublin Port (not Dun Laoghaire) by 5am. We were both rather surprised to find, when we arrived there at five to five, that half of the group was already there. And by about quarter past five, everyone was there.

Ferryports these days treat foot passengers much as airports treat their passengers: you hand over your luggage and don't see it again till you get to where you're going. So we duly handed over our luggage and boarded the ferry. The crossing was uneventful, apart from Ciara threatening to be sick before we'd even left the port (she wasn't), which was pleasant; the Irish Sea can be perfectly appalling. So at about eight in the morning, we arrived in Holyhead, collected our luggage, and parked ourselves on the platform of the railway station.

Possibly I should mention said luggage, at this point. Each one of us had a large and heavy rucksack (it is not possible to pack lightly for four days of camping and wearing costume), plus assorted other bits including a large first-aid kit, two guitars, a bodhran, and various tents/stray sleeping bags/random items of hand luggage...and my teddy bear. Winston comes to all the cons and suchlike that I go to. And then there was The Box. Steve built us a box to carry our weaponry and stuff in; it's about five feet long by three feet high by three feet wide. (Yes, people did ask us how many corpses we had in it.) It was stuffed full of rubber swords, axes, hammers, etc., plus Brian's chain mail (which slid down to one end and unbalanced the thing), Hugh's bow and arrows, and some other bits and pieces. It was heavy!

Well, so the train arrived, and we all piled in, and in due course we arrived at Crewe. (As far as I can tell, it is almost impossible to go anywhere by train in England without changing at Crewe.) We held up that train for a good twenty minutes, getting all of us, all of our luggage, and The Box, off it. Ho ho. Then, of course, we had to find our way to the correct platform. It seems to be a law of nature that if you have to change trains in a large station (and Crewe has about two dozen platforms!), the platform you have to go to is the one furthest away from where you came in. A lift was found for the transportation of The Box (one thing about English railway stations, most of them have lifts. Few in this country do), and the rest up us picked up the gear of the four people carrying The Box, and headed for the stairs.

Naturally, the train at the platform to which we were directed was not ours. We hung about for most of half an hour before a very small train, of the type that would only be used on short commuter runs here, arrived to take us to Derby. Getting The Box into it entailed a great deal of sweat and swearing. The only good part was that it was mostly empty, so we could at least all sit together (given that we had one ticket for the lot of us, this was important when the inspector came around). And off we went again. For a while. After half an hour or so, the train stopped. And stayed stopped, for no apparent reason, for at least another half-hour. (A stoppage punctuated by phone calls between Patrick and his brother, trying to set up Stu's meeting us in Derby with a minibus. There were Problems with the minibus.)

Anyway, we finally made it to Derby, but Stu was still having minibus problems. And the lift was out of order. We ended up sitting at the goods entrance to the station for the best part of an hour. At length, a car arrived to take three of us (me, Patrick, and the other Brian, whose character is my character's bodyguard) to the site. The others waited with all the gear for a LandRover with a big cage trailer; the minibus problems had not been sorted.

And so, at last, all 19 of us made it to Locko Park - with all of our belongings. We "checked in", we found our campsite (where Craig gave us a stern talking-to about fire safety; seemingly some idiot on the set-up staff had lit candles in her tent and then fallen asleep; she was okay but she lost the tent and all of her possessions. Stupid female; what kind of fool lights candles in a tent?!) and pitched our tents. I found myself going off shopping with Brian (my bodyguard, not he of the chainmail), Cillian and Bosco. Brian ended up spending about STG200 kitting himself out with armour - then came the problem. He had a sterling cheque-book, but no cheque guarantee card. Hrm. The head trader in that particular company said it would be okay if Brian knew someone (this was Brian's first Gathering). Okay, I said, who would he like Brian to know. Uh...Stu Maher, said the guy. No problem, says me. Stu's my brother-in-law, and Brian here is my mate. Grand so. They write Stu's name on the cheque, as well as Brian's name and address. Stu was subsequently a bit bemused to find he'd been so used.

Thursday is last-minute-panic-setting-up day at the Gathering; time in (time to start being in character) is midday on Friday. So we pottered about for the rest of the day, lending a hand here and there, before hitting the beer tent. This is one of the nice things about the Gathering; the beer tent is a big marquee and the people who run it are a real ale crowd with some very nice brews. We had a lot of drink, and sang, and did not dance "The Walls of Limerick", before finally leaving when they eventually chucked us all out, around two in the morning.

The only other item of note on Thursday was my attempts to impress upon people that wearing costume on Thursday is Not Done. Wearing costume that you have just bought, because that's the easiest way to carry it, is okay, but wearing costume in the beer tent on Thursday night will get you sneered and laughed at. Unfortunately, Cillian (who should know better, since he was at the Gathering last year), happily encouraged people to wear their newly-acquired gear. It's all very well if they personally don't mind being laughed at, but I'd rather not have people think that Armengar as a whole is a bunch of ignorant fuckwits.

Oh yes, and then there was the altercation back in camp. I never did get all the ins and outs of the whole thing, but about three people were having a very noisy argument around half two. I informed the participants the next morning that if they did that again, I would get up and kick their heads in (and put my 14-hole Docs on specially!). They didn't do it again, and all were in fact suitably apologetic. But it didn't get us off to a good start; other people heard and rumours about Armengar were (briefly) flying.

Anyway, Friday duly arrived, and we all got up and into costume. Down to the marketplace for breakfast; one lives out of chip vans at these events, and there's one in particular, the Cauldron, which does one of the best fried breakfasts you'll get anywhere.

My memories of the event are beginning to blur, I must admit. But stuff that happened, in no particular order...

A.R.S.E. and Armengar had some mock battles; we whipped their asses three times out of three. Very good for morale; A.R.S.E. have a helluva reputation. But I don't think they train as often as we do.

The Vipers faction (who are dire enemies of the Lions, to which faction we belong), kept on trying to get into our camp and slaughter the lot of us. We stomped all over them every damn' time. They seem to be slow learners. "Okay, let's go pick on the Lions. Oh bugger, they have the Harts and the Gryphons fighting with them. Oh crap, they kicked our butts. Again."

The Prince-Bishop's Men (one of the groups within the Lions) went off to try to make peace with the Stonebergers (one of the Vipers' groups). Most of them came out unconscious; the Prince-Bishop and his aide came out dead. We went out for blood after that, but a couple of people got hurt for real so the battle was called off. Night fighting is not safe.

The Dragons' plot team wanted us to monster for them (i.e. play opposition); the Dragons are a mostly Erinish faction, and they all do really bad mock-Irish accents, so we were all for laughing at them a lot. But when it came down to it, as the plot ref told us, the Dragons had managed to break three plots in one day, including the one they wanted to use us for. So we became a Tartar horde instead. We must've done about 10 attacks on them (20 or so of us; our entire group numbered about 40. Not everyone travelled on the train). But the fuckers don't pull their blows (most of them; a few did), and many of them don't take their hits either. I have some really impressive bruises on my arms from that experience, including one about three inches by two.

I went with a mission to one of the Lions' islands to find out what was going on with unliving. They asked for volunteers at the morning muster, and all of Armengar shouted to go! In the end there were about ten of us, and five or so others. We nearly got killed before the leader decided we should pull out; luckily we were only in for reconnaissance and not to actually destroy the baddies. Later, Cheetah went in, but ignored the report from our group ("bring a legion, and every Incantor you can lay your hands on"), and so was killed. A sad day for the Lions. (Fun part was when about six of us ended up in a big pile; the refs kept telling us not to fall on each other, but sometimes you can't help it. Patrick's character was healing someone, but got shot. I was healing him, and then got shot. And then two or three more went down and landed on us. Time freeze while the mess was sorted out.)

Armengar have now got a reputation for being Useful People; by the end of the event, the command people were saying "I need some Armengarians" when they wanted an escort or whatever. Anytime anyone said they needed people, we were there. Yay us!

I got cornered one evening by some guy who's doing research for a library; he wanted to know all about my Ancestor (as I think I've said before in this blog, we can't say we worship gods; we follow ancestors) for his archive. So I spent half an hour or so telling him tales of Heramacles. It's only occurred to me now to wonder if the other people he talked to were able to tell stories of their Ancestors. Or is it just us who have done so much work on the background info of their group? (Me now being in the middle of writing another story for the group, and planning another Tale of Heramacles.)

Came the big honour battle on Monday (last day). Vipers, Tarantulas, Bears and Dragons against the Lions, Harts, Gryphons, Unicorns, Wolves and - at the last minute - the Jackals. You can see which side had the numbers. We stomped all over the Vipers and their mates. They charged our shield wall - the shield wall dropped to its knees and the archers behind decimated the charge. They tried again - the archers popped up again, so they decided to go along our front line. To run straight into the arms of a meat-grinder of heavy infantry. I think it was about then that the Vipers and the Trannies decided to run away. We crushed the remaining Dragons and Bears. This is all hearsay from my point of view; my character stays with the Healers, behind the lines; I spent most of my time guarding our prisoner pile.

Anyone who went down in the front lines was dragged back to us; if it was one of ours, we healed him up and sent him back out. If it was a bad guy, we made sure he wasn't about to die and added him to the prisoner pile. (Which the Jackals did sterling work guarding.) Basically, we kept them out of the fight - though now and then, one of them would come round, and start hitting us; some of them had to be tied up! Personally, I thought we should have brought the lot back to camp after the battle, and ransomed them back to their factions - we could have made so much money! But once the battle was over, we just let them go. Bah.

Anyway, that was almost the end of the Gathering. We had a final muster and then started packing up. And when all 19 of our travel group finally made it to Derby station, it was after 9pm and everything was closed. This is something else I've noticed about English railway stations; trains may run all night, but nothing else in the station does!

I won't go into the hassle of getting to the station. Suffice to say that we got there. Eventually. And got on the train. And in due course, got off in Birmingham. (Most unusually, we were changing at Birmingham, not Crewe.) And found our way to the correct platform. I began to get worried when I looked at the TV screens (English railway stations have these, like the ones in airports), and couldn't see our train anywhere. I found a wee man and asked him. "Oh no," he said, "there's no train to Holyhead tonight. There's been no trains to Holyhead all day." Aaaaaaaggggghhhhh...I don't panic. I'm not in charge. Patrick is. He gets to panic. And anyway, the sight of either of us panicking will not be a good thing for the group. I find Patrick (who has gone outside for a smoke, Birmingham New Street being an utterly non-smoking station). I tell him. He is not happy. He goes to talk to The Authorities; I go back to the group, before they start panicking for lack of information.

In due course, it transpires that there are engineering works on the line. Hence the lack of trains. But First North Western are still liable to get us to Holyhead. They'll get us a taxi, they say. There are 19 of us. A taxi is not much use. Oh, they say, we thought it was only one of you. Okay, we'll get you a coach. That's better. Half an hour later...we can't find a coach (this is about 11pm on a Bank Holiday Monday). We'll get you a minibus and a taxi. This sounds iffy... Half an hour later...we can't find a minibus!

What it finally ended up being was a 7-seater taxi-van with all the seats taken out (for The Box and other luggage) and a convoy of 5 ordinary taxis (for us and the remaining luggage). We left Birmingham around midnight; we arrived in Holyhead around 4am. At least, most of us did. One of the taxis had got lost, and didn't turn up till...well, I don't know exactly when, since I was asleep on a bench by then. We had good and missed the 3.30am ferry that we were aiming for, anyway, and the next one wasn't till 9.15am. So it was lunchtime by the time we all made it back to Dublin. But Patrick did manage to get everyone there and back intact. Herding cats, here he comes!

And since then, I've been recovering. I'm think I'm getting close to making up the sleep...

My Dedicated Readers (well, some of them) have been moaning at me for not updating this thing. Sorry, lads. I've been busy.

Busy doing what, I hear you cry. Uh...dunno. Stuff.

Well, designing a temple, for one thing. And I mean "temple" in a very all-encompassing sense. Building, structure of priesthood, beliefs, rites and ceremonies - the works! It took a wee while. This is what I get for playing the High Priestess of Heramacles in our LARP group. I have to do all the work on said Ancestor and his temple. (This is the world of the Lorien Trust, in which we do not worship gods, we follow Ancestors, and we may not say "church" or "religion" - though "priest", apparently, is okay. It's some weird PC thing.) Actually, my temple is quite neat. I have a porch with cool acoustics where you can't eavesdrop, and a garden with roses, and suchlike nice things. All temples should have gardens. And I have an apprenticeship system for my priests, and a set way of electing a new High Priest, and rites which used to be bloody (some of them) but now are not. It's all cool. (I really should send it all to Gordon to put up on the website, now...)

Then I'm also on the world-building team for Armengar, which entails more thought and making things up. I invented our swear-words a few weeks ago. That was fun. And then Fergal translated them into Irish, which is even better. We will be able to swear at the Gathering and no-one will know!

We're using Irish as the official language of Armengar, because while very few of us speak it well, we all know a few words and phrases, so we can happily confuse all the English players by talking of the Ard-Sagairt instead of the High Priestess, and so on. Our battle cry is in Irish too - our official one. The unofficial one is "Who's bleeding first?!" Which is, admittedly, easier to shout than "Misneach is Urraim!"

It's sad, really, that most of us can't speak Irish, it being our local language and all. But it's so badly taught in schools that even after 13 years, few people can manage a conversation (though most of us manage to write essays about Irish poetry, in Irish! We have to. It's part of the Leaving Cert.). And then, of course, since almost no-one speaks the language in everyday life, it's very easy to forget most of it - and after 13 years of having it drummed into you in school, you have a big incentive to forget it as fast as possible.

But I digress...

Yeah, LARP stuff. I've been working away at my armour, which is almost done now; I just have to get more eyelets and some glue for the finishing off bits. And my belt-pouch is nearly ready too, though I still have to make the water-carrying one.

And of course there's been training every Sunday. We finally got thrown out of the Iveagh Gardens a couple of weeks ago. One of the park-keepers there utterly loathed us and his little bit of power eventually went to his head. He said we were disturbing the other park users (unlikely; they looked upon us as free entertainment!) and told us to leave. So we did. And went to the Phoenix Park instead, which is not as convenient to get to, but has the advantage of being much bigger, with a greater variety of terrain and more bits that no-one else wants to use. But now we really have to get our permit to make it all official to be there. At least our application has finally got to the right person, but we've been asked not to use any parks at all until it's approved. So we've been using downstairs in Fibbers (hah! You guys thought I made that pub up, didn't you? Well, I didn't) for the last couple of weeks. It's less than ideal; we can't fight there, only role-play, and the under-18s in the group can't come at all. The law changed recently; rather than being let in with a responsible adult, under-18s can now only enter licenced premises when accompanied by their parent or legal guardian. And since most teenagers' parents have no desire to spend a Sunday afternoon sitting in a dimly-lit room watching their offspring and their offspring's friend act weird... You get the picture.

The Gathering's looming ever closer now. We're off on the 22nd; god-awful early ferry to Holyhead and then about 4 different trains up to Derby. But if Patrick can get 40 LARPers from one park to another on no notice, he can certainly get the 15 or so who are taking this route from Dublin to Derby with planning.

Hmph. I had all kinds of stuff I was going to put in this entry, and now I can't remember any of it. You'd think I could write a lovely long blog after letting it lapse for a month. But I can't think of a thing to say. Oh well. Maybe something will come to me tomorrow.