Claire's blog

Seeing as I normally mention the films I’ve been watching, I thought it would make a change to mention the books I bought recently – especially as I came back to Ireland with seven new books to go on my already straining bookshelves.

Of course, although I’ve not been renting DVDs recently (too many books to read!), I had to go to the cinema while I was back in England to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The BBC haven’t been too complimentary about it, but I LOVED it. The special effects were fantastic, the cast great (Johnny Depp!!!!) and the set pieces were entertaining (mexican stand-off with swords anyone?). It is a set up for the third film though, so don’t expect any resolution of the plot lines…

For a blog attached to a beading website, this shows remarkably little evidence of beading. Part of this is because I’ve not been doing much, there have been a few busy periods at work, and a lot of my spare time has gone into launching the redesign of this site. Nope, I’ve not done the design or the coding (that would be Glynn Williams), my job description boils down to sorting out content and hassling people. I have been able to get on with some beading more recently, as I’ve been commissioned to do a couple of pieces for a book, but I’ll post pictures of those AFTER the book’s been published (which considering how far we’re all running behind could be a while yet ;-))

So I was back in the UK this weekend, as I had a meeting in London on Saturday. In order to make my flight on Friday I had to leave Galway at 9.30 a.m., and as I had some things to sort out at work before I left I was intending to get up at about 7 a.m. So obviously I woke up at 10.15 a.m. I managed to get a flight from Galway airport to London Luton, where Dad very kindly picked me up, so it wasn’t too bad. And at least I was still going to be able to use the flight I’d booked back to Ireland… or so I thought.

Yesterday my flight back wasn’t until 3.20 p.m., so no way I was going to oversleep and miss that one. I was packed, ran my errands and was ready to go in time, but we hadn’t factored in just how bad the roadworks near our house were, or how much of the roads they’d closed off. What is usually a 10-15 minute journey took 45 min, and I missed my flight. Again. Luckily, I was still able to pick up a place on a flight from Manchester (to which Mum very kindly drove me) back to Galway for later on the same day, as I had to be in work for 9 a.m. this morning.

So, booked 4 flights this weekend, only used two. I think I’m never going to hear the last of this one 😀

My grandparents arrived on Friday without any problems, and we’ve had a good time this weekend. I’m still feeling a bit off from my cold, so on Saturday we took it pretty easy, going for a mooch around Galway. We strolled down to the harbour to visit the swans…

…before walking back up into the centre for lunch (and Guinness of course!) at Tigh Neachtain where we enjoyed a great chowder, followed by a stroll around the Saturday market and a few shops. We finished up with a very enjoyable meal at McDonaghs restaurant.

Sunday we drove into the Burren, where we visited the Cliffs of Moher and the Poulnabrone dolmen (a 5000 year old tomb). It chucked it down all day, but that just added atmosphere 😉

The dolmen is set in the middle of the limestone fields in the burren, which makes for a very strange landscape.

Grandad’s looking a bit damp in this one.

I was due to fly back into Galway on Monday, but due to a horrible, horrible cold I ended up staying home until yesterday to give me a chance to recover. The journey back went fine, right up until I was a few miles outside Galway when one of my front tyres gave up the ghost and developed a puncture. I wasn’t too worried, as I carry one of those cans that fill your tyre with foam so you can drive to the garage, but as soon as I began to fill the tyre the foam began to spray out of the large hole in the wall of my tyre. I’ve been having problems with a slow leak for a while, so it looks like the tyre just couldn’t take it any more. Although I have RAC membership, it’s still for the UK, but I took a chance and gave them a call anyway. They turned out to be wonderful, and arranged for a local tow company to come and pick up my poor, lame car even though I wasn’t really covered – HOORAY! for the RAC. They were fabulous the time we broke down three times in Stevenage as well so I recommend them heartily.

The tow company then turned out to be lovely as well, taking me and my luggage home, and then hanging on to my car in their yard until the garage opened the next day, when they dropped the car off with the garage along with my contact details. I dropped by the garage this afternoon and was told that both my front tyres need replacing and they wouldn’t have the right type in stock until Tuesday. Happily though, it’s not going to cost as much as I thought it might. Also happily, Grandma and Grandad are arriving later today to visit, and they are hiring a car so I’ll still be able to get around this weekend.

This is going to be the last picture I can take of the chicks, as I fly back to the UK tomorrow after a very enjoyable Festival. They’re very active now, and I shouldn’t think they’ll be in the nest for much longer. The poor parents have been run ragged trying to keep them fed!

Their markings are very distinct now, and if it wasn’t for the larger beaks on the babies it would be hard to tell them apart from their parents. They’ve changed so much over the last week, it would be hard to believe if I hadn’t seen it.

The Festival’s been a lot of fun, with more coach trips and people passing through than ever before. In an effort to entice people to visit the studios as well as the marquees we went festive and hung bunches of balloons everywhere.

This was definitely an opportunity for a group picture!

From the left you’re looking at Lora, me, Mandy (sitting), Maria, Tas (at the front), and Jo. As you can see, the weather has been fantastic.

When we got a quiet moment, it was a chance for us to have a look around the marquees ourselves. As always there was some great stuff to see, and I found the time to attend a class on how to use Derwent’s new Inktense pencils – which of course meant I had to buy a set!

Aren’t the chicks getting huge? Definately six visible in this picture.

Spent some time today in the sun putting out stakes and posters to tie balloons too for the Festival tomorrow, along with tidying up the studio and admiring the marquees. It seems a bit strange that it all starts tomorrow! The chicks are still growing well though, and now all have feathery wings with distinct markings, and the beginnings of little tails! As you can see they are now also big enough to start climbing out of the centre of the nest and sitting around the edge for a bit more room.

The plan was to take today off, spend some time at home, and go shopping, but with the Festival looming ever closer we popped into Patchings for half an hour to tidy up a bit. I know things don’t kick off until Thursday, but Mum will be driving down to Heathrow tomorrow to pick Dad up, so we needed to get a bit of work done today. Off course this also gave me the chance to snap a photo of the chicks 😀

Sadly, it looks like we’re now down to seven. It’s always hard to count them as they wriggle around so much, climbing over and under each other, but no matter how hard we looked we could only spot seven chicks. The remaining chicks look very healthy though, all of them with feathers now and distinct primaries on their wings, and they look like little birds now instead of young dinosaurs!

Sorry about the picture, the chicks weren’t very cooperative with the photographer today.

We then drove up to Sheffield to visit Crystal Peaks shopping centre. We had some shopping we wanted to do anyway, but in particular I wanted to see their branch of Sainsburys as that’s where Rob will begin work in September when he starts on his management programme. The store was HUGE, and included the clothing range which turned out to be very nice. I came out of there with a couple of T-shirts, a pair of cropped joggers for the gym, and a lovely pair of beaded jeans (especially pleased about this one as my favourite pair of beaded jeans gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago). It was all quite nice quality, fit, and was reasonably priced, so I’m quite chuffed. Just have to figure out how to fit it all in my suitcase for the return trip to Ireland now!

Spent the day in Patchings preparing for the Festival. The marquees are going up now, and everyone is getting very excited. The chicks are still getting larger (and still eating non-stop), we can now hear them cheeping quite clearly.

The nest box is in a laburnum tree just outside the studio at Patchings, so we can watch the poor parents flying in and out as they frantically try and keep the beaks full. You should be able to see the nest box in this picture, along with a lot of bird feeders (mostly currently empty as Dad is in India so hasn’t been topping them up once a week).

The chicks appear yet bigger! But we’ve only spotted 8 of them today, so we think we might have lost the smallest one. Several of the ones that are left now have little wings, with markings on the feathers.

Everytime they hear a noise all these beaks open up hopefully, and we can now quite clearly hear them chirping.

I was teaching a beading class at Patchings today, but we couldn’t stop looking at the nest-cam. The chicks look bigger today, we’re sure of it. I guess they’ve got to get up to the size of their parents before they leave the nest, and they only get 2-3 weeks to grow to that size.

We’re now pretty positive there are only 9 chicks, but some of the bigger ones are beginning to show primary feathers on their wings.

BTW, don’t forget the Patchings Art, Craft and Design Festival starting on Thursday this week!

I’m back in the UK, so I spent the day in Patchings working on some handouts for the bead course I’m doing tomorrow. This meant I’ve now seen the chicks on the nest-cam for myself!

They look so strange, like little aliens, but are adorable nonetheless. Their eyes aren’t open, but every time they hear a noise they all open their beaks and start jockeying for the best position to get food. We feel sorry for the poor parents – they’re run ragged! We’ve definately seen nine chicks, but I think there might be ten. It’s hard to count them as they wriggle so much. My current favourite is little Runt – the smallest open beak in the middle of the picture. He hatched last, and is much smaller than the others, but fights just as hard as the others when their parents arrive with food.

Dad’s updated the Bearhugs site with pictures of the chicks!!! Aren’t they TINY! I’m going home on Thursday, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some pictures of my own over the weekend.

Why I ever coughed up the money for a Rough Guide to Ireland, or spent time searching for internet sites about the place before I moved here I don’t know. I’d completely forgotten the existence of H2G2, which has a fairly accurate and amusing entry on Galway that’s got me giggling at work this morning. I particularly liked

“A Dublin newspaper columnist recently wrote of Galway, that whenever he goes there he thinks it’s a great place, but he gets the urge to just pick the city up and shake it and tell it ‘for God’s sake, would you ever get a proper job’.”

And I’ve just had a text from Dad – the blue tit chicks have hatched!!! I’ll have to see if I can get a photo of them from him this evening, and as I’m heading back to the UK on Thursday in time for the Festival, I should get a chance to see them.

ETA: 9 chicks so far, and one egg that may still hatch!

It rained! And rained, and rained, and rained. And then for some variety it rained for a bit. We had big plans – we were going to drive through the Burren (possibly along the coast road) to the Cliffs of Moher, and were then planning on driving down to Bunratty for a bit of a look around before dropping Jo off at the airport for her flight. In the end we mostly drove around looking at the scenery from the car. We came up through Kinvara, which looked lovely even through the rain, drove in as far as Lisdoonvarna (where we visited the Burren Smokery and bought some lovely smoked salmon) and then headed straight for Bunratty. Once we got there we thought it was a bit late (and wet!) to have a look around the castle and folk park, but there are some very good and interesting shops we enjoyed browsing around and we had a lovely meal at the cafe in the Avoca shop. I still took a picture of the castle though.

We also managed to fit in a stop at the pub for Jo to have her first pint of Guinness – pretty much obligatory when visiting Ireland.

So last night I went to pick up a friend from Shannon airport. Her plane got in at 10.20pm, so we went straight to bed when we got back to my flat last night, but today we headed into Galway for a bit of a mooch. I drove us in and we parked up by work, so we could walk in by the river. The weathers been lovely – windy, but quite sunny – and we enjoyed rambling around the city. We actually made it all the way down to the harbour to wave at the swans and the boats.

Of course we had to go for fish and chips for lunch! Rob came over as well, and I picked him up from the bus just after watching Doctor Who (I’m loving the new series by the way), and just before Eurovision started. Much fun was had by all throwing popcorn at the TV, and laughing at the Finnish entry. Now that there are three of us, my poor little car can no longer cope, so we’ve hired a car for tomorrow to go for a wander round the Burren.

It’s another gorgeous, gorgeous day, which again means that work is half empty! I can’t comment though, as I arrived a bit late myself 😀 In honour of the sunshine, I’ve put up a more cheerful layout.

I head back to the UK tomorrow, so that I can borrow Mum’s car and drive all the way up to Co. Durham for the Beadworkers Guild Regional Day. I’m really looking forward to it – a chance to meet up with people, spend some money, and do some BEADING! I don’t seem to have much time for that lately, so this will be fabulous.

It’s a beautiful sunny day over here in Galway, and as far as I can tell there are about 3 other people here at work with me! Not that I blame them – the sun is shining, there’s a gentle breeze, it’s Friday afternoon….

I think I might be heading off soon as well 🙂

So I was messing around with Google maps and discovered that they’ve got quite a high-res image of Galway! You can even see my flat on it (although I can’t find my car anywhere)

Spring has sprung, so I really need to knuckle down and give both the website and this blog a more cheerful theme – hopefully fairly soon. This could be the time when I finally knuckle down and learn enough html to write my own theme for the website – but don’t hold your breath! I’ve been saying this for over a year now…

In the meantime I’ve had a nice lazy few weeks. Everything was manic before Easter as I was preparing to attend a conference in Manchester, which I was giving a presentation at. The conference was great – better than I thought it was going to be actually – and I really enjoyed it. It was also great being back in Manchester for a visit, if really odd. I kept feeling as though I’d never left, it all felt so familiar to me. I had to keep reminding myself NOT to get on a bus and head back to my flat! Good fun showing Marie around and taking her to some of the places I used to visit all the time, and while I was there I managed to meet up with someone I used to work with for a drink and to catch up on the gossip.

The conference finished on the Wednesday before Easter, so rather than fly back to Galway straight away I hopped on a train down to Nottingham to visit my parents. The Easter Bear Fair was on on the Monday, and it went pretty well. Lots of people came round, and Mum sold a few bears. As I then had a meeting in London the following Saturday I decided to be completely lazy and I took the whole week off work. I didn’t do a huge amount with the time, mostly drooled over my new delivery of coloured and silver jump rings that had arrived from over the Atlantic, and made some new jewellery with them. We also managed to meet up with my Grandparents in that time, and catch up with their news.

The blue tit had built up her nest, and I spent the time I was home eagerly checking on the nest cam to see if there were any eggs – in the end I flew out of England on Sunday and she started laying on Monday! We’re not sure how many eggs there are so far as this year she seems determined to hide them well when she’s not actually sitting on them. With a bit of luck though, I’ll get to see the chicks when I go home for the Festival.

So, that brings me back to Ireland. We’ve just had a three day weekend for the May Day bank holiday, a lot of which I spent cooking and working on the computer. Saturday was lovely weather, so I took myself out for a drive, but Sunday and Monday it rained quite a lot. This meant I got some diagrams done on the computer that I’d promised to a friend and got quite a bit of cooking done. I’ve fallen into the habit of always eating the same few things – quick to prepare and I don’t have to think when I’m at the supermarket, so this weekend made a pleasant change as I tried out some new recipes and filled the flat with pleasant smells. And, of course, I rented some more films. This weekend I worked my way through

It’s odd. I read far more than I watch films, but somehow I never mention what books I’m reading…