get out of my system-again

Very short blog here-but I have just about had it with a lot of things. Mainly the whole digital photography thing. I am fed up to the proverbial teeth seeing a new camera come out and then 6 moths later it is upgraded and replaced by not only a new model, but a new battery (so you cannot shove the old battery in your new camera as a spare). There is a plethora of digital editing programmes and even the magazines encourage you to invest in at least two or three of these programmes. I just don’t get the idea of going out to take a photo them come back and spend a considerable amount of time fixing it up-and 90% of the time the photo remains on a computer hard drive to be completely forgotten about. OK I DO try to get mine printed as much as possible-but you need to have a lot printed to make cost worthwhile, you sometimes need to download a link to some site to get them printed, if you don’t like the quality in your local Boots or wherever you go. I am so fed up with this I am 80% sure I will be off to one of those trade in shops on Tuesday and take whatever I get. I will be dumping my collection of camera magazines that I kept because there was something that looked “handy” in them-and obviously I never looked at again. I think a little compact camera is all I need-if anything. The whole computer side has really killed my liking taking photographs. This may be some form of midlife crisis-but we’ll see what happens come Tuesday.

At work today in a conversation, I mentioned that I only watch the one programme on the tv-“Dexter” and when it finishes there will be nothing I want to watch. The woman who started this conversation looked surprised and said “What do you do in the evenings then?” Is this how tv has taken over our lives? I told her that I would read,listen,to radio,music or work on photos on the computer (which will hopefully be stopping too soon).I also said that I would stare at a wall and contemplate things-which got a really puzzled look. OK I DO have some dvds of movies and some discontinued tv shows-but they only seem to be watched in the winter months, when it’s too cold/wet/icy/dark to get outside.

Gonna try a healthy eating thing next week-giving up the tea/coffee and all the rubbishy things, and the beer/cider. I only ever drink when I’m away somewhere on holiday-so that bit should be pretty easy.

And I’m giving up on a couple of other projects-less said about them the better,to be honest should have done this sooner.

Oideasgael 2- a new beginning...no wait that's something else

Previously on Odieas Gael blog- Gerdy went down Donegal  and…–ach there’s no time for that –just re-read the last one-I’ll get on with it.

Anyway the first night was just a general introduction in which we were told what to expect:- the lessons, the levels, the workshops and the entertainment. After this we headed off to the pub-Roartys it was called and a great wee pub it was too. And a nice wee seisiún  in progress too. The other guys in the b&b were regulars and were fluent in the lingo-they only come down for the craic. They were from Belfast and one from England direction. The guy from Belfast had eight languages when I said “wow” he pointed to the English guy and said “that’s nothing, he has 18.” I found out that he makes his living via a web site dedicated to languages (1)

So –where are we? Sunday?  Right! The first day. To be honest on Saturday as I had a fair bit of time to kill I regretted not bringing the gerdymobile with me-but kept telling myself that would have been very antisocial and all. Sunday was the first lesson proper. Fairly big group of various nationalities/ages. Just at the start we were told about the workshops and that we could change if we wanted to. The workshops included:-hill walking,bodhran playing,tin whistle(I actually bought one, just in case-imagine it, me doing Lithium on the tin whistle), drama,set-dancing,sean os singing, sean og dancing and so on. Carolyn oddly enough had never heard of the sean og dancing (2) and I told her to go to it as I know she would love it-and that I might come along to watch as it is very watchable –especially when a gurl is doing it.

I decided to do the hill walking. The start to the walk was pretty wet-in fact was our first days rain in 17 days some people looked pretty grim so I told the old story of Noah in the Ark and when he passed Ireland (3).

        The nightly entertainment put on for us was superb-it just got better and better-I thought I had died and gone to music heaven-but I think I already said that.

On the Wednesday my gear from the hikes was still a bit damp and fancied a change-someone suggested the set dancing (think it was Carolyn actually). I decided to go along just to watch and get a few photos. Eventually my mind started ticking over “ Carolyn –arms round waists,some other feisty looking gurls-arms round waists, Carolyn….” So I was up dancing-and great craic it was too-worked up a fair aul sweat, Carolyn –arms…” Despite getting it all wrong and losing my partner a couple of times, I said that I’d be back the next day-with a sat nav.  Leaving the place when it was all over on 1^st day we saw this thing crossing the road-we had no idea what it was –but as we were looking at it cars were stopping to see what was going on-and they would not drive off until it was out of danger.

 That night going into the pub Carlolyn stopped me and said she had something to say to me and wanted to say it away from the noise. She congratulated me for getting outside my comfort zone and getting up to dance and said it was a major thing for me. I said that it wasn’t and that getting up and making a fool of myself comes second nature to me.Then SHE  told me to stop running myself down and that I was good at the dancing (actually, another person told me this too-what’s going on here? I was thinking). Then I was thinking-I’ll show you what coming out of my comfort zone is later.

All in all it was a great week-I managed to tell a joke half in Irish,and my teacher made me tell it to another teacher.The next day I asked what irish for another word was and the teacher asked me if there was another joke on the way. I learned my “chat up line” in Irish too (4). On the last night we had Moya Brennan from the group Clannad and she did a wonderful version of the song “She Moved Through the Fair.”

On the last day after everybody had gone (Carolyn was staying an extra week). Carolyn and I went for a walk up the beach-barefoot-and had a great long chat. Both silly and pretty serious.( 5) . Any way that’s that. We’ll try to meet up next year DV and all that. I want to do the Odieas Gael thing again-most definitely. There might be a cycling holiday in August. Carolyn’s holiday time is July-so I might be able to slip in an extra cycling holiday. I have a very apt cd made for her-when she emails her postal address.

All in all it was a great holiday-but I wonder if would have been as good without her.

To be continued…..i hope

1)      It’s called http://www.omniglot.com he also has a very busy facebook page that is very interesting-with the chat in it.

2)      Sean og dancing-pretty modern irish dancing-like this   http://youtu.be/D0gF97WASl4 and this is the brush dance pretty scary stuff

                    http://youtu.be/LmdwzGDNcIg

3)      During the flood Noah (in the ark) was passing Ireland. The was simply chucking it down, and the waters were getting higher. He saw a man sitting on the summit of a mountain. Noah leaned over the side of the ark and said “Get on board,we’ll save you.” and the Irish man said “Ach! It’s all right, it’ll pass.” Which just about sums up the Irish attitude to rain.

4)      The chat up line is a not particularly complimentary one. I must make it clear that I have never used it. It’s just a joke with me. Carolyn found an idea for a sketch in a sit com staring Gabriel and I using this very funny-and I wish I got  photo of her laughing here-it was a joy to watch.To be honest Carolyn is the only person who has found this funny.

5)

Odieas Gael part 1

Well holiday (number one of at least two I hope ) is over and what a holiday!  As I type I am still on a high from it. It was really that good and inspiring-I came out of my comfort zone big time on one occasion too.

I suppose I better start at the very start. I could do a Tarrentino and start in the middle then go to the end then back to the start –like in “Pulp Fiction.” There’ll be extras on the Facebook page-when you see a number in brackets- like (1) there’ll be an extra bit about it in Facebook –like the way you see in some books in an index at the end of the book –or the extra bit William Golding sent out if you requested it, in his book “The Princess Bride,” which I have pointed out before is darker from the film/movie.

                  Last year the Kitty Club (1) from a 2011 Irish Cycling Safari holiday had a reonion –after a couple or 3 “something is telling me I am meant to be doing this” incidents (ask and I’ll explain), I signed up for this holiday. On this holiday I met Carolyn, from Colorado. Carolyn(2) was great craic, I noticed very quickly we had a very good “working relationship” and she responded greatly to my one-liners and we got on like the proverbial house on fire. Carolyn is very talented and is very much into singing and dancing and does so whenever the urge hits her, a real free spirit(3). It was a great holiday and the growing kitty club decided to meet up this again. So we all booked into the one week (Carolyn who is not really a member of the kitty club booked this cycling holiday too). I fancied doing something different so via a newspaper article I came across something called Odieas Gael. Did the Irish Language and hill walking, amongst other things.So I signed up. Turned out that the week I wanted I was not able to do both-BUT they told me I could do both the following week AND it did the whole culture thing too-the music,dancing,story telling, the sean og singing and all that. Oh yes I thought that sounds good. I’ll do that. Carolyn told me (we kept in touch from last year) she was doing some Irish Culture holiday-but not much else –yes, turned out it was the same one. So with a gap of a week I was going to have two holidays with Carolyn. BUT something happened and I decided that I needed to cancel one of the holidays. In the long run the cycling holiday would cost more, and I have done it so many times before-it kind of made sense to go for the other one (and Carolyn would still be on that one too).

So I stick with the culture one-told Carolyn the story and that I’d keep an eye out for her when I go there. I arrived with some reservations wondering what I had let myself in for. Turned out that in total there was 120 people of varying levels of Irish on the course-including one Mary McAleese.

I met with Carolyn, she smiled, said hello and hugged me. Hmmm I thought, this hug is a bit tight and it’s lasting a bit long for a “hello” type hug. I’m not complaining and  I’m not letting go first here I said to myself.

To be continued….