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"Adapt your expectations to what you're capable of producing" said ruddy Ray Mears, his chubby cheeks all aglow with childlike enthusiasm. I nodded sagely.

Fools rush in; I offered to cook dinner. No getting the lay of the land, for me, oh no. I just bumbled straight on in there, full of piss and vinegar, making out like I was the next Nigella. I'm not. She has diddies and flair. I have an overdeveloped sense of curiosity and a monstrous appetite.

The others looked a little surprised when my offer was graciously accepted. My ego and I assumed that this was because not all guests are as wonderfully talented and thoughtful as we. But my ego and I think only of ourselves. Most other guests would be sensitive enough to suss out the lay of the land. Most other guests would be perceptive enough to realise that a man who keeps special pans for special purposes - say, roasting horse chestnuts and grilling asparagus - is king of his kitchen. Most other guests would offer to wash dishes, or the king's feet. They would not paw at his crown.

Too late, I realised my mistake.The village squirmed with a sing-song of hushed, incredulous whispers. Bruce is letting you in his kitchen? Nothing quells the queasies like an afternoon supping prosecco with the folk above on the hill. Nothing impairs judgement and ability like an early evening spent chasing that prosecco with red wine and improvised white russians in the local pub. Now, you'll have to make do with whatever they have in the shop, Mary had warned. No problem, I thought. It'll be like an episode of Ready, Steady, Cook! The shop owner sat with us for a pint in the pub, and I explained my predicament. "What are you going to cook?" he asked. "I don't know," I said, "what have you got?" "Red onions" he said. "I have some lovely red onions".

Ray Mears also gave some good advice on how to trap squirrels and fight bears. Not strictly necessary for a weekend in Dolwyddelan, but it would do you no harm to know.

Grand Canal Dock

They've replaced the seats. I used to like the high benches; I'd perch and swing my feet. These shiny new seats have long backs and rounded bums, with armrests like elbows delineating personal space. I was never sure how many bums the benches were made for. I suppose they were made for four, but I'd mind the gap, wary in case someone thought I was soliciting snuggles.

I think how forlorn I must look, with my little borrowed backpack and my red coat, when the DART pulls into the station. I feel a little forlorn this morning, a little left behind. I am the only one on the platform. The driver acknowledges as much with a nod of his head.

Turns out, I'm the only one on the train. When the tinny tannoy voice announces the stops, she does it just for me.

Dublin is quiet today. The sky is a beautiful pinkish grey, a shade it seems to reserve for early morning. It jars at this time of day. I wonder if it is the absence of life on her streets that lends the city her hue - a matter of mood, not meridian. It's a lovely thought, if a lonely one.

Butterpigs

"I'm gaunnae kick yer fuckin' heid in, ya bam!" he roared, lurching down the carriage, spraying spit and spilling cider. He brayed laughing and punched his mate in the head. I was delighted.

Glasgow.

Saturday night saw us in the Buff, dancing to Pulp's Disco 2000. "I grew up with woodchip on the walls" I laughed. He pretended to be appalled. He loves his bit of rough with her swinging hips, swigging from a tin of Red Stripe, happy as a lark. The pub is called the Butterfly and the Pig and I like its dinky little ditty -

I’ll never forget falling in love with a butterfly,
a pig was I a pig not she,
you see to fly like her or be like me a butterpig you must be,
to care, to share, to love everywhere, to have curly hair,
is the meaning of the butterfly and the pig,
the odd pair.

Though no odd pair we.

On the windy way home we blessed an amiable drunk with a cigarette in exchange for directions to our warm bed. He wished us a merry Christmas and congratulated himself on being the first to do so. Aye, second turn on the left... into an industrial wasteland from which you may never escape. An hour later and a pish down a laneway - we were lost. The perishing cold gnawed at my cheer and my chips. I hate Glasgow.

But I didn't, not really. On Sunday morning I ate porridge with maple syrup in the Willow Tea Rooms and tried on every red woollen coat in Scotland. We trailed around GoMA, drank Glühwein at the fair, swung rosie cheeked with cold on the carousel swings. I eyed the Helter Skelter longingly but didn't push my luck - it's cute til the carnies have to pry your ample arse off the slide.

To the dreary Dows by Queen Street Station then to watch the football. I sat with a book as a beard, soaking up the locals. The miserable middle-aged women with their shopping, Bacardi Breezers brightening their smiles, the lone and lonely men. A Glaswegian L'Absinthe.

Before boarding the train from Central Station the Jaffa Cake dipped in to the chippie with a Mars Duo. We sat amongst the pigeons then, grinning, greasy with batter and banter. A fitting end to the weekend. Butterpigs both.

Mind The Gap

The train was filling up. Praiseach de phótairí strewn about the carriage, spreading legs and luggage across the seats in an effort to secure some space for their hangovers. Morning-after-the-night-before gaeilgeoirí. The worst kind.

She blustered onto the train at Mala, and the other passengers averted their eyes. Mine, however, were fucking glued to her. Mad, brassy burgundy coloured hair, denim jeans and a fringed denim jacket, she was all rhinestones and righteousness, looking about her like she wanted to batter the face off the next one who looked crooked at her. So I swept my handbag into a cuddle on my lap and nodded at the seat beside me. She looked grateful, and a little like she might bite me. Once she'd settled, the natter kicked off; each episode illustrated with photos from her camera phone. I'm pretty intimately acquainted with her domestic situation at this stage, everything from her ma's fibroids to her dog's gluecoma. He has a good heart though, she tells me, so he'll live for ages with it. He just keeps walking into things. I know people just like that, I tell her. She makes me smile all the way to Thurles, this pavee lackeen, and leaves me with a hug and a thank you. For what? I asked her. Nothing, she laughed, and she barrelled back out through the carriage with the same fonn troda on her that she had when she stomped in.

I think I fell a little in love with her.

As the train pulls away from Thurles we pass acres of flooded farmland. There are sheep standing in grumpy little clusters atop the hillocks that punctuate the dreary landscape. A pair of swans glide majestically across the submerged pastures, looking for all the world like they own the place. I stretch out and slip my headphones on, pleased that for the next two hours I can idle in daydreams. There are no more stops until Heuston, so I cast my thoughts adrift again to paddle across the sodden plains. More swan than sheep.

It's Not Butlins, You Know

"How come you got a nice navy one?" Mam asked, the implication being that she was less than enamoured with the blue polo shirts they'd been told to put on to mark them out lest they stray from the group in Heathrow or - heavens forfend - Nairobi. "When you get into trouble, look for this colour" retorted its wearer, bustling off to dispense more well-meant but redundant advice to his adult charges. "Management" nodded my uncle wisely, sniggering and shaking his head.

My parents, my uncle and my beautiful leggy creature of a cousin are all off to Malindi (on the Kenyan coast) with a small Irish NGO to do some work with a local school, I was doing my bit for world peace by dropping them to the airport. After all of the upsets my parents have had in the last month (my Crash Grandadicoot's death, Conor's loss, the sad news that their friend has terminal cancer) I am hoping that the next fortnight in the African sun surrounded by what is by all accounts an energetic, vibrant and welcoming community in Watamu, will give them heart.

I'd have that "manager" in the navy t-shirt buried under 2 tonnes of concrete by day 3.

An Unpleasant Post About Diarrhoea

What did I get for my birthday? Fucking food poisoning. Other stuff too (nicer stuff) but I reckon the cholera's the one I'll remember.

Having spent yesterday evening in the hospital with Crash Grandadicoot (who serenaded me with Happy Birthday again and demanded that I return the gift he gave me - a jewelled purse - so that he could check that Nana had hanseled* it as she was supposed to) I then went out for dinner with my family (sans my dad, who's off earning our collective keeps in Delhi this week). I came home in good form, packed my bag for today's trip to Galway and hopped into bed, thinking that 27 might not be so bad after all.

I woke up about an hour later, thought "uh oh..." and sprinted for the bathroom, where I spent a happy half hour puking my ring up.

Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseum until at 4am I woke up on the bathroom floor, having keeled over with the effort of all that projectile vomiting (though it is possible that in my delirious state I had simply decided that it might be easier to sleep there).

I hate being sick. Everybody does. But food poisoning sends me into a bit of a panic, and with good reason. Thankfully I'm now feeling about a gazillion times better than I did this morning but every tummy upset brings the memory of that time flooding back.

Some years ago I was visiting a friend in Trier in Germany. I was booked on the last flight home from Brussels and as I was traveling by train I thought it might be nice to go via Luxembourg, for a quick goo at the place in case I should ever decide to take up one of those translation posts that the government seem to be having such trouble filling. However, the combined effects of a crippling hangover, a bank holiday timetable and a short short span of attention saw me on a train to Saarbrucken instead, and I missed my flight. I headed back to Aachen, where another friend was stationed and where I'd be conveniently close to Charleroi and a cheap flight home. Alas, the baggage handlers in Dublin chose that weekend to strike and there were no flights in or out of the city. I was broke, I needed to get back to college, I'd had enough sauerkraut and schnitzel. Half an hour in an internet café in Cologne and I was booked on a flight from Amsterdam to Belfast - a roundabout way to get from the German-Belgian border back to Dublin but it seemed like the most sensible option at the time. Pissed off, my friend and I went out for a consolation pizza that night. Man, did we live to regret it. Within two hours we had a rota system going for the bathroom, with buckets on standby for emergencies. It'll pass, I thought. Just get home.

So the following day I got a train to the 'Dam, then a plane to Belfast, then a train to Dundalk, then a bus to Dublin, then a lift home to Naas from Dublin via Maynooth. With chronic vomiting and diarrhoea. After a few days at home with no sign of improvement, the doctor was called out to the house. She took some bloods to send off for analysis and two days after that, the hopsickle called to see if I'd like to come in so that they could put me on a drip. It seems that someone in the pizza parlour may not have washed their hands, and we'd caught some form of this. The health board called a day or two later looking for details of where I might have picked it up and cautioning me against contact with small children or the elderly lest I should pass the bacteria on, as apparently it can lead to paralysis and blindness. I spent the next three weeks licking every pensioner that crossed my path, determined to make good use of my superpower.

Nah, I spent the next three weeks crawling from bed to couch and back again, swearing to live a better life if only the diarrhoea would cease for long enough for me to leave the house. Fun times, and pleasant memories to mull over on this, the first day of my 27th year.

*Handselled? I'm not sure of the correct spelling. When you give a gift of a purse, wallet, piggybank, handbag or anything traditionally used to keep money in it is bad luck for it to be empty. You need to include a nominal sum of money to make sure that it will never be empty again.

Choo Choo!

I'm off again, this time to the Wild Wehst of Mayo to spend a weekend with my nearest and dearest friends. It's almost cans-on-the-train o' clock, the Hurler is already making his way to the station so it would behoove me to make some tracks myself. Have a lovely weekend, kids.

Some Details Have Yet To Be Finalised

My Plans for the Future

Spend a year in New York
Write my novel
Spend a year in London
Get my novel published to critical acclaim and win the Booker
Spend a year in Paris
Win a Nobel prize
Spend a year in Australia
Climb a sizeable mountain
Have Adrien Brody fall in love with me and ask me to marry him

Today's post was inspired by Davey, whose lifelong dream is to present (not win) an award (read: loser) and last night's viewing of The Darjeeling Limited (which I liked very much).