Day 28
Well, I’ve done it. My cycling is almost over. I am in Drogheda, which is not exactly as I planned, but I’m not bothered.
The day started out alright. The hot water bottle never arrived; the reason was a bit confused in the end - I think Mary had gone into town to buy one as she had said, but couldn’t find one. I was a bit surprised to find that she had gone to such lengths, and thanked her for it. Anyway, I survived without it.
Mary has a strange way of talking. I can understand what she says all right - her accent is a beautiful combination of the harsh Northern accent and the softer tones of the Republic. A bit like what I experienced back in Inishowen. It’s what she says that is difficult to understand. She will say half a sentence and then stop suddenly, um and ah, and then start another one, or worse, finish a completely different sentence all together. I guess she is a nice, simple farm lass who never had time for the big city or all that education.
Mary and I had planned to leave at 9:00, go to mass on the way, and then she would drop me off at Slane. After waking up at about a quarter past eight, I shivered in my sleeping bag for half an hour, and then knocked on the door. There was no answer. They all slept in. I was waiting out in that bloody cold for over half an hour. I don’t know how cold it was. There was no frost on the ground, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, but the temperature wasn’t far off zero.
Just across the muddy driveway was a shed in the making. All that is there at the moment is newly laid concrete and the framework of the building. I wandered through that for a time. The cows were living in an existing shed, which joins the new one, so I said hello to them. These were all calves - probably about a year and a half old. (I was quietly impressed with myself when I asked how old the calves were later and was proven to be correct!)
At 9:20 I knocked again, and Mary answered the door in a nightgown! She had only just gotten out of bed! I have always understood farm people to get up at the crack of dawn! In the end, I was rewarded with bacon, an egg and something else, livers or kidney or something. When it was mixed with the bacon and egg it didn’t taste so bad. We left at 10 ish after battling to fit the bike into the back of her tiny hatchback.
We passed a church that was about to start, so we parked and went in for the mass. After the mass, I followed her out of another door and she went into a shop to get change a £20 note into two £10 notes. Out of the door, and on the way back to her car, she slipped me one of the notes! I protested, of course, but she insisted! It happened again.
She dropped me off at the foot of the Hill of Slane and waved goodbye. We had driven about 20 miles. It is funny to have driven what is usually a day's cycling in such a short amount of time. I guess I should be fitter. Even with a backpack, 20 miles is not such a long way to ride, for someone who actually rides.
The Hill of Slane was where St. Patrick lit his first fire, in 433, against the orders of Laoghaire of Tara. Patrick was summoned before him, where he explained the Holy Trinity to the High King, using a shamrock. Laoghaire allowed him to keep practising, although for the life of me, I can’t remember if he was converted at the same time. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that he was.
I have heard that the Hill of Slane is very steep, and all I would be rewarded with if I rode up there is an old monastery, dedicated to the spot where St. Patrick did his stuff. I rode on.
I found the road to Slane Castle and set off. This involved asking three different people, and getting two different answers. In this ancient and historic town, there were signs to Newgrange and Newgrange Farm and to the battle sites of the Boyne and to the Hill of Slane, but not to Slane Castle.
The castle is about a mile out of town. From the road it is a grand sight, all big and medieval, with a long, wide driveway leading to a set of rough, iron gates, which were closed and chained. They didn’t look well used; the ivy was overtaking them.
Slane Castle is famous - in my eyes - for only one thing. In 1984, U2 recorded half of The Unforgettable Fire in the castle’s ballroom. The cover of the album has what I have always assumed to be a facade of the castle, with the lads in front of it trying to look serious, or arty, or something.
I kept riding along the road and found another grand entrance. It too was locked, but this time there was a side entrance, on a rough dirt road that looked well used. It was quite muddy and had tyre tracks in it.
I rode along this road and passed cows in a pen, of all things. The road continued, and I came across a junction giving me a choice, with a sign, of the farm or the castle.
I decided it would be better to find someone and get permission to look around the grounds.
The ‘farm’ road took me along a beautiful wooded glen, with a fast running stream tumbling beside the road. It went downhill and around the castle, and finally met the Boyne and ran along it. I was surprised to find the Boyne such a wide and fast flowing river. Sure, all it does is rain in this country, and if I had of thought about it, it would have made sense, but I was still surprised. With the Boyne flowing right past the hostel I am in now, it is still wide and fast, but now I am pretty much on the coast. The only other river I am familiar with and has lots of political history attached to it - the Jordan River - is not much more than a creek, even at the point that it spills out of the Sea of Galilee, so I guess that's an excuse.
At this point, I was on the small road (a dirt track) with a small grassy area about one hundred metres wide on my left, the castle behind me, the Boyne curving to the right and away from me, in front of me and a wooden bridge crossing the little creek that the road had been following up until this point to my right. The track led beyond the creek into a forest. Very picturesque, but a little unnerving, as there seemed to be no one about. I looked back towards the castle and took a picture, which was harder than it sounds, as it meant taking off the backpack and placing it upside down (resting on its cover) so it doesn’t get wet, taking out the useless camera (from the daypack, attached to the front of the backpack and now between it and the ground) and taking the picture. All the while, I was imagining a curtain of the castle being flicked back, with some evil women peering out unbeknown to me, as happens in all the movies.
I retraced my steps and went the route of the castle, which took me through another wooded glen, and to the front of the castle.
In 1991, the interior of the castle was almost entirely destroyed by a fire. Before this it was open to tourists but has been closed since then. I was surprised to see a rusty sign point down some steps that naturally led to the cellars or the servants quarters that read ‘Discotheque’.
Near the castle’s entrance was a generator - running - and I saw some lights inside some of the castle’s windows.
I knocked on the door and called out, feeling a bit stupid as it was a big deserted castle with workmen or a workman somewhere in a room upstairs. No answer, and as much as I wanted to go in, I didn’t.
I walked out of the front courtyard and saw, through a group of trees, another building.
I walked towards this. It was a beautiful edifice, a series of rooms built around a courtyard - all cobbled with arched entrances on opposite sides. I think it must have been the castle’s stables.
There were signs of life in one of the rooms, and I went through the nearest arch to see a car and a modern door. My knock was answered by a man, who was rather amused by my request but agreed to let me wander around the castle, as long as I didn’t go inside - which was a shame, but that’s life. He told me that he usually had to kick people out of the grounds, but because I asked for permission, he would let me wander. I wanted to talk to the man further asking about the castle’s history, etc. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to want to talk to me (there was a baby crying inside), and apart from saying that he remembered U2 being there in 1984, he didn’t tell me anything.
I walked around the castle, trying to find the angle that the album cover photo was taken with. I didn’t recognise it, so I took a photo of each face. When I get back to England I will compare the photos to the album cover and hopefully find a match, but I don’t think I will.
A different angle
I rode back to Slane and onto the N2.
The Boyne runs past Slane (and through the grounds of the castle). The hill going down to the river outside of the town is quite steep; I got to 53 kph. Which is a lot of fun.
Any fun that I might have had riding down to the river was replaced by frustration at the equally steep bank on the other side. The view from the parking space at the top of the hill (obviously put in place for frustrated cyclists) was great. All green, with the river and old bridge with a medieval town to boot! I took a photo and continued.
The River Boyne
Just around a bend from that rest place was a small castle-like building that was completely ruined. However, to my mind, it looked more like the castle on the cover of The Unforgettable Fire than Slane Castle did. I stood there and stared for a couple of minutes - in all honesty, I was still knackered from the hill I just climbed - and then rode on. I didn’t take a photo of the place. I don’t know why.
A mile or two out of Slane was the turnoff to Newgrange. A sign said it was 7 km away, and I decided to go there. I figured I would see the tomb and ride back, wasting only an hour of my time.
Unfortunately, the so-called Celtic Tiger is trying to devour tourist money. I had to go through a visitor’s centre, paying £3. The bus to the tomb wouldn’t leave until 2:15 and would get back at 3:30. I didn’t have to wait for the bus - I was welcome to walk the route (which would take about an hour) and no, I wasn’t allowed to ride my bike to the tomb.
I decided to see it anyway. No, I don’t like riding after 3 pm, but a nice lady told me of a youth hostel in Drogheda costs £9 and was only 5 miles from where I was. She was the woman at the information desk. She asked about me, as everyone does, and I told her my story, including sleeping in a barn last night. She was really nice, and took pity on me. I thought she was about to offer me her place to stay for the evening, but she didn’t.
Maire (from Malin Head) told me about Newgrange, and encouraged me to see it if I passed through this area. Newgrange is one tomb in an area littered with them. It is the biggest and oldest passage tomb in Europe. Neolithic farmers built Newgrange and many of the surrounding tombs about 500 years before the Egyptian pyramids and a full thousand years before Stonehenge.
No other structures of their lifestyle remain and no one has any firm idea of their communities, governments, religions, etc. The only clues available are those which are found in the passage graves.
The opening of Newgrange is between two large granite slabs, a narrow passage follows a fairly straight, if slightly uphill line into about a third of the diameter of the cairn. At the end of the passage are three domed enclosures, each with a large stone bowl on which cremated human remains were placed. The tomb is the home of not one person, but many.
Using what little information there is about stone age technology, people have estimated that Newgrange would have taken between fifty and seventy-five years to build. This is pretty impressive, as the estimated lifespan of the average person at this point in history was between twenty-five and fifty years.
No one knows the exact purpose of Newgrange, or any other passage tomb around.
A passage tomb is a mound with a narrow entrance at some point. This opens into a passage, which leads to an enclosing near the centre of the mound (which can be about four or five metres high). The tomb bit, at the end of the passage usually has three round sections, in which remains are placed. For some unknown reason, the round section on the right is always the largest of the three.
The exceptional thing about Newgrange is that on the Winter Solstice, the 21st of December, at dawn (and to a limited extent the two days immediately before and after this) sunlight shines through a window above the doorway, along the passage and illuminates the central section.
The ground level in the centre is about two metres above the entrance, so the sunlight creeps along the ground and fills the section by reflecting off the stones inside.
Again, no ones knows the reason or significance behind this five day window, but various theories have been suggested - none of which sounded convincing to me. The usual questions were asked about how the people knew the days and the position of the sun, etc as it took so long for them to build the structure. The guide said that people back then were much more attuned to nature, with their crops and the like, that they would notice a lot more about the seasons and the rain, etc, and wouldn’t be so used to artificial things like calendars, as we are used to. That makes sense.
It was so cold. The wind was whipping through the fields with a hint of rain on it. Inside the tomb, it was very dry and cold (of course).
There had been no seepage into the tomb. It was incredible! The carvings were very clear, using the circular pattern that dominates all Celtic art and tourist shops.
The tour did indeed get back to the visitors centre at 3:30, and I decided to ride to Drogheda.
I contemplated stopping at farms on the way, but rationalised that if I wasn’t successful I would be caught in the darkness.
For the first time since before Malin Head, the wind was behind me, as I was riding pretty much due east. I was following the Boyne most of the time, and hence the road was, on average, down hill. Of course, it was up and down all the way, but at least the ‘downs’ went for longer distances than the ‘ups’. A rare event indeed. That last stretch of riding only took me half an hour, but it was the best stretch since that day I rode around the Malin Head peninsular.
The Green Door Hostel was well sign posted and I found it with ease.
Before I entered the door, I asked about work in exchange for a reduction. The door answerer (innkeeper?) hadn’t heard of this before - which surprised me - and agreed to get me to do a thing or two in the morning. I spent half an hour on the Internet and relaxed, eating a frozen lasagne and some bread and honey, bought at a nearby convenience store.
Towards 9 pm, I wandered into town for a drink. This blossomed into one whiskey and three pints, and a bag of chips. Maybe a little extravagant, but I enjoyed my evening and got into a good conversation with two locals. One was a drunk and annoying. The other was just drunk for the evening. Both decided that they would share their republican feelings, and their arguments were sufficiently biased that they left gaping holes in them.
However, I was enjoying myself and couldn’t be bothered arguing (besides, this is their country, after all), so I thoroughly agreed with them, and had a good craic. The drunk eventually left (after falling over!) and I had a great conversation with the remaining drinker. The remaining - his name is Mark Aspell - tried to convince me that his father had once seen leprechauns! He was being absolutely serious. He believed his father completely and kept getting frustrated when I refused to believe him! The story went that his father was walking home from the pub one evening when he saw a fire in a field. He went over to investigate; it was a campfire, with lots of small men sitting around it, singing! I commented that it was funny that his father had seen the little men whilst walking home from a pub, but I think the significance was lost on Mark, who was probably drunk enough to see little men himself. He said all he wanted to do in life was meet these leprechauns that his father had seen.
He gave me his address and made me promise that I would write to him. So when I get back to Australia (in less than a month!) I will write.
The day started out alright. The hot water bottle never arrived; the reason was a bit confused in the end - I think Mary had gone into town to buy one as she had said, but couldn’t find one. I was a bit surprised to find that she had gone to such lengths, and thanked her for it. Anyway, I survived without it.
Mary has a strange way of talking. I can understand what she says all right - her accent is a beautiful combination of the harsh Northern accent and the softer tones of the Republic. A bit like what I experienced back in Inishowen. It’s what she says that is difficult to understand. She will say half a sentence and then stop suddenly, um and ah, and then start another one, or worse, finish a completely different sentence all together. I guess she is a nice, simple farm lass who never had time for the big city or all that education.
Mary and I had planned to leave at 9:00, go to mass on the way, and then she would drop me off at Slane. After waking up at about a quarter past eight, I shivered in my sleeping bag for half an hour, and then knocked on the door. There was no answer. They all slept in. I was waiting out in that bloody cold for over half an hour. I don’t know how cold it was. There was no frost on the ground, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much, but the temperature wasn’t far off zero.
Just across the muddy driveway was a shed in the making. All that is there at the moment is newly laid concrete and the framework of the building. I wandered through that for a time. The cows were living in an existing shed, which joins the new one, so I said hello to them. These were all calves - probably about a year and a half old. (I was quietly impressed with myself when I asked how old the calves were later and was proven to be correct!)
At 9:20 I knocked again, and Mary answered the door in a nightgown! She had only just gotten out of bed! I have always understood farm people to get up at the crack of dawn! In the end, I was rewarded with bacon, an egg and something else, livers or kidney or something. When it was mixed with the bacon and egg it didn’t taste so bad. We left at 10 ish after battling to fit the bike into the back of her tiny hatchback.
We passed a church that was about to start, so we parked and went in for the mass. After the mass, I followed her out of another door and she went into a shop to get change a £20 note into two £10 notes. Out of the door, and on the way back to her car, she slipped me one of the notes! I protested, of course, but she insisted! It happened again.
She dropped me off at the foot of the Hill of Slane and waved goodbye. We had driven about 20 miles. It is funny to have driven what is usually a day's cycling in such a short amount of time. I guess I should be fitter. Even with a backpack, 20 miles is not such a long way to ride, for someone who actually rides.
The Hill of Slane was where St. Patrick lit his first fire, in 433, against the orders of Laoghaire of Tara. Patrick was summoned before him, where he explained the Holy Trinity to the High King, using a shamrock. Laoghaire allowed him to keep practising, although for the life of me, I can’t remember if he was converted at the same time. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that he was.
I have heard that the Hill of Slane is very steep, and all I would be rewarded with if I rode up there is an old monastery, dedicated to the spot where St. Patrick did his stuff. I rode on.
I found the road to Slane Castle and set off. This involved asking three different people, and getting two different answers. In this ancient and historic town, there were signs to Newgrange and Newgrange Farm and to the battle sites of the Boyne and to the Hill of Slane, but not to Slane Castle.
The castle is about a mile out of town. From the road it is a grand sight, all big and medieval, with a long, wide driveway leading to a set of rough, iron gates, which were closed and chained. They didn’t look well used; the ivy was overtaking them.
Slane Castle is famous - in my eyes - for only one thing. In 1984, U2 recorded half of The Unforgettable Fire in the castle’s ballroom. The cover of the album has what I have always assumed to be a facade of the castle, with the lads in front of it trying to look serious, or arty, or something.
I kept riding along the road and found another grand entrance. It too was locked, but this time there was a side entrance, on a rough dirt road that looked well used. It was quite muddy and had tyre tracks in it.
I rode along this road and passed cows in a pen, of all things. The road continued, and I came across a junction giving me a choice, with a sign, of the farm or the castle.
I decided it would be better to find someone and get permission to look around the grounds.
The ‘farm’ road took me along a beautiful wooded glen, with a fast running stream tumbling beside the road. It went downhill and around the castle, and finally met the Boyne and ran along it. I was surprised to find the Boyne such a wide and fast flowing river. Sure, all it does is rain in this country, and if I had of thought about it, it would have made sense, but I was still surprised. With the Boyne flowing right past the hostel I am in now, it is still wide and fast, but now I am pretty much on the coast. The only other river I am familiar with and has lots of political history attached to it - the Jordan River - is not much more than a creek, even at the point that it spills out of the Sea of Galilee, so I guess that's an excuse.
At this point, I was on the small road (a dirt track) with a small grassy area about one hundred metres wide on my left, the castle behind me, the Boyne curving to the right and away from me, in front of me and a wooden bridge crossing the little creek that the road had been following up until this point to my right. The track led beyond the creek into a forest. Very picturesque, but a little unnerving, as there seemed to be no one about. I looked back towards the castle and took a picture, which was harder than it sounds, as it meant taking off the backpack and placing it upside down (resting on its cover) so it doesn’t get wet, taking out the useless camera (from the daypack, attached to the front of the backpack and now between it and the ground) and taking the picture. All the while, I was imagining a curtain of the castle being flicked back, with some evil women peering out unbeknown to me, as happens in all the movies.
I retraced my steps and went the route of the castle, which took me through another wooded glen, and to the front of the castle.
In 1991, the interior of the castle was almost entirely destroyed by a fire. Before this it was open to tourists but has been closed since then. I was surprised to see a rusty sign point down some steps that naturally led to the cellars or the servants quarters that read ‘Discotheque’.
Near the castle’s entrance was a generator - running - and I saw some lights inside some of the castle’s windows.
I knocked on the door and called out, feeling a bit stupid as it was a big deserted castle with workmen or a workman somewhere in a room upstairs. No answer, and as much as I wanted to go in, I didn’t.
I walked out of the front courtyard and saw, through a group of trees, another building.
I walked towards this. It was a beautiful edifice, a series of rooms built around a courtyard - all cobbled with arched entrances on opposite sides. I think it must have been the castle’s stables.
There were signs of life in one of the rooms, and I went through the nearest arch to see a car and a modern door. My knock was answered by a man, who was rather amused by my request but agreed to let me wander around the castle, as long as I didn’t go inside - which was a shame, but that’s life. He told me that he usually had to kick people out of the grounds, but because I asked for permission, he would let me wander. I wanted to talk to the man further asking about the castle’s history, etc. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to want to talk to me (there was a baby crying inside), and apart from saying that he remembered U2 being there in 1984, he didn’t tell me anything.
I walked around the castle, trying to find the angle that the album cover photo was taken with. I didn’t recognise it, so I took a photo of each face. When I get back to England I will compare the photos to the album cover and hopefully find a match, but I don’t think I will.
A different angle
I rode back to Slane and onto the N2.
The Boyne runs past Slane (and through the grounds of the castle). The hill going down to the river outside of the town is quite steep; I got to 53 kph. Which is a lot of fun.
Any fun that I might have had riding down to the river was replaced by frustration at the equally steep bank on the other side. The view from the parking space at the top of the hill (obviously put in place for frustrated cyclists) was great. All green, with the river and old bridge with a medieval town to boot! I took a photo and continued.
The River Boyne
Just around a bend from that rest place was a small castle-like building that was completely ruined. However, to my mind, it looked more like the castle on the cover of The Unforgettable Fire than Slane Castle did. I stood there and stared for a couple of minutes - in all honesty, I was still knackered from the hill I just climbed - and then rode on. I didn’t take a photo of the place. I don’t know why.
A mile or two out of Slane was the turnoff to Newgrange. A sign said it was 7 km away, and I decided to go there. I figured I would see the tomb and ride back, wasting only an hour of my time.
Unfortunately, the so-called Celtic Tiger is trying to devour tourist money. I had to go through a visitor’s centre, paying £3. The bus to the tomb wouldn’t leave until 2:15 and would get back at 3:30. I didn’t have to wait for the bus - I was welcome to walk the route (which would take about an hour) and no, I wasn’t allowed to ride my bike to the tomb.
I decided to see it anyway. No, I don’t like riding after 3 pm, but a nice lady told me of a youth hostel in Drogheda costs £9 and was only 5 miles from where I was. She was the woman at the information desk. She asked about me, as everyone does, and I told her my story, including sleeping in a barn last night. She was really nice, and took pity on me. I thought she was about to offer me her place to stay for the evening, but she didn’t.
Maire (from Malin Head) told me about Newgrange, and encouraged me to see it if I passed through this area. Newgrange is one tomb in an area littered with them. It is the biggest and oldest passage tomb in Europe. Neolithic farmers built Newgrange and many of the surrounding tombs about 500 years before the Egyptian pyramids and a full thousand years before Stonehenge.
No other structures of their lifestyle remain and no one has any firm idea of their communities, governments, religions, etc. The only clues available are those which are found in the passage graves.
The opening of Newgrange is between two large granite slabs, a narrow passage follows a fairly straight, if slightly uphill line into about a third of the diameter of the cairn. At the end of the passage are three domed enclosures, each with a large stone bowl on which cremated human remains were placed. The tomb is the home of not one person, but many.
Using what little information there is about stone age technology, people have estimated that Newgrange would have taken between fifty and seventy-five years to build. This is pretty impressive, as the estimated lifespan of the average person at this point in history was between twenty-five and fifty years.
No one knows the exact purpose of Newgrange, or any other passage tomb around.
A passage tomb is a mound with a narrow entrance at some point. This opens into a passage, which leads to an enclosing near the centre of the mound (which can be about four or five metres high). The tomb bit, at the end of the passage usually has three round sections, in which remains are placed. For some unknown reason, the round section on the right is always the largest of the three.
The exceptional thing about Newgrange is that on the Winter Solstice, the 21st of December, at dawn (and to a limited extent the two days immediately before and after this) sunlight shines through a window above the doorway, along the passage and illuminates the central section.
The ground level in the centre is about two metres above the entrance, so the sunlight creeps along the ground and fills the section by reflecting off the stones inside.
Again, no ones knows the reason or significance behind this five day window, but various theories have been suggested - none of which sounded convincing to me. The usual questions were asked about how the people knew the days and the position of the sun, etc as it took so long for them to build the structure. The guide said that people back then were much more attuned to nature, with their crops and the like, that they would notice a lot more about the seasons and the rain, etc, and wouldn’t be so used to artificial things like calendars, as we are used to. That makes sense.
It was so cold. The wind was whipping through the fields with a hint of rain on it. Inside the tomb, it was very dry and cold (of course).
There had been no seepage into the tomb. It was incredible! The carvings were very clear, using the circular pattern that dominates all Celtic art and tourist shops.
The tour did indeed get back to the visitors centre at 3:30, and I decided to ride to Drogheda.
I contemplated stopping at farms on the way, but rationalised that if I wasn’t successful I would be caught in the darkness.
For the first time since before Malin Head, the wind was behind me, as I was riding pretty much due east. I was following the Boyne most of the time, and hence the road was, on average, down hill. Of course, it was up and down all the way, but at least the ‘downs’ went for longer distances than the ‘ups’. A rare event indeed. That last stretch of riding only took me half an hour, but it was the best stretch since that day I rode around the Malin Head peninsular.
The Green Door Hostel was well sign posted and I found it with ease.
Before I entered the door, I asked about work in exchange for a reduction. The door answerer (innkeeper?) hadn’t heard of this before - which surprised me - and agreed to get me to do a thing or two in the morning. I spent half an hour on the Internet and relaxed, eating a frozen lasagne and some bread and honey, bought at a nearby convenience store.
Towards 9 pm, I wandered into town for a drink. This blossomed into one whiskey and three pints, and a bag of chips. Maybe a little extravagant, but I enjoyed my evening and got into a good conversation with two locals. One was a drunk and annoying. The other was just drunk for the evening. Both decided that they would share their republican feelings, and their arguments were sufficiently biased that they left gaping holes in them.
However, I was enjoying myself and couldn’t be bothered arguing (besides, this is their country, after all), so I thoroughly agreed with them, and had a good craic. The drunk eventually left (after falling over!) and I had a great conversation with the remaining drinker. The remaining - his name is Mark Aspell - tried to convince me that his father had once seen leprechauns! He was being absolutely serious. He believed his father completely and kept getting frustrated when I refused to believe him! The story went that his father was walking home from the pub one evening when he saw a fire in a field. He went over to investigate; it was a campfire, with lots of small men sitting around it, singing! I commented that it was funny that his father had seen the little men whilst walking home from a pub, but I think the significance was lost on Mark, who was probably drunk enough to see little men himself. He said all he wanted to do in life was meet these leprechauns that his father had seen.
He gave me his address and made me promise that I would write to him. So when I get back to Australia (in less than a month!) I will write.
posted by Bren Carlill @ 6:59 AM
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