News from Cork

A hard day today hitting the books trying to make up lost ground on my university music course.

I studied from 9.45 am to 7.15 pm with breaks, frequent, for Rooibosch (African tea or Redbush), quick sorties out to the animals, a lunch break and a snooze in the afternoon to combat a headache.

Needing fresh air mid-morning I spent ten minutesweeding the potato patch and gathering chickweek to throw into the hens.  The next break saw me spend ten minutes with the horses, just ‘chewing the hay’ so to speak.

At lunch time I gathered from the news that two tennis players have just been playing for two whole days: when I looked in they had played 59 games and were still going at it.  Makes my day look easy!  I don’t know how much more they had to play before the end arrived.

Friend’s husband is madly catching up on chores around the homestead this week as he is off to Spitsbergen this weekend to revisit scenes of the expeditions of his youth.  Friend has spent the day with another friend driving miles to see a specialist equine vet for other friend’s horse.  So a hard day all round.

Dear friend of mine began playing the Trumpet a while ago, loaned to her by a nephew.  Then she moved on to the Cornet and also plays the Tenor Horn which is on loan to her.  She bought her own Cornet earlier this year and I was able to contribute the money for the mouthpiece as part of her birthday present.  When I arrived for this visit I gathered that she was looking to buy her own Horn: well, she had done lots of homework and tracked down a very good one on E-bay.  She had put in some bids and it was coming up to the last hour.  She had been outbid each time and she felt she had hit her ceiling.  Friends were round for the evening so I drifted out at one point and took a look at the bidding: just for devilment I put in a bid myself, and when I looked at the numbers I realised that the person outbidding her had reached their limit.  I was sure theirs was an automatic bid. The bids had been going up by ten pounds a time and then by twenty, suddenly the top bid was £20.55 which alerted me to the fact that we had reached the top of the automatic bid: so I put in a second bid and low and behold I was top bidder.  And so it remained.

When the company left, friend could not bear to watch so went outside to do the evening chores: I sat by the screen watching the minutes and then second flash past, not believing my eyes.  But my bid stayed there at the top and now she has the super Horn with the wonderful pedigree.  My two bids will be her Christmas and Birthday presents for the immediate future: she was kind enough to say that she likes having my input into her two instruments!!

I must add that she also plays the violin, viola, piano and on occasion, the organ.  Makes me and my flute look rather feeble!

So that just about catches you up with the latest from here apart from a trip on a ferry to an island, Bear Island, which I hope to tell you all about tomorrow.  This exhausted creature is about to fall into bed, so bye for now.

(PS One of my favourite films, Life of Brian).

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