Back to School

That’s week one of the second semester done and I’m sitting on a train - my first free travel one too - much more civilised than the train I was on exactly two weeks ago - Palermo - Napoli, nine and a half hours of beautiful scenery seen through the grimiest windows.   This is a much shorter trip to Dublin where I will spend the next couple of days. While the trip is mostly to visit family, I look forward to doing a couple of hours busking at The Dublin Food Co-op where I played almost every Saturday when I last lived there.   While I miss my dog, the week in college has been a breeze without the pull of checking that she’s not too miserable every couple of hours.   It’s been a week of funerals in Limerick too with Cranberries singer, Delores O’Riordan being buried on Tuesday and, at just over twice her 46 years, my host for my time in College, Joe Neiland, two days later.   JB, RIP. The outline for the rest of the semester looks really exciting ...

Wow!    Back in college after seven weeks away - and at 66 and a half today too. I’m happy to say that all is now familiar here now and I have some idea of what’s ahead for the next three months or so.    This is in contrast to the first semester where, for the first two months I floated about the place, enjoying every minute though not realising that I should be relying on more than just my memory for assignments that seemed to sneak up on me. If it wasn’t for the fact that I make up half of the cohort on the course - and that our course director, Carl Corcoran, is such a fine and supportive gentleman - I might well have baled out in mid-November.    I just felt that I wasn’t cut out to be an academic.    After a very dark weekend, I rearranged my thinking and decided that I could only do my best and that regardless of whether or not I end up with a certificate at the end of the year, there was a lot to be gained. Last week, when I to...

Wednesday is usually a busy one with a songwriter spending the day with us discussing their approach, playing some songs and us in turn playing some of ours - some finished songs and also perhaps something we’re working on or maybe starting on something from scratch.   Having had a visit earlier in the week from Chris Wood, and with the visit on Thursday from Jake Clemons, we had a free day this Wednesday. I did go in for a couple of hours and went to a workshop on critical writing and after that, thought about trying out another pitch for busking - between the college and home.   Not good.  When I pulled into the car park, there was a very loud continuous noise which turned out to be emanating from a generator outside the chip shop.  There were still many power outages following the hurricane Ophelia. I checked the weather forecast for Killaloe - about 12 miles the other side of where I’m staying and it looked okay so, after stopping by the house f...