Nothing

Well I sat at this keyboard with around a hundred blog posts behind me, felt like writing something but found there was nothing much I wanted to say tonight. "Nothing will come of nothing..." said King Lear in my favourite play by Shakespeare.

I thought I might have a rant about something I particularly detest and that's tattoos - especially tattoos on women - but I'll save that for some other time. Then I thought I might explore a topic to which I have given so much mental energy (and some physical energy too!) since I was a boy of eleven and that's sex - the activity that brought each one of us to this life - but I'm always aware that blogs are live and worldwide and you never know who might drop in and check out what you're saying so I've vetoed this personal reservoir of fantasy and memory, lust, soul-searching and beautiful connectivity. And I thought I might write about something else that's very dear to my heart and that's food - meals consumed, meals cooked, remembered meals that make your mouth water, awful meals, the politics of food, supermarket empires - but I haven't got the energy tonight.

My daughter was hogging the computer again with her frantic "MySpace" adventures, MSN and music downloads. Shirley and I met up in the pub for the Tuesday quiz and I got the highest score 22/25 - entitling me to try to crack the safe and win £270 but my guessed code - 108 was wrong so the pot will grow on Sunday when I join my mates - Roy and Mike for another stab at this monster prize.

I was back to work today after the Easter holidays. Adolescents and A4 paper. The Year 10 had been on work experience before Easter. They now have to prepare speeches about these work placements. I gave them guidelines and a bunch of questions and asked them to bullet point their speeches. After twenty minutes, most had done well - lots of points to make but there were the usual suspects who'd written absolutely zilch - the same kids who never have pens to write with, the ones who arrive late and want to leave early with smug know-all facial expressions that cannot hide the fact that they have done so little in their lives and know almost nothing. I await their pathetic and ill-considered work experience accounts with minimal interest.

I should be mounting the stairs for bed but I have always been an owl - never a lark. This morning I was the grumpiest old sod alive as I turned the key in my ignition, pissed off that I hadn't been able to find the CD/Radio security front panel so I wouldn't be able to listen to the morning news on my way past Sheffield Wednesday's ground to the concrete architectural monstrosity that is both my place of work and my place of torment.

Jersey

New Jersey is where Bruce Springsteen comes from but Old Jersey is where new potatoes, Jersey cream and tomatoes come from. This sweet little island sits fourteen miles off the French coast. It is nine miles wide and five miles north to south and yet, like many islands, it feels like a world in itself. There's so much variety there. The north coast is rugged with beautiful little coves like the one at Rozel Bay. The south coast is more languid - St Brelade's sandy bay reaches for miles when the tide is out. My photograph shows the south west headland - Corbiere with its lighthouse and that damned gull sitting on the rock refusing to co-operate with my artistic directions.

Jersey's road names seem to be all in French - for example our country hotel was on the Rue d'Ebenezer in the "state" or parish of Trinity. Nevertheless, Jersey's historical bond with England remains strong. This is where UK millionaires bank their dosh to avoid taxation and the island boasts many luxurious homes that would not look out of place in Beverly Hills.

Recently, immigrant workers have flooded in. We saw Poles and Latvians picking new potatoes on precarious slopes - amazing really when up here in the north of England we are only just planting our tubers ready for harvesting in July or August.

We visited the Jersey War Tunnels that Hitler "commissioned" during World War II when the island was occupied. This was meant to become an underground hospital - safe from attack but the war ended before the place was finished. Of course they used prisoners of war as excavators . We also visited Jersey Zoo with its gorillas, orang-utans, fruit bats, meerkats, lemurs, poisonous frogs and flamingoes.

I bought Stephen King's "Cell" at the airport. I'm halfway through it now. Cellphone (mobile phone) users are turned into "phone crazies" by subliminal phone messages and the veneer of civilisation is quickly stripped away. It's great to rest and to bury your head in a book without the usual distractions and tiredness that work seems to generate.

Wedding

To be sure, to be sure twas a foine wedding begorrah - bejabbers - out there on the western edge of Europe - just a few miles inland from where the Atlantic crashes on the giant Cliffs of Moher in County Clare. Flute and whistle playing Katie, her of the foine voice, my beloved niece was finally tying the ould knot with Seamus the electrician from the Aran Islands.

It was to be a civil ceremony. Unfortunately, there's no registry office in Clare so we had to drive curvaceous miles over the wild limestone landscape of The Burren to reach Clarinbridge in County Galway. There the official ceremony was held in The Clarinbridge Court Hotel. The weather was kind as clouds scudded in over Galway Bay, leaving vast pools of bright April sunshine in between, making the emerald green more verdant and the turlough lakes more silvery. As part of the ceremony, I had to read an Indian blessing selected by Katie - a little shakily - having only been handed it ten minutes beforehand - but folks were complimentary. It was all about how, in marriage, we have to hang on to the sunshine that sometimes hides behind the clouds.

After the ceremony, there were a few drinks in the bar - you can see the scene below - my brother Paul on the fiddle and Katie on the whistle - then back over The Burren to Vaughans' Pub in Kilfenora. The wedding breakfast was for around two hundred. We guzzled Guinness and wine and danced like dervishes. The best man, Noel, who now lives in Arizona was as drunk as a skunk, cavorting and tumbling and communicating in a language that only Aran islanders with alcohol problems could possibly understand. It was a long day and we finally hit the sack after two a.m..

I do hope Katie will be happy with Seamus. She deserves some happiness. It was a great send off, a wedding to remember with fond smiles in the years ahead. I wrote something like this in the wedding book that was passed from table to table:-

"Seamus and Katie went to sea in a beautiful pea green boat..." A wedding is like the launching of a ship. I hope your voyage is long and happy, with few storms to ride and many lovely ports to visit. God speed!"

Shirley with our son Ian, Kilfenora April 7th 2006