The 10th of May is notable for three reasons.

Firstly, in 1801 the Barbary Pirates of Tripoli declared war on the United States (pirates are awesome). In 1957, Sid Vicious - the Sex Pistols tragic bassist - was born. Finally, in 1978, Dermot Peter Williams was born in Dublin’s Coombe hospital. (Of course, May 10th is notable for less desirable reasons - that twat Bono was born on this date in 1960, for example).

Flash forward 30 years and my birthday is being cast in the shadows of Ben’s First Holy Communion which happened to fall on the same day. Not that I mind - I’ve already had 29 birthdays and I vaguely remember making my own First Communion way back in the dark and murky past (I definitely recall putting my suit on to play James Bond in the weeks that followed; also, a bike that I bought out of my Communion money - to replace one that was burnt when our house burned down in 1980-something). Anyway, not being one to make a fuss about my birthday, I was delighted to go for a meal with Áine and my parents on the Friday before and to spend the day itself surrounded by our other family members - and with Áine and Finn in particular - even if Ben was (rightly) the main focus of everyone’s attention.

Anyway, a week passes and my birthday is pretty much forgotten about. I still have Áine’s fantastic gift of a trip to Norway to look forward to (I have a thing about going to Norway) and I’m enjoying some delicious tea from the ‘No. 1 Dad’ mug that Finn gave me but for the most part my 30th birthday is, like, so last week. And besides, we have another 30th to look forward to - Áine’s cousin. We received an invitation for this several weeks ago and himmed and hawed about going to it, finally relenting when we heard that Sinead and Jonathan were going. We’d received some good news during the week about something else and decided that we’d make a night of it - starting with a meal in Cactus Jack’s in Tallaght before heading up to the Old Mill for the party.

Áine’s folks had kindly offered to mind Finn overnight, so I dropped him up on Saturday evening. When I was going, he was sitting on his Grandad’s knee; as I was leaving, gave Finn a little kiss on the cheek and a little rub. Something didn’t feel right and I looked down to discover that it was Paudge’s leg that I was rubbing! Erk! Thankfully the night got better!

Our meal was lovely, but Áine seemed distracted, probably fretting about Finn and Sinéad, who had been feeling a little ill. We shared a starter of potato skins filled with bacon and cheese, Áine had a seafood platter and I some delicious (and filling) enchiladas, then paused longer than usual over tea and coffee. Walking back to the car, there was another flurry of text messages - Sinéad was feeling worse, and then we were in the car park of the Old Mill. I dutifully carried the present for Áine’s cousin and as we climbed the stairs to the pub’s second level, I glimpsed someone whom I half-recognised through the room’s window. Not unusual, really - I was expecting to see members of Áine’s family there and there were bound to be people that I’d met once or twice but didn’t really know.

Then we walked in and SURPRISE!!

Áine had got me good: the invitation was fake, the half-recognised character in the window was Phil, who’d let his hair grow longer than he normally wears it, and the room was full of our friends and family including Sinéad (who was actually sick and had to leave early). Truly a master-class in organising a suprise party especially compared to the shambolic effort I put in for Áine’s 30th!

Thanks hon, it was brilliant!

More pics here and here courtesy of Gordon and Siobhán, respectively.

So, this is my first post in donkey’s and, as is usual at this point, it’s about Finn. Or, as we’ve taken to calling him: Finnbag - he’s a little bag of Finn.

You’ve already seen his Jack Nicholson impression; the pic above is his Eminem one.

That pic is an old one but I haven’t uploaded it yet. Or, rather, I have - but I took it down because I wanted to figure out why it looked so washed out when I exported it from Aperture. I’ve mentioned why in my last post; I also promised that I’d post an image that illustrates the phenomenon that I’m talking about:

As you can see, the image on the left - in Firefox - looks desaturated compared to the image on the right, which is in Safari. Note that Internet Explorer washes the images out in the same way. Ironically, if you’re looking at that demonstration picture in either Firefox or Internet Explorer, that image is being desaturated somewhat! It’s still pretty obvious that the image on the right is more vibrant though.

Ben made his First Holy Communion last weekend - the photo below is testament to how angelic he looked, all decked out in his finery. I’m pretty sure that Saturday was the longest he’s ever worn a shirt; he hates them and usually has his mother pestered into putting him into a tee-shirt or letting him run around in a vest within an hour of putting one on.

Although Friday was a little wet and dull, Saturday turned out to be pretty nice; not sunny, but still quite warm and dry - a good day for an event such as this.

  
Sunday turned out to be a really warm, sunny day so after eleven thirty mass we headed up to Cregneish and sat outside, basking in the sun.

More pics here.