“We’re all of to Dublin in the green, in the green, where the rifles glisten in the sun…”
Monday, April 24th 1916 and the sun may well have been glinting off the bayonets and rifles of the Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army soldiers, but as I travel across to the Easter Rising Centenary celebrations in Dublin, it isn’t April, isn’t a Monday and there is no sign of the sun. Glad to say, on board the Irish Ferries’ Ferry Ulysses, there are no signs of rifles or bayonets either. There are signs of a nervous watchfulness in some of the passengers, and the occasional hefting huey of vomit, but that is due to the massive car ferry pitching about quite a bit in the grip of a force-7, often gale-8, sweeping the Irish Sea and us in it.
Thankfully, big ship stabilisers, which alas are not little wheels like those fitted to a kids bike, but thankfully are incredibly good technology that helps to straighten things out quite a bit, have been fully deployed and are keeping us fairly steady.
On the assumption I “make it” I’ll try to upload more blog posts when I get to dry land 🙂
Okay, ….. so that post and all the rest I did at sea, didn’t actually make it onto the Internet until just now, in the full force of a hotel wifi. I obviously did make it to shore. I did wait for an hour for a taxi… what the f*** Dublin??? Is it a surprise that passengers get off a big boat and need transport… eejits.
And don’t be mislead by that photo above. The sun was being coy and poking out between showers. See below for the real view…
Anyway, looking forward to tomorrow and a gale-lashed parade 🙂
Ian
Ian Andrew is the penanme of Ian Hooper, author of the alternative history novel A Time To Every Purpose, the detective thriller series featuring Face Value and Flight Path and some silly poem books – Google books by Ian Andrew or books by Ian Hooper – you’ll find them 🙂 All are available in e-book and paperback and some are also in Audio.