It's true. Angus is having an affair. My needs are being neglected as he lovingly puts his new mistress to bed, as he carefully cleans and croons to her, as he reads books to her and pushes all the right buttons. I have been lowered in the order of his affections.

It's my own damn fault, really.

I bought his mistress for him as a combination Valentine's/birthday present.

And so it was that on the middle of a huge sleigh bed in the gorgeous Irish town of Kinsale that Angus unwrapped his new mistress, breathless and incredulous, and went right to work neglecting me in favor of the Nikon D50, the two lenses, and the Crumpler Bag that his down-prioritized girlfriend had provided him with.

The D50 was bought on recommendations from the web, and with a lot of help from the San Francisco Treats and through much conversation about lenses in which they even used 'lenses for dummies' terms that still didn't compute, in the end I had the right camera and ebay and I had found the right lenses for the boy.

And the pictures he took are amazing.

It was worth every penny (and it is penny measurements as I bought it in the States and it's a damn good thing I did, too, as camera equipment is fucking expensive over here). He wasn't without the camera for the rest of the weekend but in truth, I love that he loves his new girlfriend so much. I'm all about the bigamy. That, and I am now left to play with the other camera on my own for the most part.

We left on the train for Southampton Airport Friday lunchtime. Southampton isn't very far away, and it's a poky little terminal that serves poxy little planes who jaunt to Scotland, Ireland, and other parts of England. While our mood wasn't great at the time it did start to pick up as we huddled onto the little propeller plane, and as we unwrapped homemade sandwiches and opened an airline-sized bottle of wine, things got nearly back to normal.

When we landed it was into an equally tiny terminal at Cork. We grabbed our bags and made our way to the rental car company, who awarded us with a dreadful Hyundai so slow that, as Angus put it, 'it couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding'. For some reason the windshield wipers and the turn signal/brights indicators were on the wrong side of the steering wheel, so for the rest of the holiday Angus would constantly be flicking on the windshield wipers whenever he tried to signal he was turning left. I cracked up every single time, but then I'm cruel like that.

We drove to Kinsale, a tiny fishing village on the southern Cork coast. I'd been to Kinsale before and utterly loved the place but this was Angus' first time to what is quite possibly the symbolic Irish coastside village. We settled into our B&B, which was a horrible-looking 1980's building on the outside, but inside the bedrooms were fantastic, with great style and loads of comfort.

Ireland has enjoyed a booming economy for the past few years. It's what they call here 'The Celtic Tiger', as software companies, call centers, and other tech industries settle into Ireland. This has meant a renewed economy is revitalizing the counry and pumping loads of Euros into the infrastructure. It has also meant big changes on the housing front-no longer are the little tumbling crooked Irish farm cottages so prevalent, now it's all about the new builds, houses that look like they are whole-heartedly embracing the 1980's style ranch house. It's sad, as the older homes are being abandoned and left to ruin in favor of the newer homes, while at the same time it just seems to be a part of Ireland. You turn one corner and see a tumbling 300-year old croft cottage and turn another corner and see a load of new built homes, all with gray putty-colored exteriors (I wondered about that for ages, until Angus explained to me that it was primer. In Ireland, nearly everyone paints the exterior of their homes-and the fence to match-a bright cheerful color. Sometimes it looks amazing and cheerful.)

Sometimes, it's just blinding.

You turn another corner and see abandoned castles and forts from the 13th century. Abbeys from the 14th century. All of them tumbling and crumbling and each one of them I want to own and make them mine and not paint them bright oragne (I will love them and squeeze them and I will call them George.)

That night we spent drinking champagne and relaxing. We had a good time opening some of our gifts-his camera and for me he bought beautiful and lovely lingerie. We walked around the village and picked up a few things-I bought a gorgeous crystal candlestick that I will love forever, and of which will always remind me of our Irish Valentine's Day. We had dinner in a nearby pub, where I saw a modern Guinness ad campaign I decided Ms Pants had to have and so tore it off the wall, stuffed it down my trousers and smuggled it out (there were many of the ads all over the pub, so I don't feel too much like a criminal).

Then we went back to our room and made up.

Twice.

And we fell right asleep and slept all night, a rarity for the both of us.

The next day we made our way around the coastline. It was a beautiful day and we traipsed up mountains to admire the locals (whom I should add are all spray painted on their wool so that the farmers can all just release them into grazing land and then determine whom owns which sheep at a later date. To which I want to ask-how the hell do they get the spray paint out of all that wool?)-

-and around coastlines to pick up driftwood to bring home and dip our fingers in the salty Irish Sea.

We spent a lot of time on windy mountain hilltops, where sudden waterfalls appear and where you get the impression that you can actually find a space where humans have never walked on in history. We stopped at one of the waterfalls and filled up an empty water bottle of the water-it was crystal clear and tasted like cold, perfect water (although with our luck, a dead sheep was lying upstream and we now have some kind of strange disease that not even Dr. House will be able to diagnose).

Angus bought us some chips from a fish and chip shop, and we went two shops down where he also bought me de shiny shiny, which I adore whole-heartedly.

We drove nearly to Tipperary (and I can tell you, it is indeed a long, long way to Tipperary) and settled into our B&B for the evening, a fantastic 250 year-old farmhouse that had been in the family for 8 generations. We tried to find diddly-diddly music but failed, and so settled for a few pints in a local pub (he had Guinness, I had Murphy's. Go ahead with the hate mail if you want, but the truth is, I just don't like Guinness. Really. And I've tried to like it, believe me.)

We went back to the room and slept on one of the most comfortable beds ever, and once again we fell right to sleep and slept the entire night, waking up relatively late for us. We had a morning round of loving, a massive breakfast then decided to drive around again. We drove through the southeast of Ireland, through mountains, around coasts. We laughed and talked and took pictures of sheep. We drove through one area that was Irish-speaking only (Gaelic is like Scandinavian lanaguages-except Finnish-in that while it's one 'mother language', there are many variants. Irish Gaelic can generally understand Scottish Gaelic, the Welsh Gaelic, and Cornish, but they are very different. So the Gaelic variant in Ireland is called Irish, in Wales it's called Welsh, in Cornwall it's called Cornish (but I think it might be a dead language, so sadly maybe it's not called anything anymore). Confusing and a long explanation, but Gaelic in Ireland is called Irish.)

And Irish? Yeah. It's a fucking confusing language that sounds like someone skidding on the carpet on their throats.

The last night we spent in another farmhouse in Killeigh. We had a fabulous feast in the town of Youghal (which is pronounced 'Yule', but which we hadn't known it was pronounced 'Yule' until after we'd already gotten so confused on how to pronounce it that we were just calling it 'Yogurt'.) We had a bottle of wine, some nooky, and then got some sleep, once again sleeping through the night and into the morning.

We packed up and visited Cork on Monday, buying some last minute goodies and, of course, some stinky Irish cheese. When we got to Cork the airport was so fog-bound that they loaded us and our luggage on a coach and bussed us to Kerry County Airport, two hours away, where we finally made our way home.

It was a fabulous holiday, a much-needed holiday, and as our next holiday looms less than two weeks away, I'm already looking forward to all the sleep we will get.

That, and I'm buying more KY.

-H.

PS-more photos will be uploaded onto Flickr, so if pics of others' holidays is what does it for you, then they'll be there.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 09:15 AM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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