Joes dream come true!

Please excuse my awful guffaw in this video - I was a tad overcome!

A town called Thirty...

So a brief camp in Florence and we were on the road again. We were not afforded the luxury of electricity in the campsite and so it was a rough and ready existence, as you can see from Bills ten o'clock shadow!


I'd always been aware of the town of Trent in the north of Italy, because Chiara Lubich, the leader of the Focolare movement, which my parents were part of, was from there. However I'd always imagined it to be a large industrial town, grey and smoky, for some reason...


So when we realised Trent lay on the road we were taking, we decided to stop there for the night and see what it had to offer!

Thank God we did, for my impression couldn't have been further from the truth! Trent turned out to be a magical little town, with coloured frescos on the buildings and a medieval wall around its border. It was lovely. We spent the day there, walking around enjoying the sunshine!

The Austrian influence was really strong there, I had a red cabbage risotto for my dinner! and the Italian was mixed up with German as well!

Joe spots some little birds...Who were happy to come and eat from our table!

I'd love to visit Trent again, with more time, I have a feeling we only brushed the surface on the magic the little town has to offer!

Mary writes some postcards!

Carrot ice-cream believe it or not!

Mary Express!

Mary, after weeks of begging to try an espresso coffee, was granted her wish!

Back to my childhood...

With Fergal and Catherine over, we all decided it would be a good idea to go to the Waterpark again, since they've never been.

So we all piled into the van and off we went. It was the best day!

For some reason, Fergal being there made me feel like a kid again, and believe it or not I went on all the slides! Some I regretted (ouch!) and some I went on over and over again... Fergal and I spent alot of our childhood summers bounding up steps to slide down the local waterslides called the "rainbow rapids" and I swear there was one stage today when I was back there, heading up the steps behind my big brother, putting on a brave face as I launched down the fastest slide after him, hearing his yells of excitement mingling with mine as the rush of water carried me away...

It was a really fun day, we could not get enough of the Lazy River, although it was hardly lazy, sitting on huge inflatable donuts we were gushed down around this wide slide, holding hands and laughing our heads off as we were spat out the end! At one stage there was a bit of a pile up and poor Bill got flattened by Fergal as he came along! Bill was laughing so much he swallowed water and ended up half 'drownded'! (The reason there are no photos of us having all this fun is because we were busy having all this fun!)

Great craic!

Yeay!

My big brother Fergal and his wife to be Catherine have arrived, they will stay on after we leave! The Mill has never had so many people under her roof!

I'm also delighted because we won't have to do all the dirty jobs like putting the pool away when we leave!! Ha!

Dear Santa...

An Orderly Cue...

M learns to play pool, and kicks ass!

Traffic

The usual view out the back of our old bus!

Nice not to be the one under pressure this time! Even birdie was muttering "Oh come on!"...

Mary meet Sea...

...Sea, this is Mary...

They hit it off!

Mary and co...

Oh thank God.

Mary has met other children.

We haven't seen her since... except when she arrives to have food stuffed in her beak...

The other night, the gang were heading to the nearby Bowling alley, and she was gone till half eleven.

As Ciara says, she was a couple of inches taller when she came back to us...

I was a couple of stone heavier from chewing my own hands off...

Happy Birthday Bill Stafford!

27...!

He had already got my present for him in Barcelona, a new pair of shades...

So it was just the kids left to surprise him - something practical from Joe - an alarm clock (we are oh-shit-its-quarter-to-nine-we'll-be-late-again type of people, and some pool toys from Little M!

"A barbie boat! Its what I've always wanted!"

"Best buds!"

The Mill...

Over 500 years old...

You can't pool me...!

We had to buy a new pool, an overground type, because the other one is in bits! So we headed to the local toy shop and picked out the biggest one they had, 15' x 1m, grand for what we need!

Anyway when it was bought, paid for, loaded into the van and I was just shutting my door the old woman in the shop ran out and started telling me it was actually fifty euro more! She grabbed the receipt out of my hand (a crucial document if stopped by the financial police!) and started demanding more money!

I stood my ground, followed her back into the shop and in my best italian asked her son if he really thought I was going to pay more? I asked his mother if tomorrow, would she come and knock on my door looking for a euro more for the car we bought Joe in the same sale? The son was mortified but the mother was going mental! I grabbed my receipt back, told her I was not paying any more and the son said to me to just go. As we hit the road we could hear her still shouting and him shouting back!

Mad or WHA???

Big Adventure!

Okay before I write this I just want to say PLEASE don’t write me any comments about how we could have done things differently, you can take it from me, what happened was the best and safest option for our family. Oh and Emily... Don't read on!

The Story of the Bees

So we arrived at the mill, excited and weary from the journey, dying to get inside with the pizza we’d purchased, dying for an ice cold beer we knew would be in the fridge, dying to just relax for a few weeks...There are about twenty keys for the house, and so baggage underarm, Bill began the process of elimination required to enter the house. Just as he got to the last key, and began to turn the lock, Little M said quietly “Look at all the Bees”...

There, coming from a crack, camouflaged against the stone work, were a score of bees. We looked up and saw more coming, landing, and entering the crevice. We backed away, slowly.I am allergic, only stung once on the hand which swelled like a balloon. If I’m stung again, the same may happen, or I could go into anaphalatic shock too, so I have to be extra careful. Alot of my family suffer reactions to Bee stings as well, my cousin was hospitalised after a sting on the neck, so I am also cautious for my children.

We came into the house from the front door which is rarely used, and were not at all prepared for what we saw. In the space between the wooden outer door and the glass inner door, at the back of the house, was an enormous hive, maybe twelve or more stalactite like compartments hanging down in the space.... And, my god, the bees, there was thousands and thousands of them.

We sat listening the droning hum for a few moments, but then Bill realised they were coming through the house as well and so we stuck the mosquito net up between the rooms and sat wondering what the hell we could do. It quickly turned from “we’re safe here” to “eh run!” when the bees, seeing the light, were suddenly all over the mosquito net and some managed to get through the space. It was like something from 'The Swarm'! By this time I was a nervous wreck and Little M was in hysterics. It was getting hard to handle.

Our caretaker was over like a shot when we rang him, he said it happens sometimes, but even he stood in awe at the creation between the doors. He said the local beekeeper would be happy to take it away and we could kill the ones in the house and just seal up the door for the night. But then after he made a few phone calls everything changed, and the next thing we knew he was spraying the hive and the bees were dropping dead onto the doorstep in their thousands.

It appeared the bees living in our doorway were aggressive, and the local authorities were trying to get rid of them, the local bees were being run out of town by these larger aggressive bullies... So they were killed.

Its hard to know if that was what should have been done, or whether the bees we had were as dangerous as thought. But that is what was done, the bees were killed, quickly and painlessly of course, but as they lay dead in piles around their empty hive, I felt so guilty. As the hive was ripped down and discarded, and the clear golden honey dripped and ran down the gloved arms of the men, I wished I could go back... but we couldn’t... and even when we thought about it logically – killing them was still the only solution. We could have got a second opinion but that probably would have probably been to kill them anyway... and we couldn’t have risked staying in the house with them until Monday...

Its sad but its how it happened. The bees made a mistake, and unfortunately they lost because of it. This may sound oversentimental to some, not sentimental enough to others, but thats how it is. This is our house, they made a mistake building a hive here, and that had to go. Our childrens safety, and our own safety comes first. I remember my father saying he would not swerve to avoid an animal on the road, for the sake of his passengers, I know what he means.

Now in the cool morning the men are sweeping the last of bees away, the hive is gone, and the wax burned off the walls... The only job left is for me, to scrub the honey off the stones before the ants arrive... As I scrub, one lone bee arrives home and lands on the door where he knows his home should be... he sits there for a moment, before circling the door a few times and then he slowly flies away.

Eurostar Barcelona

The Eurostar Barcelona is a great ship! It has 'Love Boat' written all over it, there is velure everywhere and the staff even wear white uniforms, which I think looks great - all those working at sea should wear white!

I have some videos of the ship which I'll upload as soon as I can, its hard to find wi-fi, thank god this little internet cafe is USB stick friendly!

A terribly embarrassing thing happened us on the ship, after taking the visa welcome signs as our queue to avoid running around in the heat looking for an atm, we headed down for our tea in the ships canteen only to be greeted with signs saying "due to technical satellite problem payment by visa is not possible" - YOU ARE KIDDING!

So off we went to see the captain, a lovely lady, to ask for mercy! We were star-ar-ving! She agreed, after what seemed like a lengthy consultation with everyone on board (including the ships doctor - I'm telling you it was the Love boat) and we were frog-marched to the canteen for our dinner, in exchange for Bills passport and word that he would pay as soon as we docked. Its funny because even though we were eventually paying for the meal, we felt we shouldn't look like we were enjoying it too much and ordered very humbly indeed...

I have to say the difference between sailing on the atlantic, or Irish sea, and the meditteranean is massive, I hate sea travel because I feel so ill, but not this time. The sea was like glass the whole way, being on deck was like being at the beach... they even had two pools, which as the sun came up and we were sailing with Sardinia on one side, and Italy on our other, the two kids... sorry Mary and Bill, were up, togs on so fast you could still see bum as they launched into the clear sea water... I won't say whose...!

Bill and kids in the baby pool...

Joe with his new found ability to make faces...