Ireland day 0357. Tuesday 20 September 2022- Resuming

Today’s summary	Re-joined the gym (for a year!!) in the morning, and I resumed Spanish lessons at Portmarnock Community School while Val re-started her Irish language course in the evening
Today’s weather	Dry and bright, again.   Very little wind.   About 17C
Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)			Close-up location (The green line shows where I walked) (No GPX today but click button below for TCX of Gym session): Gym resumption

Commentary

It feels like things are beginning to come full circle , as the start of our second year in Ireland starts to come into view.   We are doing things for the second time now, rather than the first, so the scary first-time fears are beginning to ease.

So it didn’t come too hard today to sign up again at the gym – my first month’s trial membership came to an end last week and today I took the plunge and signed up for another year.   I must admit that I thought we would be moving around Ireland more than we actually have, but it looks as if I might just have committed us to staying in Malahide for another twelve months at least.   Anyway, that meant that as Val was away at work, my morning was spent pounding on the torture machines and splashing up and down the pool.   All very virtuous until on the way home I spotted a half price cherry cake in SuperValu and ate rather too much of it for lunch.   I simply have no will power.   Sigh.  Back to the gym again tomorrow, I fear.

I’ve also made another long-term commitment to the Malahide area by signing up for a “Spanish Improvers” class in the Portmarnock community school.   I did two terms of the beginners’ course when we first got here and although I still have very little actually to improve upon, I thought I would give it a go.   So, once I got back from the gym and had finished scoffing the cake, I spent the afternoon going through my Spanish notes from last term and realising that I couldn’t remember any of it at all.   An unenjoyable evening of humiliation was clearly in store for me down at the college.

As it was, the class wasn’t too awful.   Two hours is a long time to think and speak in a foreign language, and it is quite sobering to be nowhere near the top of the class.   I’d say I wasn’t the least competent Spanish speaker there, though I was well down the second half of the class.   It would be oh so easy to give up, but I’ve paid for ten lessons now, so there’s no way I’m going to do that.   I’m determined to keep going and will diligently plough through my homework in the hope that at least a bit of it might stick.   (Note to any younger person reading this: learn as much stuff as you can before you are 35 because once you are beyond that, it is impossible to remember anything).

But I think Val actually had it harder than me – as tonight she also re-joined the learning community and re-started her 1:1 online Irish lessons.   At least with  Spanish you can sometimes hazard a guess at what words might mean because they have some similarity to English or French words.   But Irish words have absolutely nothing in common with any other language (except maybe Gaelic and Manx) that I have ever heard of.   I find it completely incomprehensible, I’m afraid – apart from the Irish for “Please stand back behind the yellow line, train now approaching” which is repeated with metronomic regularity by the platform tannoy on the station below our bedroom window.

Anyway, she survived her lesson, and I survived mine. so now we’re winding down from a physically and mentally strenuous day with a nice glass of red wine and a slice of pizza.   I know really it should be paella and boxty, but hey, it was the best we could do.

 

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

This is actually pretty much the view you get from the exercise bike in the gym.   This, plus the car park where a couple appeared to be having a 20 minute argument this morning.   Fascinating viewing
Going back to school is pretty draining, so we both felt this was well deserved this evening

Interactive map

(No map today)

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