Ireland day 1344. Tuesday 03 June 2025- Zooming

Today’s summary	A relatively quiet day with much of it spent online. At 10am had a zoom call with a friend in Lancaster, UK and then at noon had another Zoom call, with a different friend, in the south of England. Later in the afternoon I had an online Spanish assessment with the Cervantes Institute. Afterwards, Val and I went to Dunnes to do the weekly shopping. In the evening we had vegan pizza for dinner and Val made a cake while I “helped”.
Today’s weather	Overnight rain which had dried up by morning. Bright breezy and showery for the rest of the day. Strong westerly wind. Appx 14c
Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of our route)			Close-up location (The blue line shows where we walked) (No GPX today)

Commentary

Today was a relatively quiet day. Hooray! So after we’d had our regulation refreshments in bed, we got up and set about addressing the day’s tasks.

My first job was to join a Zoom call with a friend in Lancaster, UK. (We are having to move to Zoom, by the way, following the sad demise of Skype last month). Anyway we spent well over an hour putting the world to rights and it was very enjoyable.

I barely had time to catch my breath before I was straight into another Zoom call at noon. This time it was with a friend in the South of England. As he had expressed an interest in our recent trip to Japan, I pulled together a set of slides which I shared electronically and which I think he enjoyed. He had visited Japan in the 1970s and 80s and it was interesting to discuss what had (and had not) changed in the intervening half-century. This took nearly two hours and it seemed to go down well. Remarkably, the technology actually worked!

While all this was going on, Val had gone into Malahide to see the manicurist, and so now she had returned sporting neatly coloured and polished nails.

When she had returned, we had a light lunch, finishing off the salad Val made at the weekend. Shortly afterwards, I went to try and get my hair cut, but came back empty handed – or rather, with a full headed.   I think it must be school holidays at the moment as the barber’s was full of teenagers waiting grumpily to have their short back and sides (or whatever) from the one barber who was actually on duty.   I worked out that I would probably have had to wait over an hour to get shorn, so I abandoned the idea.   Instead, once I got back to the flat, Val retrieved a pair of kitchen scissors and a razor, and trimmed away the worst of the fluffy bits.   So at least I look decent again now, at no cost and a fraction of the wait I would have had at the barber’s.

Next on the agenda, I had to go into a phone call with the Cervantes Spanish Language Institute of Dublin, for a verbal assessment of my Spanish language level with a tutor . After a longish chat, he concluded that he thought I was probably about A2.3 which I was pleased with. I’m going to look into doing a short course at about that level in Dublin later this summer. But I have to say it was hard work speaking in Spanish for half an hour – and harder still listening to what the tutor was saying. My weakness, which I really want to address, is in understanding spoken Spanish.

As soon as I’d finished, Val and I drove down to Dunnes in Portmarnock to do the weekly shopping. I simply don’t know how so few things could cost so much money. Anyway at least we got some vouchers in return for our three-figure spend, which we can use next time we go shopping.

After we got back, for dinner we had the pizza (vegan I should note, because it feels like it should be healthier, even though it probably isn’t) and reduced-price pasteles de nata that we’d bought at the supermarket. Next, Val baked a cake while I tidied up and generally got in the way. Eventually we had completed our tasks and after an episode of “Mad Men”, duly despatched ourselves to bed.

And that was a quiet day!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)

The Casino Model Railway museum, veiled in a deluge of rain in one of the several downpours we had throughout the day.	My new haircut.   Thanks, Val!
Choosing my course..

Interactive map

(No map today)

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