If I was young I'd flee this town, I've buried my dreams underground.

I found out at about 5 o'clock on Tuesday that Beirut were playing in Dublin at 8 o'clock that same day, and was completely devestated at the prospect of missing it. When I asked around as to why NO ONE TOLD ME everyone said 'well I presumed you knew!'. I didn't let it faze me however, and myself and a friend who I shall call Candy Warhol made our way to Tripod armed with a lot of hope and some faith that fate would come through for us. There were quite a few people standing around looking at each other shiftily, not wanting to make eye contact in any sort of friendly manner in case a ticket came along and you had to push them out of the way/slap them. It was getting closer and closer to Beirut O'clock and we were obviously looking quite desolate because a blond guy wearing a nerdy/cool blue and white checked shirt and smoking a rollie who was walking past in a group of similarly Brooklyn-trendy looking people slowed down and said 'Hey, are you guys looking for tickets?'. I replied with a very cool 'eh..yes!'. 'Oh thats cool, just say you're (name blank in case I get him in trouble!) on the guest list plus one'. Once again I was the picture of laid back appreciation as I stumbled over the words 'oh my god...thank you...thank you so much' and tried to contain my ridiculous happiness. With a brief awkward smile and a 's'cool' our knight in shining armour was gone. For now. We made our way to the front of the crowd so as to have a good view of the band and lovely Zach Condon, lead singer of Beirut and, apparently, cat owner (I read an interview with him in which he talked about his cat, which made his lovely status shoot up at least 9 points). When they walked on, we were surprised to see that our check-shirted friend was none other than Beirut's trumpet player!
They played up a storm, opening with Nantes, the song that made me fall in love with Beirut/Zach in the first place. The musicians were amazing, and Zach's singing was even better in real life, spineshiveringly soulful and different. They played all my favourites as well as a some new ones. As he came back on stage for his second encore, Zach leaned into the mic to confess that last time he 'stumbled his way through Hallelujah'. When the crowd roared its approval he ran his hand through his hair and half laughed 'not again. I'm not so good with other peoples songs'.



It was such a great gig, it honestly made me ridiculously happy, and it lasted for about 2 days afterwards.

The unexpected dose of happiness came at the right time, as the rolling around of the 28th of August marked the official end of my Sarah Lawrence dreams. I still cry every time I get post from them. But it was not to be. It was a hard lesson to learn that no matter how much you want something, or how hard you try, sometimes it just doesn't work out.

After wallowing in a pool of broken dreams for a few weeks, I had to get my act together and formulate some new high hopes so I decided I wanted to go to New York anyway on the 1 year work/internship visa available to Irish students and try to take a 10 week novel writing course at NYU at the same time.

On a happier note, I am now the proud owner of a Nikon D40 :) I had been saving up to buy an SLR for a while, and whilst in York I had used my friends D40 and loved it, so when some birthday kindness meant I had enough to buy one, I started looking around. The D40 isn't being made anymore so I was looking for a 2nd hand one, and I had a few incidents where sales clerks said 'You don't want that old one! For only 400e more you can buy this D3000! LOOK, new and shiny!' but my heart was set and I just sadly shook my head. Finally, my lovely friend Paul directed me to Conns Cameras where they had one in stock and the rest is history. I named it Paul after Paul. It really is a great little camera :) I'm still only learning how to use it but we're best mates all ready.

I gotta get to the passport office now to make me an official Irish person. I hope I don't have to wait around for ever. I'm bringing a new book just in case; Columbine by Dave Cullen. I've been reading up about high school shootings for a character I was writing about, but I've had this book for a while and not gotten round to reading it so I'm looking forward to starting today.

Hope everyones enjoying the last of the summer sun :)

The real life horse whisperer! (and some other real life stuff)

Yesterday I went to the RDS for the Dublin Horse Show! I go every year just to soak up all the lovely ponyness and enjoy the excruciatingly nerve-wracking experience that is the Aga Khan FEI Nations Cup (kinda like the world cup for showjumping). This year there was another super exciting event to look forward to though; a demonstration by Monty Roberts, a real life horse whisperer. I got his book The Man Who Listens to Horses when I was about 11 or 12 and used to totally idolize him. We got a seat on the grandstand to watch the 4 year olds showjumping class, and stayed put through the rain storm whilst Monty's students set up a round pen in the arena. Monty ran into the ring waving and wearing a stetson and cowboy boots. They brought in a 16hh grey mare called Heather who pranced and reared around as her owner explained over a mic that she was agressive to handle, spooky and wouldn't take a rider. Monty did his famous 'join up' routine that resulted in the horse eventually coming in to him and following him around wherever he went. It was lovely. It makes sense that he works with kids in juvenile detention because when you see this small-ish old man calm a wild-ish horse in 10 minutes and have it walking around behind him across giant tarps of plastic when it couldn't handle a single bag at the start, without him laying a single hand on her or raising his voice, you realise that he's right: 'violence only helps the violator, and never the victim'. Even as Heather was lashing out at him with her hooves, he was explaining how often the most violent horses turn out to be the most gentle once they are taught to trust people. Lovely lovely lovely.


In other news, we currently have a house guest in the form of Lisa Faith Phillips, who is in Dublin to do her show How To Be a Bad Girl in Bewleys Cafe Theatre on the 8th of August. I haven't seen this one yet but if you're around I recommend catching it because her shows are a lot of fun.


Lisa also introduced my parents waay back in the day, which is an irrelevant but interesting fact :) she ALSO got me an awesome present in the form of a ticket to see Florence and The Machine play in Terminal 5, New York on November 1st. I'm so excited about seeing Florence play again! Her live shows are so spine-tingling good, I can't wait. I was doing some Florence watching on YouTube in preperation and came across this awesome cover of En Vogues 'Don't Let Go'



Lisa's present got me thinking about my top 5 presents list. I have received many presents in my 22 years but here are some of my favourites (in nor particular order of favouriteness)
1. My Little Pony on a chain that Martini made me for my 21st.
2. Chamele No. 5 from Moore St.
3. Two old volumes of William Blakes completed works my dad got me for my 21st birthday.
4. A headcollar and leadrope a friend of my parents got me when I was 12 because she 'knew I'd have my own pony some day to use them on'.
5. Ticket to Florence and The Machine in New York.
There's a whole other blog post in the making about my Twilight related gifts, of which I have received an unsettling for others but awesome for me amount.

The other day when I woke up in a room full of smoke and I thought the house was on fire, it raced trough my mind that I would have to choose certain things to rescue (apart from my kitties obviously). This was a slight cause of panic because I lean slightly towards the hoarder side of the hoarder/non hoarder scale and have many treasured possessions. When I was a kid I used to insist on travelling with all these cigar boxes I filled with stuff I deemed incredibly important and I think it never really wore off. Thankfully there was no fire and I still have all my lovely paintings and books and boxes of random crap. I'm working on a top 5 list of treasured items (always think about this on a Saturday because of the question in the Guardian Weekend magazine interview 'what is your most treasured possession?') but I think its gonna take a while...so many pretty shiny things to choose from.

Here's a video I made of my furry alive treasured possessions documenting their unhealthy attachment to catnip. I would just like to note that I am not a crazy cat lady who spends all her time making videos of her cats. I sometimes go to work/sleep/do non cat related things. But not often.