Ennis Visit and Jim's Birthday Celebrations 6.3.10

Jim with his Birthday Cake - just four candles for 'When I'm Sixty Four'. I love this photo!

Ennis Trip

Yesterday I popped to Ennis to do some shopping for Jim's birthday. It was a lovely warm day and I really enjoyed my day out. I was successful on the shopping front and Ennis was buzzing. A new footbridge has been built since my last visit:

The pigeons took no notice of me.

I loved the shadows


The view from the bridge.

I took just one photo of the priory as most of it is shrouded in scaffolding.

the tower looks magnificent against the blue of the sky.

One of the main streets in Ennis, which is very narrow.

These lovely guys were playing 'Summertime' as I passed them. They liked having their photo taken - I put money in their pot of course.


Don't you just love this bike with one round and one square wheel!


Look at my great take away cappuccino!! This is how I felt!

This is the statue of O'Connell taken from by the river. You can see the sun was going down.

A dead tree at the side of the car park. There was a large bird on the top branch - which flew away as I focused!

I finished all I had to do and headed for home, stopping occasionally to take a photo of the lovely sunset.



Sunset taken from Kilbeacanty on the way home.


This was the last one and it really was too dark by then.

Today, Jim's Birthday, 'When I'm Sixty Four'.

It's been a funny old day! This morning, Jim just had time to look at my card for him, then we had to be on our way to a funny place called Cranny to pick up a bed we'd bought! It was a lovely drive over there, towards the West coast, and we found the house with no trouble. Now this is a king size bed and we wondered whether it would fit inside the Doblo - but it did, well, the mattress hung out the back a bit!


It's amazing what we've transported in the Doblo. Cranny had a wonderful 'welcome' sign:

The first word is 'Failte' which means welcome in Irish, but is pronounced 'Folcher'!!

It was a bit of a draughty drive home but luckily the weather stayed dry and bright. We had cheese on toast at home followed by a cream cake we'd bought on the way - delicious. Then Jim managed to open his presents at last.

I had had some trouble wrapping his presents as most of the paper we had was Christmas wrapping, so I had to eke out the birthday sheets. I left the last one at the bottom of the bag - and Jim reckoned it was the worst wrapped present he'd every received. It looked OK from the top:


As long as you didn't turn it over.

I must remember to buy some wrapping paper!

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the garden. Jim pruned some of the living willow fences on the allotment and I did some digging there.

When it became almost too dark to see, we came in, had a curry with peshwari naan bread (my favourite) and watched Casualty. We did the 'birthday cake' thing of course:


I seem to have some ghost candles for Jim to blow out! I couldn't fit 64 candles on the cake, so just put the 4 on. The other photo is at the top of course.

Jim then decided he'd like to go to the pub, so we got changed and headed up to Canny's. It was reasonably busy, with a crowd of young men playing darts. We didn't know anyone but enjoyed people watching, Jim had 2 pints of Guinness and I had a gin and tonic. How rash! As the late evening moved towards 11 and then midnight, the pub got much busier. Nothing much seems to happen around here before 10.30pm. Michael the farmer arrived so we did speak to someone. Then it was back home.

We had both enjoyed Jim's birthday. Only a year to go until pension time for Jim. Woo hoo! He's already retired so we've lived quite frugally for a few years.

Lest I forget, Jim's main present was really for us both. I had ordered one of Rima Staines's hand painted clocks and she timed it (oops) to arrive for Jim's birthday. It's quite beautiful and is all ready on the wall in the kitchen/diner. Rima is an artist extraordinaire and I encourage you to visit her blog at The Hermitage. Wander around and click on her paintings. Wow is all I can say. Here is our gorgeous piece of Rima's art:

Rima has called this clock 'The Hedge Brother Clock'. We discussed what I would like on it and I gave a few suggestions. It had to have a hedgehog and I like umbrellas and Jim and I both like wild flowers and here it is. But not just any old umbrella, it is, to me, one shaped like a flower. Look at those dandelions too.

A close up of Harry the Hedgehog.

Thank you Rima. We both love it.

Now I must go and do some gardening as the sun is shining. I hope everyone is having a Splendid Sunday.