Musical Moments

I'm busy whenever I get a minute importing all my music to my Ipod. Nearly 4,000 individual pieces of music and songs. Mainly classical, but lots of the great rock groups of the sixties and seventies. An astonishing 600 pieces of Irish music, Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Christy Moore, Altan, Chieftains, Sean O'Riada and on.

I'm nearly there. Loads of memories attached to much of it.

As I transferred my favourite jazz pieces I was reminded of the music coming from the lighthouse behind our summer house on a West Cork island late at night, many, many years ago, underneath the navy blue star-dotted skies. Drifting across the bay to us, the jazz sounds of Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane. So deliciously at odds with our Irishness and the lighthouse owners’ Britishness. And so completely wonderful.

I've never lost my love for Mr. Monk.

Blog Jam

Well for starters, I'm back in Newfoundland's stunningly warmish weather and a sort of Irish damp clutching at everything. Good to be home. Picked up Ansa at the kennel. I love the disbelieving look she throws my way when I first appear, she goes all rigid, her ears reach the ceiling and her eyes pop.

"You?" she says, "OMG! You? - I'd just about given up!" and then she leaps at me, trying to get to my face or any exposed piece of skin to lick it, yarping in joy. And then she smells me all over and I can see her nod: I.D. confirmed. Then it's a repeat of the leaping and yarping. It is almost worth going away just for this incredible display.

I have one family member who always seems to be in the trouble spots of the world just when trouble strikes: Argentina during the collapse, El Salvador in the midst of civil unrest and machine guns taking target practice at his house, and now Chile on the 14th floor of a hotel when the earthquake struck. We were all on tenterhooks until he connected once more on Blackberry to say that he was safe, he got out of the hotel before it shredded and is now staying with a colleague in a private residence until arrangements are made to get him out of there. I told him his entire 9 lives were now used up and STOP.SCARING.US.

I've finally joined the Ipod Brigade. I can't believe this little itsy bitsy teeny thingy can hold, like, 40,000 songs. Yeah, I'm really late to this particular party but I can hum them all.

And hey: Canada won the hockey. Yeah, we did. You should have been on the plane when it was announced. A party of forty instant friends singing the Canadian national anthem with the cabin crew conducting. You just had to be there.