HOLIDAY PART # 3 : Irish Homecoming

After three nights camping in Pamps, I caught an overnight train back to Barc and an early flight to Ireland.... finally after two years it was time for my Irish homecoming!! My 12 months in Dublin was probably the best year of my short life. I had such an amazing year, met the most amazing group of friends.... people that left such an imprint on my life and I miss terribly (Stevo when are you bringing that Irish bird back to Melbourne to live??? You have approximately as long as it takes for me to find my way home....) (Pic. the Dublin crew)

My heart was in my mouth walking out the gates, but expecting to be bowled over I had planned to just walk out in view and brace myself for the impending tackle.... but it never came?? I was hugely disappointed and looking around frantically for the faces I had been so eager to see.... Turns out Isie had seen a ghost several minutes earlier and almost scared the life out of some poor girl who resembled me. Suffice to say when I did find you, I think the airport staff remembered us from 2004 with the amount of tears there were!! Anyway, I arrived and the story goes....


The drizzle that was covering Dublin when I landed was a full on downpour by the time we got to Punchestown.... home of Oxegen Music Festival. Sandpit people - the idea we have all developed that rain is wonderful and refreshing is delusional - it is still just a soggy inconvenience! Especially when you have travelled thousands of miles to party all weekend. I wasn't the happiest of campers after lugging eskies up a hill soaking wet and wearing thongs.... But when we finally arrived the old crew were waiting with open arms.... cold beers.... and so forth! Belinda, Marie, Martin, Amy.... all the old faces - god it was so good to so you all! And fairly surreal.... like two years ago I went out for milk and here I was all of a sudden at my place in the circle like I had never gone. A lot of things never change, and I am so relieved - you guys are the best.

Apologies, sentiment is getting in the way of a good story here....

The Irish weather didn't let up and as The Dublin Sun quoted yours truly a few days later 'we soldiered on and didn't let it damped our spirits'. Wrenching ourselves out of the tent well into proceedings, covered in garbage bags we trekked up to the festival grounds for some DJ action. Would love to tell you who played that night (if you can help shout out) but it's all a bit of a blur. But I can tell you we ended up at the mainstage watching The Who and waiting for James Brown to come on.... and who should I spy standing next to me, but none other than an old friend from South Africa! (Gareth, so amazing to see you - I loved catching up). The world continues to shrink....



Partied well into the night and after an interesting breakfast, I was determined to see Xavier Rudd. Quite the festival groupie and managed to get my picture with Xavier at the end of his show (Dom if you ever work out how to get that off your mobile I really would love to see it!). Another awesome day was had, seeing some wicked performances including Ben Harper, Franz Ferdinand (flashbacks to BDO Melb in Jan - T, Dan, Peeps, Louis) Kaiser Chiefs, Pharrell Williams and of course the Chillis.

But after 9 days on the lash, my body gave up the ghost during the Chillis encore and it was all over - although it lead me to discover that you can sleep quite comfortably on hard earth for ten hours when you are over-tired-drunk-smelly....