Turned over a new leaf this morning...up and had breakfast before ten o'clock...then a gaspy shower...totally forgot to close the bathroom window so not only was I gasping, but was freezing cold into the bargain...tried to think how lucky we are to have running water and a power shower and big fluffy towels...failed miserably.
Lurched into the sitting room and plugged myself into the oxygen...blessed relief.
A thumping great lorry went past at ninety miles an hour...closely followed by another one...work has begun on the bridge.
Himself was there at six this morning with the dogs...Eilis sits beside me quivering with anxiety or temper...not sure which...Himself scoops her up and she has her extending lead on before she knows which way is up...anyway...he met two blokes and two Guards down on the bridge waiting for a crane to arrive...it'd set off from Offaly in the middle of the night with a Guardia escort 'cos it was big and slow...
The men were there to put it together once it arrived...the Guards were just bored and were only there for the craic...
Everyone in the street is muttering about the waste of money which could have been spent on something useful...more free meals for the elderly for instance...to stop the lorry drivers from getting too close to our cottages Himself has moved our stones closer to the road...Hubert has a row of traffic cones he's purloined from somewhere or other as has Tom...everyone else's houses are set back further from the road so they haven't needed to bother too much...though Frank has acquired traffic cones as well...dozens actually.
Lorna's put a sign up that says Slow Down, Children Playing and Tom has one that reads...Cattle Crossing...
We all have Beware of the Dogs on our gates...even though Honoria and Paddy don't have a dog, they still have a sign displayed...not sure how such signs will stop the lorries thundering past, but there you are...we're Irish. Not known for our logic...poetry and books...music and dancing...but not logic.
The workmen have a little cabin apparently...somewhere to sit when it rains...and a portable toilet, so they don't have to pee in the hedge and alarm the cows...
There's a pile driver coming tomorrow...to put the supports in the river bed...what about the Otters I asked Himself...and the Kingfishers...and the fish...and the neat little Moorhens with their babies.
Just as well I can't get out and about by myself because if I could I'd be in Michael Mulligan's Ironmongers shop raising Cain...he's the Councillor who kept on and on about the feckin' bridge in the first place...says it's essential for it to be open for the tourists...and the fishermen who are too bone idle to walk a few yards to the riverbank...
And he tells terrible fibs...once told me that there was a hidden camera inside a Coco-Cola tin, ready to film people who dump rubbish on the bog...he looked quite alarmed when I laughed...his wife raised her eyebrows at me and gave me a bar of that red soap women used to scrub their doorsteps with...and wash their hair and use on their children and the laundry...
Perhaps I was a bit smelly that day...
Apart from muttering every time a lorry laden with stone went past, it's been a good enough day...no sunshine...but no rain either. Murphy is brightening up a bit...he's away to see Susie again tomorrow for another jab and he has rampant ear mites...I've cleaned most of the gunk out, which he didn't care for one bit...something else for Susie to deal with...
Think he'd be better if he had a friend...
