Phlauer Pauer

Well, it's been a good day so far, with me having picked up Laura at the airport and wandered around town with her, meeting up with Anna and Barry for a Mancunian Reunion over coffee, tea, sandwiches, and indeed cake, and then having a stroll around the National Museum.

All the stuff from the Rising and the War of Independence and Civil War has gone. Apparently it's all been moved out to the new National Museum, the one formerly known as Collins Barracks, and which generally houses costumes, billing itself as the museum of 'Decorative and Creative Arts'. I'm loathe to be snide, as I've yet to set foot there -- perhaps on Sunday -- but it seems to me that that's a fairly arbitrary name. Is the Ardagh Chalice not perhaps the finest piece of creativity anyone has ever wrought in metal? And surely the Tara Brooch is highly decorative?

Still, it was good to have a wander, to stroll down O'Connell Street, pointing out our abundance of cribs -- I'll get back to that -- and crossing over the Liffey, down D'Olier Street and rounding Trinity onto College Green, before dawdling through Front Arch and wandering about in Trinity, there to arrange our Grafton Street rendezvous with my onetime protégé and her young gentleman. It was nice to have a halls gathering on home turf -- Laura was once our Social secretary back when one of our halls had a habit of getting stroppy and doing things separately from its mothership, before we managed to get everyone to play nicely again. No fault of Laura's, of course.

The museum was next, of course, with the Dynamic Duo taking in the Guinness Storehouse instead, and then it was time to head home, there to shake my head in disbelief at the contents of my inbox - that's what I'm trying to ignore right now. A delightful dinner beckons, and then tonight we'll be off to the Montrose, where I shall introduce Laura to the troops. It should be a fine evening.