I won’t be blogging for another week or so, as I’m off to Romania on a jolly romp to see what’s going on down Transylvania way. Not that I blog that much anyway, so you probably won’t notice the difference.
Anyway, the garlic, crucifixes and wooden stakes are all packed and ready to go.
Been practising the language a bit. Not that difficult really – you can almost get by speaking Italian with a slavic accent.
O sticlă de vin roşu de casă va rog.
Noroc!
La revedere for the moment!
I watched a TV program last week about a man called Duddy from Derry who acted as an intermediary between the British government and the IRA with the help of a mysterious spook from the intelligence service known only as Robert, negotiations which eventually led to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. Like most of Peter Taylor’s investigations it was all very interesting, but I won’t comment so much on the content of the documentary. There are other institutions which could do a better job – like Bugger O’Foole with Rick Kielty or whatever he calls himself, where contributors can discuss what a shower of sectarian bigots the GAA/Northern Ireland soccer team (delete as appropriate) are. But what caught my imagination was the final scene. The man called Duddy who in the previous scene had broken down with emotion was now seen on a remote hilltop looking out over a breathtaking landscape – probably somewhere in Donegal – with the wind in his hair and the dark silhouette of a large bird soaring overhead. The camera didn’t pan in close enough for me to indentify the bird, but it looked like a golden eagle, a bird which became extinct in Ireland after relentless persecution many moons ago, but is now making a comeback after a successful breeding programme in the Glenveagh National Park. I could get all pretentious now and say how the return of this majestic bird was a symbol of peace and stability on the island – but I won’t, as it would sound rather tacky. What I will say is that the return of the eagle, the red kite, the buzzard, the peregrine falcon and other such formerly rare raptors to the skies of these Hiberno-Britannic isles is a welcome sight. Just last weekend, while out rambling in the Chilterns I observed a spectacular aerial tussle between a kite (the bird, not the wind-assisted stringed contraption) and a buzzard, something which will linger in the memory for times to come.
The Dreaming Armadillo 
