Well, Christmas is now almost here. It’s the 14th of December in Ireland so we’ve 11 days left until the big day.

I am really getting into some of the Christmas music again. Not the stuff that seems to get on everyones nerves like Fairytail in New york but the good stuff!

So, Here you go. Happy Christmas from DigitalDarragh.
Or, it could be a punishment. haha. you’ll just have to see.

Yes, we may get completely ripped off by the budget today and it could effectively screw the entire country for the next fifty years as we struggle to get out of this recession but what is writing about it going to do? what is worrying going to do? What is complaining from a distance going to do?

It’s going to do absolutely nothing! that’s what.

so. Yes, we are not looking forward to this budget but there’s no point worrying about it. If it’s going to happen it’s going to happen. Unless we’re willing to actually do something about it then there’s no point writing dozens of blog posts giving out.

So. Today, I’m going to stay posative, I’m going to keep an eye on the budget speech, I’m going to work as normal and then, when I get the results, I’m going to see how it effects me and plan around it to try to mitagate against any major problems that may arise as a result.

Until we find a way of doing something about this mess our selves, we’re just going to have to put up with what the government are doing. I’ll put it this way. Their doing the job and they have the advisers. We don’t. I’m not saying their making the best choices. I’m not saying their making the worst choices either. Because I don’t know.

I’ll tell you what choice isn’t the right one though. Being constantly negative.

We’re not going to get out of this by fighting every decision the government makes. Because at the end of the day. although I personally have no trust in FF, I don’t see any other party being any better. So, either get behind them and try to help this country better or find a way of doing it your self. Writing negatively and telling stories of how we’re all doomed because of the stupidity and incompatence of the government is doing one thing and one thing only. It’s playing straight into the oppositions hands. And, do you really think FG or labour will do any better? Come on. Think about it. Look at both parties. Do you think they’ll do better? what about SF. Do you think they’ll do better either?

Do you think you’d do better?

Lets face it. decisions were made baddly but in 1990, I remember traveling on a bus and a builder telling me the boom wasn’t going to last. I remember people saying how it couldn’t last for seventeen years. I remember small businesses saying that the more multi-national businesses that came in the less compeditive the market was and the less viable it was for them to stay in. I remember the home grown companies saying that the multi-national companies weren’t going to look after the Irish interest. Everyone remembers this. Every single one of us had the oppertunity to do something about this. Either by supporting local produce and manufacturors or by lobbying public representatives, councilers and TD’s when decisions were made that would, in the long term lead to the situation we find our selves in now. But no one did it. We were all happy to go along with it when things were good. Yes. the government could have done something but we were happy to go along with their decisions. especially when those decisions resulted in lower tax and VAT.

Answer me this. Why was it so easy for English to get such a firm grasp during the plantations.

Do you know?

It was because the Irish have always been a divided people.

It takes a lot to make us come together.

When we finally did come together, the routes of the plantation had already taken hold.

It’s the same now.

Instead of coming together and fighting the common cause of beating this recession we instead fight the government instead of helping.

How do we help? I don’t know. Maybe start by sending suggestions, complaints, problems, comments or simple updates to your public representatives in the Oireachtas. If your not sure how to contact your local TD, look his or her contact details up on the Oireachtas website. It’s all there.

That’s the least we can do.

So, stop complaining because without doing something and contributing to the resolution of the problem you are part of it.

negativity seeds negativity and it’s negativity that has this country where it is today. Not bad government decisions.

Ok. I’m sorry!

1. I left the house without my iPod and my earphones. I had been looking forward to listening to the new Julie Fowlis CD since I got it last night but I couldn’t because I left the stupid iPod at home!

2. I had to do something while traveling to work on the laptop before I got to work but because I forgot my earphones I had to do it with jaws, my screen reader, talking through the speakers. To ensure others didn’t hear what I was doing and the synthesized speach didn’t annoy people, I had to have it at a bearly audible volume.

3. What I was trying to finish didn’t work. I’m still not sure why it wouldn’t. I was basically adding some functionality to a site that I have created for an organization but the code was showing without the functionality! It makes no sense and when I tried the exact same steps when I got to work it all went fine!

4. I tried to log onto my home exchange server to check for new mail but it looks like my internet connection at home is down. That’s going to be gone all day so I’ll have to keep up with my personal email during breaks using web mail via my backup server.

5. The budget is coming tomorrow so things here are quite on edge. Plus, we were given some news a week and a half ago about the company I work for that will apply in April that has everyone very worried as well so although I’m fighting, I’m not happy about it.

6. I’ve decided that I’m just going to go buy a coffee. But guess what? I have €1.46 in change on me. a coffee is 2:50. I’m not going to an ATM to get money out. If I get a 20, it’s just going to be spent before I even know it’s gone. The Irish urin currency just falls through your fingers as soon as you break a note.

7. I can look forward to the prospect of sitting on a crowded train today at a quarter past five on the way back home without any music to listen to.

I really should just go back home to bed. I’m not liking this Tuesday.

Well, yesterday I promised that pictures would follow our decorating attempts on Saturday night. Click on any of these pictures to see them in a new window at a much larger size.

As the description in the graphic describes, the tree is shown in the room with only it’s lights eluminating the walls. I’m told that it makes the room look very different. There’s a lot on there. There’s two sets of gold and silver beeds, four sets of lights, red silver and gold tinsil, four bells, 12 glittering star things, ten lantern shaped things, the usual round shiny things tat are also come in red, the angel on top and in the middle, probably not very easy to see, a hand made wooden angel that was given to us last year by a very good German friend of ours.

There’s a lot on the tree. It probably sounds a bit too much. But, the tree is over six foot high. In fact, considering the one in the porch is six foot high, I’d say ithe one in the living room is over seven foot high and is very broad on the bottom so to get rid of the bare look, it’s necessary to have a lot on it. A part from the angel on the window looking out, it is the only decoration in the living room as with it, nothing else is needed.

Speaking of the angel, Emma loves this.

It was dark out when this picture was taken so unfortunately some of the features of the angel cannot be seen. A better picture will be taken during the weekend when it’s not so dark out. Well, that’s the plan anyway.

The angel has a white dress on that is very intricate. It’s just less than a half a foot high from bottom to top. The top part of is light up with fibre-optic lights on it’s back. It’s very difficult to explain it other than that.

The next picture was also taken outside.

This time we look at the front of the house. We have an extention to the left of this picture so from left to right you can see the living room window with the angel, the porch with the fibre-optic christmas tree and on the right you can see Emma’s sowing room. It has an electric candle thing. This looks like a tryangle shaped candle stand with about seven candles on it. Three on the left and three on the right and one on the top. Again, up close, this is very detailed. There is a leaf effect at the bottom of each candle stick to make it look very authentic.

So there you have it. I hope those descriptions were comprehensive enough to give you an idea of how things look. Oh, I forgot to mention. The christmas tree in the porch is about six fot high. It’s not half as dominating as the tree in the living room.

I don’t mind saying that it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced. For the people who read this who are not blind, go home tonight and imagine someone is in your house. Imagine that the scope of your awareness is limited to that you can hear, smell and touch. Imagine that someone is outside that scope. Their aware of you but your not aware of them. Imagine that you are alone with that person and you don’t even know it.

The dog barks! The silence is broken.

I jump out of sleep and I’m fully awake and alert. But. I’m frozen. Unable to move. Unable to think. Unable to process what is happening.

My commen sense tells me it couldn’t be happening and it was just a bad dream but the part of me that still is frozen with dred cant ignore what ever it was that woke me up so quickly.
I’m not sure why I’m frozen solid but I know that it’s not something I drempt.

I’m still unable to move.

I feel stupid for being afraid of what is possibly nothing.

What is it?

I can feel something.

I cant hear anything though.

The rain batters the window.

The dog isn’t barking now.

I’m consintrating on trying to hear something but I cant move! I won’t move. I’m afraid that if I do, what ever or who ever it is, if something or someone is in fact there they will know I’m not a sleep and ……. No. I cant think of that.

I lie there. I know that a lot of time passes. But still nothing!

I start to loosen up.

I tell my self that I’m stupid. The dog could have got spooked by something out side the apartment.

I tell my self that the presence I felt wasn’t a person. It couldn’t have. I’d have heard him or her. It was all in my head.

I try to sleep.

After more time, the alarm goes off.

I spring out of bed, throw the clothes on from the day before, grab the dog and leave the apartment within minutes. I don’t need to be out that early but the feeling of being watched won’t go away.

As the cold morning air hits me on the way to the train station, I convince my self that there is no way someone else was in the apartment with me all that time.

I say it to no one because I feel so stupid. I push it out of my mind and I hardly give it another thought.

Satisfied that it was not real, I continue on for another month. Things are as normal as they’ve ever been.

One night, after going to bed, I hear a door close. Determined to fight the feer I experienced the month before I check that the rooms are empty.

More time passes without incident but residents speak of apartments that have been broken into. I’m assured that my dor cannot be opened using a card like others have been as the lock is too stiff so I’m happy with this reassurance. I also feel very confedent that the dog will be vocal in his notification that someone is in the apartment.

One morning however, I leave the apartment and open the second door toward the stairwell. Freddie emetietly behaves like someone is near. Without any reason to be concerned, I greet the person. He doesn’t respond. I let the dog walk over and find that he’s lying on one of the ornamental sofa’s. He’s a sleep but concerned that he may be locked out of his apartment, I wake him up to see if there’s anything I can do to help. He admits that he’s sleeping rough. Satisfied that he’s telling the truth, I continue to work. Within five minutes, On the way to the station, I call another resident and ask him to check the landing as with the break ins in the building I would rather that he’s monitored. I’m told that he’s no longer there.

I return home the next evening to find that the door to the spare room is open. Things begin to add up and I become less sure that my previous fears were unfounded.

Because of the mounting security problems in the building, I ask my land lord to get something done about it. He has the largest stake in the building as he owns most of the apartments. He fights the management company to get extra security added. The security company installs new locks but it is learned that keys have been left in post boxes. This has no effect as as soon as keys are provided, one is stolen.

After some more time, I decide to move out.

Packing begins and everything is moved to the new hous. While clearing out the spare room I find a cussion, different to the others in the apartment standing up against the wall in the spare bed. I’m now convinced that someone was there both when I was there and when I was away.

I return to the apartment for the last time to clean it to ensure it’s ready for the next tennent.

I open the door and the dog stops dead in his tracks.

I know straight away that there is someone in front of me.

I muster a very angry and demanding voice and demand to know what the hell he’s doing in there.

He tells me that he was given the apartment.

Concerned that he could be armed, I leave and close the door to the apartment and the door to the stairwell. The next time I go in I bring Emma with me. She doesn’t inform me that he has any kind of weppon so I confront him further. I ask him again. “Who gave you this apartment!”. He answers again that he was given it. When I demand to know who gave it to him he says he was given it by magic.

I give up and leave again. This time, I call a neighbour to stand at the door with me and call the gards.

He comes out and attempts to leave. I block him and tell him that he’s going nowhere . Expecting a confrontation I feer for the worst and tell Emma to take the dog out of the way.

Instead, he calmly agrees that he’ll stay and returns to the apartment.

Another resident passing by tells us that he knows who the man is. A number of very shocking facts are divulged and we’re advised to leave the building.

The gards arrive and ask us a number of questions before going in side. They already know the man and their aware of what he’s been doing in the building. I wish I understood how they were aware of it but yet did nothing to stop him but that’s a story for a later time I think. They also back up what I’d been told a short time before and suggest that I do not confront him again.

I was told he had been linked to a number of high profile and serious crimes in Tallaght and had travelled to Drogheda to hide. I was also told by the same person that he enjoyed acting stupid to throw people off.

The Gards went up and threw him out. When we met outside, they requested proof that he didn’t live there as he told them that I was the intruder, not him! Of course, a call to the land lord proved that but I’m still amazed that they needed proof! When all that was done, they just sent him on his way. Thank god, I’ve never heard from him since.

When he was gone, the Gards asked me to go to the apartment to make sure he had not taken or damaged anything. The gard walked through each room describing everything she could see. When we got up stairs she told me there was a cussion on the bed. When I checked, it was the same one from the spare room.

I completely loved that apartment. It was in a great location, the inside was done to such a high standard, the church design was really unusual and the high vaulted sealings with the windows made everything sound fantastic. But, when I returned to that apartment, everything seemed different. I knew that he’d been in there, I knew that I was stupid for not trusting my instingt and I knew that he could have been there a lot more than I knew.

I don’t mind saying that it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced. For the people who read this who are not blind, go home tonight and imagine someone is in your house. Imagine that the scope of your awareness is limited to that you can hear, smell and touch. Imagine that someone is outside that scope. Their aware of you but your not aware of them. Imagine that you are alone with that person and you don’t even know it.

I’m not sure where to start this entry.

Do I start it by talking about the fantastic gig on Friday night?

Do I start by talking about how I didn’t make it to bed on Friday night?

Do I talk about the crazy crowds in Nury on Saturday morning?

Or, do I talk about decorating the house on Saturday night.

Ah!

Too much happened! It was a very busy one.

Ok. I suppose it’s more logical to start from the beginning.

Friday night, I did the usual gig in Dundalk. It’s an Irish music gig that I’ve only recently been invited to play at. Usually, it’s Malachy on guitar, Alan on fiddle and banjo and my self on Pipes whistles and the bodhran. This week though, instead of Alan, we were joined by Noreen. She also plays the fiddle but she has a very different style. Both musicians would be the same in terms of experience and talent but I really enjoy when Noreen plays music with us as the change is very nice. Of course, they’ll say the same when someone stands in for me. The change, no matter who stands in is always nice. As usual, I was last to leave the pub. We normally wait around after everyone has gone to stay for a drink with the bar staff. It was around 4:30 when I finally got out of there. There was method in my madness though this week.

I’d organised with Emma that we’d go straight from Dundalk on Friday night / Saturday morning to Nury. For people out of Ireland, Nury is in the occupied 6 counties in the north of the country. It therefore benefits people in the 26 counties who can travel to it to go up there for shopping as the VAT (Value Added Tax) is less up there than it is in the 26 counties. In certain shops such as Argus, further discounts can be found as for some reason, their prices are lower in the 6 counties.

The reason that we were crazy enough to go to Nury so early on Saturday morning was to avoid the huge tail backs on the way into the town. Last year, we left Drogheda at 8AM but it took us 3 hours to get into Nury! It should take 45 minutes at most!

So, the shops opened at 8AM, but the crowds started building at half seven! It was amazing! Ten people ascended on the door trolleys at the ready within a few seconds. By the time we got from the car park to the door at 20 to 8, the line was a good fifty feet long. By a quarter past 8, there were people in the shops complaining that there were no trolleys left.

I’ll not bore you with the rest of the events of the day but I have to tell you, I got 48 pints of Bulmers for around 50 Euro. You can really appreciate why people are travelling to get these prices.

I’d promised Emma that we’d put up the Christmas tree and decorations on Saturday night. I’d been invited to a large house party on Saturday as well but I decided to cancel. I’ll probably get an ear full next Friday though.

The tree I bought a few years ago is over six foot so with four sets of lights and a lot of decorations; it needs a lot to fill it. It’s not over done though from what I’m told. I have a picture of It on Emma’s camera but as usual she’s been too lazy to edit it for me. I’ll annoy her about it later.

The reason it is so big is I bought it when I was living in the most fantastic apartment ever. It was an old converted convent and I was on the top floor where the chapple use to be. It had really high vaulted sealing and the bedroom was up stairs over the bathroom and the spare room. The living room and kitchen had no sealing so when standing in the bedroom up stairs, you could look down into both rooms. I’ve a very scary blog post to write about my time in there.

Anyway, back to the decorations, it’s all done now for another year. We’ve a tree in the porch, we have a fibre-optic angel in the window of the living room and we have an electric candle thing in the front window on the other side of the house so from the front the two windows on each side of the house is lit up with the porch in the middle containing the fibre-optic tree. I hear it looks well.

Again, pictures will be available soon.

I have to admit, Sunday was more or less lost. Because I didn’t get to bed at all on Saturday night and was therefore up for almost 48 hours straight, when I did finally get to sleep on Saturday night, I didn’t wake until 4PM on Sunday afternoon. Terrible isn’t it? I felt terrible for losing most of the day. It’s not like me at all!

No! not me! Come on… You should know me better than that at this stage!

I’m sitting on the enterprise in first class on the way to work this morning. Believe me, there is really no better way of traveling to Dublin.

While sitting here, I notice that the cairage is almost full but yet very few people are talking. When Emma who’s sitting beside me speaks, she wispers. The entire environment screams “BE RESERVED!”

Around me, rattles can be heard from every side. What was once a very quiet and modern train seems to have fallen into some disrepair in recent years.

Still, the heat is at a perfect tempriture, the seats that recline to provide that extra bit of relaxation during the trip are still a welcome change to the upright cattle props that we normally sit in while being hurded from one stop to the other.

Even the carpeted floor on this train adds a difference.

With all this comfort and relaxation, I begin to overhear a phone conversation behind me.

The young woman who is probably in her mid twenties with a fantastic northern accent is confiding in a friend seemingly. I hear her talk about a possible love interest. They talk about a possible encounter that may be on the cards but how she is still unsure if she will follow through with it.

She exclaims that she is too afraid of being hurt again and she doesn’t know if she’s ready yet.

This conversation may as well be preached across a 10000 wat sound system to me as because everything else is so quiet, I cant help but be drawn to the one voice that can be heard.

But I am interested.

How can someone who is afraid to be hurt be so comfortable to voice her feelings on a crowded train. How can she be so open to inadvertently profess her deepist worries to a cairage full of complete strangers.

Maybe she’s just so caught up in her conversation that the rest of the world has faded into the background.

Either way, I find it strange, interesting and kind of sad that what should be a private conversation with I assume is a close friend has been broadcasted around the cairage.

Or, I could just be really bord on this train trip to Dublin.