Today’s viewing, not shown by any television channel this side of the Shannon, included The Dish. It is an absolutely wonderful movie about Parkes Observatory in Australia, which provided most of the live pictures from the moon landings.

It is a fascinating movie on several levels. It has a wonderful humorous script featuring one of my favourite comic moments in cinema. It makes a radio telescope the star of a movie about moon landings. It has some stellar performances from amongst others, Sam Neill. And when I watch it, tears run down my face.

The Dish reminds you that while putting a man on the moon is an unequalled endeavour in humanity’s efforts, equally, there are a lot of unsung heros making small parts of that story possible.

It means that my knit group now assess yarn purchases in terms of whether it is as much money as Treasa would spend or somewhat less bankrupting. I have 100g of the stuff, it’s a dead simple pattern called “cast on as many stitches as you think you want and then sock stitch your way through the yarn until you’ve just enough left to cast off”. I estimate it will be finished in February some time, the way things are going. But already the colours are looking very attractive and I will find some mountain to call it after at some stage.

Reads did indeed have scientific calculators, including mainly ones acceptable to assorted exam authorities. I bought a Casio one because they were deemed to be “good” in all the reviews I read. What made this one attractive though was that it was pink.

I’d have killed for a pink scientific calculator when I was in school. Instead I had to make do with brushed steel from the local coop shop.

Things are so much better now than they were in the 1980s. At least we have pink calculators.

While she was perusing the glitter, I was perusing a very dangerous section of the shop, namely, the cookie cutter section. I don’t often bake because I really don’t often have the time.  But I like pretty things, and pretty things involve, for example, pink two heart cookie cutters, aeroplane cookie cutters and assorted related. I got those ones in the fantastic kitchen shop on Oliver Plunkett Street in Cork. Somehow, I’d never quite managed to uhem, check out Kitchen Complements’ collection of cookie cutters. This was rectified yesterday. All for the sake of glitter. I now have a few stars (pretty), and a palm tree. I pondered assorted leaf selections but talked myself out of them in favour of the under water collection. The next time I make cookies, I am cutting them in the shape of little lobsters. I think there’s a lot to be said for lobster shaped biscuits myself.

In addition, I bought a few new stackable mixing bowls, to fit into the three I already have and love. This means I had to go into the corner cupboard to see how I was going to arrange stuff. [insert rant about kitchen again but you know that already].

All told, Kitchen Complements did nicely out of me. I successfully did not buy a Bodum red handmixer but that’s only because it cost nearly 80E – like what the hell – and anyway I have a servicable white Kenwood one which cost about half the price if not less. I will probably get the red one at some stage because I love beautiful things. But not today.

The shopping centre itself is not universally loved and yet it is generally very busy. It has a massive range of stores from huge chains to small independent shops. Some of the chains are quirky. In Ireland we have nothing at all like Natures et Decouvertes, for example, which is a bit like an Innovations catalogue gone nuts. And to know what that means, I suppose you have to be of an age.

One of the shops where I always, always do damage is La Compagnie Anglaise des Thés. For a nation of tea drinkers we in Ireland are pretty useless at it. The choice is Barrys or Lyons and of those two, the better tasting is unquestionably Barrys. The supermarkets sell a range of other teas but few of them have any significant market share.

Dublin has at least one specialist tea shop – Le Palais des Thés on Wicklow Street which tellingly is a French chain. They are terrific. There used to be one in the Powerscourt Centre called Matchabar – they had really nice things as well, and I have also bought tea at a stall in Dun Laoghaire which I’m pretty sure is connected to Kingfisher Teas.

The whole idea of a small tea shop in most reasonable sized towns doesn’t exist here however; for all that we are generally placed 1 or 2 in the teadrinking stakes.

Back in Paris, they have lots of these little tea shops and my favourite is the above mentoned Compagnie Anglaise des Thés. It’s not just because of the smell wafting out the door as you pass it (this is how I usually find it in the maze that is Forum). It’s not the huge range of teas. It’s the fact that if you go in to buy one thing, one lousy hundred grams of Turon black tea which should cost about 6E at the most, somehow you come out having spent a lot more than 6 euro. This time I bought two new cups, lusted over 7 teapots, bought a few new strainers. And they weren’t done with me. They give you samples. Sometimes they don’t even tell you this. Or they have suggestions you might not have known about and suddenly you need 100g of Fuego as well, and that nice one with all the peach and caramel stuff.

It’s probably in my interest that they don’t do online sales or have a branch in Dublin. I have rather a lot of tea to go through now.

This is just a piece of art I based off a recent photograph taken in Clare. I wanted something to bring a little colour to this piece.

Via Lonely Planet’s twitter feed which Flipboard serves me on my iPad from time to time, I happened across this piece. It caught my attention because I know – to some extent – what it’s like to be able to express somethings in one language, but not another. It’s disorienting when the blanks are in your native language, and the gaps are filled by second and third languages. French, in my case, can be a holy terror for being more expressive for me than English.

I’m good on Age-otori – the art of looking worse after a haircut than before – it’s a common feature of having my hair cut in Dublin. Irish hairdressers just are not as good as their French counterparts. Mokita is another one. The truth everyone knows, but no one says. The elephant in the corner, in local parlance, you might say.

The one which hit me like a freight train, however, was Mamihlapinatapei. Even typing the word is a bit of a killer and I am having serious problems remembering it. I’m not good on Amerindian languages and this is from the Yagan language from Tierra del Fuega. Pretty remote to me, it must be said.

So sublimely contained that it’s apparently been named the world’s most succinct word by The Guinness Book of World Records. Wikipedia says it’s ‘a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to [initiate]‘.

When you look at it rationally, logically, it seems so crazy. We both want something, but we neither of us want to start it. It seems so very sad in a way. I sometimes wonder how much societal norms has to do with that.

Buried not too far been the surface, however, is the memory of that look. It doesn’t come alone – it comes lined up with hope for company. And it leaves a bittersweet taste that pervades your mind for a very long time. And the heartbreaking thing about it – I think – is you often don’t recognise it until after it’s too late.

It’s nice to know that somewhere, someone, thought it was a concept worth labelling.  Most people in the world have probably been there.

I put a lot of effort into pricing one of these on the web during the winter and really had trouble justifying it to myself, so left it for a while. After some consideration, however, I decided that really, I didn’t drink, or smoke, and frankly, didn’t do too much else bad that was really pricy (it’s been at least 18 months since I bought any camera equipment, and 2 years since I bought any kitesurfing equipment) and anyway, I had abandoned the pink surfboard for now, and so there was surfboard money floating around.

The Pen Corner are great. They couldn’t get hold of their distributors while I was there but offered to phone me back with a price, which they did, and today I called them and asked them to go ahead and order it.

I have 5 Caran D’Ache pens in theory. I think I know the locations of 3 of them; not sure where the other two have disappeared to but I think one is under the bed in the spare room (will go and look very shortly).

When I was at knitnight last night, the subject of writing implements came up and I had one of the Caran D’Aches with me, and put it into the discussion. Much to my astonishment, everyone recognised it for what it was – a Caran D’Ache.

Most of my life, people who did nice pens had Crosses, Mont Blancs, Parkers and things like that. In my entire life I’ve never heard of anyone who’d even heard of Caran D’Ache, never mind would even recognise one. I also discovered that there was a common like of beautiful stationery.

I write a daily journal and have done so since I was 20 years old, and heartbroken (really) heartbroken for the first time. In that time, most of the notebooks I have used for writing those journals have been Clairefontaine. I haven’t been able to buy into Moleskin heaven at all.

In a way, I’m not sure how many people even still write journals – I failed most of the way through my teenage years to do so – but it’s something I find incredibly therapeutic. And I stockpile notebooks to ensure I always have access to paper for them. Paper at least will never be connected to the internet.

This evening after work, I went to Easons to have  a look at fountain pens. Apart from the Caran D’Ache ballpoints, I have a number of fountain pens, three of them I think are Lamys; one has a wooden case on it and was brought from Finland and then I think there are some cheap school pens from France. Today I also bought a Parker one because it reminded me of me, aged 10. I don’t know how it happened, but I didn’t wind up with the standard school issue fountain pen for long. Possibly my sister bought one for herself and I liked it, so got one for myself even though school was hopelessly against cartridged, or maybe I lost the school issue one (my school issue one was red, if I remember, and it must have been horrific looking at my school work as I was not renowned for neat handwriting from the time I could write until I was about 9).

There’s a forum on the web called Fountain Pen Network which I found for the first time today. These people take writing instruments and stationery seriously; far more seriously than I could have ever imagined. In a way, I felt a strange resonance with some of the contributors to that site because yes I love having cartridges in what would be non-standard colours in Ireland (purple, pink, turquoise), I love good quality paper, and I love pens. I cannot understand why it is that in Ireland, all you can really get in most stationery shops is blue and black. It’s highly boring.

Following on from that, I decided to go and have a look to see if there were any interesting pens on Ebay from Caran D’Ache. There were. I’m not going to link to them because links die, particularly in Ebay land. But there was one with a current bid of 11500 dollars. You read that correctly. I was stunned. I’m considering keeping an eye on Caran D’Ache pens on Ebay now just in case something interesting catches my attention. Preferably one that doesn’t cost 11500 dollars.

Pens are things of beauty; stunning tools for anyone who has to write regularly. Very few people have to, however, do much writing and if I am honest, having a couple of boxes of various coloured cartridges, 5 Caran D’Aches, a Cross (which I think is MIA at the moment), 3 Lamy fountain pens and whatever else seems to be crazy if the only thing I really do is write a diary. I write a work journal as well but it probably is a reflection on that works that mostly I use disposable ballpoints for that. So much so that I am considering bringing decent pens into work so as to use them there as well. They were never designed just to look pretty.

One of the things I would like to do, use the pens for, is drawing and doodling more. I always want to do these things; I never do them.

The Ecridor Eclat will hopefully arrive in my life in about 10 days time. I am looking forward to it. In the meantime, however, I want to get my writing instruments and ink act together. Figure out what I have and start using them.

Anyway, today has been a beauty. The sun has shone. I have not been pulled 10 different ways. Decisions have been incredibly easy. I spent 2 hours on my balcony listening to the sound of waves and the west Cork rally which was on this weekend. Actually it still is but the temperature has dropped five degrees or so in the last 15 minutes so I’ve abandoned the balcony for now.

You want to swim? You can swim. There is a nice seawater pool one floor down; yours to use at will. You want food? No problem. So far breakfast and dinner have been fantastic. You want anything? Pretty much just call us.

I’m in West Cork because I’ve slipped up administratively and my new passport application is still in chateau winds and breezes without having been submitted. This means that my choice was limited to the Common Travel Area, excluding Ryanair flights who require passports apparently. I had looked at flying into Newquay with Air Southwest, picking up a car and going around Cornwall. When I priced it, I realised a week in an expensive hotel in Ireland would be significantly less expensive and really when I thought about it, I had wanted to spend some time in West Cork for a long time. I chose Inchydoney because I optimistically hoped there might be some few waves. There are, this is true, but they are not worth struggling into the wetsuit for. They do, however, make a lovely sound.

I hate the word staycation. Staycation is what you do if you spend your holidays at home not doing all the things you said you’d do if you took a week off work. I’m holidaying in Ireland; in fact, if I’m completely honest about it, it’s one of the most beautiful parts of the country and accelerating.

Typically when people ask me what my favourite beach is, I usually answer Barleycove. But I’m rarely enough there and frankly if I’m honest about it, and think about it, the toss up is between Inchydoney in Cork and Keem in Achill (just for the record of someone I know, Achill IS, in fact, in Mayo, and not in Galway).

Despite the presence of a huge hotel overlooking it, in fact, almost because of it, Inchydoney is shading it at the moment. You have everything there. The road, while daunting, is not the spectacular fearfest that the road to Keem can be. I did it in fog last night and yes I did think during the journey that at least it could be done; that the road to Keem I wouldn’t want to do in the dark ever, never mind, dark/wind/fog. But even if you come down here for the day, there’s somewhere to pick up coffee, somewhere to sit down. It’s a gorgeously shaped beach, a double beach because there’s that little headland in the middle. It has a huge tidal range so that in high tide which we have now, the beach just fills up, both sides of the headland. I’m not in favour of holiday homes as a matter of principle but if I was ever corrupted, here’s where I’d buy one. It’s just perfect.

The wind is rising now and although I have no idea what direction it’s coming from; cross on looks likely judging by the way the plants are rocking out, the fact that the tid is so far in makes kitesurfing probably not a great idea. The complete lack of other kitesurfers is a clue in this respect. I’ve no desire to try and curl my way into a wetsuit at the moment anyway since Recurring Back Injury has checked in for a day or two.

All told, holidays where I don’t have to do anything (except what I choose myself) or be anywhere (except where I choose myself) rock.

There will be a few more of these over the next few days as I dip into the archive.

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On my list of books to read for sometime has been a book by TE Carhart called The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, and today, I have finished it. The book is in the Fingal Co Co library system (well I have it right now) if anyone is interested; if you have an interest in pianos or pianomusic, it is to be recommended; it is beautifully written and very close – by that I mean it is a book which draws you rather over much into the world of the book, so much so that a trip back to reality can be somewhat of a disappointment.

I live in a rented house, as any regular reader is going to know, which I share with two other people, neither of which are family to me, and both of which I doubt I will live with for the rest of my life. If property life in Ireland were half way normal at the moment – which it is not – I might be in a position to buy such a house – the truth is I can, but not anywhere near where I work – and do to it the things that I choose, rather than making a happy – or unhappy – compromise between considerations relating to the fact that the house is rented and shared (most of the time) and the fact that I do live here and it is, to some extent, my home.

But I can, for the time being, only dream and today, I’m dreaming about what I would do, were I to own this little piece of housing. The living room, you see, is remarkably big, probably because the diningroom/kitchen is not especially large.

Most people would probably put a three piece suite, or, possibly, two sofas into the room. My landlord put a three piece suite in. The focus of the room is not, in fact, the door out onto the balcony, nor the mantlepiece, but the corner of the room where the television resides. In that respect, I think it is probably no different to most houses of its type in Dublin. But I would do things differently, I have decided. I do not watch a great deal of television – it is an unusual week where I would spend more than an hour or two watching something or other, although I am sure that there is much to entertain if I were to investigate more fully. For me, the television is far from being essential. If I owned that room, the recess where the television lives would be occupied by a very nice stereo system, and a sufficient amount of shelves for the increasingly massive CD collection that I have accumulated. The other recess, to the left of the mantlepiece, would be the new home for all my books. Despite joining a library so as to radically cut the number of books I buy, I still possess more than a few. Perhaps I might have a sofa, or maybe just two armchairs. The focal point of my living room would be a grand piano. Not a huge concert grand – the room is big, but not quite that big, and I dare say I would have some difficulty getting a full concert grand into my living room, given that I live upstairs in a duplex. But one of the smaller grands, maybe not quite as small as a baby, would fit quite nicely into my living room, if it were, in fact, my living room.

The piano was the television of yesterday year. Where many people had an upright in the corner, and people sang around it in the past, now we have television. I must be rather an old-fashioned child, stuck in some sort of tradition. I have always dreamed of owning a grand piano. I may not be the world’s greatest concert pianist, and at this stage of my life, it is unlikely that I will ever become one. I should like, however, to have constant access to a piano, a beautiful piano, something to work towards.

We live in an era of instant gratification in this country – particularly in this country I feel – and many people no longer know the value of anything, but are fully aware of the price of everything. It’s a platitude and it is uncommonly often voiced now. We can buy everything on credit, and the idea of working towards something seems to be an old-fashioned idea. The attitude pervades everything, from a 06 BMW to the education system in the country which seems less based on actually learning anything, and more based on being a currency for entry into finishing school, I mean, university. We do not like things to be hard, and the idea that you might have to work towards something seems to be very passé. There are, of course, a few crotchety exceptions, but still and all, we’re inconveniently useless at science, languages, maths and Irish, which leads me to suspect we’re useless at pretty much everything that’s remotely useful, as there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot left other than business and if everyone has a business degree, there won’t be enough business jobs to go around.

The world in Ireland is such that if I wanted, I could go down to the bank and borrow the money for that piano. I don’t know if they would give it to me – but there’s a fairly good chance that they would, depending on what piano and what money I went looking for. I could, depending on the piano again, put it on my credit card (yes, Visa likes me that much). But none of these are really a solution for the obvious reason that currently, I don’t control the furnishing of my living room, plus I have to share it. Somewhere, in the back of my head, is the little voice saying “piano account”. Open a savings account for a piano. It might be the one true insane purchase I ever make – in the same way as some people collect funny little Japanese ornaments, or paintings by obscure English artists, or 17th century furniture from France.

Because I know what it is to work towards something. All my life, I have been working towards the future, studying this, learning that, trying this, getting that experience. I have never wanted a PlayStation, and I see no need to save towards it. The one mad thing I ever did was go to a Grand Prix and I saved towards that when 1000E was a hell of a lot of money to me. I remember the weekend with great affection, despite the crash on the opening lap that halved the number of participants in the race. The things we work for, I suspect, give us more value. I’ve never borrowed money to buy anything except my car, and even then, it sticks in my throat to do so (so much to the chagrin of my car dealer, I cannot be inveigled into borrowing three grand extra to buy a completely brand new car).

So it’s 6pm Saturday evening, the clouds are drawing in, and I am sitting, listening to the beautiful opening movement of Saint-Saens’ second piano concerto, dreaming about a piano, a piano which will certainly cost me around €12,000, and which, depending on the mood of the day, will be either a Kawaii or a Yamaha. I could live without television if I have a piano worthy of my dreams. I will be unable to take part in conversations about the latest deals in Harvey Normans or Discount Electrical and who has the cheapest wall sized flatscreen.

There’s a part of me rebels against the instantaneous gratification culture of today. Some could say that if I were to buy the piano via some sort of a financing deal (the practical considerations of the house aside), I would have the piano sooner rather than later and might get more and longer pleasure from it. To that, I can only reply that they are not aware of the pleasure which you can derive from working towards something.

I’ve never felt, however, that romance and love are the same things, and I’m not a fan of the choreographed large gesture or formula that is Valentine’s Day.

For reasons I don’t want to go into in too much details, I had cause to think about this a day or two ago, about the little things that made me love some people, and the absence of which caused me to regard other people less. It never seemed to be about 12 red roses and a poem, somehow and yet the media would have you believe that in fact, it is.

I sometimes wonder if the game of romance is too much of a competition. And if it is not also too much of a one way piece of traffic where AN Boy has to prove his affection to AN Girl in some way deemed appropriate by society. Why, for example, does it not really run the other way? And really, if it only happens on 14 February, how real is it? The most romantic present I ever bought a man was a music box. It wasn’t expensive; it was just something that I noticed he liked but didn’t feel like buying himself because how crazy it was to buy a little music box that only played Beethoven. And for a long time, until, I suppose, he replaced me with someone else, it sat on his bedside table. A box of Butlers chocolates would have been more expensive and given less pleasure.

I don’t believe in the grand gesture because, very often, it’s the small gestures tell you more about someone. A grand gesture will tell you someone has a lot of money. But it won’t tell you much about their heart. I can remember once a girl coming onto a kite forum I frequent looking for advice about a birthday present for her new boyfriend who was into kitesurfing and she didn’t have a whole lot of money so what could they advise. Almost as one voice the responses were “give him the odd free weekend pass to go kitesurfing with his mates if it’s windy”. She pretty much took it on board from what I remember and I think she picked up some stuff to keep him warm on the beach as well. This is not a brand new Underground board costing 700E; this is just some little consideration of another person and their interests in life.

I love that.

When I look back on some of the things that reinforce why I have cared about someone at a given time, it’s never been the big thing. In one case it was simply picking up a child’s anorak in a café when said child had thrown it out of his pushchair and his mother couldn’t see where it had gone. It was not my child, nor anyone to do with me but the person doing the picking up was with me and that small gesture told me this person was very thoughtful.

Pushing the grandiose film-esque stories of romance, in my opinion, are far less than the care that goes into noticing the people around you.