TUESDAY 6th – SUNDAY 25th JANUARY
On Tuesday I was starting to feel better so felt comfortable going back to work. It was a very frosty morning, with parts of Ireland getting down to -8°c overnight. As Em needed the car so it could be checked by the insurance inspector I caught the bus to work.
The week went by quite quickly really, with more very cold, very frosty mornings to start our days. I had the car for work from Wednesday onwards, which was nice.
On Saturday we spent the morning in town buying a few things, and then the afternoon doing housework. I cleaned the car, which got all the mud off and made it look a lot better.
Sunday was a lazy day. In the afternoon we went to the movies to see “Defiance”, a true story set during WWII. We both really enjoyed it. After Christmas and New Years it was nice to have a quiet weekend at home.
The following week was more of the same really, just normal day to day life. The heavy frosts continued, but nothing quite as bad as the previous week. On Saturday, the 17th I had a home game for hockey which was a nice change. As it turned out, it was not a nice game. It was a beautiful morning, but as we got closer to the start of the match the wind picked up and the rain clouds blew in. By the time we were playing is was so windy the goals were being blown over, and it was pushing rain and sleet sideways, so it was stinging your eyes. By the time we had finished we were all wet and freezing cold, and well beaten without even scoring a goal ourselves.
On Sunday morning we woke to see that there had been a very small snow fall over night, but nothing to get excited about. The hills around Limerick looked really nice though with an icing sugar dusting. We decided against heading anywhere, instead going to one of the local museums for the afternoon, which had lots of artefacts from Ireland's history – stone, bronze and iron age, up to more recent times.
Monday the 19th bought more snow. I went to work, and discovered that there was even more snow around Nenagh, and by the time I got to a small town called Littleton, snow was still falling. It thankfully stopped, so it didn't build up on the roads, but it was nice to see some snow. It snowed three times at Em's work during the morning, and she was very excited. The rest of the week was rather cold, with daily snowfalls on the hills around Limerick.
Yesterday I had hockey in Dublin, so we drove up in the morning, and had a bite to eat up there before playing the game. Again it was rather cold, but thankfully it didn't rain. The result of the match was similar to previous weeks. After the match we had a drink and a snack at a nice pub (put on by the home team) before driving back to Limerick. The plan was to go out for a drink with the team that night but we were both really tired, so favoured sleep instead.
Today was another day in Limerick. We did go to the movies again though. It is nice to be able to take advantage of weather that doesn't make you very enthusiatic about getting out and exploring, and just watch a movie without feeling guilty about missing nice weather outside.
As you can see, since our trip to England and Scotland we have had a rather routine past few weeks. We are off to France in 2 weeks time for a few days though, and we have also booked our trip to Turkey for Anzac Day. In the mean time, we have planned some trips to the surrounding areas in Ireland. Now the days are getting a little longer, we may get out on the road again.
