Every Day is Election Day

C’mon the Cats!

Viva la Vida on repeat in work, at home, the iPod… tad ridiculous. And even more ridiculous that I just heard an ad on the radio announcing that it’s out on Friday… aaaaaaaaaaand I still squealed. Breaking the law can be good for the ears.

Juno is [finally!] out on DVD… Hurrah! Pizza night ahoy friendies. WATCH THIS MOVIE. The dialogue is phemonenal and Ellen Page is tremendous in it.

If you haven’t been before, visit www.rarebooks.ie. Fabulous. Just as a real musty bookshop should be, and if you buy online, they send you your book wrapped in old newspapers! Spiffy.

Softening to Damien Dempsey through his recent album ‘The Rocky Road’. Luke Kelly is alive and well folks…

We’re going to Neil Diamond on Saturday with respective parentals. Both sets are equally excited, and it should be yet another fabulous family occasion in Croker. President McAleese shall be in attendance so it’s a night for the glad rags…

Kilkenny kick off the championship season this weekend… WIN!

Davy Fitz in Waterford… I feel I must restrain myself here. I won’t say what I really want to for fear it will come back and bite me in the ass.

Home to vote tomorrow, how quaint. Driving home with Nickey and using the occasion to hang with Darmo on Thursday. I won’t lecture you, but I’ll be voting yes.

Oh, and Prince is cancelled. That’s the secret I couldn’t tell you the other night buds.

Meanwhile here are two photos of Reilly and I at Radiohead, and one of the boys themselves to boot:

Ps. I don’t really follow BB (I swear *cough*) but I will miss Dermot O’Leary from BBLB. Here is one of his best (Irish) moments. G’wan ya yellabelly!

Radiohead in Malahide Castle: Superb. Venue, Act, Company. All excellent. Need to see them indoors soon. It’s on the list!

Cork loss? As good as a Kilkenny victory. I’m singing Slievenamon.

(nice hair Louise…!)

Call me bitter, but it was Tipp’s first victory against Cork in the Munster Championship in 85 years. Shame the Dubs couldn’t be finished off. Just a week before Kilkenny kick off their Championship season against Offaly now! Three in a row is so close…! Seems the hangover from Justin McCarthy’s resignation is ongoing. Parallels between this and the Offaly situation of Michael Bond/Babs Keating is silly and futile. Difference between now and then is that the Offaly team had public support, something I think the Waterford team are lacking. In fact, most struggle to see their reasoning and distinguish it as a cowardly, sneaky move. I maintain my position that it is a bad idea to hand the players that sort of power and let them decide who manages them. That said, I’m not anti-player, I just think that a clear administrative line needs to be maintained. Perhaps the players just panicked, and the idea of a bridesmaid year yet again was just too much for them to conceive, but he didn’t deserve what he got in the end. I wish Justin McCarthy all the best. *GAA rant over*

Anyways. Equipped with a fabulous new kitchen in chez Reilly/Scally/Brennan/Troy, I am now domesticated beyond belief, serving up feasts at any available opportunity. I give it a week for this nesting to settle down. But Friday night was spent ironing, cooking, cleaning, hovering and mowing the lawn. Well. Gav moved the lawn, but I was uber supportive.

Curves is ongoing. And yes, I still love it.

Moving onto the week ahead however, this is my last week in the office. I’m ok for now, but emotions are bound to overtake me at some stage… I suspect I’ll break Friday lunchtime!

Right, I’m off to more classes, tonight it shall be Constitutional and Contract ftw. Contract is fabulous, compact and concise… and Constitutional is anything but. It’s long, intense, emotive and difficult. But it’s still my favourite, so I’m looking forward to it! Val Corbett is the new James McDermott in my life… more anon!

PS - Booked tickets for The Panel for the National Concert Hall on the 22nd June. Win!

I never thought a press release from a Bookie would interest me but there you go! Check this out…

‘With the Championship season starting to heat up, Boylesports, Ireland’s independent bookmaker, has produced a GAA Ethnic Dictionary which translates a host of popular GAA specific terms and words into both Polish and Chinese. According to Irish company Ethnic Media, there are currently over 200,000 Polish people and up to 100,000 Chinese people residing in the state.

The GAA has its very own unique language and common place phrases such as “breaking ball”, “sideline cut” and “square ball” are now translated into the native tongue of the country’s two largest non-Irish national communities in an effort to foster a greater level of understanding of our national games. There is now huge interest amongst non-Irish national communities in the GAA and the uniqueness of the games is equalled by the uniqueness of the terms associated with the two sports.

Other fun GAA terms such as “schkelping”, “shemozzle”, “mullocker” and “bomber” are explained and translated into both Chinese and Polish.

Leon Blanche, Betting Spokesperson for Boylesports, said, “Gaelic Games are one of the most important parts of our heritage and culture. Ireland is rapidly becoming a diverse multicultural society and we thought that this would be a good way to give the Polish and Chinese communities a greater understanding of Football and Hurling.

“Words such as “mullocker” and “shemozzle” are explained while specific GAA terms such as “breaking ball”, “sideline cut” and the famous GAA “Committee” are directly translated. We hope that when Polish or Chinese people go to watch games that they will now have a better understanding of what is being said around them!”

The Boylesports GAA Ethnic Dictionary translates 25 distinctive GAA terms and into both Polish and Chinese and also gives a translation of the term’s meaning. The dictionary was developed in association with Ethnic Media.’

Croke Park should have this done already. Tis only a matter of time before we see a Dobroslaw Młynarczyk lining out at full back for Offaly. Great news story!

With a blog title like that you’d think that I might be a defeatist Birmingham City or Reading fan, but I don’t mean that Championship at all. I should explain.

This morning in the hotel (we’re still in Slovakia, slowly getting to grips with the needless pedantry of our fellow students’ unions) we noticed a group of youngish men wearing matching red Nike tracksuits. Having had a quick glance at the crest adorning them we learned that the lads were from FK Dukla Banska Bystrica, a club based not too far from here. They have a home game today at 5pm and were here for a team-bonding breakfast before the match. We also learned that the team are currently 8th in the Slovakian Corgon Liga (the local version of the Premier League).

What I found most unusual - almost unnerving - about seeing the team was the fact that they were literally sitting amongst us, without any airs or graces and simply just being. They weren’t being surrounded with dozens of nutritionists, or assistants, or logistics officers; they were standing in the breakfast queue amongst us, queueing up for the same muesli and scrambled eggs as I.

During some of the more tedious seminar sessions earlier in the week I’d been doodling on a pad and paper trying to formulate the starting eleven I’d pick for Manchester United’s UEFA Champions League final against Chelsea in a couple of weeks (I’m still wondering about the merit of Wes Brown at right back). A more obvious juxtaposition you couldn’t get - the United lads will likely be spending the days before the trip to Moscow holed up in the Lowry in Manchester, getting on the most luxury of coaches back and forth to Carrington for training, and having their five-star breakfasts sent to a private refectory. And there won’t be muesli or scrambled egg for them either - the whole breakfast menu will undoubtedly have been carefully cheoreographed by an army of fitness nutritionists days beforehand.

For a minute I really struggled to get my head around the idea of a team in the premier competition of a country’s national sport, aimlessly wandering around a hotel lobby and sipping espressos at a hotel bar. I doubted even the Drogheda United or Cork City squads would be sitting around liable to a torrent of verbal abuse (or worse) if they had to stay somewhere for a few hours pre-match.

Then I had a slight epiphany - of course they would. I had been somewhat hypocritical - before I’d realised that I was going to miss any TV coverage of United (hopefully) winning the league this time tomorrow, I had realised I was going to miss Longford play Westmeath in the first game of the 2008 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship.

Perhaps that’s a special touch that the English league is lacking - although the self-styled Greatest Show On Earth™ reaches out to billions worldwide and unifies people across all kinds of devides in ways that only sport can, the amateur locality and everyday integration of gaelic games helps so much to make Ireland so special - and when the weather gets better we get two gripping, emotional championships that shape the Irish summer like no other.

I think that if Longford or Westmeath weren’t sitting out in full open public view in their hotel the morning of the match, we’d all regret it. Maybe that’s something worth bearing in mind while I sit, clad in red and white with worry, watching United climb off their team coach in Russia on Wednesday week.