Moving on...

Well I'm sitting here with Freddie on a wet Sunday morning in Tralee. We're cuddled up under a blanket on the couch in our new home. Yes we've moved to Tralee. Freddie's neuorologist doesn't want him to be be more than twenty  minutes from a hospital for the time being. Dingle being at best a forty minute drive from Kerry General Hospital means that we can no longer live out in Chorca Dhuibhne. So after ambulance trips, ICU, two weeks in CUH, another week in Tralee General we went house searching in Tralee. We saw this one on a Monday morning, agreed the rent Tuesday, took a six month lease and moved in on the Wednesday

Now we're only five minues away from the hospital which for us is a massive relief. The Wednesday we moved in CUH called and Freddie was booked in for more tests. So after one night in our new home I drove Lisa and Freddie down to Cork where they stayed for ten days, till I went to collect them last Friday. In the meantime Ruby and I have become commuters driving to Dingle every morning and back home in the evening. We want this to cause minimum disruption so she's staying in the Pobail Scoil and I'm working my shop as normal. The commute is about forty-five minutes along some of the most beautiful coastline and through the spectacular Conor Pass so its not the worst. This weekend is our first as a family for what is almost two months now and its feels good. I have to say the care we've received from all medical staff and goodwill from friends and family has made this time so much more bearable but its not a time I want to go through again.

All this driving means I'm listening to a lot of Ruby's music...Spin South West is the radio station of the moment and I get it full blast at eight o'clock every morning. Some of it is terrible, some ok but usually I've had enough after about half and hour and switch over to Morning Ireland for the gloom and doom that seems to make up the news these days. Its coming up on the third anniversary of the bank guarantee given by the last Fianna Fail government and the country is still suffering direct consequences from that. The more I think that a government made up over the years of McCreevy, Bertie, Cowen, Harney, et al ran us into the ground and then retired with fat pensions the more my blood pressure rises. Harney with the HSE and eircom, McCreevy giving the EU the two fingers when they told us to calm the economy down on 2002, Bertie and his cronies in Anglo Irish. I could write forever but would have to take a break to go lie down in a darkened room every now and again. This was all brought to mind when listening to my good friend Dave Harmer Walsh on Liveline recently. Dave had called in looking for help in recovering his high-end bike which had been stolen out of the back of his jeep whilst he was at work. Much was made of the crime but unfortunately theft is part and parcel of our society,  the have-nots will always try take from those who have. Its a story as old as mankind itself. No the real crime here is Dave, a Parkinsons suffer, has to take a job behind a bar to try make ends meet. This is a man who can't tie his own shoes but has just cycled across the USA to raise awarness of his disease and funds to help in research for a cure. Our society should be helping this man not forcing him out to take a job obviously unsuitable for him because he isn't "sufficently disabled"! WTF is sufficently disabled??? Because of the cutbacks he's been made to suffer. Because of the cutbacks my son's access to his education SNAs has been curtailed. There is now only one SNA covering the four primary schools on the Dingle peninsula. Why are these cutbacks hitting the less well off in society whilst those responsible for the mess leading to the cutbacks aren't in jail? The bankers are walking free, the politicans are retired on fat pensions. A friend of mine was shown a photo recently of Bertie and Seanie Fitzpatrick playing golf in the Caribbean only last month....says it all doesn't it?

Enough of me going on.......

Whats on TV:  Because of the upheavels we haven't been watching much TV together. I have been watching Wilfred though. Hard to explain the premise of this one. Elijah Wood plays a slacker lawyer between jobs. His attractive neighbour asks him to look after her dog, Wilfred. Wood sees Wilfredas a man in a dog suit who talks to him and everybody else sees him as a labrador. The humour is very adult orientated but very good. Wilfred goes out of his way to get Wood in trouble which he does every week. The scene with a stuffed giraffe and Wilfred will stick in my mind for a long time. Very funny but not if you're shocked easily.