Like Enya

...Haunting, emotive, multitrack.

My journal observations have returned to mundane entries about how I weeded around the new trees and aired the woolens. A few weeks ago I described a symphony rehearsal I happened upon in Canterbury Cathedral and how I met an archaeologist with a theory about a Saxon king’s burial.

But most of my travel journal is full of petty complaints and observations. Such as:

The plumbing is weird and different everywhere. I had to call a concierge to a room in Port Rush to show me how to open the sink drain. (It had a spring mechanism.) At a aged place in Dublin I tended a temperamental toilet and never did figure out the shower. (After the host’s painstakingly long description of the process I was embarrassed to ask him to repeat it.)

There are too many coins and they’re too hard to see. The prettiest money is Northern Ireland’s ten pound note with hares and horses and flowers.

None of my new credit cards had a tap and pay feature so clerks had to come get my signature every time. Between that and the impossible coinage, I held up every line I was in.

The free television stations are about the same quality except there are no evangelicals, no pharmaceutical advertising, no advertising about lawsuits. Home shopping is ubiquitous.

The smoke alarms are touchy. In a sticky hotel room on the Wexford coast with paper thin walls my alarm went off. I don’t know why. It was exactly midnight.  I could hear my fellow guests cursing over the alarm’s screeching. I stood on a chair and pulled it from the ceiling. I was ready to heave it off the room’s balcony but it stopped and I placed it warily on the floor. After a time the concerned mumbling diminished and I fell into a fitful sleep. I dreamed I was hiding a small angry animal in the room.

Back to grocery lists and watering the garden.