Birthday in Dublin

So there we are, the Community Weekend is over and I'm back home in Norn Iron again for a wee while. Yesterday, as you may have gathered from one of my earlier postings, was my birthday. And there was I in College... with prime messer number one in attendance, aka James Boyd.

James has the reputation in college for being the messer. Early on in my time there, these mysterious arms came in through my window, and who was it? Yes, Boyd. There have been other things too... But anyways... From the start of first year, I knew the weekend was over my birthday, and that I would be there, and so would James. So my policy was of complete silence. My birthday would not be spoken of.

But there was a problem. Dorrian knew. So I had him promise he wouldn't tell anyone. All seemed to be going well. We approached the weekend, and there seemed to be complete ignorance of it. But then on Friday night, late on, Adrian and Clare were doing photocopying for the kids programme and we were all talking. Suddenly the suspicious random question. Wee doll asked when my birthday was. I was very non-committal, and the conspiracy was unveiled!

Thankfully all that happened was that Clare had a cake for us (cos it was also William Steacy's birthday yesterday - we must be twins!), which was brought out as the principal announced our birthdays at dinner. There were none of the feared tyings up, or getting plastered with the week's scraps, or any other unpleasant type stuff!

It also turned out to be quite a good day for me. In the afternoon we went bowling at Tallaght and I managed to win (beating James by only 4 points, and one of the kids by 2 points - I was on 125). No doubt some people will allege that I can only win when there aren't Presbyterians to defeat me...

Then at the evening entertainment, I won in the karaoke!!! It turned out to be a bit of a marathon session though. My song was 'American Pie', and there kept turning up more and more verses that I had never heard of before... I think it turned out to be about 8 and a half minutes. Torture and agony - for my audience! But fair play and well done to everyone who got up to sing, whether we could or not!