On St Stephens day Senan and I went to the RDS for the Leinster Ulster magners league game. It was a pretty dull first half with Leinster getting a commanding lead through the trusted boot of Felipe Contepomi. Second half produced a more confident display by Leinster. They managed a couple of trys. Ulster it must be said were pretty poor - the result 29-0 was a pretty good indication of that.Match report from the Leinster website is here.
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Conor says we got through the book in record time - Greg kept us moving and cut the verses short when ever we were lagging.
We had Christmas cake and tea and scattered at twenty to nine to get to "midnight" mass in Rathmines.
To Sheila and Phl, Louie and Rosha; Barney and Mairead, Ronan and Roisin, Eoin and Colm who culdn't be with us - Happy Christmas.
Saturday morning Katy got up early to meet her school friends Sylvia and Simone for breakfast. After lunch we headed for Christmas Market Number Three in Rudesheim. There are two Rudesheims as we discovered - GPS is not always helpful - but we found the right one - and approached it from Bingen on the other side of the Rhine. We crossed in a ferry and got a great view up the Rhine gorge just as evening was setting in. Rudesheim is a wine town with the vines growing up the side of the hills that form then southern end of the Rhine Gorge. It is very popular with tourists in the summer. The town is build on the side of a hill and the market wound up the narrow streets as well as along the quayside. It was busy being Sunday - and as well as the usual Christmas market activity there were pony rides and train rides. We even met St Nickolaus himself - a giant of a man giving out goodies to the kids of all ages. After Bratwurst Gluhwein and Pretzels it was time to go back to base. We spent a hilarious evening playing Popstar on the Playstation. Our flight left at 10.15, Monday morning, so we had an early start but made it in plenty of time. By midday I was back in the office - but the Christmas Season had truly started.
When she got back we all got the train to Mainz - Christmas Market Number Two Mainz is always a busy market on Saturday morning, but was now even busier. As well as the usual market activities we also spent some time in the Cathedral - surprisingly, we had never visited before. I took a lot of photos of stained glass windows. There is a panel for every Archbishop of Mainz since 800! That's a lot of pictures; a lot of Archbishops and even the odd Cardinal.Senan worked on his Pretzel count and we had some - yes you guessed it Gluhwein and Bratwurst! We were out to dinner with Kay and Karl-Heinz that evening so we had to head back around 5 pm - not really enough time to do justice to Mainz - but we will be back. Dinner in the Spindlers was very nice. The boys have grown and Senan hit it off with them both.
Sunday morning Mags and Ingrid and I went for a walk around Auf Esch - we were Stork hunting! We were successful. The storks were intermittent visitor when we lived in Germany but now are well established. Eckhardt was cooking dinner - we had a wonderful traditional Sunday lunch with roast beef and Knudel. 
Her latest album is Tales of Silversleeve available on Amazon.
More of my photographs are available on Flickr at THIS LINK
Barney and Ronan were over from Galway. Senan, Matthew; Lisa, Niamh, Ronan, Caoimhe, Laura and Sarah, along with Barney and Kevin.
Munster also have the challenge of Wasps (last years winners) plus Clermont (big spenders in the pre-season, John Smit World Cup winning captain of the Springboks has just joined) and Llanelli. Ulster started the week-end with a defeat in Ravenhill; this was not a good omen. On Saturday Leinster had a great start - a confident second half performance in the RDS means that they beat Leicester 22-9. The great news is that Leicester didn't get a bonus point which means that a close encounter in Wellford Road could be very valuable. Of course it was at home and it's just the start of the campaign. However the performance was convincing, Contepomi's kicking was superb, the back row defence from Leinster was pretty awesome. You have to say that Leicester were probably at their one dimensional worst and will only get better as the season goes on. In the end it could have been closer and only some great covering back from Horgan catching Geordan Murphy just short of the line saved a try and conversion which would have given the extra point. There was a great atmosphere in the RDS with a sell-out crowd of 18,000. The Dublin 4 crew will never match the passion and intensity of a Munster crowd - but that's as it's always been. Munster had a great away game against Wasps. The intensity of the Munster-Wasps clash was in sharp contrast to the Leinster-Leicester game. Munster nearly stole it and lost 24-23 in the end. It's a very valuable extra point. They now face Clermont at home - a must win match, as all of the rest of the games are now.
and aslo here
I must put our own Regina videos up on YouTube.
There are quite a few Video clips from the Dublin Concert on YouTube
Turns out that Lonesome Pine1 was also at the regina Spector gig at the Tripod at the end of August - same shots just a different angle.
We then had a break for about 20 minutes. The stadium now has a bar! 
When we arrived the support had just started - is was a lady called Donna Maciocia, who is the singer/songwriter of an Edinburgh based band Amplifico. She was very good - she played keyboards and Guitar. She also achieved a very interesting effect using a vocal loop. She was joined on stage by Andy the cellist for a couple of numbers. Her band apparently plan to issue a CD new spring without a recording contract. (A little) more about them HERE That was a pretty good start. KT Tunstall then took the stage with a very lively 4 piece band and 2 backup vocals. So we had a pretty full stage. We have the new album (KT Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza) around the house - but someone has mislaid it - so we were less well prepared than we should have been. When they started it was surprising how many of the songs were familiar and how many strong songs there are on that debut album Eye to the Telescope. She could talk for Scotland and she certainly had a very relaxed rapport with the audience. Rather than introduce the songs, she told some jokes and made some comments which always ended up being related to the following song in some way. She did a solo piece in the middle which included Horse and a Cherry Tree. She also used of the loop recording on that track and it was quite impressive live, maybe it's cheating but as she sang it solo and recorded the loop live I guess that's ok. 
KT Tunstall
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Ashes in Dublin
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High Energy
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