Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

Wow, next time anyone's in America, please get me on of these Mozart Didn't Like To Practice Either t-shirts. Ian might like one of these.

Also, if you're a fan of brit-pop, go have a look at Copy, Right? before the brit-pop covers get taken down.

A wonderful thing happened today. We went to Cork to do some shopping in the sales. Now Cork has recently acquired a Lush. I wasn't particularly planning to go in there because I have quite a lot of stuff already, but Mum wanted to go in to get something for Ian, so we popped in.

They had The Best sale offer on.

Spend 30 euro and get ANYTHING in the shop free. Anything. So Mum and I spent 30 euro on this and that, and got a SEVENTY EURO hatbox free. Bargain!

Later we decided our cousins needed some Lush products for Christmas too, so we went back and bought them presents there. Unfortunately all the hat boxes were gone, so we only got a 50 euro box this time. Apparently they had ten 150 euro hatboxes first thing in the morning but they obviously got snapped up straight away.

What a great promotional tool. We spent 60 euro more than we intended to, so Lush benefited, and we got 120 euro of stuff free so we benefited too. I love Lush.

Mum's diligently typing up my diary of my time in Cuba. Go read it here if you have some time to spare (and who doesn't at Christmas time?).

To keep you entertained on Boxing Day, make your own Bush speeches and explore the other flash games on offer, elf yourself, buy a Charlie Haughey conman t-shirt, try out some cardboard speakers, read geeky women writing about being geeky, or be virtuous and take part in a year of living generously.

James Brown has died!

Merry Christmas and all that. I like Christmas. It's nice and relaxing. We're sitting in the front room (rarely used apart from at Christmas because it's north-facing) in our pyjamas (except for Mum who has that Protestant gene that prevents her from being slovenly) playing with our new toys. I've got ooodles of detective stories and Lush products and a bouncing tigger and and and and ... oh, and The Great Aunt Anne got me a gold handbag which will go ever so well with my new black cocktail dress.

Anyway I'm very excited about our nine course meal we'll be having later. I've done my bit, making some sorbet (which I think probably won't be as good as last year's: I forgot to stir it while it was freezing and raspberries/blackberries aren't as good as mango and passion fruit for forcing through sieves) and my traditional pavlova. Of course there's trifle too: what else would you do with the yolks left over from making meringue other than make custard? Well, mayonnaise is good too.

Christmas Rule No. 1 Chez Goggin is quite simple, and goes a little something like this:

Thou shalt not decorate the Christmas tree until the offspring return home.

The senior members of the household are very good at obeying this rule, and don't even buy the tree until we get home.

This is how we got hit by the Great Christmas Tree Shortage of 2006.

Apparently it's a nationwide shortage. Too many Christmas trees are being exported, and there's a general feeling that we're all too posh to just nick trees from the forests and sell them these days. Damn Celtic Tiger economy. We may have sourced one in Nenagh (approximately twenty miles away) and perhaps even one in Newport but it seems a little like buying things on the black market, all knowing someone who knows someone who might have one.

And I Will Not tolerate a fake tree in my house.

The riverbank on a normal day:







The riverbank in the floods:

I've just been down to the river to walk the dogs, and I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by how huge it is. It's ... huge. And very fast-flowing. It has even covered the big rock, home to the Castleconnell Rock-sitting Association [CRA] (of which I am a founder-member). It's a damn good thing we only usually meet in summer or CRAP (CRA personnel) wouldn't have anywhere to sit and drink cider.

I'll have to go down again tomorrow to take some pictures so I can post normal-river and huge-river pictures so you can comprehend the difference.

Holidays are so very complicated: I'm faced with so many choices. Should I eat or shower first this morning?

Should I have breakfast or just move straight to lunch (it is officially the afternoon now)?

Should I continue reading For Whom The Bell Tolls in the hope that it'll get more exciting or try to find a different book?

Should I do some baking or just sit on the couch patting the dogs on the head?

Should I brush Goldie or just let his hair continue to fall out in chunks?

And is it better to use the pre-heat function on my electric blanket so it's very warm when I get in, or to use the overnight mode so it stays hot all night?

Last day at work before Christmas and all I want to do is go home and sleep.

That's my Christmas presents solved.

Special meeting of the Management Liaison Group today to discuss Students' Union funding. I think we put across our case quite well (despite my blushworthy comment that Sam has so kindly blogged about already).

Anyway, we're all in holiday mode here. No power in the morning until 11, so a bit of a lie in seems in order. Christmas party tomorrow evening, half day Wednesday then it's holidays for two weeks.

Imagine that. Two whole weeks. I'm not sure I can sit still for that long.

I've been meaning to add Mum to my list of blogs for some time (although Sam managed to find her without my help). In these busy busy times when I don't get to phone home as much as I'd like it's nice to read up on what's happening Chez Goggin.

Had a leisurely wander around town today, and was delighted to find a present I'd been considering buying had been reduced by 30% since I looked at it earlier in the week. Bargain. Now to get wrapping.

Finally finished, printed and distributed the December issue of Il Popolo del Sindacato, our SU newsletter.

We may get some angry questions at Council.

Playa Ancon. How jealous are you?

It's hard work, this Union newsletter business. The first issue of Il Popolo should be going to print tomorrow for distribution on Thursday, but I'm nowhere near finished writing the text.

I think it'll have to be a door-closed sort of day.

Sam asked me if I was drunk when I got dressed this morning. My outfit is perfectly co-ordinated! The yellow of my t-shirt and red-and-white of my skirt match my yellow, red and white wellies perfectly! How dare he.

Back from Cuba now. The internet connections there were too slow to blog regularly, and now I'm back it's hard to summarise the entire holiday. But I think my favourite moment was when we went horseriding in Vinales and our (very unofficial) guide took us to meet his friend Chico (who, he kept telling us, was 'loco').

Chico was a proper Cuban cowboy. He was sitting in this hut made out of palm trees and bamboo, wearing a cowboy hat and no shirt, chopping the tops off coconuts with a machete. He poured in rum, sugar, lemon and lime and served it to us with a straw. Only the Germans with the antibacterial hand spray (give up! It's Cuba!) objected to alcohol at 10am. He rolled us cigars from his home-grown tobacco, again chopping the tops off with his machete (which our guide kept pretending to slit Chico's throat with).

It just seemed properly foreign, and brings to mind Chris's old band, Fidel Castro And Those Crazy, Crazy Cubans.

You know when you have so much to write about you end up not writing anything?