But when they stand next to you? And she’s buying him food? Dressed in a quasi schoolgirl outfit, a thin plaid skirt? And his huge hand is fondling her ass crack? While you contemplate your lunch?

You kind of lose your appetite.

In France I woke up early most mornings, sometimes before dawn. I’d break fast soberly with some french bread and a few bites of Comte cheese, or a little bit of yoghurt. By noon, I would have been out walking and taking pictures for four hours or more. After lunch, I would pick another part of town to explore. I’d walk around till dinner time, feed myself, chill out a bit and be in bed before 10pm.

I do everything arseways.

That’s us, lazing about in Dublin, undecided about what to go see or do. (‘I know, let’s go over to the east side of the jungle. There’s always a bit of action, a bit of swinging scene, alright?’).

But really, in five days we saw two shows, went to the IMMA (modern art) and the Casino at Marino (18th century outhouse), had another extravagant lunch at L’Ecrivain, sampled the food and drink at various places such as the Octagon bar, Nude, Good World, Mulligan’s and what not. Mostly the Octagon bar. Why? Because it’s quiet, because they serve great food and have the best cocktails. I’m not sure the staff appreciated our ten hour session (‘I’d like some ice cream, please.’ ‘NO.’), but hey, it wasn’t like the place was teeming with punters.

In contrast, it appeared many of the other hotel guests never left the horrible hotel bar, with its round the clock play by numbers Irish didleyaye and dancing.

Ronnie Drew, I love ye, but there’s only so much I can take.

Do me and my kin a favour and vote for ‘De foto’ on the ‘Wonderen bestaan’ website. You’ll find the poll on the right hand side and ‘De foto’ is the last option in the poll (which doesn’t give it much of a chance of winning!).

It’s a great story and my uncle, who is an author and lyricist, does a great job of telling it (well, duh, he does readings and theater shows for a living). In short: About 20 years ago he was on holiday with his girlfriend L. and another couple. It was a miserable day and he hadn’t even wanted to go to England anyway. When they stopped for lunch, they came across an antique shop.

My uncle had a thing about ‘a book without a title’. He had been talking about this obsession during the trip, of wanting to find this ‘book without a title’. His friends had said books without titles didn’t exist.

Looking through the books on the shelves in the antique shop, he didn’t find anything he wanted. But there was one more book, sitting on a table. Picking it up he saw the book’s cover didn’t have any marking or lettering. It was a book without a title! And when he opened it, he found a picture of himself taken when he was a young man.

Cue theme of the Twilight Zone. Vote now. Vote often.