(I wrote this while in Moneglia, in different stages, and I'm posting it now that I have a connection again)

[Sunday, 7pm]

Moneglia is still a very nice place.

There are lots of very chatty blackbirds, funny to hear them sing so much in the middle of the day (in Dublin they only seem to get enthusiastic around sunset). There are also many pretty wagtails, and they're called ballerine.

Swallows are another kind of bird I don't see in Dublin. There are lots here (and in Milan), and I'd forgotten how loud they can be.

There is an enormous quantity of tadpoles in the stream (no legs yet). I wonder if anyone has ever thought of making a fry out of them. I used to catch them as a kid, but it was for the purpose of growing them.

The wisteria is past flowering, which is a pity, but the bougainvillea is in flower now. Focaccia with cheese is extremely yummy. The temperature is probably what humans were evolved for. On the whole, life is good.

[Sunday, 11pm]

There are also frogs, and crickets. Both are noises I haven't heard in a while. In fact, I don't remember when I last heard a frog.

There are a few stars visible, but not many. I hope tomorrow the weather is good. I might even get to dip into the sea -- something else that I haven't done in a very long time.

[Monday, 8pm]

This morning I actually swam in the sea! I literally don't remember the last time I'd done so, but it's certainly been years. The sea was very calm and clear, the sun quite hot, and the water... well, I don't know, my parents thought it was too cold, I took a while to get in but once in the water it was nice enough. Maybe I've just become too Irish...

In fact, that looks likely. I seem to have acquired an Irish complexion, anyway. I managed to get sunburned (shoulders and ankles) by sitting in the sun for about 2 hours. This didn't used to happen when I lived here...

Moneglia appears to be full of turtledoves -- I don't remember so many of them when I came here regularly. I've also discovered that they don't only have the ceaseless, pitiful hooting call they're most famous for: when in flight, they actually sound like crows (jackdaws in fact).

I also saw a couple of lizards -- an animal that I've never seen in Ireland, not sure if it exists anywhere.

[Tuesday, 23:50]

No bathing today, but I went to the beach in the morning and in the afternoon. I kept my shoulders well covered (as well as slathered with sunscreen). I waded into the water a bit, but the heat from my ankles tended to evaporate it...

I watched Forrest Gump on TV in the evening. It is a completely inane movie. Harmless, probably, but I really don't understand what anybody could see in it.

[Thursday, 15:30]

Back in Milan, in time to see on TV the stage of the Giro d'Italia which is happening where we were this morning. Sestri Levante, where today's race starts, is the next town on the coast from Moneglia (LOL they're showing and talking about Moneglia this minute on TV!) We had to take a roundabout way to reach the autostrada because usually we go through Sestri and today it was closed to traffic.

My shoulders are almost healed, I did spend some time on the beach again yesterday and the day before, but I kept them covered. Also didn't get into the water past my knees again.

A few days ago I wrote about the amazing variety of birds in Dublin, and how that still fills me with wonder.

Well, yesterday I saw a new bird, and a completely unexpected and surprising bird. A small hawk-type bird, in my garden, right in the centre of the city. I only noticed because as I crossed the communal garden of the apartment block to go out the back, there was a commotion in a shrubby evergreen tree right behind me. I looked and saw this large bird, which at first I took for a wood pigeon, upsetting some sparrows. All birds involved were hidden in the foliage, but the idea of a wood pigeon in the city was peculiar enough that I looked more closely. And the bird was indeed wood-pigeon-sized, and approximately the same kind of colour, but very definitely a bird of prey by the head and beak.

I didn't get a lot of time to look at it before it flew off, to a roof on the other side of the building. Watched it a bit longer, but from a longer distance, until eventually it flew away again and disappeared. It's definitely the first time I see a bird of prey in Dublin -- though there must be more in the outskirts, and admittedly if I hadn't looked closely I would have gone away thinking it was a wood pigeon, so maybe I've seen some without recognising them...

A bit of searching on Irish birding sites convinced me that it was almost certainly a sparrowhawk, which looks right and is reported as occasionally frequenting suburban gardens. Well, this one had probably still got lost, but a garden is a garden... Another possibility would be a kestrel, and while from the pictures I can't be sure it wasn't one, they don't seem to be as urbanised. (The third and last possibility is a merlin, but I don't think it was. They're even less urbanised than kestrels.)

(And I found that a sparrowhawk is called sparviero in Italian -- which is a nice word.)

As a side note, I will make no comment or moral judgment on the fact that the first hit when googling for "birds in Dublin" is
"DublinBirds.com, the definitive guide to Birds in Dublin. Escort services, domination services, lap dancing clubs, massage parlours, the street prostitution scene..."

Also, and completely unrelated: I can haz kimchi! Went to the Hop House (Korean pub) with L and came back with 1/2 kg of their homemade kimchi. They also sell kilo packs. I'm tempted to take one down to Cavan for the retreat, and see what happens... (The food on retreat is very good, but a bit on the Irish-conservative and mild-inoffensive side. Well, apart from the Glaswegian retreat leader's signature porridge in the morning, which is the real reason why people go to his retreats, of course. It involves ginger, and toasting the oats before cooking.)

This morning I got out before dawn (ok, it was 8 am, but it was before dawn...) to go and do some puja and chanting at the Dublin Buddhist Centre. It is a pleasant thing to do on a Sunday morning. As is crossing town on a Sunday morning: the place is completely empty, a very rare occurrence...

According to Google Earth, that was 2.3 km (or 1.4 miles), and it took me half an hour. So I have established that my cruising speed in town, without rushing but also without traffic (pedestrian or motor), is 4.6 km/h.

Since I didn't know how long it would take me, I left plenty time and so I got there very early. So I went to sit by the canal for a while. The place is full of birds. There were ducks (of the mallard type) and moorhens, small gulls, and a pair of swans. For a while I sat watching a heron from about a metre away. This was particularly interesting because on the way there I'd been working on some remaining kinks in the scene I'm rewriting, specifically to do with what Lanta says -- whose name means "grey heron" (as well as "ash"). Somewhat to my relief, the bird did not turn around and start talking to me. Instead, it would occasionally start stalking, then stop in mid-step for some time, then give up and go back to standing. No idea if it was actually stalking something or only practising... Eventually it flew off, possibly looking for some more interesting (or fruitful) stalking place. A hoodie landed on the other side of the canal -- a type of crow that I haven't often seen so close to the centre. (And on the way there, I'd also met herring seagulls and magpies, as well as the obvious pigeons). I'm not a bird expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm always delighted (and still somehow surprised, after all these years) at the number and variety of birds in Dublin city.