I had a very nice Tuesday, thank you for asking. I caught a late morning train down to Bray, blew off the cobwebs with a brisk walk along the sea front and then had lunch with a friend. I’d forgotten how much I like trains.

The DART, which runs from Howth at the north end of Dublin Bay down to Greystones in County Wicklow is a useful and pleasant line to travel. I got on at Pearse Street, a station that does its very best to hide its whereabouts. Even the ticket machines are obscured by the dry-cleaning outlet.

The first bit of the journey is depressing: Grand Canal Dock was Dublin’s attempt to look like downtown Atlanta, built at a time when the developers were way too full of themselves. Now it seems half empty and in permanent shade. But you soon have something prettier to look at: the new rugby stadium at Lansdowne Road. It’s a kind of glassy twisted doughnut   – a torus is probably the correct name for its form  –  and very easy on the eye.

From Booterstown on the track rarely leaves the shoreline. Monkstown, where Mr F lived in another, more prosperous life, Dun Laoghaire where the Holyhead ferry docks, Sandycove and James Joyce’s ‘scrotum-tightening snot-green waters’. After that you’re really out in the country.  You emerge from a cutting above Killiney Bay and think, ‘Oh my gosh. Did I fall asleep and wake up in Amalfi?’

There was a stiff easterly blowing across Bray harbour, a gorse fire smouldering on Bray Head  and dog people throwing sticks on the beach. Ozone a’plenty. So that’s my batteries recharged for a week or two.

*****************************

 As my Brother in Blogdom, Scott Gronmark, rightly predicted the ah-but-mongers are getting to work on the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is questioning whether the killing was in accordance with international law. Of course the UN Human Rights Council had Libya as one of its members until a few weeks ago so you have to have a lot of respect for that organ.

A smidgen of sympathy for the over-excited journalist who reported that Obama had been shot. Obama, Osama. Easily done when the heart is pounding.

And I loved this advice to women looking to date A Real Man. Drink in any Bullshit Bar late on a Friday night and every second guy you talk to will claim to be a SEAL on furlough or a former SEAL. 

Killiney Bay to Abbotabad in one blog. Do I give you value, or what?