Hurrah, I am returned to the Land Below The Wall for a few days, and what an exciting time has been had so far. Starting off with the epic train journey (how I wish Alnwick was just a BIT closer to home), in which a delay meant that I had 3 minutes to make my connection in Newcastle, causing me to leg it from platform 3 to platform 11, flinging hapless fellow passengers aside. All very comical.
Then there was great excitement in our household with the election of the new pope. My mother took the highly unusual decision of letting us eat in front of the TV, something which generally only happens if she's in hospital giving birth (although she's got out of that habit now) and my dad's in charge. My mum tried to speed up the election of the new pontiff by shouting at the TV, for we had to leave at 7.20pm to see the DUBLINERS. Luckily, the conclave in Rome, too, is scared of my Scouse/Irish mother, and heeded her word by getting the new pope to appear just in time.
THEN IT WAS DUBLINERS TIME.

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(you weren't meant to take photos but I sneaked a very blurry one)
They were well good as ever, and still amusing, with little jokes like 'We've had a lot of requests during the interval…but we're going to keep on playing anyway'. I was concerned that they just wouldn't be the same without Barney McKenna (and John Sheahan, who's still with us but isn't touring). It wasn't the same, but it was still excellent, The new addition of Gerry O'Connor works well, and they even played a couple of songs I'd never heard before. The only thing was, they had no tin whistle player. PERHAPS THEY HAVE A VACANCY. I HAVE A BLOG AND EVERYTHING.
I loved it, anyway, and it was nice to see quite a few younger people at the concert. I'm much-mocked for my love of the Dubliners, but it's rare to find other bands so utterly without pretension. They could've retired many, many, many years ago, but keep on going because they well love it.
Now I am spending my time idly dreaming of finding an Irish folk group in Alnwick to play with and overcoming my fear of playing my tin whistle in public (not a horrendous euphemism). My remaining days at home will be spent visiting my nan and clothes-shopping in Worcester.