Dear Friends,

Well, winter has arrived. On Thursday night/Friday morning, temperatures got down to –2. Let's just say ‘Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr', shall we? Friday itself was the kind of day that reminds you why the Irish invented whiskey (yes, that's right we invented the stuff, along with bag-pipes and kilts – our Scottish cousins are just better at marketing themselves). By the time we'd walked the ten or so minutes to the village (or town, as I'm now supposed to call it), I was dreaming of a swig of Black Bush. Alas, only dreaming, as I can't find my hip flask. Unfortunately, finding my hips presents no such difficulties these days. Whether that's to do with being back on Mammy's radar again or feasting on foods I haven't had for ages (or, indeed, both!), I'm not sure.

Things here continue to astound me – and not always in the nicest of ways. While it is nice to be back in a part of the world where the newspapers have opinion pieces that actually express opinions, I am quite disconcerted by a stunt being pulled by a radio station here. Maybe I'm just getting old, but whenever I hear the promos for this I can't help feeling that the whole thing is just, basically, wrong. This Dublin radio station is running a competition – if you want to call it that – entitled “Two Strangers and a Wedding”. The basic premise being that two unfortunates who have never met get to marry each other live on air.  It's being touted as a ‘dream' wedding. Is this legal in Ireland ? The bit that kills me, though, is that the wedding dress comes from Debenhams. If it was a John Rocha or Louise Kennedy design, I'd understand. But come on . Debenhams. But come on . Debenhams – it's a department store. Granted, it's quite a nice department store, but still – any frock you get there will hardly be exclusive, will it? Where's the cachet?

Another thing that astounds me is my lack of broadband. Apparently, Eircom is getting the country wired up at – according to themselves – alarming speed. To me, the only thing alarming about the speed they're doing it is how slow it is. Here's the situation. We moved into our house on the first of November. The little man came out from Eircom a few days early and offered to fix my telephone line. I wasn't here. He left a postcard with his name, the time he'd called and all that guff on it. I rang Eircom and told them I'd missed him – but was surprised that he'd called in the first place because he wasn't expected until two days after we'd moved in. They told me it would be 3 weeks before I'd see hide or hair of him again. Excuse me??! Oh yes, that's how long it takes, I was assured. Where? Outer Mongolia ? Surely not in a sophisticated, Celtic Tigerish Ireland . Well, apparently, yes. Thankfully, the little man who had called out to me had left his number on the postcard thingy, so I just rang him directly and he popped in to see me first thing the following morning and fixed my line up for me.

But it doesn't end there, boys and girls.  Eircom, who heretofore was a state-owned company and had a monopoly, is used to charging outrageous prices for calls. I make a lot of phone calls. I particularly make a lot of overseas phone calls. So I rang around and realised that one of their competitors was less than half price on all calls. And they'd sort my broad band out for me as well. At least they would, if Eircom would let them. Eircom owns the lines, you see and they need to flick a switch or press a button somewhere to indicate that I'm around, have a phone line and am broad band ready. Unless and until they do this, said competitor cannot take over my line (which I'd still have to pay Eircom an extortionate rental for!) and give me cheap calls and cheap broadband. Has Eircom obliged yet? Silly question. It will, I'm reliably informed by their oh-so-helpful customer services people, take about another three weeks. That's apparently really speedy and I should be grateful I live in a suburban area. It makes me wonder what people are doing in Connemara . Are they still using baked bean cans and bits of string to communicate? Maybe that accounts for why country people speak so much louder than the rest of us.

Ishthara, my 32 month old has just started back at playschool. She had been attending Montessori since January until we left Singapore in September. Thankfully, she's having a great time. Her playschool here is, funny enough, more international than the one she attended in Singapore ! In her class here, there are two girls from Armenia , a girl from South America , two Scottish children, and one or two Irish kids as well. While Ishthara is an Irish citizen, she doesn't look your quintessential colleen, so peeking in their classroom window is a bit like taking a peek at a Bennetton ad. They can't get the hang of her name, though, so from 9.30am until 12.30pm every Monday through Friday, she is ‘Star'. She doesn't mind, which is just as well.  

We've decided to go to Holland for ‘Kissmas', as Ishthara calls it. She's looking forward to the fireworks (she's still talking about the ones we saw over Hallowe'en), and snow. I can guarantee her the former, but the latter I'm not sure about. Thankfully, I don't have to worry about hawking large gifts for my girls there and bringing them back. We don't ‘do' Christmas and we certainly don't ‘do' Santa, so I can put little things under the tree for them so they have things to open with their cousins on the morning in question. On the 25th, their cousins will only have little things under the tree, either, as St. Nick will already have been and gone earlier in the month. My mother is appalled that I don't do the santa thing, but I'm adamant. I can't expect my kids to trust me if I lie to them. Plenty of kids don't expect a fat man in a red suit and black wellies to come down their chimneys and they still manage to lead normal, well-adjusted lives.

As for that Economist survey proclaiming Ireland the best place in the world to live! I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Without boring the knickers off you entirely, there's just one or two things of particular note that I'd like to point out. For a start, they based their figures on the GDP,  which are highly inflated. Then, they based their ‘happy family life' bit on – guess what? - divorce rates!!! We've only had divorce in this country since 1997, for God's sake! And it takes five years to get the bloody thing! No wonder we ranked way up there with our low divorce rate. To get a true and accurate reflection, they should have included those in ‘Irish divorces' - where the husband and wife live under the same roof, but don't talk to each other, don't go out together and most definitely don't sleep together (although they quite often sleep with other people). They allege they took the weather into account, but if you ask Irish people what they dislike most about the country, the answer is the weather.

Then there's the public transport system. ‘Nightmare' does not begin to describe the state of it. Last week, I had an appointment at 4pm on the far side of Dublin . (To give you an idea, with traffic and everything, it's about an hour's driving time away.) Anyway, I collected Ishthara from playschool at 12.30pm and brought her home. We left the house at about a quarter past one and got the bus at half past into town, where I met my sister, who had agreed to take the kids. I got a bus out to where I was going and she got a bus out to her place. I finished up my appointment and legged it at about 5.15pm. I took a cab to my sister's place – about 15 minutes away –  gathered up my girls (Tracey had to be in for work at 6pm) – and left.   We took the DART (train) back to the city centre and trundled down the road to get a bus. We missed the 6.55pm by about 30 seconds and had to wait a half hour for the next. We eventually got home at 8.40pm. How ridiculous is that – a one-hour appointment took seven and a half hours!! I do miss the days when I could walk out the door and know that the girls would be okay. I also miss the days when you could grab a cab to take you to where you wanted to go and it wouldn't cost you an arm and a leg. Okay, I'll stop now. After all, I should be happy. I live in the best place in the world.

One of the other things that's struck me since we got back is the amount of crime. Over the week-end, there were three shootings. One young man of 23 was shot in his bed at 3.30am. His girlfriend was in bed beside him and their 18 month old was in the room as well. That's barbaric. I heard on the radio today that he was the third brother in his family to have met a violent death in recent years – and all of them under 25. Then today, Joe Duffy (on the radio) was talking to a priest who reported that 20 minutes prior to going on air, a young woman had had her handbag stolen from inside the church.

What's also struck me is the amount of druggies I've come across. Not hordes of them, you understand, but a noticeable amount. A few weeks ago, I was in the supermarket with Kashmira, having dropped Ishthara off at playschool, A few weeks ago, I was in the supermarket with Kashmira, having dropped Ishthara off at playschool, (so it wasn't even ten in the morning) and there was a woman there completely strung out. I was shocked to speechlessness. Worse still, she had a little boy with her who was only about 18 months old.

Then, last week, something else happened before ten am that had me floored. Marion Finucane was on the radio, being herself. You know Marion , sensible, heart of gold, no-nonsense Marion . Easily as old as my mum. Anyway, she had a sexologist on – and they were talking about sex. On Irish national radio. Before 10am. Not only that, but they were talking about orgasms. On Irish national radio. Before 10am. Not only that, but yer one mentioned the word clitoris. On Irish national radio. Before 10am. I didn't think Irish women were allowed to have those. I thought the church banned them or something. Or maybe that was orgasms. Not only that, but this sexologist had a selection of vibrators with her and she chose one and turned it on live on air on the Marion Finucane programme and described it and all it's functions. On Irish national radio. Before 10am. Can you tell I haven't recovered from the shock of it? Seriously, though, fair play to Marion . And she's having yer one back next week. Mind you, it's a fat lot of good a sexologist and all her helpful hints are to me....

And if you think that's sad, do you want to know what my sad sap of the week moment this week was? Please brace yourselves, this is award-winning. I was in Tesco's and I got excited about a new product. Fairy washing up liquid with eucalyptus oil. I'm serious.

To cheer you up after that, here's another ‘From The Mouths of Babes' episode. I was feeding the baby. The radio was on. The Angelus came on at 6pm, the way it does every day. The bells toll as a  reminder to Catholics (remember, Ireland is more than 80% Catholic!) that they should be saying the Angelus prayer. It's a monotonous tolling of a single bell for a full minute. (If you sit there and say ‘dong! dong! dong!' to yourself for sixty-seconds, you've got the effect! Half-way through, Ishthara looks up from her book and proclaims “Oh Mum! The cd's stuck.” She couldn't understand why I found that so funny.

So I guess we're settling in. We're getting a feel of the place. Getting used to having family around. Getting used to the cold. Getting used to the idea that I'm going to have to learn to drive. Not getting used to having no domestic help. I don't think I ever took Nishanthi – who was our live-in domestic helper for a year – for granted, but if I did, I regret it. I miss her efficiency. I miss having a second pair of (adult) hands in the house. I miss having someone to wash and cook and clean and iron and shop so I can spend time with my computer or my kids, or my friends. SoIf you'd like to know what I want for Christmas, I'll give you Nishanthi's new address, you can wrap her up and stick her in a DHL box for me.

Lots of Love,

Hazel.