Julianstown

We gained a new member to the ranks of the Music Group a few months ago who's turned out to be a real find and a hugely enthusiastic member. He'd promised from the outset that he would host one of our sessions sooner rather than later, and jumped at the chance of hosting today, which coincided with one of our quarterly 'concert' programmes. By a further nice twist of chance, his name was one of the two chosen to present the concert. Most of our hosts are in city suburbs, but this new guy lives in Balbriggan, which is on the old, pre-motorway road to Belfast, so we weren't at all sure how many members would turn up. As it happened we were six including the host, and we had a terrific day, treated right royally both in terms of hospitality and musically.

I'd recently heard about Ardgillan Castle, which is close to where we were today, so I set off afterwards to find it. Obviously I didn't listen sufficiently attentively to the host's directions, because I ended up, since I ended up much further north than I should have been. My sense of direction is not the best, and it was only when I found myself at Julianstown that I decided it was time to retrace my steps. Before doing that I stopped at this terrace of cottages which took my blip fancy. I did eventually find the Castle, but it was getting a bit late by then and the weather was becoming increasingly unpredictable, so I didn't linger. Anyway, Carl had suggested that I make my way over to his place and we set on 8.00 pm as my ETA.

We had a brilliant evening. Carl cooked up a fab spread of roast beef with a wonderful selection of sides, which we wolfed down hungrily. We'd begun to watch 127 Hours and made the mistake of continuing while eating. A brilliant film, we thought, though not for the squeamish or anyone with a weak stomach.