Snowscape With Firework

Yesterday evening my wife came up to Dublin on a flying visit from her parents' place in Wexford (to do some shopping in Dundrum) and we had time to go for a meal in one of our favorite restaurants, Toscanas, on the seafront in Dún Laoghaire. The sea was unbelievable, a vast blue-white churning, furiously remaking itself, flinging huge Hokusai waves right over the seawall, carpark and road. S decided, sensibly, to re-park away from the onslaught. Just as well that I didn't bring the camera; it would have gotten soaked. Lovely meal: crab claws & squid for starters then skewered mixed fish (S ordered one of her werewolf-raw steaks) and crisp white wine.

Most of today I spent wintering indoors, apart from a brief run down to the shops (in a light sprinkle of non-stick snow) and midnight was upon me before I knew it. When I heard the fireworks begin to pop I opened the door and was surprised to find that another, proper snowfall had rendered the suburbs white, for the first time in years, maybe even a decade: a more literal new page, a silence and (largely) stillness in opposition to whatever revelry was happening in the city centre. I took out the tripod and shot a few frames, glad to catch one of the odd local firework-bursts.

Happy bottom-of-winter's-sack day, and here's to a better, less historically 'interesting' decade. Cheers.