When Ireland is Hampton Beach, NH

You would think I would tire of talking about the weather but New Englanders and Irish folk are endlessly fascinated by weather and since I am of both worlds, I fekkin' love it. Anyway, maybe global warming is to blame but we've had a spate of warm, sunny weather again. On Tuesday temperatures were the hottest recorded in Ireland since 1887. All the gorgeous beaches finally got some use and the newspapers were full of pictures of splashing kids and hotties in bikinis. lovely.

Went to a wedding up north last weekend that took place in a seaside town and damn, it was almost like a proper hot, New England, summer weekend. The seaside town was, like seaside towns everywhere, a main street morphed over time from quiet, sleepy, village, overlooked by mountains and on top of the sea, choc-o-bloc, with kids eating soft serve icecream and begging their parents for change to play the penny arcade. There was the local hardware store selling inflatable dinosaur water-wings and family-run hotels and little greasy spoon diners for your fried breakfast. Despite how diverse the world really is, it's comforting to know that from Wolfsborough, NH to Newcastle, Northern Ireland, little kids get icecream all over their faces and play ski-ball and run around on the beach while their parents nurse their hangovers with a platefull o' grease...nothing like eggy goodness with toast and coffee to help recover from a late night. The more things change...