Last week I took a trip out west to film a gig for Laoise Kelly for the launch of her new album Ceis in her home town of Westport.

My girlfriend, Anne-Marie and myself hopped on the train on Wednesday afternoon and took a well needed excursion out of Dublin over to the beautiful coastal town of Westport in Co. Mayo. The gig was on in Matt Molloy’s (of The Chieftains fame) and it packed in a full house of eager ears to listen to Laoise’s wonderfully captivating playing of the Harp. She played a magical set of tunes, showcasing some from her new album and was joined on stage for a few by Matt Molloy himself on the Flute and later by her brother Mick on the Djembe.

The next day we were treated by our hostess to some of the awe inspiring scenery the west has to offer, firstly on a lovely boat trip out in Clew Bay with her uncle David (and I even got behind the helm for a while!), then on to Croagh Patrick.. no, no not to the top, just far enough to say hello to the statue of St. Pat! (Will have to make that climb sometime). We then drove south through Doo Lough Valley passing the Twelve Bens and witnessing some amazing harsh landscape and ominous clouds hanging low into the valley. Onwards towards Leenane on Killary Harbour, location of the pub from The Field and then back to Westport for a few scoops. Read more

Just a quick post re WordPress. I have upgraded to 2.71. now which allows automatic upgrading of versions and plugins from here on it. Very handy indeed. However getting this working was not without it’s woes (some still unresolved here) but thanks to Tara in Blacknight it is now up and running. I needed to move on up to PHP5 and all seems ok now. One small snag though is that the posts (I re-imported them from backup I done earlier) from the last year (very little of them anyway admittedly) are not showing up in the normal page view. They are here though in the archive and in the sidebar over yonder. Anyway, it’s funny that it has jumped back almost a year to the day and my last post was concerning a Tara too!

Anyway, last years Paddy’s Day was spent up at Tara and it gonna be the same again this year. The documentary project has been on standby for the most part but there have been many developments in the last year that play an important part in the story. The major one being the huge economic slump worldwide and the unravelling of the incompetence and corruption that has prevailed in this country for the last decade under the guise of the Celtic Tiger. This does all fit in with the wider story I am attempting to tell with the Tara Saga story and it is sad the a lot of my predictions have come through. I’m not gleefully saying “I told you so” but there are interesting times ahead to say the least, where questions raised by groups involved with campaigns such as Rossport and Tara are going to be asked by the wider public.

It is a time though for reflection and change and hopefully people will have the time to concentrate on the things that matter. All the rest is irrelevant.