Best weekend festival

This will sound corny, but I actually envy people coming to Dublin for the first time this weekend. It's the weekend of the annual festival of street performance, it's amazing, it's free, and it's in one of the city's prettiest parks, in Merrion Square (home of the Oscar Wilde statue, affectionately known as "the quare on the square").

I went to this last year and it was hold-your-breath fabulous. Basically, street performers from around the world, including Ireland of course, descend on the square and put on astonishing shows. It's all out of doors, and it doesn't cost a Euro cent, and you can just wander about from one performance to the next taking it in. It's fantastic. Ireland has a big culture of street theatre and I've never gotten tired of it. You can walk down Grafton Street any day and there'll always be people performing.

I will be babysitting tomorrow, and it's going to be an easy gig, because all I have to do is take the kids to the festival and make sure they don't disappear.

A week or two ago, I met an American couple on holiday here. Well, guess what, I was at work in the Dublin Tourism centre as a meet-n-greeter yesterday and they came back! To see me! They had been down to Clare and think they found the house their ancestor used to live in. It's all been a big voyage of discovery for them because they're African Americans and only recently started finding out about the Irish side of the family. I guess a lot of Americans must have similar experiences when they come to Ireland -- but it's quite moving to hear it directly from someone in the process of finding out about their family. Apparently, all the girls in their family are always taught how to make soda bread, and they never knew why -- it was just a thing they did. But now they know it's because of their Irish heritage! How cool is that?