loonday lunch

My father-in-law comes for lunch today, and announces he has lost his front door key yet again. He has come here leaving his door unlocked, which in this (or indeed in any) city is surely unwise, but this is his way. One day a terrible thing will befall him as a result of this sort of thing, but so far the gods have favoured him. My wife accompanies him home after lunch to search for the key, but returns having failed to do so. This makes it 3 keys he has lost in as many months; well at least it keeps the key-cutters in business.

Tomorrow we set sail for a week in the Emerald Isle. I have considered taking my laptop along, and while this may work in our Dublin hotel, it might not help me in the remote B and B we have booked on the Antrim coast, so I have made the decision not to worry too much about posting a daily blog. So followers (if any) will hopefully show some forbearance if I do not manage to keep up my daily schedule. I shall offer a summary of events when I return home, whose highlights should include Bloomsday on the 16th June, and seeing the Giant's Causeway (to say nothing of the Bushmills distillery, which is close by)

DR PELAGIUS'S NEW HIGHWAY CODE

TRAFFIC SIGNALS: NEW PROTOCOL

RED- stop (though see below for more details)
RED AND AMBER- Accelerate aggressively away
GREEN- should the car in front of you fail to move off immediately, leave a reasonable courtesy interval (say, 0.06 nanoseconds) then sound your horn assertively- after all, the driver may be asleep at the wheel, or even dead.
AMBER- again, accelerate violently to avoid being delayed by the red light.
RED- it is now considered safe to continue on your way for up to 5 seconds after the lights have gone red. Don't worry about the possibility of collision with another driver operating the same policy and crossing your path. Traffic signals are carefully synchronised to take this into account.