Well, my nightmare weekend finally being at an end and the unfeasibly long school run behind me, I decided that a spot of R&R was a good idea and headed to the largest shopping centre in the hemisphere for a spot of retail therapy. I’ve made that sound really exciting, and actually all I needed to do was purchase a couple of school jumpers for #2, who has managed to lose both of his in a frenzy of misplacement spectacular even by his standards.
Parking my car, then, in the firm knowledge that I’d never be able to find the bloody thing again, all car parks in the place looking exactly the same, I set out. Now you know that I do generally try to avoid the England vs Ireland thing as much as possible, but I don’t remember ever having problems buying school uniform (except shorts maybe). It seems that here if you don’t buy your entire yearly stock by the end of June, then you’re knackered for the whole year.
Talking of uniforms, the Irish are shockingly cruel to their school children. After I’d pathetically given in to the temptation of the Bagel Bar (do they have these anywhere else? They’re magnificent - you can choose any one of load of different flavours of bagel, then have it stuffed with practically anything you want) and settled down to scoff my Caesar chicken with chilli relish, followed by a medicinal Double Decker, I sat watching a stream of school kids going in to McDonalds (Jamie Oliver’s healthy school’s initiative obviously hasn’t reached Ireland yet). One particularly puke-inducing uniform consisted of a teal green pleated skirt (mostly hitched up over the knee), combined with teal green knee socks (never a good look on a teenage girl, believe me), creamy yellow shirt and grey jumper with a massive yellow splodge of a logo which looked like they’d lost the filling of their Big Mac down their chests. Poor little buggers. Maybe it’s some sort of punishment.
I also saw a monk - no, really I did - he had a brown hooded cassock-thing on with a rope round his middle. I’ve never seen one before either. Full of surprises this place.