Darkness into light

I saw this man and his horse walking on the road and was compelled to stop and speak to him, he seemed to have his whole life on the horse's back but looked as though he was going somewhere. We had a short chat and he told me his name was Steve and his horse was called Jess and he was walking around Ireland to raise awareness for suicide prevention. He had left Dungarvan in May and felt he was on the home stretch with another two weeks to go. I was fascinated and googled him when I got home and the story is of course much more profound -read it here I wish I had spoken to him longer.*

Tomorrow we are off to Cork city for the weekend. We are going to see Martin Carthy and Dave Swarwbrick who are doing a gig as part of the Cork Folk Festival. I last saw them together in the early '70s!!! On sunday we might attend the ceilidh mor. We did this a few years ago when Cork was trying to gain the Guinness world record for the most people dancing an Irish set for the longest time! It was meant to start at 2pm and was taking place in the South Mall - a long wide street in the city centre. Being English , we arrived on time. About an hour later things started warming up. There were 6 live bands with Michael Flately, of Riverdance fame, somewhere at the front playing the flute. In the end, after about 2 hours of practice, 8000 people danced the Seige of Ennis for 6 minutes ! ! This is a progressive line dance - one line goes on way and the other goes the other, so although you dance with your partner you meet other partners as you progress. We were flanked by a fairly elderly lady who was brilliant dancer and a Swedish student, still wearing his backpack, who was on his way to the airport and leaving it very fine to catch his plane. We were going out for a posh meal afterwards and didn't have time to get back to our hotel and were so hot and sweaty we had to zoom into Marks and Sparks for fresh clothes!

*The darkness into light refers to the fund raising movement