Standing guard

We refer to him now as "our UK member", but to all intents and purposes we've lost Cathal from the Music Group. That said, he contacted me last week to see where the session was on on and to say he'd be there since he was back home for a week. We agreed that we'd try to meet up some time, and this morning we arranged to do lunch together.

It was Cathal who suggested that we meet in Dún Laoghaire, so that Carl could join us. The chosen spot was The Purty Kitchen, and it was really good. I had breaded tiger prawns and a bowl of cream of carrot soup, both of which were excellent. Its a great spot, full of character, and also, as we know now, full of good food too. Apart from the food itself, the whole experience was really good, as our Eastern European waitress was wonderfully helpful and attentive. To be recommended and gone back to. Definitely.

We'd arranged to meet there at 12.45. I walked to Killester to get the DART over, having checked times before I left home. I must have walked quicker than usual, because I ended up catching an earlier train than planned. So I got off at the Seapoint, the station before my intended stop and walked from there for a bit more exercise. It was dull and misty and a bit damp and generally grey, but that didn't deter the camera and I came back with a handful of blip possibles. They were all pretty flat and dull and uninteresting, and I quickly decided that whichever I chose would need a bit of processing help to make it at all decent. So these birds on the rocks have been given a bit of a helping hand.

Apart from that, I actually got a few loose ends tidied up. Things began yesterday, actually, when, still suffering from inconsistent broadband connection from eircom, I took the plunge and committed myself to switch provider. I'm now due to be connected next Wednesday to UPC's fibre-optic cable network. I feel a bit of a hypocrite doing this, since I parted company on bad terms with NTL (now part of UPC) when I got my Freeview satellite setup. Hopefully UPC will turn out to be better than their forerunner were (NTL were notoriously bad at customer service when they were the principal cable TV provider).

Then there's the car with its electrical problems. I've been dreading contacting the garage to check the outcome of my attempt to get a concession from Renault, who'd already handed the situation over to them. I spoke to the service manager this morning, who stated bluntly that the problem was not related to the recall letter I'd got while the car was off the road. He was quite apologetic about the quoted price to get the problem fixed, gave me some relief by telling me the price was all-in, including parts and labour, and told me he's see what he could do about getting a discount on the parts. He actually phoned me and said the best he could do would be to take 100 euro off (which still leaves a price tag of 860 euro). I told him I'd mull it over. He suggested that I might get the work done in two stages, with the driver-side window to get initial priority (and he said he'd honour the same discount for the second window). Tomorrow I'll follow up an alternative option through a contact which my motor-sport mate Robin gave me on Friday. Fingers crossed for a better outcome through him.