Days 702-714, 5-16 May '16, Farewell Ireland...

It's been a busy but not earthshattering final couple of weeks in Ireland. We've spend a lot of time in Cahore and taking long walks on the beach (sounds like a dating website!) The weather has been improving day by day - even up to 20 scorching degrees... that's shorts and T-shirts weather here in the emerald isle incidentally. When we have been indoors we've been Netflixing and watched multiple series of iZombie. Sounds like utter rubbish but hugely entertaining and very well done given the subject matter. Even stars a NZ actress. Recent movies to look out for are Spotlight - about the coverup of child abuse by clergy in Boston and Bridge of Spies with Tom Hanks - which is a recommendation in itself. Deva the little kitten has been growing bigger, bolder, more confident and also a massive set of furry balls... so is now, most definitely a boy cat. For the first couple of nights we had a big spa bath he was absolutely entranced by the water and bubbles and walked around the edge of the tub. After several laps on night 2... he slipped in and was completely submerged... takeaways from seeing this occur... 1) Cats CAN swim. They just really, really don't like to and 2) There wasn't going to be a Night 3 of bath inspections. In other "cute" news. Deva was on the kitchen bench playing with eggshells from the scraps basket. Peanut the Jack Russell, his best mate, was on the floor looking up lovingly. So Deva dragged an eggshell to the edge of the bench and tipped it over so Peanut could join in the fun... awwww. About 10 May we needed to update our flights for the trip to Langkawi - we wanted to leave a few days later to fit in with our owners and also take a 3 day stopover in Dubai on the way back, just for some sightseeing and to adjust to the time difference. Shouldn't be a problem with a flexible and more expensive ticket... right? Wrong! Emirates was desperate to make the changes at a charge of €600 extra. Each. Heck that's almost what we paid for the airfare. After 3 hours on the phone to-ing and fro-ing... Finally I came up with the idea of cancelling the whole thing and rebooking from scratch (and booking the Kuala Lumpur/Langkawi return ourselves online... which was 70% cheaper than going through Emirates). Success! Probably set us back a total of €200 in total which is not great but 1000% better than €1200. Friday and Saturday, 13th and 14th was cleanup time - Goats, Chooks, House, Car, Dogs and huge amounts of s**t redistribution - phew! Sparkey the terrier decided to celebrate cleaning day by murdering 2 chickens just to create a bit more work. Come Sunday 15th, it was wonderful to welcome back our lovely owners then after dinner we jumped in the car and headed to Cahore for a couple of dog-free nights at the mobile home - blissful (but a bit lonely). Final packing and a good nights sleep - tomorrow it's off to Dublin and Dubai. Bring on the gold and diamonds...

PS - Sweetie still very, very pregnant. She's now under her real mum's care and we're waiting for the news any day now.