Happy Halloween! It's the October long weekend here today - sort of mid-term/clocks have just gone back/bank holiday weekend and this year rather conveniently falls on Halloween. Massive pumpkins have been on sale in the supermarkets since we flew in from Dubai 5 weeks ago - a great deal of home-carving must be going on somewhere. There are muffins with eyeballs, fabulous witches costumes to buy for a few euro and spooky decorations galore. No - Ireland isn't following the commercialisation of the USA - Halloween, All Hallow's eve started here as a pagan tradition of pre-Christian times. Though I don't think they always get a holiday for it. Tuesday on the other hand will definitely be a holiday in France as I discovered a couple of years ago when I went to the supermarket on 1 November... All Saints' Day and an obligation to visit the cemetery with a potted chrysanthemum for your dearly departed. Funny how things resonate around the world totally dependent on season - 'mums are Autumn flowers in May 'downunder' and are the traditional flowers for Mothers' Day in the southern hemisphere.

Today led to us reminiscing about our round the world trip from 5 July 2012 to 4 July 2013. Four years ago today we arrived in Dublin for the very first time after a road trip from Cork and around the west coast of Ireland. We were blown away with all the spookiness of Dublin in a chilly, Autumn, Halloween frenzy. We are just over the half way point in this particular Ireland stay - we've spent 5.5 weeks in Caim Newtown just outside of Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford. We've enjoyed our 4th visit to the same family and catching up with all the furballs - including my timeshare puppy dog Peanut, the Jack Russell now coming up to 2 years old. We had a new Bengal kitten this time around. We christened him Bennie, but Chaos, Trouble and Ratty were all being seriously considered further down the line as he went through mad attacks of kitten-itis. We spent the last few days having a good clean up and tidy up and, heaven forbid, semi-packing. Not a 'hard' or 'plane' pack, just a general put together. We have just spent a couple of nights at the beach house in Cahore. Lovely to be down here at the beach sans-dogs/cats/chooks/goats - but do miss the little fellas.  We've had long walks on the beach for an hour or more a time and last evening we went down the laneways picking late blackberries off the roadside brambles. Well we think they're boysenberries... They certainly jazzed up our breakfast fruit bowls this morning.
This time around we are not leaving Ireland but moving on to another housesit about an hour and a half north in the bustling metropolis (that is, tiny village) of Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow. Our new place is within an hour's drive to Dublin and we have a few day trips and heritage visits planned already (in fact, Wed 2 Nov is the monthly "free Wednesday" at the Heritage Ireland properties... so we'll definitely be up and at 'em that day). We'll be taking care of 11 cats who have 2 cat flaps and do all their business outdoors - so utter magic from a housesitting perspective. But we don't head there until later tonight.
So what else have we been up to in the record 3 weeks since our last entry. Going to the beach house once or twice a week. James has been recovering from a nasty "flu-like" virus he developed immediately after getting his annual flu vaccine. Can't see any link there of course. We've spent a couple of days enjoying walks around our local town, Enniscorthy - in particular our weekly roast chicken from the deli at Dunnes supermarket - huge value at €5/A$7.50 - keeps us going for 2-3 meals and the cats honestly think the skin and other bits are Christmas-come-early. Spent a few days researching light-weight travel gear (which keeps us hugely entertained). The cheap puffy jacket I bought in France a couple of years ago is now less waterproof than cotton wool and whilst still cosy, weighs in at over 800 grams (or almost a kilo - which is a big deal when your 4-season wardrobe including ugg boots, wellies, fur coat and summer clothes all need to weigh in at 20-23 kg). We ended up in Wexford town for a day playing dress-ups in the various outdoor and adventure stores and found a super lightweight (400 grams) black, down jacket at half price. No where near as cheap and cheerful as my €12 supermarket job... but 1000% lighter. We got a few shop assistants laughing too... as they asked if they could help. Yes! Need a jacket in black that will look as good on the streets of Paris as it does on a country lane or the back of a horse. Needs to be super-warm, weigh nothing, be water-proof or water repellant and I don't want to pay anything for it... what have you got? So quite happy with eventual purchase. And as if it's not perfect enough, when it's packed into it's little stuff-sack it's essentially a down travel pillow. Since we were in Wexford Town and spending money anyway, we visited our favourite non-German supermarket - Tesco's! We buy 95% of our supplies at either Lidl or Aldi, conveniently next door to each other in Enniscorthy - but exotic supplies are a bit hit and miss... unless it's "Italian" week for instance. So whilst using our 3 hours free parking at Tesco's and shopping on the Wexford high street, we also stocked up on Risoni/Orzo, arborio rice and the best quality €4 Spanish red vino we've found in Ireland. Equivalent to your €1.50 bottle in Spain quality-wise, but alcohol is taxed with a vengeance in these parts.
About a week ago we started final house preparations and James cleaned the chicken coops and goat pen, cut the lawns and cleaned the inside of the car while I spent the whole day on the iPad getting tax documents up to date for the year so far - prior to bringing in the wood and coal and getting a cosy fire going. So we were feeling very shiny indeed by the time our lovely owners returned from their cruise just a couple of days ago.
Well that is all the news to date. Once again, Happy Halloween from the home of Halloween and keep a look out for more regular entries as we start to explore our new home in Dunlavin, Co. Wicklow over the next 4 weeks.
(Preview: After that? A night in Dublin to enjoy the Christmas lights and Christmas markets prior to flying to Lisbon, Portugal for a week then on to Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol for December.)