Made it back to Ireland last night to see the rest of the family (sans Bevin who’s in Whistler) having caught up with Isabella & Conal in London, and spent a few days with Cormac, Belinda & Jacob in Durham.

Seeing Isabella & Conal was great, as I haven’t seen either of them in years and was unable to make their wedding two years ago. Is met me after work and took me for a whirlwind tour of Selfridges to help her in choosing Conal’s birthday present, then it was back to their apartment to catch-up, followed by dinner and a drink.

I said farewell the following morning, picked up my bags from the left luggage at Paddington station, then had to lug all 30+ kilos of them to King’s Cross to get the express up to Cormac. Arrived in Durham to a rainy afternoon, to see Cormac with a brand new X3, but it turns out that it was a loaner as his car was in for a service.

Back at their place I got to meet Jacob for the first time – my sole nephew who’s almost three years old! That’s one disadvantage of living at the opposite side of the planet to your family. He’s a bundle of laughs and not too much trouble, particularly if he hasn’t been fed full of sugar. Still, it was interesting to sit in on a young family and realise just how little time you have to yourself while he’s awake… and once he does go to sleep both Belinda & Cormac are shattered. They wouldn’t change it for the world, but it reaffirmed my intention to never have kids!

While Belinda went shopping with her Mum, myself and Cormac took Jacob to the Shildon Train Museum (photos) yesterday, to tire him out before we flew to Ireland last night. It worked up to a point, but when Ryanair were an hour late (for a one hour flight) we had to respond to “I want to go on the aeroplane” repeatedly. To top it all off, Cormac bought him a toy aeroplane on the flight, so we had to listen to high-pitched toy plane noises for the rest of the flight as well :-)

The welcome party of Dad, Cliona & Dave were conspicuous by their absence when we landed as they were too busy chatting and didn’t notice us coming through customs! I haven’t been home in four years and they’re too busy yapping to notice! ;-)

It was obvious on the drive back home that a lot has changed since I was last in Dublin (notably the Luas), though since the weather’s pretty crap today, and Mum’s throwing a party here tonight for Dad’s birthday, I haven’t been out of the house. Still, I’ve another nine days in which to explore.