Beyond the Pale: Updates

Friendliness:

When I mentioned how friendly the Irish are, I neglected to tell you the sweetest and funniest example. The first time Kevin and I walked out the causeway, we took pictures of each other. A spry elderly woman out for, what I assumed was, her daily constitutional asked us if we would like her to take our picture together. We happily accepted her gracious offer. While she took our picture she said, “I’m not very good at this but I get asked all the time.” Here is the picture she took of us:

Those are our feet in the upper right corner.

The Beast:

The plumber who came out to kill the beast installed some sort of plug in the shower drain and it worked quite well. I had an occasional and faint unpleasant smell emanating from the bathroom, but nothing I’d complain about. Until last Sunday. When I walked in the door after church I thought, “My God, what happened in here?” The Beast was back and with a vengeance. I called the property management company and they said the problem is that the shower is not used regularly (I have two). They asked me to run the water in the shower for two minutes twice a day for a few days and then every day for two minutes after that. The woman I talked to commented on the warm weather we had the week before. She was right—we reached 70 degrees two different times! She was also right about the Beast. It seems the Beast cannot be killed, he can only be kept at bay.

The Scrap Heap:

I watched the mountain of scrap metal grow with both fascination and occasional bad humor. I found the process surprisingly intriguing but the erratic noise of the machines and the metal hitting metal challenged my patience. As the pile grew, I was surprised to twice observe people climbing the old metal looking for treasure. The heap looked to me like lock jaw waiting to happen. I was also interested to observe a group of about nine adolescents near the pile one evening. They appeared to be staging some sort of fake fight. I assumed their “weapons” were scavenged from the scrap heap.

It took seven days to build the pile after which I experienced two days of peace and quiet. On the third day after completion, yesterday, I woke to the sight of a large ship, the Suurhusen St. John’s docked next to the scrap heap. Workers loaded scrap metal onto the Suurhusen until 7:30 PM last night. The job wasn’t done, so I assumed the work would continue today; I doubted the ship would sit all weekend. Boy was I right. At 6:00 AM this morning (today is a Saturday!), the noisy work began again and continued until the job was completed at around 10:30 AM. Whew. I’m not sure why they needed to start at 6:00 AM because the ship appears ready to go, but it cannot go anywhere until high tide, just before 8:00 PM.

I learned from email inquiry that “the scrap metal is loaded and shipped out of the port at regular intervals” and Galway Harbor Company receives “notification approximately one week beforehand.” In other words, “get used to it.” I am considering working somewhere other than my apartment when the next round begins.

The pictures below (and these are a fraction of the pictures I took) are photographic evidence of how fascinated I was by the whole spectacle.