Happy St Patricks Day

Some people know I live the UK, but my family is actually Irish.  My mother was born in Dublin, and I have large number of relatives who visit all the time to drink and sing terribly (admittedly I’ve spent more time in Glasgow than in Dublin as I also had an aunt who lived alone there and every holiday as a kid I had to go stay with her in her tenement flat in Pollock.)  My dad always claimed that we were cheated out of some inheritance in Ireland, a stable or farm or something.  I don’t really like horses that much – stupid animals that are constantly surprised by things they’ve seen hundreds of times before – so it doesn’t really bother me.

Anyway, today we celebrate Saint Patrick, who banished the snakes from Ireland.  Also, any evidence that snakes had ever lived in Ireland in the first place – that’s just how thorough he was.