Around here

Low tide at Rostrevor Bay Wednesday night

We've been having some lovely September sunshine these past few days - and great sunsets.   I find it hard capturing sunsets, even with the special setting on my camera - it never quite gets the light right.   

Still, I'm enjoying practising.   

And the crescent moon over Finn McCool last night was gorgeous. 

It's hard to believe it's already Autumn, and I can't believe that we've all been so focussed on the weather this year lol   My American friends on Facebook are welcoming in the season of jeans and sweaters and boots and bonfires - we have hardly been out of the jeans and sweaters and boots and the fire has been lit many nights over the past few months...  

We even had a bonfire last night to clear up some of the garden rubbish.

But in spite of the cold summer, my passion flower which never gets any direct sun, bloomed all through August - a couple of blooms a day ... It's such a lovely flower.  

The first of my lovely group of singers started up a few weeks back and now I'm abandoning them to head out of the road for a run of concerts in Europe.  My friend Brona will be taking over for one of the weeks before she leaves to get married and then we get back into full swing once we return.

There's something so exciting about packing up for a tour - seeing old friends again after a year or two's absence, meeting new ones along the way.  Visiting neighbourhoods we're familiar with and this time going to a couple of new towns.   

And most of all being able to focus on just one thing for a length of time.  

We've a couple of very long drives on this trip, but still the focus of the day is on the concert and much and all as I love my singing groups, my students and my work with Csilla and the Emigrants Tale, it's delightful to focus on my own playing, singing and writing for a while. 

The few days before leaving reminds me of packing up for boarding school when I was a kid.   There was an old trunk in the house and as everything from the list was bought, or made, it was added to the trunk.  I'm sure I unpacked and repacked that thing everyday of that summer before finally making the 25 mile journey to school.   

That excitement of packing still catches me - and getting all the things ready from the list is pure pleasure. 

I'll keep you posted along the way on our travels - the full list is at my website - sign up for my mailing list when you're there if you'd like to get occasional updates of things going on that don't involve photographs of flowers :) 

So here's to la belle France, then Germany (hopefully there won't be any delays getting in and out of Munich with the immigrant crisis), then Denmark for a day and back through Germany to Luxembourg for our final port of call and back through France for the ferry home.