It’s clearer out this morning, and my walking buddy CJ texts to suggest an outing. We meet up at our usual time at 1:30pm and head north east to some parts of Dublin I haven’t seen before, namely the North Strand and Clontarf.
As we approach the North Strand neighborhood, we pass by Five Lamps, which is a well-known landmark to all Dubliners. The Five Lamps was constructed in the late 19th century to commemorate a British general’s conquests in India. It originally had water fountains with four basins at its base during a time when there was no running water in homes. The inspiration of the “five lamps” design and name could taken from the five roads that meet at the intersection and/or the five major battles that the British Empire fought in India. There is a local saying, “Do you know the Five Lamps?”, which is a peculiarly Dublin way to tell someone to shut-up or “feck-off.” From what I understand, no one actually knows how this old saying originated.
A map showing relative positions of locations mentioned in this post:
We walk along the Clontarf Promenade for awhile, and then it begins to rain, so we decide to take the bus back to city centre. We end up clocking over 11,000 steps, so walking all the way back would’ve been quite the trek! The bus drops us off near the Spire on O’ Connoll Street, and we part ways around 4:00pm as daylight is just starting to fade (sunset is around 5:10pm these days).
Yesterday the number of new COVID-19 cases in Ireland fell below 1,000 for the first time since before Christmas. However, there had been a backlog of positive test results being reported, so some of the previous daily figures may have been misleadingly higher than the actual number of new infections… so the recent decrease may not be as large as the numbers might make it seem. This has raised some concern that the decrease in new cases has been slowing or plateauing. At the same time, Ireland’s vaccine uptake rate is ahead of most of Europe at 4% of the total population having received a first shot, although this is far behind the UK’s rate of almost 15% (even Northern Ireland is above 10%).
Late last night I heard from my friends J & S in Dallas. They said they were able to get vaccinated recently, apparently because there were available doses of the Moderna vaccine that were going to go bad and so appointments were opened up to the general public. I’ve seen reports of vaccination sites being opened up in the SF Bay Area as well. Obviously Ireland and the EU are way behind, but hopefully the pace will pick up soon as more vaccine doses are made available.
Until next time….
