Happy Halloween / Samhain blessings! Samhain (“SAH-win”) is the ancient Gaelic festival marking the ending of summer and beginning of winter. It that starts at sunset on Oct 31 and ends at sunset the following day, Nov 1. Daylight savings time ended for Europe this past weekend, so it definitely feels like a shift in seasons with sunset before 5:00pm now. However, the weather has been unseasonably warm in Ireland (and the rest of Europe) with highs in low 60s F / upper teens C. There has been lots of rain over the last couple of weeks, and even some thunderstorms. Still there are many bright and beautiful days interspersed between the wet ones.
My friend S. came to visit this weekend. The October bank holiday, which us observed on the last Monday of the month, just happened to fall on Halloween this year. We went to see Robbie Williams in concert at the 3Arena on Saturday night — for those who don’t recognise the name, he is a popular UK pop star who got his start in the 1990s as a member of the boy band Take That. I had heard of him but don’t know his music, but nonetheless it was a fun evening out.
On Sunday, we met up with my other friend CJ for brunch and then went to see ”The Banshees of Inisherin,” a new Irish film starring Brendon Gleeson and Colin Farrell, that has been getting lots of press lately. It is a very dark comedy (!?), set on a fictional island off the West coast of Ireland in 1923 during the civil war (it was filmed on multiple locations on the Aron Islands). The spectacular scenery and knitwear costuming alone made it worth seeing. What more, I decided it would be a good opportunity to check out The Stella cinema in Rathmines, which has been restored to its 1920s art deco glory and outfitted with posh red armchairs and sofas — not a typical movie theatre.
Later that evening we went to a special Halloween haunted-house-like event at the National Leprechaun Museum, which is actually much less of a tourist trap than it sounds — it’s really a museum dedicated to Irish folklore. My friend B. works as a tour guide / storyteller at the museum and was one of a handful of performers who recounted creepy ghost stories based on Irish myths. There were also some live musicians who were incorporated into the performances. It was very well done.
Until next time….
