the things I said and didn't say

It's the first of October and I haven't written any of the blog posts I thought of writing. I haven't written about the Bubble exhibition at the Science Gallery and the lecture on food foams I went to there. I haven't posted any of my pictures of either. I haven't written about “Arthur's Day” or Culture Night or the differences between them. I haven't written about finally capitulating to the inevitable and going to IKEA and then much less inevitably but with some satisfaction going to B&Q and the many and significant differences between those two big box stores. I didn't label the pictures from a recent trip to Kerry so that they'd be comprehensible to anyone bar myself, though at least I did post them. I continued not to post any pictures of graffiti, even though I've taken many, in a number of different countries and indeed continents. I didn't comment on the fact that Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate bars are now made with fair trade cocoa (I assume, it could be fair trade sugar as well), which is A Good Thing. I didn't write about the phone opinion poll I took part in. And I didn't write about a number of fair trade developments, and didn't post the pictures I took of the related chocolate poster. I haven't written about Lisbon, the vote on which is tomorrow, and I haven't written about NAMA or moving banks in an effort to become more ethical or at least support the only remaining worker/account-holder owned building society in the country, EBS. I didn't write about the on-going enormous scale of suicide in Ireland, prompted by the suicide of Irish boxer Darren Sutherland in London, or how one might hope that his tragic death could instead help wake Irish society up to dealing properly with suicide, which it seems almost everyone in the country is touched by at some point. At home, I didn't write about the tomatoes I harvested from our courtyard, or post the photos I took of them, or mention the upcoming participation of our building in Open House Dublin. I didn't complete and post the piece I half-wrote two months or so ago about consumer rights, and while I was at it I didn't write about PRSI contributions, not getting money back for eye-tests and glasses, or the inscrutable, and apparently deeply inefficient, idiosyncrasies of entitlements to such social insurance-based 'benefits' in this country. I didn't write about any of this, or about coming back, probably the most important thing to happen, to me, in the past three years. So you'll just have to imagine it all, and what I might have said about those topics, unless I ever do get around to writing any of them. Because though I haven't written much, here I am, and I'm very happy to be here.