Our week in Ireland

Everyone enjoying a Christmas dance at the end of the Bray Arts Club meeting

So, on the 3rd December I set out for Bray, County Wicklow. My suitcase got a thorough rummaging through at the airport (due to the amount of metal in my suitcase: two penny whistles, a flexi-tone, and a melodica amongst other things) and it took me three hours to travel the 45 minute journey from the airport to Bray in my hire car (As far as I can remember I did three detours, one in totally the wrong direction, and two through the centre of Dublin in rush hour...), but otherwise things went without a hitch!

So , arriving very late there was no time to relax, and after meeting Bobby Chen at the B&B we immediately sped off to the Bray Arts Club meeting. We were received with such friendliness for which we are very grateful: our presentation about the project went well and we got lots of interesting feedback from the people there. One lady told us about her great-great grandfather who had been a Captain on a Ship, and managed to steer the vessel back to Bray despite a huge disaster at sea. The purpose of spending a week in Co. Wicklow was to gather as many stories as we could about the area, as well as doing the school workshops, so the meeting was very useful as well as fun. Another member told us about the erosion of the Greystones Cliffs (about a mile of land has disappeared into the sea in the last century), which was very interesting, and I think that the second movement of the piano concerto that I will write will be in some way based on this.

We didn't leave the meeting until gone 11pm, and (after briefly exploring Bray's nightlife) we went back to the B&B, and had thankfully little time to think (and panic) about the following day's first workshop!