DUBLIN!

Three hours of sleep later I'm on the plane to Ireland, where I've never been before. I'm hazy and feeling slightly worse for wear, so my immediate plan is to find a hostel and rest for a while before hitting the streets. However, I arrive just as they are cleaning the rooms and aren't too happy about my placs for sleep, so I've no choice but to busk, really!

This job constantly amazes me... on the corner of EARL STREET NORTH and MARLBOROUGH STREET I make five Euro on my first song and it's a great start and sign for things to come. Three songs in, Patrick approaches me; an Irish musician who's busked around Europe and who shares his tips with me - Budapest, Greece and Croatia sound fabulously lucrative as well as loads of fun. He tells me about various festivals he's recently been to and the community of buskers in Croatia that support each other, and I feel stoked to be a part of this world, or at least on the fringes of it...

A song or two later I notice I'm being filmed by a rather Italian looking man who keeps periodically throwing Euro coins in my case, possibly so I don't stop and ask him what he's doing. I finish the song I'm playing and he promises to email me the video - he's a musician himself (actually not Italian as it turns out, but from the U.S, near Boston) and he plays my guitar while I sing 'Like A Rolling Stone' with him - Patrick comes back with his guitar and is incredulous to see me jamming away with another stranger- he asks me if I'm trying to start some kind of street band or something! We're certainly a bit of a spectacle on the street by this stage... it's a whole lot of good 'craic', as they say in these parts.

So, after half an hour of busking I have the promise of a place to stay and play on the West Coast of Ireland, a video in the (e) mail, and the offer of dinner from a lovely Zimbabwean woman who stops to listen and talks to me about how important it is to play music... it's all happening so fast but I'm not overwhelmed, though I do start to tire in another hour so take a break after an easy 35 Euro's - more than enough for my return ticket to Galway in a few days. I'm off to find the vegetarian restaurant Patrick told me about, and also to take my guitar in for a check-up - too many plane rides lately have not been ideal for her and she's beginning to sound a bit tweaky...