"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade." (Charles Dickens)
And it is a cold, cold March this year. Despite the heat of the midday sun, there is ice in the air. I hurriedly close the balcony door and curl up on the sofa to eat some more Easter chocolates. Surely I deserve it. I have spent the month trying to learn my new job and adjust to my new life, and now, miracle of miracles: I have twelve days off to forget it all and go to Ireland!
Ireland, my second homeland, so well known and so much changed. I will look at it with eyes wide open, buy the Irish Independent and eat Cadbury Creme Eggs and breathe in the smell of turf fires. I will share drinks and stories with some people I love. I will moan about the lateness of spring in a typical Irish manner. And I, a rational person from a rational, logical country where nothing strange ever happens, will fall helplessly under a spell I didn't even believe existed. I will watch with bafflement the weird things that happen and the even weirder things I do myself under this spell.
There is ice also in the Irish air this March, and there is the smell of turf fire and the blaring of a burglary alarm that nobody bothers to turn off, and there is magic.
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