Day 38

Well as excting as yesterday wasn't. Today had adventure all the way.

We were off on our school trip! Alas it was a 6am start for me, and I wasn't really in to that at all. But like mummy's little soldier, I still got up and stumbled in to the car to meet the others at the school for 7.30 for the 2 hour drive to watch some cheese being made.

I'm pretty ashamed at what happened next. I really am. So I'm driving along the N25 listening to the radio (they've played Footloose a lot recently) and I'm thinking "Do I really want to spend 4 hours in a coach today?". The answer was no so I turned the car around and went back to sleep. I'm going to see cheese being made one weekend soon anyway.

But all was not lost for the day, I knew they were going to see a guy called Frank Hederman, an artisan smoker of fish. And that was at 2pm and only about 30mins drive away, so I caught up with them then. And glad I was too. This guy has a very small operation, just 1 shed as his smoker. Personality the size of a house though. This guy was a real life Willy Wonker. Amazing. As a little plug, you can buy his stuff in Selfridges. I can recommend it. The smoked salmon was stunning. Apparently the smoked mussels are better.

So that brought me up to about 3:30. And I followed the rest of the school to the Market in Cork and had a little look around with them, picked up a couple of presents for Therese, as she passed her driving test today, and headed back of home. Just as I was giving her the presents. OUCH!. I'm doubled up on the floor screaming in agony holding my jaw. A few minutes later, once I can feel through the pain, I realise that I can't close my jaw anymore. There's about a 5mm gap between closing. And then, one of the dogs, Maggie, decides to say hello by scratching her paw in my eye. Talk about kicking a man when he's down.

I wasn't particularly happy now. Eating a sandwich later was pretty much impossible. My eye was red and watering. My jaw hurting and not closing still. I went to be. Was this because I didn't go to watch the cheese? Karma.