Brendan Gleeson and the Black Smudge Wednesday

Lent has now started in the household, following a domestic banquet of pancakes the night before. And I have already managed to forget about both the no-meat-today and my no-chocolate-for-Lent attempt. The cafe serving the chicken fajita and the hot chocolate made no attempts at reminding me, so I happened to carry on as usual. Trialling this Lent business and giving up chocolate for it may be looking defeat in the face, but I'm interested as to how far this chocoholic can go. Or how far she is driven without her weapon of choice. .
(O gawd I am reduced to non-mocha coffees for the next month)
Now not being a Catholic myself I wasn't really prepared for any of the rituals around it. So when the elderly lady at the girls' montessouri school came into the classroom this morning with a large black smudge all over her forehead I honestly and naturally thought she had had an early-morning battle with the car tyre, and was sympathetically drawn to telling her she had a little somthing right there on her face. Oh so glad I didn't..! Then when the middle-aged man I walked past on my way to the DART station had one too, for some reason it didn't yet click that maaybe car tyres weren't the culprits here. . It wasn't til a lady running past me at the same time as a dog-walker walking and they both were bedecked with the smudge, that a penny dropped. It was Ash Wednesday and I was in a bloomin Catholic nation!
So well done on the intellect there.
Then I added my own black smudge this evening. No, not to the forehead, but to the cooking pan. Somwwhere in the midst of cooking kids dinner and my own, I forgot to check the water steaming my vegies. It signalled its death by a slight burning smell and I found a stubborn little black bath ring around the pan. Meh. Kind of like last week when I stepped in my own Marmite drippings and successfully trod it throughout the house. Not the easiest thing to get off your con sole.

Now for some celebrity bites. Host mum and dad and I got tickets to the closing gala of the Dublin International Film Festival (lesson learnt: enter newspaper comps!), which was to show the compelling animation The Secret of Kells, with Brendan Gleeson as one of the main voices. A tad too many people in the foyer to get a decent clear photo, but there's him side-on on the red carpet! Was an awesome atmosphere to the place and wouldn't mind another one.

Just so happens the day before I had signed up at a movie extras registration/ photoshoot which may be carting the lucky of us all over Dublin county to be yelled at by some old artisty breed with pipe and tweed cap. Whatever happens. I have 11 months left here and am still pushing to opportunitise it all ;)