The List

So notice given, flights booked and a mountain of things that needed to be done!!! Where was I to start???

I made a list of things that needed to be done. Although quite concise, I’m a terrible procrastinator, so I knew I’d be doing well to cover half of this stuff early on. Anyway, it looked something like this (in no particular order and probably in no way interesting):

• Get a Police Certificate in Dublin check for my working visa.
• Get my licence renewed in Dublin (which given my situation would be far from easy).
• Book return flights back to Dublin to sort out the above and a final flight back to Dublin from the UK.
• Give my ‘moving out notice’.
• Arrange for my stuff to be shipped back to Ireland from England.
• Book a hire car to get around while trying to sort out all of the necessary stuff before I leave.
• Get the gaping hole in my tooth filled (I’d just broken a big filling).
• Get an international drivers permit sorted out.
• Get three months worth of college work to distinction standard, submitted a month earlier than the submission deadline.
• Pack up my belongings to prepare for shipping (being a bit of a hoarder I’ve amassed quite a bit of stuff in two-and-a-half years).
• Book flights/accommodation to/for Sweden - I’d previously made a commitment to a friend to go see The Stone Roses in Hultsfred. (Three days I could scarcely afford to give up.)
• Put time aside to practice for/play 3 gigs that I’d already made a commitment to play.
• Arrange a bit of a farewell party before I leave the UK.
• Arrange a bit of a farewell party before I leave Dublin.
• Spend as much time as I can with my family and friends and see as much as possible of the newest arrivals (my nephew and neice Kealan and Robyn and my best mates twin girls Aoibha and Caoimhe) cos they'd be substantially bigger next time I saw them.
• Try to get all this done while being massively distracted because Ireland are playing at their first European Championship finals in almost 25 years!

So that was the challenge, it was around the start of May and there was a lot of organising to be done, forms to be filled, etc etc. The following few weeks would go surprisingly smoothly but I wasn't counting any baby hens!


Till my next scrawling...


Do chara, do mhac, do dheartháir...


Damien