bookshoplaura

On Sunday morning I woke feeling tired and groggy despite only having three drinks the night before but I think lack of sleep and too much coffee was starting to catch up with me. I  got up early to take advantage of the free breakfast our hostel was providing but it turns out that was only toast, not much good to me so we headed back to bed for a bit before packing our stuff and checking out. We went searching for food in the city and it was Sunday morning before 11 so most places were closed but we eventually found a place that was open and had porridge and coffee so I was happy.  After breakfast we took off looking for St Finbarr's Cathedral as Stephen wanted some pictures of it and we had time to kill. Once we arrived, I tried to find a corner to read my book ( ideally I'd have been lying on a bed but with our early checkout time, that was not possible) and Stephen kept asking me to be the focal point in his photos. As you might be able to tell, I usually do a terribl...

For the first time ever I think I have actually done too many things over the last few days  for one blog post. This is not good for my blog or my need for sleep but otherwise good for my life. It's okay though because I have a perfectly reasonable explanation for my carry on. This weekend myself and the boyfriend are going out a full year and we had made all of the plans for celebration. We were  going to Cork for the weekend but first we were celebrating Halloween night down here. I think we might have actually taken on too much for one weekend because I know I am barely sitting upright now on my couch to type this. So Halloween night will get the short shift in blog terms as I have far too much of Saturday to write about and I need to lie down somewhere so I can start feeling like a human again but I will summarize like a pro and you'll a general idea. We went to see The Riptide Movement play in Shortts bar and they played up a storm to a very drunk crowd. I was sober a...

So it's officially Halloween and I survived another kids event. The good news is my face is no longer green and from what I could tell the kids at the party had a good time but I am sure if I am still the witch in residence come next Halloween, I will do one or two things differently. I am not going to go into the minutiae of my day leading up to the party for two reasons. One it would be really boring but also I might accidentally give away some sort of trade secrets and get myself into lots of trouble. I will give you some idea of why I was almost a bald witch by the time the party got going. So because of my weekend off falling on a bank holiday and then being very close to my holidays this weekend, I only ended working two days this week. Seeing as I am not back in work till Tuesday next week, I had a whole lot of work to do as well as all the party stuff. It made for a very stressful morning. I did get almost all of it done and then manage to go out and buy party sw...

I am sure I have mentioned many times that I am off Halloween weekend because of my first anniversary with the boyfriend and because we're going away. Now technically we'll still be around on Halloween night itself but while we were making plans, I didn't fancy being stuck in work until 9.30 that night. This is all well and good and I'm sure we'll have a great time but one knock on effect of this weekend away is that for the second year in a row, I won't be in work on Halloween and not to sell myself a cornerstone to the store but in my absence, the children's section can get a little messy and of course no Halloween party gets thrown. Mostly this is good as Halloween parties in a bookshop can get a little manic at best. However I then feel bad for not celebrating it particularly when you have parents asking what's planned in the shop and my eyes dart around nervously as I look for something pressing that needs doing while I mutter nothing and promptly...

So some of you might know that Stephen and I will be together a year this weekend. We decided to mark this event by going away for the weekend. As I am already broker than a joke your dad would tell, I decided we'll exchange cards only and that way we wont have to spend a weekend in Cork in a hotel room wishing we had money left to spend. Now in theory going away for the weekend is a lovely idea but then you factor in the chances that in November we'll be facing into some fairly miserable weather and we don't exactly have buckets of money to throw around and suddenly it all becomes a bit more challenging. Now we have been to Cork a  few times. I like Cork, it's a nice city but usually when we're down we go through our routine of lunch at Milanos (nom nom pizza) and a walk around the city maybe stopping in H&M, Tk maxx, m&s food hall and any health food shop I happen to pass. Then we'll finish it off by seeing a movie in Triskel arts centre. This week...

Having been terribly boring Saturday night and staying in only to fall asleep at a ridiculously early time, we decided that Sunday we were going out. Lucky for us Central Arts had a gig on, a chap called Jinx Lennon who was described as a satirical punk poet. Now if you are anything like me, you will have no idea what you're walking into with a description like that but with  the promise of comfy seating and a sense of adventure we said we would pop down for a look anyway. I know I have previously confessed my interest in poetry, although I am not sure confessed is the right word, it's hardly a shameful secret. I will say that the mention of poetry in an event usually piques my interest particularly if it's not your run of the mill poetry reading. A poetry reading is all very well and good if you actually like the poems being read, otherwise it can prove to be a real snooze-fest. After my recent night at a spoken word event, I am eager to go to more and when I heard abo...

On Wednesday evening just gone, myself and the boyfriend found ourselves with quite the interesting dilemma, we had to choose what to go see from a list of many. Now I used to  be the first to complain about the lack of things to do in Waterford but will admit that things seem to be changing and that complaint is becoming less and less valid. Particularly given the rise of organisations like central arts who bringing all sorts of cool and interesting things to the city. If they ever added art-house/world cinema to their bowstring then I would probably just tape a reserved for Laura sign on their squashiest couch and just move in. Of course were in the middle of the imagine arts festival right now so its less a case is there anything on and more which thing shall we pick. We eventually settled on either a gig in central hall or a play in a nearby theatre. Now I knew very little about either option so I left the choosing up to himself who after much hawing and hemming sa...