Shocking news

We arrived safely, and very surprisingly on time, in Dublin this afternoon. We stopped off in Tipperary for lunch, and for Mum to do some family history research. It is a romantic sounding place, but pretty functional in reality. The main street is a major trucking route, and like most of Ireland, three quarters of the shops are pharmacies, and most of the rest stock what could most accurately (and optimistically) be described as 'stuff'.

It's been pretty low key since then. A drink at the bar, a trip to the playground, and dinner. The Guinness and Beef casserole was uninspiring, and the whole meal was a little missing in presentation for some reason.

However, all that kind of drifts off into the unimportant parts of the world when we heard the news of the attacks in Norway today. Having just been wandering around downtown Oslo a few days ago, and having been flitting around islands just outside of Oslo, which is about all the information I have at the moment about where has been affected, it feels very close to my world. I am hoping that Espen, Ragnhild and Marie are all OK, and that the same is true of their family and friends.

I've had two of the most peaceful and pleasant evenings of my life in my Oslo summer visits, one as recently as this time last week. It is very hard to imagine the sort of pictures I have briefly seen this evening in a place like that. The rational part of my brain knows that has nothing to to with the root causes of these sorts of attacks, but it makes it more real and more shocking when they happen somewhere like that. Makes you realise that the world is a smaller and smaller place, but that we are getting no better at problem solving.

Location:Dublin