On some days, I just write because it’s so obvious what I need to write about that I don’t even have to think. On those days, something has happened that I just need to get rid off by typing it into this laptop that shares it with whoever wants to read it as soon as I hit the publish button. I don’t even think about who might be interested in reading this stuff because for me, it’s like an act of liberation.

Today is different.

There is the first of Advent. Being a German at heart, I went into Lidl and bought my four candles.

For the first time, each candle was of a different length – well, it’s because the one we lit today will burn over four weeks, the one we’ll light next Sunday over just 3 weeks and so on… What first looked like a mistake, makes perfect German sense! I also baked a cake, one my mother always did. All in an attempt to create a bit of this German Advent atmosphere in the middle of Drumcondra. While I was doing all this, two friends of Pádraig’s called in for a visit, and so did a neighbour bringing in an apple tart made with her neighbour’s apples. Pádraig enjoyed the banter, was really interested in some quirky news  – apparently Tom Cruise, an accomplished member of the Church of Scientology, can now fly but won’t do it -, and loved the whole atmosphere of anticipation of things to come. And things will come!

Then there is the really very funny story of someone getting my name (slightly) wrong and putting together an even funnier picture.

A German ‘Braveheart’ dressed up as a Scot fighting in Ireland… Could it get any better? On a more serious side: the HSE are finalising their service plan for 2017 these days. I just hope for their own sake that they included the An Saol Project. Because if they didn’t Braveheart’s fight for Scotland’s freedom was a piece of (Apple-) cake compared to the storm that will come over them.

Today, the discussion about whether Fidel Castro was or was not one of the giants of international politics, someone who took away Cuba from the US Mafia and gambling bosses and gave it back to its people – or a ruthless dictator killing hundreds of his fellow citizens.

What is true, no matter in which way you look at it: there are no homeless people and there are not people on hospital trolleys waiting to be treated in Cuba. And I don’t think they would just abandon survivors of severe Acquired Brain Injuries, rather than helping all they could to all survivors to have a life, travel on the Dreamboat.