Highlights of the week ...

Well to say the least this week has been pretty interesting, beside being on water restrictions since the "Big Freeze", we have aparently had an infestation of rats as well.  I must say I haven't seen them, but our neighbors have, so we all called out pest control, I believe it happens quite often as we have a green or a field behind us and the rats come in from there, run along the wall and eat the food you leave out for the birds or your animals. 

Our wonderful kind neighbor offered to let them in on Thursday morning while I was at work and seeing as he still has a key for our house it made sense.  Now, D and I have been a bit slack since we came back from our holiday and have not put the alarm on.  So after Colin had let the pest control people in, he locked up and "ARMED" the ALARM.  I got home at about 3 ish with Emily and unlocked the door and heard beep, beep, beep, beep, thinking oh S*&t, Colin put the alarm on - I tried to reach back in my memory banks for the code and I knew it had something to do with Emily's birthday, but what?  Oh my heaven's, the thing kept saying to me "please enter the code"  and I kept entering the wrong code until ... the most deafining ear piercing alarm rang out.  The alarm system is linked directly to the security company and then to the local Garda Station (Police station for any foreigners ;)), so the next thing that happened was the telephone rang and the person on the other side of the phone wanted our secret password, I tried telling him it was a secret but he still wanted it.

The alarm kept ringing and ringing and ringing, beside having the alarm company on the one phone, I had Derrick on my mobile and Siobhan (our neighbor) had colin on her mobile, the alarm company go irrate with me when I couldn't give him the "secret" password which D had forgotten too (I told you it was a secret), but eventually had the code and managed after the 5th attempt to enter it in right.  I phoned the company to let them know, but they said unless I had the secret code they couldn't cancel the call, unless I emailed them proof of ID and a utility bill, which I duly did while D actually remembered the code and phoned me back. 

By now it was almost 5 PM, the security company phoned me back, told me the security name I had was correct and I duly went about my normal daily routine except of course for the disruption.  By 6 o'clock I had just put dinner on and Emily and I were going to sit down and watch her favourite show "Murder She wrote", when the doorbell went.   There outside the house was a big Garda Van with Blue lights and a young Garda man enquiring whether we were okay, so even though the call was cancelled they still came to check up on us, which makes you feel really safe.

Must admit that I felt very old, because the Garda in his beautiful polished uniform looked like a child to me, barley 17 I would say, I guess that happens the older you get.

Oh yes and the water Crisis, aparently reserves in Dublin are very low and they are blaming this on the big freeze and I assume too because we have not had our required rainfall for a while now, so we have been rashoned to a water tank a day, they turn it off at about 8PM and only turn it on again at 8AM, which has not affected our lifestyle as yet, so we just wait and see.