To celebrate the part-Irishness of my husband and son, I did wear green today.  I find that people who don’t know me are a bit surprised to discover that my son is part Irish.  As a tribute to this Irishness, I seek out shamrock shaped dishes and collect shamrock tea cups although not Beleek tea cups as they cost far more than I want to pay.  We visited the Beleek factory when we visited Ireland and came away empty handed as the Canadian dollar did not buy much.

I joined the U of T workout today and attendance was about one-third of last week.  Could it be the lure of a good old Irish pub and a tankard of Guiness? Well none for me today, or tomorrow but I will republish a favourite photo taken at the Guiness factory.

As for the run I was pleased to do 10 X 200 metres in 42-46 seconds per lap. We did some amazingly hard stair exercises of hopping from step to step on the same leg! Give that a try and see what you think. It didn’t help that the stairs were concrete.  I’m gonna get faster but it will take time.

It has been a troubling week for the world so instead of the “may the wind be at your back” poem I’ll conclude with this provocative Yeats offering.

The Second Coming
by W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?