Scissors, paper, rock. Keen readers will have noted this blog’s disappointment with the Rock of Cashel and its bored-looking staff (see below: What a welcome). A couple of days after the Cashel non-experience we took the Texans to the Rock of Dunamase. That was a great hit: ‘much better than Cashel’ they chorused. More exciting, more left to the imagination, more nooks and crannies, more unkempt. Please keep Dunamase a secret otherwise they’ll start charging, and one will have to fight through turnstiles and so on. When you’re up there, you can understand its strategic military value. Great views to the Wicklows, the Slieve Blooms,  towards Nenagh, towards Kildare and the bogs. It puts me in mind of the castle on Kirrin Island (Enid Blyton Famous Five, remember?). Oh, happy days.

I can understand why people want to be buried in the graveyard next door (one of ‘my’ churches). You feel in touch with the spirits of history in that place. When Susan and I came to look at the this job back in March 2011, I was pretty much bowled over by the spirit of Dunamase. It  puts the parish pump politics of the Church of Ireland in their right place – which, dear Reader, is probably best left to your imagination.