The first three days of April are known as the borrowed days and someone today said that they are known as Old Cows Days. Of course Patrick Kenny has another name for them and I cannot remember what he calls them. Anyhow the last day turned out to be bright and sunny and the papers were predicting 13 C. The river has risen quite a bit in the last week and the lower jetty has water overlapping.

Good news from our back yard. A robin has built a nest in the beer shed and this year she has chosen WKD or wicked as her sponsor as the nest is plonked right in the middle of a partly used box of this blue drink. So far there are three eggs and the nest is reasonably safe on a high shelf but cats have been known to leap. Two years ago the robin was obviously on Coke and she used their crate to house the nest in the mineral shed.

This evening five men arrived into the pub. They told us that they had been cruising upstream on a Silverline cruiser and had reached Carrick-on-Shannon and were now on their return journey. They were German but live on Borquit Island, which is off the coast of Germany. They live in a town with a population of 5,500 which will rise to 50,000 during the summer months. The five were taking a break before the holiday season began. They were playing a dice game and they said that they had a piano accordion on the boat which was collected. The player had a great selection of tunes including Irish, Scotch and everyday favourites. Soon he was joined by a friend of Mick Doherty on guitar, Joe Hamm on the bodhran and Mick on trombone. Pat played a few tunes on the piano. There were about twenty people around for what turned out to be an enjoyable couple of hours to end the Borrowed last day.

Colin and Mike joined up with Louise on Saturday night to play a gig in Dublin and it seems that on next Saturday they are playing in Thurles. Better check her website for details.