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MY EUROPE DIARY - Dublin 

FRIDAY 21 AUGUST

Travel day.  Airport, plane, airport.  Dublin planes have no aisle chairs for wheelchair users -- they have the airport ambulance officers carry them off instead.  Dublin wheelchair taxis have no securing straps at all, so Anne bounces around as in a pinball machine.  We are staying at a modern university hall of residence looking exactly like all other muhors.   The normal room charge is I£18 per night, but because we are a large party the conference organisers have managed to get us a special rate of I£30.

Working out how to use the apartment facilities deserves a PhD all by itself.

To operate shower, we eventually deduced,

•  switch on by pulling cord of ceiling switch in bathroom
• turn water knob fully on
•  turn power selector to highest number
•  select temperature by turning temperature control knob in direction of arrow.

To operate heater

• set knob at left back of heater to No Boost
•  turn knob at right back of heater to setting 5 (Cold Weather)
•  turn round switch at front of heater to 6
•  turn thermostat near door to 20

Chernobyl was less complicated than that, and look what happened there.

SATURDAY 22 AUGUST

Catchup day.  Rose spends many irreplaceable hours that will never come again doing ironing.  (And washing Chris's socks! RC)
Chris leads group in a long and exhausting trek to Joyce's Martello Tower.  Find it ruined by commercial development/adaptation/poor signage.  Resolve to complain to press weakened only by checking to find that Joyce's tower was at Sandycove, not Sandymount (or is it the other way about?) and that we have thus been wasting our reverence on an unworthy object.

SUNDAY 23 AUGUST

Busy writing our papers for the ISAAC conference.  Meet other conferees.  Anne adds "Please don't patronise me, you bastard." to her Macaw repertoire, after speaking delegate carefully explains to her that Schubert was a composer.

At 11.45 pm Chris completes the final touches on his paper on communication aid users and the law for delivery tomorrow morning.  Reads it to Anne & Rose to check for length.

Rose says utter crap.

Back to drawing-board.  Everybody up till 2.

MONDAY 24 AUGUST

Up at 6 to cut and paste from other papers.

Complete paper in time for presentation at 10 -- first session of conference.  Tepid response from small audience. 

(Paper much improved and audience quite respectable -- RC)

In evening boozeup with Guiness and free Irish whiskey tasting.

Rose stays up till 2 writing her own talk.

TUESDAY 25 AUGUST

In the morning Anne's poster session on the Communication Aid Users' Society, with a short address on the Macaw.

A good talk, but when Rose tries to save it she erases the whole machine.  In the afternoon Rose's first paper.  Well received.  Then off to Royal Hospital Kilmainham, an enormous and elegant 18thC barracks with great hall, chapel, and plentiful Guiness. 

Chris remarks to attendant "Nice place you have here."  Attendant says unsmilingly "It isn't ours.  We didn't build it.  It was left to us by the British."  Bear a good grudge, those Irish.

Rose stays up till 2 writing her next talk.

WEDNESDAY 26 AUGUST

Rose's main paper, on the heightened risk of being labelled as intellectually impaired if you can't speak.  Full (capacity only 80) room and people turned away.  Psychologist stands up at the end and says "But what can we do?"  Rose says "I thought there would be more questions."  Someone says "But we all agree with you."

(This is a first.  I must be losing my touch. RC)

Someone knows where Christopher Nolan's (Under the Eye of the Clock) sister works, so we try to raise him.  Sister off sick.  Blast.

Rose stays up till 2 writing her next talk.

THURSDAY 27 AUGUST

Rose's third paper, on two people who lost speech due to encephalitis and recovered it 8 & 14 years later after using facilitated communication.  Well received, by small audience.  Last paper of conference.

Anne has an intense chat with Michael Williams, disability rep on ISAAC.

"I think the conference is run by professionals who shit on parents and users."

Rose transmits "Anne thinks that the conference is run by competent and well-meaning professional people who however occasionally tend understandably not to take absolutely full account of all the views of parents and users."  Anne calls Michael's position that of 'token crip'.  May need some followup.

In the evening off to Molloy, a monologue based on Beckett.  Theatre accessible, playlet funny.  Chat with actor in bar after.

Rose up till 2 reading papers for research seminar.

FRIDAY 28 AUGUST

Rose off to

Trinity College, Dublin

 for Research Seminar.  Chris and Anne shop for souvenirs.  Look at book of Kells at Trinity (or, in Anne's case, the side of the display cabinet holding the Book of Kells).  Dinner at Italian restaurant with German colleagues from ISAAC who spent time with Rose in Cologne in May.

Rose has early night: in bed by 1.45.

SATURDAY 29 AUGUST

Anne looks at Trinity College Library long room.

A wonderful collection of crap books.  (AM)

On to wander around

Dublin Castle

state rooms.  Anne likes the room where wounded Irish Patriot Connolly weltered in his own blood for a short while after the 1916 rebellion (two doors up from the Viceroy's throne room) before they executed him.

On to play 'At Swim-two-birds' underneath Abbey theatre, down three flights of steps, with Anne adding to the level of difficulty by having a small seizure on the way down.  Play not bad, although it brings out Flann O'Brien's limitations of characterisation rather.

Rose up till 2 packing.

Next: London