I've always liked that phrase. My first official permanent three-day weekend has gone very well. Friday morning I took Paddy to the beach to swim. His happy place. Before that I had a chai latte in Holywood, waiting for the tide to come in farther.

Then I went to The Range to rent the Rug Doctor to clean my rugs. Their equipment was being serviced so I went next door to Lidl and bought a rug cleaner – for the cost of two Rug Doctor rentals. I also bought three pieces of agility equipment for Paddy. I love Lidl.

Once I read the manual and assembled it, i cleaned the five rugs downstairs. The ongoing heat spell means they'll dry quickly. Unfortunately, no attachment so I couldn't clean the runner on the stairs. My reward in the evening was a film at QFT – Blind Ambition, about four Zimabwean refugees who are smuggled into South Africa, nearly dying in the process. They start at the bottom in restaurants then work their way up to sommelier. The documentary charts their journeys from Zim to the world wine tasting championship in France.

One of the heart breaking things about refugees is how much they love their homelands. Despite the corruption and dysfunction that force them to leave, they long to go back. If only...

Saturday morning was Redburn Park with my tireless dog. At 11 a.m. I went to a driving range with my friend Patricia, then we had a very good lunch. I read a lot in the afternoon then went to the Lyric in the evening for an extraordinary night of music, poetry, and prose curated by Northern Ireland poet – and longtime Princeton professor – Paul Muldoon. His band, Rogue Elephant, puts his poems to music. So he would come out, explain the context for the poem, read a stanza, exit stage left, and let the band rip. It would have been an entertaining night had that been all, however we also were treated to:

Roddy Doyle reading a very funny short story about a man whose mother has died and left everything to his brother.

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

a Cork poet and inspiration to Muldoon who read multiple poems. I've copied her name from Wiki, for obivous reasons, and can't reset the type. Her most affecting poems, for me, were those about refugees and part two of a trilogy based on the Divine Comedy ("I read it during the Lockdown for the first time in 50 years"). It spoke of spending the legacy of hardworn forbears on pursuits both romantic and futile. I can relate to that. I remember her use of the word 'accounting' at the beginning and the end very effectively. The first in the context of the grinding work of earlier generations to survive and in the last to account for how this investment was squandered.

Zoe Conway and John McIntyre on fiddle and guitar. All I can say is look them up on You Tube. Oh my word the talent in these two young people. I think her fiddling was better than anything I heard during Trad Week and her voice--perfection. They sang two songs in Irish and her inflections and scales (whatever it's called when a voice quickly jumps up and down notes) were riveting. Huge applause from the sold out audience.

Muldoon's poems/lyrics were wry and full of word play. The one I remember had a refrain: All grannies have a service dog. Preceded by:

*Dead Irish poets are buried in the bog

Catastrophes have a back catalog

Democracies throw up a demagogue

And now it's Sunday. Paddy has been to Belvoir, had a bath, and has been through a tunned a few times, with lots of kibble coaxing. In an hour I'm off to Galgorm Hotel to watch the ISPS Handa golf tournament, featuring Leona Maguire, the heroine of the Solheim Cup, and Olivia Mehaffey, another young NI player.

14 August