I suppose I shouldn’t laugh… when I was growing up, the cool kids were driving around in ‘81 Toyoto Corollas with windscreen stickers bearing the legend, “Dance your ass off to Tweed”. And I grew up just a few miles from the musical nexus that was Foster & Allen and T R Dallas…

A sure sign of summer despite yet more hailstones today – A bunch of Cowslips amid Forget-Me-Nots in the Rusheen Bay Park near Barna Woods in Galway.

L E Roisin approaching Galway Harbour on Friday evening.

The Sea Fisheries Protection Authority (SFPA) are running adverts on Irish radio at the moment, though I’m not sure why. The SFPA is charged with ensuring that fish quotas are observed by fishing boats. The sharp end of this work is done at sea – the SFPA, along with the naval service, stop and check fishing boats to see what, and how much of, fish stocks are being netted. If a fishing crew have caught a protected species, or exceeded their allowed quota of a permitted species, the naval service escort the fishing boat to the nearest port (and, by extension, the nearest District Court).

In the eyes of some Irish fishermen, the SFPA catch more than their fair share of Irish fishing boats, and I doubt if an advert [which merely explains the function of the SFPA] will change that opinion. It’s a bit like the police running an ad to explain that the reason they arrest people is because, well, it’s their job.

Though the sun shone in the early morning, it rained for most of today in Galway so hard that one couldn’t see across the bay towards the Burren Hills. Yesterday was the opposite. Early, heavy rain gave way to a clear, sunny day in Galway and Clare. The photograph above was taken around 10.30am yesterday as the cloud cleared over Abbey Hill near New Quay.

Canon 5D, lens=24-105mm@24mm, aperture=f11,speed = 1/60, ISO=200,tripod, polarizer. [I was originally going to use a graduated neutral density filter on this shot, but the reflection from the grass was so strong, there was no need].