I was out enjoying the sunshine yesterday. The warmth triggers bliss. Everyone I met seemed happy. Temple Bar with its tourists, is far more crowded then usual. But colourful scenes abound with the buskers, painters and musicians! A right picture of theatrical merriment. I always seem to leave places during the good times, although I'll be back in the height of summer.

At the moment, I'm halfway through Irish novelist and playwright, Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture. Barry is also a wonderful actor to his own narration, as I recently discovered, when I went to hear him read at Trinity College. His writing can hardly be faulted. In The Secret Scripture, Barry mimics the cracked whispers of an ancient crone believed to be 100 years old, recalling her days of flushed youth amidst poverty and survival in old Ireland. The prose sounds musical in that sing-song-ish tavern way and it all feels a bit like reading a heartwarming Irish classic as in say, Maria Edgeworth. As he performed an excerpt, Barry cackled through the old lady's expressions and playacted a weary hunchback with her talent for darting back from fear with passionate alacrity.

My yellow fever vaccination is scheduled for next Wednesday and I should be ready to go after that if I want. I lost my world health card somewhere in London a couple of years ago. All I'll do is a lug a light bag of clothes with a few books and I'll be set for my travel to Nairobi first of all. I'm also taking in the Zanzibar and am going to attempt my half-finished novel and children's story. It doesn't matter after embarking on all the sights, smells and sounds of beautiful East Africa, that I complete my stories in Dublin, on my return. It's just that I need a fresh start to my writing and to recapture the flavour of a land I love. This time round, I'll also be studying East African literature in an enthusiastic new light.

I'll still be filling in my blog, in Africa.