When the sun shines, as it did all day today, the grass in Ireland is not so much emerald green as florescent DayGlo green.

You won’t get the full effect from this picture unless you sit in a darkened room with your monitor turned up to maximum brightness and contrast. This is the garden of the College of the Church of St Mary in Youghal.

There’s been a garden here since medieval times.

The college became a mansion and is now an office building, but the garden is still there.

The church is still doing fine…

… though due to the fact that Youghal (pronounced somewhere between a US Southerner’s y’all and a sailor’s yawl) is a great place to invade Ireland from it is anglican rather than catholic. Normally I’m happy to expound on the tangled history of the places we visit, but quite frankly the history of anglo-irish relations for the past thousand years (and viking-irish relations before that) is so depressing I’m not up for it tonight. I’m not going to tell you about the gatehouse used as a torture chamber, the box that Oliver Cromwell was standing on when he burst into tears, or the house where someone threw a bucket of water at Sir Walter Raleigh. Instead we’re going to look at the really important things in churches, skulls and boobs.

But first, the strange story of the helicopter in the graveyard.

At the time the Irish government did not want to admit that they were co-operating with the British on anything, so the whole helicopter incident was suppressed. Except this was Ireland where even if the truth was available, the fantasies would be much more interesting.

The graveyard is bounded on one side by the old city wall…

… and has spectacular views down to the Blackwater Estuary.

In the church, there is as fine a collection of skulls as you could hope for. There’re skulls on a tomb…

… a woman on a skull…

… a skull on a woman…

… and if you look closely, there’s even a rather worn skull and cross bones.

Not only does the monument to Richard Boyle have two lovely skulls, there’s also as fine a wardrobe malfunction as you are likely to see this side of Las Vegas.

Apparently she’s one of the Four Virtues. The Four Virtues are Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. You’ll notice that Chastity didn’t make the list, which is just as well given the dress code. I’m not sure which of the virtues involves going around with your tits hanging out, but in the Irish climate, it’s probably Fortitude.

Our lunch in Youghal was blaa.

Blaa (pron: blah) is a soft roll filled with meaty goodness. In this case a breakfast blaa with fried egg, bacon, and sausage. Nom-nom-nomilicious.

When we got back to Ardmore I walked down to the beach and took pictures of the birds. That’s the first time I have seen a hooded crow.

Rook pretending to be a seagull.

Herring gull and black headed gull pretending the other one isn’t there.

Jackdaw stepping out.

Yes, I know the black headed gull doesn’t have a black head. They do that to annoy birders.