Irish Dancing and The Priests

Yesterday was a full on Irish day for me!

In the afternoon I took my 10 year old daughter Alex to an Irish Dancing festival. She's laidback (some would say lazy)in the extreme and if I hadn't told her to go and practice her dance in the morning I would never have found out the elastic had snapped on her dance pump and needed sewn back on. 10 minutes before we left the house, she went to get changed and informed me she needed black tights to go with her dance dress. Now this was the first I'd heard of needing black tights and of course, as any mother will know, we have the supernatural powers to magic up anything at 5 minutes notice. Thankfully the tiny Co-op in the village had one pair of extrememly dusty black tights they found in a back storeroom!
She did pretty well, winning a 3rd and a Highly Commended. When she commented that she never won a trophy and I replied that she would need to go on a Wednesday and a Saturday, she just said she didn't want to win that much! What can I say?!

Yesterday evening I went with my Mum, MIL and a friend Martina to see The Priests in concert at the Odessey Arena in Belfast.


The Priests really are Catholic priests who have become a bit of a phenomenom in the Ireland and the UK over the past year and appeared on The Jonathon Ross show a couple of weeks ago. They have been signed up with Sony for an incredible $1.4 million. In December 2008 they scooped the Guinness World Record for 'Fastest-selling UK debut for a classical act'. The album has turned Platinum in Ireland, UK, Sweden, Norway as well as going Gold in New Zealand, Canada and Spain.

I kind of went because my Mum and MIL were keen to go and I decided to accompany them. Martina attends the chapel where Father Eugene is priest,so she was keen to see what they were like in concert.

What can I say? 3 Priests and 5,600 congregation - I mean audience - and I swear Martina and I brought the average age down by about 25 years. But they were totally amazing. Their voices were as good as any I've heard live before and they were such a good laugh. They sang everything from Ave Maria to Danny Boy, Abide with Me to Pie Jesu.

Got to say, looking at my concert going this year - Il Divo, The Priests and er, Miley Cyrus - makes me out to be a strange one, but really they are well worth listening too