The Luck of the Irish

St Patrick's Day saw an amazing win for the Irish cricket team against Pakistan, one of the biggest upsets in World Cup history. I'd be inclined to dwell more on the stunning nature of their win and laugh at Pakistan were it not for the fact that the defeat, which spelt Pakistan's elimination from the tournament, was followed the day after by the death of the Pakistan coach, former English test player Bob Woolmer, from what looks like a suspected heart attack. I'd harbored a sneaking hope that Woolmer might coach England after Duncan Fletcher's reign was over, but it looks like it was not to be. A sad day.

The win itself couldn't really have been better timed, although as I mentioned earlier I'm fairly certain it meant absolutely nothing to most of the participants in the St Patrick's Day parade. I went over to 5th Avenue to meet Kate and one of her friends who was in town visiting, and we stood behind the barriers and watched the various groups go by. I was somewhat surprised by how few people there were; perhaps the cold weather (we had 4 inches of snow the previous day) might have had something to do with it. It all seemed very well organised, though, featuring groups from as far away as Orange County, CA, and New Hampshire (if you look at the badges on the arms of the marching band below, you can see the NH).

It wasn't quite all fun and games, though, at least as far as I was concerned. I had kind of half-expected it, but I was somewhat dismayed to see a group (of about five or six people, admittedly) marching with the banner "Irish Republican Army Veterans". I assume they chose that because "Retired Murderers and Terrorists" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Later, once they'd gone past, the dickhead standing in front of me in a green Oirish beret yelled out "IRA, all the way!". I was tempted to add my own shout of "Go Al Qaeda!", but there's a time and a place for everything...

Obviously, there's always one fuckwit in every crowd, but it's disappointing and, as an Englishman, somewhat uncomfortable to hear that kind of thing. I had hoped for a degree of circumspection given New York's recent history with acts of terrorism, but apparently not. Oh well. It played on my mind for a while, until I recalled that the IRA is dead and buried now, largely by their own actions. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, mate.

Moving on, we wandered around Times Square for a little while. Having Kate on my arm we naturally wandered into a sweet store, that being the M&M shop just off 42nd Street. They don't do things by halves - as you can see, they have 30-ft high tubes of the stuff available for the public to pour into bags. A bargain? Well, no, not exactly. It's $5 per half-pound, which makes it more expensive than salmon, at least by my reckoning. Just as well I don't have a sweet tooth, then.

And in other news, I got the certificate for my MA, which as I wrote a little while back has now been formally awarded, as a sort of stepping stone on the way to the doctorate. I had a little debate with Kate as to whether I should frame it or not...my family kind of has a tradition(?) of not displaying their academic qualifications (though that might be because there'd be no room for anything else on the wall if we did). I'm still in two minds, at least for the moment. The actual ceremony takes place in May, so I'll make sure to post some pics of me looking daft in a light blue gown and mortar-board (for such are Columbia's colours).

Apart from going home in the summer to get another MA, I now also have a rather more pressing reason to go back; I need to renew my visa. When admitted to the US, I was given a 2-year visa as an MA student, and it runs out in May. Which isn't actually a problem - it's perfectly OK for me to be here with an expired visa so long as all my other documentation is in order - but if I want to get back in again once I leave for any reason, I'll need another one. So this means a repeat, most likely, of the whole rigmarole I went through in June of 2005, recorded for posterity on this very blog. All just a little bit of history repeating itself...