This morning I went to Shahrit at the Rathfarnham Road synagogue in Dublin which I reached in under 20 minutes from the airport side of the city. I didn't find the people there desperately friendly, neither were they desperately unfriendly. A few years ago I heard the megila read in Zurich at high speed... this morning it was read at an average pace. There's a young rabbi there, Rabbi Lent, who seems on the ball. Apart from that it seems a fairly ageing and humdrum community, disinterested in visitors.

Returning to the north side of the city at around 8.30 was another megila. Dublin is the only city I know where traffic seizes up on a regular basis. Getting out towards the M50 ring road from Terenure took 35 minutes, a distance of some 4 or so kilometres. Being Purim they could have opened up a lane especially for Jewish drivers. I could have tried cutting through the housing estates around Clondalkin but a UK-registered car might have attracted unwanted attention which, after recent shootings in the North, I was not prepared to risk.