It has been nearly a month since I last updated. It seems as though not that much has happened but then at the same time I have been too busy to post an update. In the past three weeks I have seen the Jameson distillery, took a hike around Whiddy Island, saw more of West Cork and got to shoot the Liverpool FC reserves team as they played a friendly match with the Dunmanway team. I have also booked my flight to Moscow.

Lets start with the distillery. Jameson is currently distilled in Middleton, which is near Cork. The old distillery, dating from the mid-1800s, is now a museum while the new distillery sits on an adjacent piece of land. The Jameson folks have done a great job of restoring the old buildings to their mid-1800s look. If you are interested in the history of the industrial revolution then you can get a good education at The Jameson Experience. If however you want to see where your last shot was made then you are out of luck. The new distillery is a mysterious-black-contemporary factory with a lone chimney giving away its location. But the tasting room is what the tour is really all about and I’m proud to announce that I am now a certified Jameson whiskey taster (or some such silliness­­—I had to drink three small shots of different kinds of whiskey and one Jameson neat to get the honor—if only they knew).

The other big highlight of that week was the Dunmanway FC vs. Liverpool FC match in Dunmanway. It was a big score that the small Dunmanway team was able to get Liverpool to agree to send their reserves team over for a friendly match. All of West Cork was excited about the game and the tickets sold out fast. They had to build a temporary pitch with seating for over 7,000.

Tickets were hard to get and luckily Leonie had met the organizer of the match at a conference in Canada last year so she rang him up to see if he could get seats for her sister Lynda, her brother Liam, her nephew Darragh and Richard. When she went to pick them up he asked her if she would be the Liverpool team liaison during the day-and-a-half that they were in Ireland. So much to everyone’s chagrin the Manchester supporter got to spend her time on the pitch with the Liverpool team.

The deadline for press credentials had passed before I had even gotten to Ireland so I was out of luck to shoot the match. Then Leonie worked her magic and on the morning of the game she secured me field access for the match. It was great fun shooting my first pro-soccer match and yes I did feel a bit inadequate with only an 80-200mm lens—but I’m used to it after all that high school football last fall.

That is all I have to say for now. I have a flight booked to Moscow for the 7 September and will be there for two weeks.