[ for all you U2 fans ]

I WAS GOING through my ever-increasing pile of magazines which happen to be overflowing from the crate I've got them stored in and it reminded me of the story behind those wooden wine crates and it made me laugh. and so I'll share.

When we first came to Ireland a couple of years ago, we were renting a coach house in Killiney, a beautiful little village on the east side of Ireland overlooking the Irish Sea. It's a pretty exclusive area and everyone's properties are surrounded by tall stone walls so meeting or even seeing neighbours isn't really a common thing. When the agent first showed us the place, I asked her where the little narrow stone staircase in our courtyard led. She said "Bono's house". what?? "You mean Bono, Bono?" i asked. She said yes, that was his house right next to ours. Well, as it turned out, it wasn't Bono's house, it was The Edge's house.

I only discovered that it was The Edge's house a couple of months later when I was walking down the driveway that we shared with him. He was having some clean-up done on his property and so there was a skip (dumpster) temporarily sitting outside his gates.

As I walked by, my eye was drawn to a pile of 4 wooden wine crates which I immediately thought would be perfect for me to store magazines in. And so I made a couple of trips back and forth carrying these crates to our coach house. Each crate had a shipping label attached to it addressed to David Evans. And so I decided to Google it and my hunch was confirmed - The Edge was my neighbour.

My husband couldn't believe that I had brought these crates home and loves to tell everyone that I was digging through The Edge's garbage. No, I didn't actually dig through anything and I wasn't dumpster-diving - they were just sitting there nicely off to the side. And who wouldn't grab these awesome crates for storage? And now these crates are all the more special, knowing that they belonged to one of the greatest guitarists of all time, who actually graded the wines by writing on the crates with a ballpoint pen.

lisa