PaddyAnglican is Coming to America!

After a week of TV interviews here at home, this time next week yours truly will be sitting down to dinner with Hilary Clinton! Mad or what!

We (the 10 disciples) leave for the US on Sunday morning next 18th January. We are Henry Healy, Barack Obama's Irish cousin, The Corrigan Brothers (There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama) and their team, Ed Godsil a long time follower of this story and Sinead O'Donnell, head of news at i105-107 radio.

We land in New York at lunchtime Sunday and are staying in a cheap and cheerful hotel near Times Square. Apparently the cockroaches are friendly!  Not that we will see much of our beds as we are scheduled to do a live broadcast to the UK during the night!

Next morning, if we wake, it is the Amtrak for Washington where we are staying with a very generous friend of a friend of mine. She normally puts up Buddhist monks but as a concession in sub zero temperatures we have been allowed to substitute the saffron robes for winter woolies! That night our hosts are having a family birthday to which we are all invited! I don't know many people who invite 10 strangers to family birthday parties but we are very grateful.

Next day is the Inauguration and we have to get ourselves over the Virginia bridges to the Ronald Regan Center on Pennsylvania Avenue where we are guests at the Inaugural Luncheon & parade party organised by the American Ireland Fund. Unlimited buffet - just my kind of thing! :-) I am sure we will be ready for it after a three mile walk in arctic conditions! The Corrigan Brothers are part of the program here and they are hoping that the President might stop for a listen after the inauguration.

Then having watched the President pass by following his inauguration we head for the Phoenix Park Hotel for 6pm where Henry and I are guests of the Irish Democrats and will be dining with Hilary Clinton. There is a small chance the President himself will look in to check up on his Moneygall cousin - you never know!  Henry and I will be presenting an invitation from Moneygall to the President to come and visit us and unless the man himself comes by this will be conveyed through Stella O'Leary of the Irish Democrats. The band play again at this function and then we head back to our hosts for a much needed nights sleep.

The next day it's off to a hotel which will be our base for the final 36 hours.  Sightseeing and shopping are on the agenda for the remainder of the trip and its back to the auld Sod on Thursday night/Friday morning - Well that's the plan.........the reality may be somewhat different........Watch this space for news of our adventures.