Swift, Shaw, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce and Beckett: the list of great Irish literary figures is long and extremely impressive. Yesterday as I wandered around the Museum of Writers I started to wonder why this ’emerald isle’ has produced so many literary greats.

Is it something in the Guiness? Or the water? Or even the oysters?

No, it is the weather.

The weather here is so bad that you risk drowning by putting your head out of the door. So clearly you have to stay indoors. Because it doesn’t rain inside, or “in the pubs” as one Irishman told me yesterday. And what is there to do inside once all the household chores are dealt with? Especially when most of that list was around and there was no TV. You got it – write.

So there you have it, Ireland’s literary secret. You can see the proof in this picture of James Joyce. He is wearing a hat AND carrying an umbrella and he isn’t even outside.

The shopping in Ingolstadt Chic Shopping Outlet went well; I managed to spend my budget of 250 euros and for that I got a pair of trousers, a cashmere tank-top with matching cardigan (pink), a scarf, a beige wool cardigan and a see-through purple long top you could either wear over leggings or on the beach, with matching scarf. I also bought the MOST gorgeous rabbit-fur coat which will be very useful in Abu Dhabi, as you can imagine. But it was a bargain (in relative terms) and it is saving me from certain death through hypothermia here in Dublin.

Today we head off to Kildare, Dublin’s Chic Shopping Outlet and then Bicester Village in England. The gruelling tour goes on…..