Friday OFF!

Go and see this then go to see the Turner watercolours, only shown in January in the National gallery Merrion Sq.







Remember when it was ROMANTIC to fly?


Don't know how this one got out.


Then there is the training.

Weather and aeroplanes...It will effect your plans.
My oldest son came home on the boat today from London By train from Euston and boat from Holyhead total cost £30.50p.
Seems like Ryanair wanted between 200 and 300 quid to bring him home even though he had a ticket and they had cancelled the flight..

He like me has sworn never to use them again.

This is my first Friday off for a very long time.
The weather is so bad and I reckon the people have no money left to go out anyhow.

I started to keep a notebook just so that I could keep account of some of the things which have been going on.

I dropped a young couple from New York at the Guinness brewery the other day and just went 50 yards when I got a fare to the airport. A very big man 6 ft. 6ins.tall an English engineer who had flown over to "Tweak" a generator in the brewery after the fire..Thing was his flight cost him little or nothing but as his bag had tools in it so he had to pay €40 or so for the bag. You can't bring tools onto a plane.
He was reared in Birmingham the home of the British industrial revolution...He really knew his stuff and you could see he had spent his youth stripping down motors and engines, he took great interest in the Prius.
A vintage car passed by and the conversation turned to the Fiat Topolino I wanted to buy last autumn, that was before my wife stopped me!
I felt that this car had been sent to me at €5000, one owner from new, loads of service history...NO NO NO..she said .So
So I let it go and saw one in a worse condition for sale in the UK for £15,000 Stg.
Next time I want to "invest" I will keep it a secret.
I just wanted to have it for 6 months and then sell it for 3 times the price.
I told him that the car had found me.

He as it turned out had 2 kick ass cars a Jensen(or perhaps an Aston Martin Vanquish)which he bought for £4,000. The owner was ill and wanted a good home for the car. One thing he wanted was that he be brought out for a drive in it for his 70 th birthday.
This part of the contract he fulfilled and the old guy passed away a few months after the day out. His other car is a V8 Jag well I did say he was a big lad..He said "I have a big carbon footprint too".
There was a fantastic tradition of engineering around Birmingham, they could build and make anything there,sadly the skills are mostly gone.

I picked up 2 girls from Kenya going to Lomond Ave to collect a package from the postal sorting office. Chatting away the alarm went on my phone to remind me that I had a collection to go to the airport in 15 minutes. When we arrived at the sorting office they had forgotten the collection docket...No docket no letter!
So I raced back to their house and back again with the docket. It was a registered letter and he found it in a few minutes...The girls are working as nurses aids, not well paid so I gave them a good reduction on the fare.
As they came from east Africa they spoke to me about a thing in Voodoo called a "Gen"
Or "Jen" It is 1/2 fish 1/2 human and possesses special powers which are good and very bad....The moral is that for every gift there is a very high price to pay.
I knew about this from years ago but Nigerians or South Africans do not know of that story.

The port tunnel is a great way to go to the airport but the other day there was a problem and I know someone who spent over an hour held hostage there because of an accident.
I had an interesting one today, 2 guys going to see a house. First they demanded that I stop in the middle of the road and got miffed when I insisted that I drive into the side of the road while we waited for the other guy to cross over to our side of the road.They were heading to Churchtown to view a 4 bedroom house for rent.
After I dropped them off I headed towards Dundrum when I saw a girl looking down the road the other way..Now I thought, she is looking for a taxi, but after I did a U turn and came back she had just crossed the road. Then I decided to retrace my steps back into town. As I passed the house where I dropped the 2 lads I noticed that they were standing in the drive in the snow. So I drove up the drive and spoke to them..The agent would be along in 10 mins and yes they would need to be brought into town again. So I said I would wait for them rather than drive around looking for work.
So the agent came and they saw the house and the agent told them that it was too far from where they were working, he had another property.....Hold on....No it wouldn't be empty until the end of the month.
Well I know someone I said, and they rang him and he had a 4 bedroom house in Kenelworth Sq for 500 a month less than the other house was! This landlord is loaded.
That location was ideal as well.
Could have charged both sides a "Finders fee"
I brought them there but I had to leave to meet the ferry to retrieve my long lost son, home at last by ship.