Wakie Wakie

 I don't suppose the blog will write itself, perhaps AI will do it for me.

There is a story about a footballer who broke his leg and his team won the cup. He was devastated and a guy he knew who had a market stall took him under his wing. He trained him how to sell things and then took him to the family chateau in the South of France, The chateau was bought by the family after the war and seeing how the house was so large the family could come and go. They re booted his mind and his financial journey has made him the 8th richest man in the UK.

So Just spotting the opportunity can make or break you. One guy told me that if he was staring his life again  he would become a taxi driver. Look you meet interesting people and you can work any hours you want. One simple idea that you overhear can make you a fortune.

That man became a friend for the next 10 years his name was Chuck Feeney who founded duty free shopping and he gave away 8 billion dollars to help his fellow man. 

My son is driving the taxi now and today I took a walk into town, things are bad. Beggars on every street corner and plenty of drug fueled pedestrians going around. Not as bad as the streets of Philadelphia on YouTube but where America goes Europe follows. Shops are closed down all over the place as well. I spoke to a Polish lady who has lived here for 20 years, they rented a home all this time and there is a rent review in December. She is stressed as the rent will go up. A Chinese guy bought his own house last year and the mortgage repayments are now only one third of what his rent was when he was renting Wow.

So a story which is so long that it comes to you in 2 parts. Tom a friend of mine from Crumlin  rang me around 6 weeks ago and he asked me to come over to his house. He is a taxi driver and he says that he will never retire. He sat me down with a mug of tea and he started his tale of woe. His wife had died around 2 years ago. She had retired from her job and they had planned to take a cruise to the Caribbean to celebrate. But just as they were about his wife died of a heart attack. No warning and no pain.

He had 3 kids 2 boys and a girl all settled now, but as he went through their bank accounts a secret that his wife had kept from him came to light. Their bank account was paying their daughter €150 per week and when he blocked it it caused a huge rift within the household. The boys has worked at trades electrician and a plumber. They paid rent when they lived at home and this money was put aside for their house deposits when they moved out. Mary the daughter never paid a penny and now this €150 per week was causing him pain. They had also paid for her wedding, he was shaking.

Scorn Not [Luke Kelly] Lyrics

                  One day 

 

A friend of mine who is a comedian was in Manchester on a job and they had an evening off and they went to see the Dubliners, There was 2 drunken Irishmen in the front row and Luke Kelly said that he was going to sing a song that has never been sung in public before. 

But ladies and gentlemen we will not be singing until these 2 drunks are removed.

20 minutes later Luke sang Scorn not his simplicity.

After the song was finished the audience were stunned and 15 minutes of silence followed followed by a huge round of applause like you never heard before.

 

Things happen when you are driving along and this thing will stay with me until I die.

 I never got even near to a solution.

Coming up the hill to turn left on to St.Johns rd and Heuston station. There was a minder on my left with a mentally handicapped girl beside him. He looked at me and then put his right arm over her right shoulder and fondled her breast. I changed direction and went straight ahead and back around. They were heading into the John Of Gods compound and I went in. There was hundreds of minders and patients going around and I looked for the pervert. Then I asked to speak with the person in charge. One lady told me that there was no one in charge, so I had to go. Thinking about it now I should have said that there was a dead body lying near the gate.

I went to all the local Garda stations and I got the reply that they would have to see him do it before they would act. There was 2 other facilities who deal with mentally handicapped people and I got no reply.

I wrote to the Garda commissioner twice and got the same story, would you not just come and look was the last contact I had with the boys in blue. 

There was a big place in Palmerstown which later had to close down when a huge expose of sexual misconduct came to light. 

I pray to my god that things worked out for her in the end. 

Wilbenton

 Came back to the house from a trip to Aldi when I heard a strong grunting noise from 2 women.

Its a porn movie I thought ! No just 2 women playing tennis. 

 My mind is going back to something that happened around this time of year, though it was many years ago. 

There was an elderly neighbor who had a telephone system given to her by her grandson. It was fantastic 2 handsets you could ring downstairs if you were upstairs and visa versa. So far so good, she didn't understand that you had to charge both handsets upstairs at night and then after around a year the batteries were showing wear and tear so I bought 8 new rechargeable batteries for around £10. It was working great until the grandson blew up saying that I had overcharged her and he told me to take them back and give his gran back her money. Around a week later they were sitting downstairs when the minder smelled smoke and went upstairs to take a look. There in the bedroom the phone had gone on fire, she scooped it up and threw it into the toilet. Imagine if that had happened when she was asleep.

As I had tried to tell her you must use rechargeable batteries end of story. 

12th July coming

 So here we are with the 12th of July around the corner, with drum and fife and bagpipes the Orange order   will start to march in support of King Billy.

So there I was aged 17 and I drove my father up to a scrap yard in Northern Ireland. 

My first big trip. 

When we arrived my father told Mr Traynor  that this was my first solo trip.

What followed has remained with me to this day, He got someone to look after my dad while he showed me the destruction of lives owing to car crashes. Bent steering wheels, Hair on the windscreen, teeth stuck into the dashboard. Your knees shoot forward and they hit this point here breaking both your legs.

There were no seat belts  back then,

You see this car here? We are stripping the wheels gearbox and engine, then this car will be shredded.

It doesn't seem to be that badly damaged I said. He reached under the drivers seat and pulled out a child's bootee. Look at the blood on the roof liner, Whatever happened the car tumbled over and a beautiful baby was killed. 

No one wants to ever see that car again.   

I didn't do this to frighten you BUT some day you might think I know I am late BUT better late than sorry.

Years later I told that story to his grandson and he told me that his grandfather had saved countless lives with the tours of the wrecks. Then he then took me over to see a sports car. 

Driver dead car now to be shredded. 

So to the present.

Donegal is a place where there are terrible crashes. 

Mother Natalie McLaughlin a nurse and her wonderful 6 year old daughter Ella were killed in a car crash in Donegal . Such a waste of wonderful life

SLOW DOWN BOYS AND GIRLS 

New car? Just walk into the office

 As I was driving along with a passenger in the taxi a brand new car drove past and I said wow!

The guy beside me opened up his laptop and an a few minutes he had the cars details. "Its leased from a certain date  and he is paying X per month, and that is a lot of money.

Going back to when I was 20 I bought a new car and borrowed £700 over 3 years at 4%. my dad asked to see the loan details and he asked me if I had ever paid attention when I went to school ?

What the BANK did was to take the £700 and add 3 years interest and divide it by 36. So what I said.

When you got the money you have not accumulated 3 years interest. 

When you make a payment you do not owe £700.

Do you see it now? 

I went back to the bank and the manager came out and he really thought he could talk me down. Until I said that I would take it up with the media. So I then got my first term loan.

Did you notice all the new cars around? I asked Mr.Google and he says that over 90% of new cars are bought on finance. 

Chuck Feeney told me to burn my credit cards and use debit cards instead. Now you cannot spend money you don't have.

I once helped a girl move apartment and I noticed  a credit card statement with a  e2,000 balance on it unpaid. I brought it up as we moved out and she said its only 3%.. No No its 3% per month. She checked later and she told me that she had been blinded by the figures.She worked in a bank.

If your parents are alive check up on their finances, Spry finance give loans to the elderly and  they will then have rights to your parents estate. So check up on them.

 

 

Suddenly I was cut off

 Long time no see 

I really don't know what happened. 

Like Alice I went through the looking glass and my world took on a different reality.

I did buy a second hand computer when my old one died suddenly and that might be a clue as to how I lost the link to the blog.

In the end I did manage to find my way back, but another strange thing happened with the book.

I got an email to say that the author had stolen the book from Amazon "AS IT HAD BEEN STORED IN AN INSECURE LOCATION" and there was nothing I could do about it. They also said that they had sold the ideas from two of the chapters to a film company.

Nice of him to let me know.

So I contacted that big river in Brazil called Amazon 4 times no reply.

The book was not on sale and strange to say when my son went to look at the email it was a burner, it had vanished. Time passed and one day Amazon contacted me and they told me that I had written something bad in an earlier publication. I said go to look it up and get back to me.

They did and it had been a mistake and just like that it was back on the market, no apology.

"The steering wheel university" By Paul Malone is back on sale.

The author drove a million miles and met thousands of people along the way and they educated him,   

Wow !!!!

 This has been a real mess.

My computer sat down and I bought a second hand one. A big mistake as it has a mind of its own, passwords applied and unknown.

So here is a story that would make your hair curl.

In the past when money was worth something a developer decided to build houses for £1 million each. At the time you could buy a good house for £60,000. So this was an exclusive development, a quality undertaking. A taxi driver bought one and he paid cash!!!!!

The tongues started to wag and the other kids would not play with the taxi drivers kids, every time a police car saw him they chased him down and searched the car. "Why are you stopping me? I have nothing to hide." So it went on and the taxi man went into the Garda station where the super told him that he knows himself what he was up to and it will be only a matter of time until he is caught.

Taxi drivers have a wide circle of contacts so he started throwing out feelers. 2 private detectives were added to the mix. Then one day when he came home he was met with "Drug dealers out" painted on his front door. The police did nothing when asked but as luck would have it a spy video camera caught the villain.

2 legal eagles who had houses were summoned to court and the local Garda superintendent was ordered to attend, smug in their righteousness, but boy oh boy they were in for a shock.

On the day everyone was shocked to see  the taxi drivers legal team, All high quality the  CC tv was shown and their confidence faltered. The chief of police took the stand and called him a drug dealer. Plain and simple.

The barristers jumped on him and asked him why he never checked up on the taxi driver ?.

The judge said that although he was under no obligation to declare it openly in the court 

He would like to know. 

So an envelope was passed to the judge and the judge said to the superintendent. Everything is legal and in order. A simple phone call would have straightened out the matter.

The taxi driver will sell his house and any deprecation will be picked up by the residents committee. 

The taxi driver also got compensation and costs for the disturbance.

Where did the money come from?

The taxi drivers brother had gone to England and became very successful

He never married and his money came back to his family in Dublin on his death.

The brothers company was very successful I have 5 pairs of Clarkes shoes myself.

If you come into money just say I won €5000. and I mean that. 

A guy I used to work with won €6MILLION IT DESTROYED HIS LIFE

A lady talking noncence

 We have a saying here that one good turn deserves another.

And so my story begins in Sandymount after getting a coffee from the girl with the golden smile. I had just stepped up to the taxi when a black lady from the other side of the green started calling me. So I went over and she said "City West". Which way would you like to go?

Oh Jesus Christ the taxi driver don't know the way.(She is talking into her phone) Do you have a particular route to go? Go to the coast and turn right. She directed me along the road until we hit the M50. All the time she is telling the person on the other end of the fone that she will get drinks on arrival and canapes for the 1,000 guests.My mind kind of switched off as we were  taking the most long route ever. Then as we passed the sign for Ballymount she shouted

"My god the fucking eejit has gone the wrong way we just passed a sign for for Ballymun..I slowed way down and said Look at thee sign for Balllymount the next turn is yours. Any more of the bad behavior and you will be walking.

5 minutes later we were driving into City west. I was shaken and went into the hotel to use the toilet. I said hi to reception which is a good tip as they might be needing a taxi. Outside there was a guy struggling with 2 suitcases on wheels. I decided to tell him that you cannot push anything on wheels on gravel, you have to pull it. So I took one case and he pulled the other. On the way over I told him about the mad woman looking for free wine and food for 1,000 people.Some chance that. Catering for large groups leaves very little profit, if you looked at a breakdown of the figures you would understand extra staff etc. What she is looking for would cost around €8,000

As we walked beck to reception I saw a wonderful sight a Rolls Royce and a Hummer. Wow I said that is fantastic, I love the Rolls. "Take it for a drive I will get the keys" No No No I said. I can't do that. I would be mortified if I damaged such a car. You see I would be very nervous as well. God you are a great guy. I didn't think about that.

So as we reached reception he asked me if I had another job lined up. He went inside and asked in reception and then he lined me up with a cup of coffee and a job to the airport.

I asked in reception who the guy was and was told that he was Mr Mansfield who owned the whole place.

Just as I took my second mouthful of coffee the colored lady stormed into reception and ordered me to take her back to Sandymount, 

But she had to make other plans.

Reception told her to wait for the taxi outside for her taxi.