Walking in Dublin

Anyone for a walk !


Good is'nt it

Darker mornings.

I went into the Oktoberfest tonight to have a look, loads of people, beer and sausages.
The recession must be over !

On the work side I picked up 2 guys from the Cork train this morning. They were tough as tough can be "Langers" is a word that came to my mind.
North circular rd. mister.
Its a long road, which end are you going to.
North circular Rd. mister said the other guy.
Where abouts on the North Circular Rd. are you going to? Its a long road.

Oh I see St. Patricks (juvenile detention center)
They had come to visit a pal who had been sent away.

On Friday I picked up an old regular customer, a Polish girl. She had changed her hair and I nearly didn't recognize her.
As she was getting out I said a very strange thing.
I wonder what kind of person I will pick up next?. To which she said. I hope it will be someone nice. Then I said, Perhaps it will be little red riding hood going to her grandmas house.
Down in Mount brown a girl with a red shawl over her head waved me down, she had red hair as well. I told her what I had said to my last passenger. I had better look closely at grandma when I get there so.
She was a financial controller for a large store.
The next guy was a financial adviser to a large telecommunications firm. He spoke about Nick Leeson the rogue trade who brought down Bearings bank.He knew him, he lives in Galway now, it is odd how he not only knew of him, but he had talked to him many times.
Trading floors are still policed in a very lax manner today. Look at the massive losses in UBS bank a few weeks ago. Even the smallest sweet shop in the land would have some way to prevent such a happening.
But little has changed as he said.
Today I picked up a lady on Whitworth Rd going to East Wall Rd. A couple of phone calls to arrange babysitters and she turned off the phone. Said she was sorry, but she had to get things fixed. She was off to her brother in laws funeral. 60 years old, dropped dead on Tuesday.He had had a heart attack earlier but continued to smoke and drink. Then he just keeled over dead. Me sister is in bits.
Still he had plenty of warnings to mend his ways.
Sad part is that all her kids have left the home, now she has an empty house, I can't get any of mine to move out. Now there's grandchildren as well.
Even 60 is not a bad age, there is nothing worse than burying a child.
Jesus you're right there my little girl was a week off her 8Th birthday when we buried her. She is at peace beside my mother in Glasneven. The only good thing about today is that I will spend some time at the grave.
Here we are now 8 euro. There's a 10 keep the change and God bless you.

There is a lot of humanity in decent working class Dublin women. Salt of the earth.

2 girls for Uruguay in the taxi tonight, not bad looking at all.
What do you know about Uruguay?
Well in Montavedo a young music student gave a transcript of a tune he had written to a local tango band. That song he then sold the copyright for the price of a packet of cigarettes.This tune is the most popular Tango tune in the world today.
Bravo ! You are a very wise taxi driver.
Here is a very good clip for you.


I bet you won't be able to guess what happens next !



So I went on youtube to see Dave Young ?


Yes he is there
The next time we meet he will be buying the tea, again.

Here's a piece I found about an English horse fair.

You see there are good Gypsies and the forth coming war on Chalk Farm will paint all Irish travellers as scum.

Steve Jobs RIP

Dublin City falling down


Artistic bus


Adare Co.Limerick

Sad to hear that Steve Jobs founder and the brains behind Apple computers has passed over.
I still have one of his first computers in the garage, I bet it still works too.
The first computers with their green screen never crashed and there was no fans roaring away while you tried to work.
Microsoft stole the edge from him for a while, but it was with I pods and the new I fones that he bounced back, giving the kids Gigabytes of music.
Sorry but the older the fone the better for me. But I see my kids flicking through pages of information all thanks to Apple.

You must all know the story about how he started off building computers in the family garage. He had found out that some people did not want to build the computers themselves, so he went into production.
Now things were getting hectic in the garage so he rented a factory unit.
Then came the big day to move his boxes of tricks out. So he hired a driver and a van to give him a hand. He was strapped for cash and offered the driver a share in his new company, Apple.
The driver must tell the story over and over again !

HE HELD OUT TO BE PAID IN CASH !
THE SHARES WOULD BE WORTH MILLIONS TODAY.

So whether you are rich or poor spare a thought for all the people around who are fighting Cancer, a special prayer for you Nancy, I hope your results are good.

Your health is your wealth, and all the wealth cannot buy your health back again.

So what else is happened to me today !.
A lady coming from a personal trainer nearly dying !
She is getting married soon and went to get toned up.
"MY God he nearly killed me! I had no idea I was so unfit"

A retired teacher from Galway who taught a Polish girl for her Leaving Cert. She got an A in Irish, she had only done the subject for 2 years as well.
I went through my usual rant about how the migrants are the ones with ambition, they work at 2 or 3 jobs just to give their kids the chance they never had. Boston is a great city to see how many of them have propelled themselves to excellence in the Legal, Medical and Financial institutions.
Yes we know many have fallen by the wayside,that's life, many more have progressed though.
A Polish man drinking Red Bull wearing a suit. He was going for a job interview.
The Red Bull was causing him to stutter. I hope he got a bottle of water to drink before he met the panel.

Young electrician going to hospital for tests. Bemoaning the fact that in spite of paying taxes while he was working. He now finds himself in the position where he is out of work and he is entitled to no unemployment benefit.
Even though he has always paid taxes on his work.
Then to add insult to injury he sees refugees coming into Ireland and they get houses and every damn thing handed to them.
So Australia is calling him and when he gets the all clear he will be away.

Another young girl off to Frankfurt, her job were looking for people and she saw the chance to better herself. Lucky girl things are on the up and up.

Two really funny women off to Pearse St.
They were just after a really hot curry.
I just had to say "If you think it was hot going in wait until it comes out and burns your arse!" This lifted the mood no end.
They were in tears getting out with the laughing, €4 tip for the good of it all.

This lifted my mood as well and I can reveal that more business came my way as a result.

On the news,
A woman who refused to allow the electricity company on her land was released from jail today, she had spent 22 days locked up because she refused to allow the ESB on to her land to cut down her trees. The court ordered her to let them on the land, she refused and had to go to jail. The neighbors and other protesters occupied the land and prevented the work from going on. So in the end they let her out.

Compare this with the Billions which have gone missing from the banks. 2 years later not one person has gone to jail. Many have retired with multi million pensions golden handshakes and gold wrist watches to boot,all because of greedy bankers, corrupt politicians, incompetent and corrupt civil servants.

Did you see that 5 people had been sacked from the income tax office? They had been lowering the tax rates for family and friends.
One woman crippled her ex husband for tax.
In their defense they said that everyone above them was doing it.

Not a great defense in a sacking situation.

I had a great evening with my Chinese friends and their 6 month old baby girl.
Really wonderful people. My wife is learning Cantonese from Judy, just for fun.

"I went into a restaurant and ordered the entire meal in fluent Chinese.
All my friends were impressed, except for the waiter.

It was a French restaurant"

Tommy Cooper

Stolen property

There was a big discussion in the Magic club last month about some magicians "stealing" others tricks.
I once saw a guy do another persons complete act, he did it very well but he is nowhere to be seen now and the original guy is still going strong.

I knew another person whose sister used to manage 4 comedians and there was war all the time when one stole anothers gag.
But it is difficult to say who owns what to a point.

o!

In the movie funnybones the main characters father comes on stage on his sons opening night in Las Vegas and tells all the sons jokes. The son then comes on to the stage and dies on the spot when his gags are met by silence.


On the other hand in Greece you can buy a pair of Chanel sun glasses for €5 or a Rolex watch for €10
If this continues there will be no point in putting adverts in the magazines to sell top of the range products.
China will copy, there Copywrite means" Make no mistakes copy it right"

If you can't do things well.

The least enjoy doing things badly.

OK everyone sing along !

Oktoberfest

One thing ends and another begins.
The guy on the island is gone and the Oktoberfest begins.



The local scrap yard guy has a Porsche!


This is the view from the lake view hotel..Not bad?


Back in the "Big Smoke" again.

While I was on my travels in the rain and mist,Dublin was bathed in glorious sunshine.
We spent 2 nights in Youghal and a day in Killarney before coming home.
We found out that a friend who lives there had turned 60, so we went to him to wish him well.
Youghall is doing very badly at present. Lots of shops closed up and a feeling of despair all around.
There is only one hotel in that town the Imperial hotel, so we went there for a meal.
My wife has a few limitations with regard to diet, nothing too difficult though.
Boiled or roast chicken with boiled vegetables and boiled spuds. Nothing added.
No, there was no boiled potatoes, chips or mashed or wedges and that's it.
No, they couldn't chop up a spud and cook it.
Rice? No we can't do that.
Cous Cous? I see it comes with herbs and lime juice, could you cook some and serve it plain? No!

We did manage to arrive at some kind of compromise in the end but I can tell you we will never set foot in there again.
I had a guy in the taxi who knew his way around a kitchen and he told me that this place might have a cook who comes in once or twice a week. The food is then cooled down and put into the fridge. Then microwaved as needed.
That makes sense, but not great food.
In Killarney we went to the lake hotel a 4 star hotel. The view of the lake and the service was better than you could get at home.
The server came back 4 time during the meal to see if all was well.
In Youghall the server was sitting in the bar talking to the customers while we ate,she only came back when we were finished.
To cap it all the 4* hotel was cheaper.

So do you want to make money ?
Open a really good restaurant in Youghall---There are plenty of empty places to set up in.

Going back a few years ago a man walked into a small hotel and asked for dinner.

"Sorry sir we are finished serving"
Then the customer said.
"Could we have a sandwich please?"

"Sure I can organise that for you, Tommy! Stop scratching your arse over there and get up and make these people a few sandwich's"

Things have moved on a good bit from then and got much better. But things will slip back fast enough if managers don't keep an eye on the staff at all times.

Man on an Island

Theres a man who is a castaway in the middle of the Liffey.






Every taxi driver in Dublin will remember the moment when he saw this house.
Tucked away in a suburban housing estate with its dragon gates.
Well as you see it is for sale, 8 bedrooms and all that.
Other properties for sale can be seen here. One of note sold in 2005 for more than €58 million in its day is going now for €15 mil. But if you had a good bit of cash you would get it for 7.
The ones I feel sorry for are the young people who bought for say €700,000 and now they have a house worth €450,000. They cannot sell the house and they cannot buy it either.

There are auctions taking place of "Distressed" properties. They sell your house for any price they can and you are turfed out. Then they present you with a bill for the amount owing to the bank.
The big developers on the other hand have had their assets taken into care by the state to protect the banks.
While all this was going on the bankers were paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses, yet they get off Scott free.


The only reason that stiff prison terms were not handed down is that the gouvernment ministers were getting big backhanders (Brown envelopes) from the developers.
Its enough to make you spit !

In America they are going through this as well. A friend told me that the system they used to determine if someone was fit to get a loan was. "Can they fog a mirror?" ie if they are alive they get the loan. Though in the USA you can give the keys back and owe nothing. People were doing that, then when the bank sold the property they bought it back themselves.
Nice one !

Do you notice a lot more road rage going on?
A guy on a bicycle outside the Kevin St.Garda station. Punching the car and calling the lady driver a stupid and dangerous. He could find himself in big trouble some day. She may not have a gun, but plenty of ladys carry Mace. Some other driver might have decided to come to her rescue. But it was all over in less than a minute.
People who behave like that cause great harm to come their way.
Did you ever herof the law of attraction? Or "The secret?"
By thinking peacful posative thoughts and being in a positive mood will attract positive things to you.By raging and causing distress to others you attract bad things to yourself.
I don't know if it works but there are plenty of people on the net selling courses.

There is a big grain of truth in it all, but the snake oil sales men push this one too far for me.

On a different subject. What would you do if you found out you were going to die?
At the Tango Fiesta last weekend they paid tribute to one of their pupils.
She took tango lessons all through her illness, she never complained then at 29 she died.
Julian and Kristina danced at her funeral as a tribute to her bravery.
Here they are. Good ?


Here is a clip from an eirlier Fiesta. Geraldene would be one of the very best tango dancers in the world. I didn't know it was on youtube..

Mental health.

There was a tough decision to be made this week.
None of my business you might say but I felt that a moments intervention might avert a disaster.

There are a lot of mentally ill people going around this city. In Fairview there is a large mental hospital which provides day care and full residential care.
They are often seen by their minders being taken for walks around Fairview park.
Many are happy and docile others can be way out of control.

So I come back to my dilemma.
A girl who lives not far from my house suffers from schizophrenia, she is on the higher scale in severity of her illness.
Well I saw her throwing up on the grass on Sunday morning as I went for the paper.
I thought straight away "morning sickness".
What should I do?

I mulled it around for a few days and then I saw her father pulling in at the house, so I stopped and went over. The way I put it to him was that she might be vomiting up her medication and just to keep an eye on her.
He thanked me for my observation and said that they would keep an eve on her for a few days.
The poor man then gave me a brief synopsis on what it is like living with her.
It is a very difficult situation all round, she is not attending a day care center and her life is not structured in any way, so she is decking by the year.

She is really good looking and the thoughts of some scumbag taking advantage of her mental state to have sex with her really upsets me. You have to take into account that she cannot make a rational decision for herself.

Getting back to the state of mental health.
I know someone who is suffering from severe paranoia, she has cameras and alarms all over the house. "No they have come in and they have taken away my papers, everything has been moved around. No they have a way of interfering with the CCTV footage" So it goes on for the past number of years.
A doctor cannot sign anyone into a mental hospital against their wishes. So she is going nowhere and will not admit that there is any problem.
The result of all this will be that she will either have a complete breakdown or she will die by her own hand, she lives alone.
One thing about this lady is that she was a wonderful painter, her paintings would sell for good money. She can't paint now at all.

On the other hand a woman was found stabbed to death in the midlands a few days ago. It turns out that her mentally ill son had knifed her to death. He had been refusing to take his medication.

It all makes me thankful for the little bit of sanity that I hold on to and the ability to laugh off the troubles of the world.

Another good idea is to listen to Lyric FM during the morning and Ray Darcy on today FM.
That RTE with all their doom and gloom just causes anger and stress.

Here is a good website to find help. http://www.mentalhealthireland.ie/finding-support

I just thought I would share this with you in the hope that you might be a bit kinder to your fellow man.

Happy birthday Arthur.

What a weekend for the Dublin people that was.

They beat Kerry in the all Ireland and suddenly the sun is shining and our mood has lifted.
So its Dublin for "Sam" and Kerry for the holidays.

Now tomorrow the patron saint of porter Arthur Guinness is having his birthday party and there are many events planned. Remember I picked up Bryn Ferry off on his way to the Hop store last year?. I wonder what is planned for tomorrow? Look here

So there you are everything is booked up.
Perhaps if we help carry in the amps for the gig and then say we are with the band we might get in.
When you live in a city you don't seem to tap into what is going on around you but thanks to Google and the Internet you can find out everything.

Business is up a bit and though there are more people around it is totally down to luck, sometimes you are lucky.

So we had my son and his girlfriend over from London, a week goes very quickly and they are gone again..I was having computer problems but as it is there was no time for him to fix it, so no photos until next week.

While they were here they showed me this video.
The guy wears a bat suit and has to fly through a gap in the mountain.

Now get ready for a big Adrenalin rush.
He is wearing a winged suit with no margin for error.