Spring forward

So on Sunday the clocks spring forward one hour and we will have Summertime.

The EU wants to stop this habit, but it would effect us badly especially in winter time with the kids having to go to school in the dark mornings.

Still it is best to enjoy the promise of wonderful weather.

I haad to put on my plumbers hat when I got a call."John come quick,Gas leak"

It turned out to be a leaking water pipe under the floor, hissing like an angry snake.

I had to make 4 visits to plumber supply places and I can tell you the plumbers are all busy men. Plumbing is a tricky trade and good plumbers are hard enough to find.  

A customer told me that they had a big problem with little or no hot water, loads of tradesmen came and went. She met this lad who happened to be a plumber and he was collecting her to go on a date. The dad told the lad about the hot water problem.

It is one of 2 things which are easily fixed. If it is what I think it is it will cost £2 in parts.

It was a very simple solution. The water pressure coming in was pushing  the hot water back up the pipe through a faulty mixer tap in the kitchen. 

The solution was a one way valve on the hot water pipe to stop the cold water.

Everything is easy when you know how for sure.

She also told me that her Dad told her to marry the plumber, but she married a doctor.

Years later she was in a bar in Spain when she met her plumber once more. He was retired and had a villa in Spain where he spent his winters. She said that he looked great.

Regrets she had a few.

We have been blessed that so many wonderful people have come to Ireland,in Kellys of Springarden St there is a tall girl from Georgia working there with the most wonderful voice. I told her that she should be reading the radio news in the morning. Everyone would be going about their day with a big smile on their faces thanks to her voice. 

God bless the beautiful women from Poland and Brazil as well

Anyhoo (As they say in Canada) it might be a good idea for you to take up an online study in something, keep your mind active 

Charlie Landsborough - Isle of Innisfree

 

Here is the ultimate song for the immigrant 

Full of sadness and longing, whether you are in LA or NY the thoughts of home never go away.

This poem was written by a Garda called Richard Farrelly on a bus going to make a statement. The words came to him and he had a notebook and pen so he wrote it down. A friend wrote the music and Bing Crosby recorded it. They were in the money,

Then it thurned up in the John Wayne movie "The quiet man"

Then much later checks started coming in again. 

This time from the movie ET 

Just as well that he wrote it down when he did.

Happy St.Patricks day

 So this will be the second time that we have St.Patrick's day in lockdown. Such a downer, but it is not the black death or a bigger epidemic.

Before I start I will ask you to get a book called Wherever green is worn by Tim Pat Coogan. It is quite a big book but I think you can get it on your Kindle. The Irish dysphoria spans to globe form Che Gavaras Irish mother  being Irish.

The founder of the Argentinian navy, again Irish. 

I was fortunate to drive a taxi meeting the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor. One day I picked up 2 girls from Canada and it turned out that they were Escamos (They were Inuit escamo means snow eater)Well they had come to Ireland because they had met so many Irish people. What did they think of the place?

It is so so beautiful and the people are so friendly we cannot understand why people ever leave it. 

So I said that we had bad neighbors and in and around 1830 we had a famine and this started a mass exodus which continued right until the 1980s.

When you go leave your home you have an ache in your heart to return, but this is the one day that gives you the opportunity to re-connect. 

Still things will get better,I feel it in me waters as the Moore St dealer would say.

By the way St,Patrick was a slave taken from Wales !

So I wish you all good health and that next year we might hopefully have the NYPD leading the big parade. 

I hope to see you all there.

Pope John Paul in a moment of foolishness decided to Un-saint  Patrick, but the nuns who worked in the Vatican let him know that there would be no dinner until he changed his mind and reversed that mad idea.

Jameson whiskey are having a virtual St. Patricks day

(sorry I could not find the link.)

In the West Indies statues of St Patrick are on display all over the place. Well to them it represents Kali (I think) who is a snake God.

Montserrat has a weeks holiday for St.Patricks day !!

I must try it out.

This must be what prison is like

I am being lined up for my shot next month and I hope they put a big rubber stamp on my forehead which says "clear to travel"although I doubt it.

The ing things are progressing Painting, Cleaning, Gardening etc. 

YouTube and Netflix are keeping me occupied as well. 

Hard on poor me ,but imagine single people living alone. 

One thing that is getting my blood to boil is the new advertisements on the radio 

"Seniors money"

Borrow money on your house and have a holiday,enjoy yourself and the bank will own your house in a few short years, your kids might even have to pay some of the money back.

One passenger who I had in the car gave me great advice on money.

"Live on what you have, don't buy a fancy car with big repayments. Buy what you can for cash with no loan. Be polite and listen to people. A good idea will pass you at least every month, grab it and use it yourself." 

I had no idea who he was at the time but I was driving him to a press conference where he had to declare that he was the person behind a charitable foundation called Atlantic Philanthropies. Mr Obama had brought out a law to find who was giving donations to rival political parties If you donated more than $50,000 anomalously you had to declare who you were and what your donations were. 

Well the remarkable Chuck Feeney had donated $8 Billion of his own money to help people all around the world. How did he make his money ? Since you asked he had a good idea, a simple idea. He invented duty free shopping DFS 

You can read about him in my book "The steering wheel university" By Paul Malone

Or a fuller account called "The billionaire who wasn't" By Connor O'Cleary

You can buy both books on Amazon 

 He is one person who has lifted my life for sure.

It is an awful pity that there is not 100 more people like him,

Happy Valintines day to one and all.

 40 years ago there was a St.Valentines dance in the Stardust ballroom on the Northside of Dublin.

When everything was going full swing a fire broke out. But there was big a problem, a really big problem.

The fire doors were chained shut and the staff did not have keys to unlock them. There was absolute panic, kids running left and right windows were barred and soon the fire had turned to an inferno, 200 kids were injured and 48 were killed. The grief and people openly crying in the area you could cut with a knife.

Nothing came of the numerous inquests which were held, one strange thing that did happen was that Mr.Butterly who owned the dance hall got compensation for having his dance hall burned down.

Please believe you me when I tell you never take your safety for granted, look out for yourselves.

So at this time thousands of magicians would land in Blackpool in England for a big convention. Its the biggest in the world and by God it is the best.

So I was there a few years ago and it was flying. There was dealers and demonstrations everywhere and the main lecture was to kick off. It was to be held downstairs beside the main magic dealers hall, I went off to it and I found that there was more than 4 times the number of people there than the hall should haves safely  held. The killer was that there was some building work going on and the fire escapes of the room were boarded up.

I felt claustrophobic and left for safety, some of the lads told me afterwards that the lecturer was crap.

Now I went home and after a few months I found the phone number for the Lancashire police. I explained about the problem.

Her reply was NO No NO you have the wrong department you have to ring Billy Jack or Joe, not us.

So I just said that she should ask someone about the Stardust fire in Dublin. Then ask yourself if anything like that happened in Blackpool, how would you feel knowing that you could have prevented it.  

I saw a guy going around with a clipboard the next year. 

Good on me.

My old classmate in school was a radio officer in and out of Belgium.

While he was on the bridge he spotted a ship heading out to sea with its bow doors open.

He got on the the emergency channel and told them to close the bow doors because the wash from his ship would flood his car deck. A few months later the same thing happened and the call went out, crisis.

Disaster averted.

Then he got the news that "The Herald of free enterprise" had capsized with loss of life. 

At the inquest my classmate told that he had warned the captain twice about the bow doors being open, other ships had warned him as well. 

The clincher was that calls on the emergency channel are recorded, so the captain was caught.

I had to wonder why the door was left open in the first place.

"To clear the exhaust fumes from the car deck, and a simple light on the bridge would have prevented it"

Goats looking at thunder

 When you just don't understand something a good expression is

Goats looking at thunder

 

So here I am still stuck inside wondering what is going to happen next.

The pubs all shut. Schools and university's closed, the government are handing out shit loads of euro to people who are not working. 

But it is Europes money.

So everyone thinks that it won't have to be paid back..

Wrong! it will have to be paid back.

Thank God that I am only a stupid taxi driver otherwise I would be worried.

But I do know a Chinese lady who is a member of a very large Chinese company which controls Billions of Chinese Yuan. I helped her to buy a car once and she stays in touch. 

China seems to be coming out of this whole thing lightly. If you break Quarantine there they jump on you and beat the crap out of you.You will stay in the house the next time. Sues office is in Ballsbridge and they really opened my eyes on the proper way to make things happen.

I went to a local estate agent I knew shortly after I met them to help her to open dialogue between the Chinese company and his agency, the receptionist there just gave me the bums rush, you can never judge a person by how they dress. But I am still shocked.

Sue told me that they had bought a lot of hotels and around 400 houses for renting. Now they are buying land and developing entire towns !

So next week I will ring her up, the Chinese new year can not be far away.

She knows what is what, I really do not believe that BitCoin is the answer. 

To me it looks like a Ponzi scheme.

Anyhoo I don't have that much money to loose.

 

So my old flatmate caught Covid and spent 26 weeks in bed 1/2 a year.

I got that wrong, what he had said was that he closed his hairdressing business 26 weeks ago.

Not what we thought.

Gerry Marsden singing You’ll Never Walk Alone with Take That at Anfield

Stupid to the end

I am reflecting on things that happened, doing an audit of the past.

We have  a showground complex in Ballsbridge called the RDS.(Royal Dublin Society).

It has three main complexes and the horse show, the dog show etc. are all held in different parts of the complex. The main entrance is on the Merrion Rd. Then you have the Anglesea Rd entrance, and last of all you have the Simmonscourt Rd. entrance.

So it came to pass that I was dropping off this lady and I asked her to check her ticket and then we went over to the Anglesea rd entrance. As she was getting out one of the ushers was telling a very entitled lady "No you go other side. Other side"

She got in and said I am going to the conference center

Now I knew that usher was telling her to go to the other side of the building through the Merrion Rd. entrance. So I tried to tell her.

Look, can't you see that I am talking on the phone.

Could I just tell you something ?

I hardly think a taxi driver could tell me anything I don't already know. 

So I headed off to the Conference center on the other side of the river while she spouted on talking pure crap. At the end she was paying by credit card which created the moment for the second part of the story.

As the  woman got out another lady got in and said The Microsoft conference please at the RDS.

The entitled lady said. "But that is where I am going"

Yes I tried to tell you where it was at least 4 times and you told me that I could not possibly be able to tell you anything and that I was just a stupid taxi driver.

She didn't say sorry.

Look you can come back with me said the new passenger. 

I said that there is absolutely no way she was getting back into my car unless she paid the entire fair. She agreed.

The return trip was non eventful, no mobile phone and at the end she paid again.

On handing her the receipt she said that she was going to report me for being rude. 

Please do madam, do you see that camera over there? 

It has recorded everything that you said and did since you entered the taxi.

Now don't bump your head when you are getting out.

 

A bombshell some time later.

So 2 guys got in and I recognized one of them as once being from a boy band.

The poor kid had invested heavily into property and lost a lot of his money.

The older man was an auctioneer and was helping him to whip his portfolio back into shape. A phone rang and the conversation got very serious suddenly.

He hung up the phone and said excuse me. The follow up call was short and clear.

Tommy, you rang Lidl (or Aldi) We were going to sign the lease today and you decided to just put up the rent, by yourself, before the paper was signed you jacked up the rent.

The agreement we made was a good one, they were a great tenant and they are gone now because you decided to act the bollix.

The business relationship that we had is now completely finished. 

Look at your contract you signed with me and you will see that once a tenant has been found and a rent agreed 

You are liable for all costs 

So we all let out a gasp of air.

As he paid me he said

There is a limit to mans intelligence  

But Stupid goes on and on.