Tidal flow of people.

This building is at the bottom of Vernon Ave. Clontarf.
Strange structure, it won a prize.
What is inside ?
Pipes, valves and pumps...

Meeting (pleasant) people from all over the world is one of the big perks to my job.
20 years ago we were an island surrounded by water on the west coast of Europe.
Then the EEC came and with it prosperity.
Suddenly Ryanair arrived with cheap air fares.
Then there was extra jobs which soon took many of the jobless in. Back then you would never guess that other jobs would be filled by people from outside Ireland. Latvia,Estonia,Poland,Spain and later Czechs Slavic's and Romanians all came.

I can't help thinking we will have very good looking grand children.

Listening to accents and guessing where they came from is a little bit of fun.
But today I really surprised my passenger.
Before she said a word I said. "Are you Spanish?"
She thought it was really strange as she had not spoken.
"But how can you know?"
You have a classic Spanish look.
"But I am blond and Spanish people have black hair"
No in the Catalan area all the beautiful blond girls look like you.
"I don't know how you guessed it but I am Catalan"

It is strange, but tribes have certain looks.
The first time I guessed that a Mongolian guy was not Chinese he thought it was fantastic, until I pointed out that he was speaking Russian at the time.
I do not speak either language, but to any listening ear the sounds are different.
Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese all have subtle differences.
Through time I will have refined my skills.
Many of the Latvian people are blond, some have fantastic blue eyes. We think of the Swedish people as the classic blue eyed blond, Many Swedish are very dark haired.
Most of the new continentals carry themselves very well, shoulders held high, no slouching around!
Did you ever meet someone from the very north of Greece for example?
Very wide foreheads black dark eyes, very exotic.
I met a woman from Iran the other day, I just couldn't place her features. There are a lot of Iranian people who fled at the time of the fall of the Shah. One guy told me how he had paid 1 million euro in tax and he still owed them 8 thousand.He asked them if they would accept a post dated check for the balance and they told him that they were going to find out how much interest and penalties they would charge him.
"Imagine I took the risk,I made money, I invested again, I employ around 60 people. We all pay taxes, but the government do no work at all, take no risk. Yet they cannot accept a post dated check, Money will be on the move out of Ireland next year my friend".

Some week I will try to keep a tally of where everyone came from.

Temperament is another thing that runs in a race of people, Cypriots and Italians are very fiery. South American people have this electric sparking temper.

There is a lady who lives close to me from Columbia, one day she came from the local church hall screaming and shouting at her daughter who is around 9 years old.
The lady gets into the drivers seat and fires up the engine. The daughter has the door open, but before she has a chance to jump into the people carrier the mother zoomed back with the daughter hanging on to the door. Now she was flooring the pedal.
If any kid was behind the car they would have been killed, as it was the daughter managed to hold on to the door until she stopped to go forward.
It is really strange how some people loose the head with no thought of tomorrow.

A couple of weeks ago an English man was hit over the head by another motorist for driving too slow.The man died a few days later.
In the leafy streets of Sandymount you would never think such a thing would happen there.
I had an Irish guy in the taxi who is working in Moscow.
He was going to Sutton and as we passed Connelly station a group of women stepped out of a lane of traffic. I had seen them ,but he couldn't believe it.
He said time and time again "They didn't even look!"
You see in Moscow you couldn't stop so fast.
He wouldn't tell me what he did for a living, he had been there quite a while. "I work for Putin" is all he would say.
Later he told me he had written a book called"The Russians are coming"It looks like an interesting book.

I dropped him just round the corner form Phil Lynotts house, so I went to see his mother.

She is another of the worlds greatest people and guess what?

She is 80 this weekend.
All the folks are coming from the 4 corners of the world to Rock and roll.

Happy birthday from me too Philomena.

Philos grave in Sutton graveyard.