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,