You never ever know.

 I have been only working half days for the last few weeks, so not an awful lot of news.

On Easter Sunday I cruised around and picked up a Phillapeno mother and daughter going to mass.

Her husband was a taxi driver and she is a nurse, making small talk I asked her how her husband was getting on with the taxi driving. She said that he was sick. "Covid" I said. No its Cancer.

The poor unfortunate folks. That cancer is an awful curse. It seems to hit the good people all the time.

The other job today was to the equestrian center in Ballyfermott. I didn't know where it was and we asked a few people.(Dr.Google was no help)

As we got closer he pointed me to a bus stop where he had been set upon by 3 men with batons. When they had beaten him to a pulp one of them phoned a girl on a video call. "WE got the bastard look at how we beat him" the reply came "That's not him you stupid shower of retards"

They just walked away after calling an ambulance. Nice people.

He showed me the bruising and scars on his body and arms and legs.

Then back to business.

Down from the equestrian center is the back wall of Wheatfield prison and an exchange of goods was taking place, when we were going back into town he remarked that he was only out 2 1/2 weeks and last week he got 15 mobile phones into the prison without damage.

The thing about this guy is that he will only live for another 6 months if he is lucky as he is doing all the running around and carrying cash and drugs and he is very expendable.

Now for the UK news

Another case where a little boy called Logan Mwangi was beaten to death by his mother stepfather and a teenage boy, his body was thrown into a local river.

The boy was on the list of vulnerable people

Then

On 6 th of August Verphy Kudu abandoned her baby of 20 months for 6 days while she celebrated her  19 th birthday by visiting friends the length and breath of England. There was no one to look after the child. When she came home the baby was dead. The one thing that is strange in this situation the place where she was living with her baby was supposed to be supervised. 

Anyhow she will not be doing any partying for the next 9 years.

It is not much of a punishment for killing a child

36 Years ago today

 My wife has the memory of an elephant, she never forgets anything. 

She reminded me that it was 36 years ago to the day that we moved into this house. It was the end of one story and the beginning of another.

Our first house was in Blanchardstown on the edge of a large public housing scheme and with a lot of hard work it was mostly paid off and we wanted to move up in the world.You can sell a candle or a box of matches you can also sell a house with no help from an estate agent. No internet back then, so we put a few ads in the evening paper, many people hung up when we said that the house was beside Corduff. We painted a sign and put it up on the embankment beside the house and a man came. "I've come to buy your house" (The kids later called him the cross man) Everything was put into motion to find a good house and we cornered one in Portmarnock beside the sea. Offers were made and rejected, while we increased our offer several times. No go.

Then we tried to get our buyer to pay a deposit of around £2,000. No he said. 

"Me word is me bond"

So I wanted to nail him down as he was moving from a corporation house and he was getting a grant.

I told my solicitor to take £1 deposit and he blew his top. My brother who is a solicitor in the UK told me that his purpose was to act on my behalf and he must act as per my instructions.So £1 was paid and we moved a step closer to the end. Two weeks later he told us that he would move in 2 weeks !

Back to Portmarnock NO GO ! A friend of ours who had been an estate agent told us to walk around the area day and night, there might be a drummer living next door, you only have one chance to find out.

Then on the way back home we cut up a road in Clontarf where they were putting a for sale sign on a house and the lady told us that she would let us see it on Monday. Viewed it on Monday, Survey done on Tuesday. We told the auctioneer that our house was sold and that we had been approved for a loan. So this was a cash offer.We could move in in 2 weeks another £300 closed the deal.

2 weeks later as we were moving out the phone rang and it was the auctioneer from the Portmarnock house to tell us that our offer had been accepted. Poor man was flabbergasted when I told him he was too late.

"You could not close a sale so quickly" he said. I said for him to ring back in an hour and talk to the new owner. 

I knew a guy who lived in the area and the Portmarnock house went unsold for a further 6 weeks.

Yes fun and games often backfire.

Caught myself out !

 Hello folks, nice of you to pop around. Did you get caught by an April fool gag? I fooled myself!!!

I went up to visit our baby granddaughter in N.Ireland the day before. Our roof signs are detachable and it is a 4 hour drive up and back so I took off the roof sign and put it in the dining room. There was a bit of frost on the windscreen in the morning which I scraped off and away I went, I noticed one or two punters putting out their hands and taking them back down again, I thought nothing of it. Then I got a job from Bolt and the customer seemed a bit reluctant to get in.

I got another 2 bolt jobs with the same hesitation before they got in. Then the bombshell came. Where is your roof sign? Back at home came the answer. But the final customer was easy with the situation, he was a part time actor, so I filled in the rest of the trip talking about what a great playwright Arthur Miller was. As it turned out the customer had acted in the Crucible. Arthur was never happy with his work, he kept changing and re writing again and again. I probably told you about picking up a guy at the Abbey theater once and I was raving about View from a bridge which I had seen a few months before. I was ecstatic about how good it was. Then he said "Thanks be to God that you liked it. I am Joe Dowling I directed it" I got a €10 tip as well.

Praise from someone who dosent know is true praise indeed.

Still when you see a great play done well there is nothing better, or a song well sung, done badly there is nothing worse as you sitting there knows knowing how great it could be.