Farewell 2015 welcome 2016

                 Once again Dublin is looking great..

                         Clontarf yacht club held a suicide awareness day.

      A new member to the €uro its Lithuania and Latvia is in as well.

    Here is a great idea if you're taking a month off. A solar powered battery charger

There will be a big festival in Dublin to celebrate the new year click here for details.
The site is not great all I need to know Where? Who is on? and When?

Looking forwards and looking back at this time can waken you up for sure.
John Lennon died 35 years ago..Many of us can remember that shocking moment.
By the way The Beatles are now on Spotify...Strawberry fields forever.

Soon the work will vanish for 3 months.
Many of my older mates head off to Spain to rest. An old guy explained to me that there are bargains to be had at that time of the year. "But don't go out in the sun or there will be no tips when you come back".

This year I have a plan.
Instead of just saying that I am writing a book, I will just finish it off.

All of my 3 sons went to Mount Temple school. The famous school where U2 met.
 youngest lad David was in the same class as Jack Doyle the son of Roddy Doyle the creator of the book and film "The Commitments"
We met in the supermarket. "How's the blog going?
"Not too bad I am working on the book, its very hard, writing, correcting and writing all over again."
All he said was "Tell me about it"
A funny guy to say the least.

We all know that there has to be at least 3 books in it.
From the tragic to the comical and on to the farcical. 

Today I brought a Brazilian girl to the airport, going home for good.
Often customers become friends and it is not a money making job, its a freebie.
Brazil is very very wealthy country but it is so corrupt.
She told me that one of her friends belongs to a wealthy family and the father groomed and had sex with a young girl. The father was never punished,"my friends brother is a judge and he quashed everything... I said this is so wrong, is there no God? But nothing changed,"
 
So many things pass your ear every day, still it is an education..

Best of luck for 2016  

Christmas wishes

 Happy Christmas, war is over !!!!!!





Irving Berlin made a fortune from this



 The usual video is gone, but you get the story



Lets not dwell on the bad things there is a lot of good things happening..

Have a fantastic Christmas 
And an even better 2017

Small change big fuss

 A giant washing machine wash all the clothes,the kids, the dog and the cat all at once.

 An old TV with the works taken out and an and an animated display put in its place.

Not the kind of Christmas lights we like to see

Well at this time the amateur drinkers come out.

A taxi driver dropped off around the Bleedin Horse and then headed for home.

Great!  I'm finished now off for a pint before the pubs close he thought.
Just as he started off again two girls just jumped in.
"Two stops Rathfarnham and Dundrum. no long way around and shut your fucking mouth, no talking"Said one of the girls"
So the driver tells them to get out and after much "You HAVE to bring us" they got out before the police were called..

A man gets on to a bus and pays in the machine and the driver doesn't give him his 5c refund ticket.
He calls the driver names and he is then is asked to get off the bus.

NO I WON'T GO !

This time the Garda come and remove him and the bus goes on its way 40 minutes late.
So he is full of rage and engages a solicitor and goes off to court.
Deformation of character !!!
So the judge listens to the saga, perhaps she saw the CCTV footage as well.

Let me explain something to you said the Judge.
Your own actions caused all this friction, you caused the trouble by not getting off the  bus when you were asked, so the defamation was of your own making.

YOUR CASE IS DISMISSED AND I AM AWARDING COSTS AGAINST YOU OF €20,000.

Then  
My own washing machine stopped, so I had a look, no go.
Off to the man, 36 hours later I get the call.
This is the problem 2x 1c coins stuck in the pump, "That will be €50!"

Sometimes small change causes big friction.

11 days to go

To all the taxi drivers out there and all the people working in bars and shops.

Thank God it will soon pass.

Phil Lynott 30 years gone

 Don't forget to buy your ticket for the "Vibe for Philo" concert 30 years on.

                                                        Trinity college

                A lion a tiger and a Jaguar.

Here is a story from the Irish Times (click it)It concerns a lady who was in my taxi.
She filled me in on her ongoing battle with her husband in the High court.
His previous partner had walked away from him with nothing fearing the battle.
Now she has fought tooth and nail, he has spent €800,000 on court proceedings. She now has a barring order against him. 
The war will continue.

In Dublin a few years ago we had 2 profoundly handicapped boys living in Dublin.
Christopher Nolan would sit and stare at the world while the "experts"said he was not capable of rational thought . Then he was given a drug which relaxed his muscles and boy did he start to write.
His poems have won many awards."Damburst of dreams"and "Under the eye of the clock"

Davern Hannahs (link) parents were told that he was not viable but his poetry was better than anything I could ever write for sure.I used to work with Jack Hannah a very intelligent man.

Yes folks how would you like to be a prisoner inside your own body unable to make yourself understood and unable to help yourself in any way.

So stop moaning for a while and help others.

A reality check for me

                                                                      Westbury hotel

Well Christmas is well and truly here. Greed, shopping and very little of the 
 real message of peace, goodwill to all men.

Whenever I get complacent about things I get a good kick in the arse from the man above
Yes even taxi drivers take things for granted and become grumpy, customers not coming out and cancelling after 4 minutes, little things like that.

Well last Friday I was humbled by what I saw.
A guy waved me down on the Clontarf Rd and there was a girl in a wheelchair beside him.
I jumped out to put the chair in the boot and the man told me that their would be a chair at the other end. He helped a young girl into the back seat and off we went, just me and her.
She was a beautiful young lady but she was profoundly handicapped, every small gesture turned into a big jerk and as I spoke to her desperately trying to decode her answers I was really humbled.
Nothing for me is any effort, picking things up, talking or walking.
Everything I take for granted is for her a battle.
She is really beautiful and I am so grateful that perhaps from now on I will not take my own life for granted.

May God bless you.
A guy in the car dropped a small credit card wallet on Friday and the next person in the car handed it over. There was credit and business cards in it so I sent him a text.
I got a reply soon after.
So then I dropped it back to his office.
No big deal!
Today as I dropped someone off the same man stopped me on the street to thank me, I said it was no trouble but he insisted on giving me €10.
Good man.

Beats the crap out of that doctor who dropped a wallet wit more than £1,500 in Irish and English notes years ago.  He never dropped me the smallest thanks.
One customer told me that this guy doesn't believe in God or Man. One day day you will be passing a shop and see a waving cat in the window and that will be him in the next life.

But one day recently I saw a waving cat and I bought it knowing that it was him in his new life..


Just in case you didn't understand the significance of last weeks post, here is some more.

Small battles and big victories.

Sometimes things happen which has no bearing on reality.
The other day I was at a 4 star hotel which was moving well, the porter came out and we put the cases in the boot. "Take these people to the airport and the hotel will pay the bill"
I asked him to repeat it and he said "The hotel is paying, bring the receipt up to the desk and you will be paid when you come back "
So I went off and Tommy who had put the cases in the boot was on a break when I came back and I missed him for the rest of the day. The next day I presented my bill again and I got a very nasty surprise.
"No we would never pay a guests taxi fare" No way was I going to be paid..€35.00!
Now to say I was a bit shocked would be putting it mildly.
I spoke to around 5 people and "Tommy"couldn't remember when he was phoned on his day off.
Two junior managers fobbed me off.
You would need to get something like that in writing one of them said.

I saw a senior manager and told him of my plight.

"No we would never pay a guests taxi fare"
"But there was another taxi driver beside me when the porter spoke to me" I said.

The matter was investigated and though they had no liability in law they said they would pay me as a good will gesture.
So perhaps without my witness the hotel was trying to screw me.

A porter at that same hotel once asked me to bring a customer to the airport a journey of approx €25.00. Don't start the meter if he asks you just say that its on the hotel bill. There is €30.00 in it for you and €20 for me.
I refused and put in a receipt for €21 and the porter told me that I would never get another good job from his hotel.
Anyhow I picked up a really interesting guy today going to an airport hotel and I told him my story.
I came here one day early, so I stayed in this hotel.
I usually stay at the Carlton and I have a meting there now.
I believe your story and at best they are incompetent and at worse dishonest.
He was wearing high end clothes and suitcase were Louis Vuitton. He knew of all the tricks used in this life by scam artists and crooks and I was telling him that a friend of mine had locked herself out of her car.
He had done the same and a taxi had to drive 400 Kms from his office in Luxembourg with the spare key.
I said use a courier next time.
When we arrived at the hotel I had to validate my parking and as we walked into reception a Pilot in full uniform approached us. "Good morning Robert here are the flight plans.
I will see you after the meeting."

During the trip I had told him about this urban legend that I once herd.

 Key locked in the car...Spare key at home.

Get the person at home to find the key and hold it up to their fone.

Then put your fone on speaker and ask them to press the unlock button.

Your door pops open I swear to god its true................
We did it today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyhow life is full of small battles and big victories.


Cabs are for kissing is a great blog written by a New York taxi driver,
His book is now published on Kindle.
 
Click here to buy Eugenes book




What kind of religion is Islam?

Look at this..11year old

She was put to death for dishonoring her family



then this

A sad week for Paris

Thinking back to the Paris terrorist attack it would be wrong of me not to comment publicly.

What an awful thing to happen, so many innocent beautiful people cut down in their prime.

May God comfort the injured and bring peace to the bereaved and comfort to the left behind.
They may find peace in the knowledge that the departed are in a place where there is no pain.
As for he the terrorists there is no hell bad enough for them.


There was a "Freedom fighter" in my taxi a few years ago called Sam, he had written a book a few years ago called "Soldier for a Summer". There was also a video made by French TV about his campaign against Gadaffi in Libya which won an award.
He explained to me how Gadaffi controlled terrorism around the world, how he trained supplied explosives and arms to the IRA and many other terror groups and how his intelligence service would hunt down his enemies around the world.
There is no doubt in my mind that what he was trying to do was just the right thing to do at that time.

Then a British soldier who had served in Iran and Iraq told me that the problem over there is bigger than you might think on many levels. It is a tribal country and like in the ancient fables if you cut the head off the dragon it just grows 2 more heads.
Meaning that the big leaders were just keeping all the different factions at bay,
"When you take one leader out there is total chaos"

And so it happened.

Islam means peace but like many religions it has more than a fair share of evil prophets who preach their evil gospel  from the Mosque they take young minds twist their logic until they are prepared to die for the cause.I don't know how they do it but there are training camps in Pakistan and Syria where they are trained to hate and to die.
There is a huge Arabic ghetto on the outskirts of Paris, one commentator spoke on the 
 radio of how unemployment and lack of opportunity leads the young Arab people onto the path to hell.
The British government have a great intelligence service, its the only good way to beat them.

But the won't stop me from going to London, Paris or anywhere else.

Below is Sam from Dublin