Feckin Blogger bugs

Graphic borrowed from Huguito on Flickr, more on Blog Day in the previous post below this post.


The first paragraph of the last entry is NOT what I wrote at all, fecking blogger bollox, I was saying how BackSeat Driver had posted onto his blog about this pic.

Firstly it said when I went to save my orginal post which made sense it said, 'sorry your html is incomplete'. Then when I sorted that out, it apparently cannot find my blog and somehow changed the wording on my first paragraph leaving out a whole line and messing up the links.

I think because I had links in it that Blogger went a little screwy.

So apologies to BackSeatDriver http://backseatdrivers.blogspot.com/ for appearing to not link to his piece properly, I so tried. I don't even know if this will work. So here's fingers crossed.

Pervert caught by camera phone and BLOG DAY

I SPIED this piece entitled 'snapper shames flasher' on picture on Flickr and I thought, fantastic!

Basically a woman was travelling on the underground in New York when a man began to masturbate in the carriage. You can read her detailed account of what happened here. You might need to click on the largest size picture to see that the dirty fecker did actually have his codger out, perv.

The photographer took the pic on her camera phone but the detail is surprisingly good and leaves nothing to the imagination, well once you get the zoom going that is.

While I completely applaud this woman for her actions, while I would be fearful that people, unscrupulous people would use the same method for unsavoury reasons against an innocent, but how and ever, it is very clear in this picture what was happening and that it certainly wasn’t innocent.

You can also see the glut of comments left on the picture, which is astounding; some even try to stand up for the perv, trying to explain why he conducted himself in some way. As if…

Having had similar incidents, her use of mobile phones is great, empowering and a strike against those pervs who do this without (or maybe they do) considering the impact of their actions.

This can be very frightening for a woman, and having been followed on the tube in London by a man in one such incident, I can tell you, very frightening.

That particular incident happened in the days before mobile phones when I was 17 and luckily I managed to get out of what could have been (and I seriously believe that) a frightening and dangerous situation.

Basically I was waiting on a train when a man sat beside me. He began to rub under his legs at the outside whilst looking straight ahead. The trouble was, he was also rubbing my leg.
I moved my leg in case it was an accident and it continued more. So I got up and walked to the opposite side of the tube station just as the train approached.

As I sat down in the carriage, I looked up and there was the dirty bastard who proceeded to sit opposite me and stare me out.

Not knowing what to do, I began to semi-shout ‘for fucks sake’ and look back at him. I would look up again and if he was looking I would say ‘FOR FUCKS SAKE’, all in my best and roughest Belfast accent. The few people who were in the carriage thought I was mad, and would not look my way but I did not care one bit. If I had too I would have explained why my behaviour was so odd.

The fecker then got off at the next station and when my station came I ran all the way back to the flat.

I don’t know at all if a mobile phone would have helped me then other then phoning a friend to come and pick me up at the station, but we have seen so many big uses for mobiles this summer alone from the London bombings to this. Who would have thought it?

BLOGDAY

FOR the last number of weeks, I have posted a link on my sidebar about Blog Day which happens tomorrow, and as Damien Mulley said do more than is required.

So I am posting my entries early and including a special Blog Day Blogroll for the next week or so linking to my chosen sites.

The idea behind Blog Day is to have a day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers, people from different cultures, countries, and backgrounds.

You can find out more at Wikispaces here.

My five recommendations are

1. Dervish - described as the online diary of a Muslim who seeks the light of the Beloved Creator wherever it may shine. Yasmin is a woman, wife, mother, feminist, pluralist, sixth-generation Australian, Muslim convert, raised Baha'i, serious student of religion, academic, sci-fi fan, avid reader, webpage designer, Melbournian, coffee drinker, and generally happy person.

2. My Life is a movie I haven’t yet watched - I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her... no, wait.., that's Julia Roberts in Notting Hill. I'm a Belfast poet, living with another very talented poet, trying to be creative as possible. Stuggling artist? Not really, just doing it for the love of the game. But if there's anyone out there who wants to give me a publishing deal, then... hey, wait... come back...

3. My Best Gadgets - Hello, my name is Joe. I am the editor of MyBestGadgets.com. This website started out as a personal blog containing reviews of the cool gadgets I purchased. I decided to open it up to the community.

4. Not So Clever - mysterious meanderings about meaningful things from Dublin.

5. Google Sightseeing - Google Sightseeing is brought to you by Alex, James & Olly who take you to the best tourist spots in the world via satellite images from Google Maps & Google Earth.


Technorati Tags

blogday
redmum
irishblogs
flickr

Listing the seven things that...

I HAVE been memed by Colm Bracken from In Fact Ah and Janine from Wysiwyg.

I am not very good at lists, cos I change my mind so much about the top slots, but this is as definitive a list as I can come up with for these subject matters.

Seven Things I Plan To Do Before I Die (well more hoping and wishing)

1. Visit Egypt and the pyramids.
2. Buy a lovely house.
3. I plan to win the lottery to buy the above house in Dublin.
4. Make an incredible dark room/ photography suite in my lovely new house.
5. Travel around the world for an long-extended period of time.
6. Belt out a song (well) on stage with a band.
7. Hold an exhibition of my photographs and sell the lot. (wishful thinking)

Seven things I can do

1. I am sometimes a source of useless information.
2. Sometimes I am also a source of useful information.
3. I can be good in a crisis just ask Tetra
4. I am an fair to middlin cook.
5. I can spot a teenager lying from a mile away.
6. I can give the worst dirty look in the world.
7. I make a mean marguerita.

Seven things I can not do

1. I cannot play a musical instrument, apart from the tin whistle and the way I play it doesn’t count.
2. I cannot drive.
3. I cannot stand heights, whatsoever, at all.
4. I cannot sing despite doing so often.
5. I cannot drink Sambuca or Southern Comfort *retch*.
6. I cannot drink Guinness either.
7. I cannot abide rudeness.

Seven things that I find really attractive about the opposite sex

1. Eyes
2. Smile
3. Sense of humour
4. Intelligence
5. Charm
6. Smell
7. Confidence

Seven things I say the most

1. BOLLOX!!!!!
2. Is your room tidy?
3. Have you brought the dog for a walk yet?
4. Don’t you be cheeky!
5. How many times do I have to repeat myself?
6. Turn that music DOWN!
7. What are you up to?
God I am even boring myself there.

Seven Books I love

1. Maybe the Moon, Armistead Maupin
2. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote
3. The Clockwinder, Anne Tayler
4. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
5. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
6. The Firebrand, Marion Zimmer Bradley
7. All the Harry Potter series (hangs head in grown-up shame)

Seven people I would like to see take the quiz - whoever would like to, feel under no pressure! Boliath, Doris, Steve of Wittering Heights, Dora, Trixibell, Andrea Knapp and KTBuff.



meme redmumirishblogs

Ratty has come to visit Tetra

With some pictures, not for the squeamish.

PICTURE the scene:

Me: “If there is any sign of droppings, I am out of there, okay?”
Tetra: *laughs* “As if, but sure….”

Famous last words as they say…

I promised Tetra this Saturday afternoon that I would help her gut and clean her flat after she found out she had a new and very unwelcome visitor, a rat.

Poor Tetra, she’s had an awful time lately with Ratty and her experiences have left us all experts on the life, needs and habits of your common, disease -idden and nasty rat.

It was about the time I was beginning to sun it up in Turkey, Tetra discovered she had a rat and promptly moved temporarily into her boyfriend’s flat, her flat was just not big enough for a visitor of that type.

Well when it a visitor of that ilk ever welcome…

Much phone calls, reading and research later, Tetra has learned that rats are nocturnal, would prefer outside where there are bins and therefore much more food to her flat where there is frig-all food, are neophobic (ie will not go near something that is new, no matter how delicious and tempting), pee as they go and shite up to 20 times a day.

Her boyfriend, a countryman, had told her previously that he thought she had a rat, however she dismissed him.

Then a week later she found droppings, panicked and phoned her apartment management company, when she got no answer she phoned a pest control company and her kight in shining armour turned out to be a butch woman called Pauline.

Pauline arrived to her rescue and took control of the situation, striding into the apartment with Tetra clutching her arm for comfort.

Traps were laid, the ones with the sticky stuff and off they went, Pauline to save another damsel in distress and Tetra to live temporarily with her country boyfriend.

A hole was discovered in the back wall leading to the pipe from her sink and this was believed to be the visitor's entrance, so it was promptly blocked up.

With there being more food for it outside, Tetra believed that, hopefully since two weeks had passed since it last desposited any evidence, it was now gone.

Believing that Ratty had just been wandering in once or twice in the hole from the bins outside, we ventured in to begin the clean-up operation.

We would go in, the traps would still be untouched and we could clean her life back to normality.

But Ratty has obviously had other ideas.

So it is now more than two weeks since the traps were laid and four days since they were last checked.

And they were empty.

Somehow the rat/s have managed to clear the traps of the bait and not get caught on the sticky stuff. (A feat which I managed to do while washing my hands uuurrrggggggggggggg)

So back to Saturday afternoon, in we walked to the flat, rubber gloves and protective clothing at the ready, ready to scrub every inch of the place, convinced the rat had not been back.


Some manic cleaning

We saw the traps were empty of bait and just looked at each other.

A couple of phone calls later we established that the country boyfriend had not moved them (why we thought he would do that, I don’t know) and somehow Ratty managed to eat them off the sticky trap and get away.

One of the traps had been overturned and somehow despite actually been stuck to it, Ratty got free.

Then we noticed Ratty had chewed part of wood underneath the cooker.



We SO wanted to just leave and we couldn’t for a while.

More phone calls to the pest people later and Tetra is out again for another couple of weeks.

Like Doris, I have had mice visitors and they are absolutely vile, horrible and urrggghhh but rats, oh yeuck, disease ridden horrible creatures.

My heart goes out to her so much at the moment.

And we weren’t the only ones having a tough Saturday, the poor Dubs lost out to Tyrone in the GAA football semi-final.

All around town you could see the red and white shirted Tyrone fans and the blue Dubs and most were smiling.





After a hard day's GAAing, and maybe a few pints, there's nothing better than a Burdocks Chip



Here’s one last picture, I took it on Friday morning going to work. I saw the graffiti on the hoarding in front of the GPO on O Connell Street, I took three shots, two had people walking right in front of the writing while the third was this one which I am happy with.

For the non-Irish visitors to the site, if you’d like to find out more about what it means, click on the picture to go to my flickr page explaining more.



(And to find out even more do a google search for Ireland 1916.)

Travelling down O’Connell Street today, the hoarding has already been painted over and the graffiti has gone.


irishblogsdublinratredmum
ireland
gaa
flickr
1916

Nobody good ever plays Belfast

THE end of the summer concerts are finishing up all over the country, kinda makes you a little sad.

I just watched an excerpt on the BBC Northern Ireland news about the big concert in Botanic Gardens in Belfast featuring Franz Ferdinand and Scissor Sisters. And having grown up in Belfast, I did think ‘WOW look at that’.

I know loads of people and big names have played Belfast over the last number of years but it did strike me that a two-day outdoor music festival is still a pretty new phenomenon.

Growing up in Belfast as a teenager in the 1980s was a completely different story, you had to travel to see the bigger names.

But in fairness to The Smiths, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, Big Country, Nik Kershaw, they all played there, many regularly (you know you did Nik), as did bloody Chris De Boke and the less said about that ugly wee bollox the better.

There were no big sets, no costume changes, none of these stage antics and dramatics expected nowadays, just bands like the above playing in the Whitla Hall, Mandela Hall (both at Queen’s University), the Kings Hall or the Ulster Hall. There were very few venues suitable for concerts.

You would never have gotten an all-day event and certainly not a two-day event and on a school night as well.

I made it sound like ‘ugggh you had to travel’ but it was really like ‘way hay, we’re off to Dublin for (insert whoever) for the day, way hay’.

The first big concert that we went to in Dublin was Self Aid and we were all 15 and got up at the crack of dawn to call on each other, dolled up to the nines and make our way into town to catch the specially laid on buses to Dublin.

From http://www.cs.may.ie/~adamw/selfaid.jpg


From http://www.nireland.com/c.tunnah/ticket3.jpg
And I still have my ticket too…

The only regular way to travel to Dublin at the time was the train but it was too expensive in comparison to the bus tickets and secondly the times did not suit concert days.

When I started coming to Dublin for the weekend, the only official Dublin bus from Ulsterbus left Belfast at 6 on a Friday and returned at 6 on a Sunday, bloody madness considering they are the two largest towns in the country and located only a hundred miles apart.

Even then, there were many people who came up and down from the North to work, there was a large gang I used to meet all the time on the train when I came back and forth more than I do now.

Anyway the topic tonight is concerts, so back to that and sorry if I lost you along the way; Irish public transport is and will be a post on its own when I get the energy.

So off we went to Self Aid with loads of other people and had a complete ball loving every minute of it. We didn’t get home until nearly dawn the next morning.

Another time, a friend and I went to Dublin to see Simple Minds, backed up by The Waterboys, Lloyd Cole and In Tua Nua, or was that Light a Big Fire????


That’s my hand…. Jim, Jim, over HERE!


Check out the shorts on the guy with the 22 tshirt! Nice.
(The photographer who took these is documenting pics of all the concerts he’s been to, including the one we were at). Check out more of his pics here

Again we set off at the crack of dawn and met up with people along the way. Its amazing how when you are away like that, you have no qualms going up to someone and saying ‘don’t you go to (whatever school, disco, etc)?’ and spend the day with people who would probably ignore you otherwise. (Belfast was such a posey place as a teenager in the 1980s with little reason either!!!!! Or maybe it just felt like that.)

At one point during The Waterboys set, we met a fella we knew from home and he played our big brother, getting us water and making sure no one crushed us, only poor Brian messed up on his newly acquired self-imposed duties and down we both went under the crowd at nearly the same time.

I just remember thinking about the girl who died at a concert having been crushed as I watched people’s legs, shoes and arses, and then nothing.

I came too-ish being held over people’s heads and passed to the front of the crowd where I was very gently (considering) passed to the first aid people right at the front of the stage.

Finding myself placed on a seat being given water, I turned around and there was my pal on a chair also in the first aid tent.

Having recovered, we went back out with not a bother on us.

That was also the first and last time I ever sat on a fella’s shoulders, it was another lad from Belfast and he bent down and scooped me up before I realised what on earth he was up to.

But I hated it really, I liked the vantage point but I was scared he was going to topple over, I was taller than he was.



The Simple Minds concert was one of the best concerts I was ever at and I was never mad about Simple Minds, they were fantastic. Their last song was Sun City and Bono came out on stage and sang to and there was thunder and lighting, all very melodramatic and wonderful.

That night going back home on the bus, we were caught up in an awful traffic jam as these buck eejit teenage boys sat behind us meaowing to get our attention.

Between the cat sounds and the occasional outburst of ‘GINGER’ pronounced as in Ming the Merciless and ‘UGLY GINGER’, my wee head was about to burst.

[Just to explain Belfast in the 1980s was an awful place for redheads. Redheads were considered to be the lowest common denominator of attractiveness. To summarise those hard teenage years, I had one boyfriend say to me ‘I always said I wouldn’t go out with a redhead and here we are’ to which I replied ‘Sure I always said I wouldn’t go out with an arsehole….. At least I realised that it was the men in Belfast with the problem.]

We took this abuse for about half an hour until the main instigator launched into this very sorry diatribe about how ‘no good bands ever play in Belfast cos of the troubles and its so terrible, oh poor wee me, whine, whine, whinge, whinge!’.

On and on he went, and on and on.

I threw my coat over my head in an attempt to try and sleep only to get ‘That’s right Ugly, cover yer head’. And they all launched into a jeering session.

However, they did look shocked when I went back to them and launched into my own blistering attack on their witterings before ending it saying ‘and you (to the main buck eejit) have to be the MOST boring eejit I have ever heard!’

As I went back to my seat, a sorry and pitiful voice sounded ‘that’s the second time someone’s called me boring today’.

Don’t you just love it when you hit the nail on the head?

And back to my original point, watching snippets of tonight’s concert with the Scissor Sisters giving it loads in Belfast on the news, isn’t it great how things turn about too?

irishblogsbelfastconcertsredmum

Spreading Italian

DURING my recent time off, I went to Belfast for the night and took a Bus Eireann coach at the very reasonable price of €12.


View from the bus

The ticket used to be €25 but Bus Eireann was forced to recently halve the price because a private operator started servicing the same route with an hourly bus.

While I prefer the train, who doesn’t, I do not prefer to spend nearly €50 in addition to whatever the young wan’s ticket would cost.

Besides which, you can never guarantee whether or not you’ll be bused between trains stations which is a complete pain in the arse and adds ages to the journey time.

While you miss the amazing views from the train stretching from outside Dublin right up to Portadown, (at which point it turns suburban) often you are better off just getting the bus. And now with the new bargain price and brand new road to Belfast, it’s even more desirable.

Or so I thought.

On the way up, we were caught up in the most awful traffic in Dundalk due to roadworks, I think it took us an hour to get through the traffic. So while we reasonably should have expected to arrive into Belfast at 6.30ish having left Dublin at 4, we didn’t arrive in until 7.45pm.

It’s only one hundred miles to Dublin and with the opening of the new road; the time it takes to drive up has been reduced drastically, well normally that is. And you also get to see the snazzy new bridge at Drogheda which looks stunning at night, rather like a space ship landing.

While the extra time was annoying, at least for the first time, the express was actually an express in the way I believe it to be and drove straight to Belfast without stopping.

The way home was a different story.

I phoned to check the times and decided to opt for the 4pm home. I asked was it an express and was told that it was. Fantastic.

We caught the bus with Dublin Express written on the side with moments to spare.

Trawling up the bus there were no double seats left. There were many single ones all throughout the bus and then I realised that the nine or so Italians all taking up a double seat individually were actually together but not seating together.

That’s okay, if there’s four or five, but to take up so many seats in that way is just a bollox.

Selfish bastards.

And along the back seat, there was an Italian couple who were also part of this group.

He, in the manner of men everywhere, spread himself over about four seats, so I just stood in front of him until he moved and allowed me and my daughter to take the last two seats (together) on the bus.

We hadn’t even left Belfast before he was falling asleep and moving slowly and uncomfortably close to me.

Down and down his head moved to my shoulder, despite trying to ignore it I could feel and sense my personal space being completely violated.

So as his head inched closer and closer to my shoulder I placed my freezing cold bottle of water against his arm, which was at the this point practically around my waist.

He didn’t even budge, flinch, waken.

I started giving little but violent shakes of my shoulder and he didn’t budge and I am starting to get really peeved off, the young wan laughs heartily thinking this is an absolute geg.

Then his girlfriend who was the whole time reading a magazine noticed and hauled him unceremoniously by the neck over to her.

But that wasn’t the end of the nightmare journey, we weren’t even outside Belfast at this point.


Views from along the new road

This brings me to the term ‘Express’. The bus normally stops at Newry, Dundalk, Drogheda and then onto Dublin, the express goes straight stopping nowhere, well that’s the theory.

So this express stopped at Sprucefield (a shopping centre about 10 miles outside Belfast), Banbridge (a small town about 25 milesish outside Belfast) and then Newry.

Can someone explain to me how that qualifies as an express and it is even more frustrating as I have never seen anyone get picked up at Sprucefield or Banbridge.

This particular bus journey was absolutely boiling, there was no air conditioning on the bus and the temperature felt about 30c and the Italian started to spread out.


Spreading Italian

By the time we were coming into Dublin he was lying over three seats, over his girlfriend and over me.


Spreading even more Italian

Maybe I should have taken the train…


Beside the new toll booth

Dreaming of Turkey...

I'VE just come home from a wonderful holiday in Turkey and I'm depressed.









Just look at the view that I have left behind, wouldn't you be depressed too?

I will be downloading the hundreds of pictures I took over the next couple of days onto my fickr account and you can see them all then.

You'll be able to see views of Ephesus, Kusadasi, a market in Celchuk and the bazaar outside our apartment. And all are wonderful. But for now here's a taster.


Outside the airport, having a last ciggie.


Waiting for the sun, well waiting for the plane actually. Delays are a bollox.


The bazaar outside our apartment.


Looking down into the bazaar from our apartment.


Men playing cards at a bar in Celchuk where they hold a very large weekly market.










There were a lot of ‘snip’ parades where a young man who has just come of age is paraded around on a donkey after getting snipped.

Then outside Celchuk there is the most amazing place Ephesus. I will do a post on this but here’s a little taster.







irishblogstravelturkeykusadasiredmum

Calm and serene

RIGHT I have semi-calmed down after my last post and I stress semi. However I plod or should I say blog on and am going to give you a little taster of St Stephen’s Green on a sunny lunchtime.



Firstly apologies to all you Dubs, living in Dublin and others who are already very familiar with this beautiful park and have no interest in seeing it again.



But for the rest of you, you are in for a delight.

Based right in the heart of Dublin city centre, well almost if you take O Connell Street to be the absolute centre, St Stephen's Green is a well-used fantastic spot of urban greenery and nature.



It's celebrating its 125th birthday and I have been wanting to do it justice and capture it for one of my flickr sets. (If you are not a member do join its free and a wonderful site to store pics, share pics and learn about photography.)

However, back to the park; years ago there were even chickens and roosters roaming about, don’t know what happened to them, I haven’t seen them in a while.

I did see this lot though, wouldn’t you know it, its tourists, sure if you can't act like a complete buck eejit in a foreign city with yer pals, when can you? And act like buck eejits they did.


You do the hokey cokey….

There was a band, a three-piece set-up, belting out all the Irish favourites to the crowd who were assembled in the sunshine listening.
(Check out the man at the side, more on him in a mo...)



And there was a bodhran player. (pronounced boar-ron)



The bodhran player, not this one of course, figuratively speaking, can strike fear into the most courageous session musician. They can make or break a lively tune with one clumsy ham-fisted over-enthusiastic beat.

Generally they aren’t welcome in tradition music sessions unless of course they have already proved themselves to be wildly competent.

Some people choose to spend the lunchtime in their own company watching the music,



while others choose to cuddle up to someone lovely…



Others prefered to just stand watching everyone else (a bit like me I suppose).



Only joking, this man was just standing away from where the crowd were gathered and it made for a nice shot, I thought anyway.

There’s many different wee nokes and crannies in the park, paths to follow…



and bridges to cross…



OKAY OKAY I’m cheating there, I took that last week in the park during a wet, very wet, lunchtime and you will still find people milling about and around this beautiful spot.

And I did take pix of pigeons cos I know how Doris loves them!…! But I feel that flying rats have had enough good press on these pages so here’s the not the pigeon shot…



Here's a couple of my favourite pix of the park.









And just because I have ended writing this post in a good humour, here’s something else I took today just to illustrate a point.

I want someone to explain to all the very welcome but nonetheless annoying Spanish students, please don’t block pavements, entrances, buses, Luas trams, roads, etc, etc, cos you are getting completely and utterly in the way.

Spanish students are great, they are most welcome, but could someone explain why oh why they ALL, all of them, all over the years I have been here and seen them every summer, why do they block everything, pavements, doorways, public transport?

When you can’t get by on a pavement, the gang of kids you will see will be handsome, tan and chattering away loudly, really loudly, and Spanish.


you can't see him but there's a wee pasty-faced short Irish bloke trying desperately to get out of the museum

I suppose even on a sunny day, you just can’t have everything.

irishblogsdublinireland