Redmum's pressure [over] cooker

IF possible I never ask my landlord to do anything around my flat, having been burned by previous experience. That means no DIY, no decoration, and certainly, when I can help it, no fixing of things that I can fix myself.

Then on Sunday my oven blew up.

It was pre-heating ready for a lovely rib-roast, Sunday dinners are a sacred thing in my book, when I turned on the kettle… Sparks, smoke and crazy crackling noises later, the oven packed up completely and utterly.

I think it has been threatening to kill itself for sometime now. First one hot ring went but I could work around that.

Then a second hot ring blew up, so I told the landlord. I may be no cordon bleu chef but I do like to cook and a cooker that works much in the same way as a camping stove is no use to me at all.

Then the oven blew up on Sunday, I think it took one look at the rib roast and just lost all will to live.

Now let me explain something about my landlord, he’s alright. I know others who have lived in this house over the years would not feel the same. But he is, just do not get him to replace something.

I made that mistake some years back and learned the hard way that this is the house that Jack fixed with coloured wires, silicon and gaffer tape.

Some years ago my sink was beginning to show the shines of rust and I asked him to have a look, thinking it would be replaced.

Well come on, how much does a sink cost? And I am not talking about a brand, new spanking wonderful designer malarkey.

He came over with gate paint. I didn’t see this until I got home and I was gobsmacked. Was I supposed to wash dishes, etc, in a sink which has paint on it!!!

He left a basin perched on the side of the sink telling me not to use it for 24 hours. Three days later the paint was still tacky to touch and I just went feck this and since then there has always been a basin in the sink.

Well would you wash dishes in that?

Or there is the time I needed a new fridge cos my own one was absolutely and completely knackered and he brought me over the one the people who lived downstairs had discarded.

It was colder in my flat than in the fridge. I started to keep milk out on my windowsill. Thankfully one of my mum’s friends got a new kitchen and I got her old fridge freezer. It is knackered but generally works. Oh and it is a deluxe model in comparison to the shit he left me with before.

So now I needed work on my cooker.

He came over last night and obviously was not able to fix the cooker, it was marked DNR.

So I came home from work to find him fitting a new cooker, oh sorry, did I say new, I mean old, decrepit in fact.


If only!

When he left I started to try to clean it up, the dirt on the knobs alone would not come off. Then I realised there is absolutely no calibration on ANY of the knobs, including the cooker.

At the time (and experience has proved otherwise) I thought this wouldn’t be such a problem with the hot rings but it would be a big problem with the oven.

So I called the landlord back into the flat and told him.

His solution was ‘will I draw a line on it with a marker’. WHAT!

Sure couldn’t I do that myself? How fecking thick does he think I am?

But that won’t solve the problem of what fecking temperature the oven is. Only I know men who would agree with me I would say only a man would say that. So instead I will just say only someone who never cooks would say that.

So I argued the point and he just didn’t get it, then he left.

I turned on the oven on full and 20 minutes later it still felt less than hot. It was at that point I saw the spider running for its life. Yum.

Needless to say what should have taken 20 minutes to heat actually took an hour and 20 minutes.

Since then I have realised that it is even worse than at first inspection. The rings and grill don’t turn off properly, at all. You know the click when a cooker knob is turned off or on full, the clicks on the knobs defy all logic.

I realised this last night when I thought…ha… that I turned the grill off. Until 15 minutes later the room started to slowly fill up with smoke.

Where was it coming from, I opened the oven. And then I realised it was the grill. This has happened a couple of times. Can you imagine the young wan left loose on this cooker, oh God no. I must remember to tell her again to leave it alone.

So I have been turning it off at the mains constantly since just to be sure that it is off.

I am so pissed off. How dare anyone he think that’s okay. It’s not. Not at all.

I phoned him earlier and told him that I need a new cooker, that this one doesn’t work. I don’t need a brand new one, but I would prefer one that hasn’t sat in his garage for bloody years.

I need to move. But seeing as how the housing ladder has evaded me until now, I can’t see that changing in the short term anyway.

Ironically, I pay as much in rent, more in many cases, than the repayments friends I know who were able to get a mortgage pay.

But it is time to move, I have been here ten years and I never thought I would still be here.

I found this place years ago and that particular flat hunting phase was the first time I did so while on the dole.

In all my other flats up to then (there were four moves in one year alone, urgg), I had been working. It was hard enough to find a flat with and suitable for a child, let alone find one as a student (as I was at the time) AND claiming social welfare. So when I came to find here I was starting to get desperate as no one would touch me with a barge poll.

In one case I went to see an awful, awful place. But we needed somewhere to live and I remember looking and looking wondering what on earth I could do to the place to make it home.

The prospective landlord looked at my pal who had come to see the place with me and asked was it for us two and I told him no it was for my daughter and I.

He said: “So you’d be on social welfare?”

Me: “Well ehm yeah”

Him: “I don’t want that type here, no offence!”

Me: “Well offence taken and let me tell you I am only looking at this hell hole because I am desperate due to your TYPE.”

Cue one pissed off Redmum. Then I found this place and I cannot believe I am still here 10 years later.

Since we have lived here, my daughter has started and finished primary school, started secondary school, I finished college and started the big world of work within the year.

Seven years on from finishing college I have a good job, okay salary (couldn’t it always be better) its not fantastic but I am much better off than before, and much better off than loads of people you see everyday.

Yet I cannot afford a home of our own. In the not too distant past it was not unreasonable to keep a family and home on one salary. That’s certainly not the case in post-Celtic Tiger and booming economy Ireland.

We need to get out of this flat, we need a home with a garden, more space and storage. But it has been our home and we will both miss it. Well a bit anyway.




I'll miss my lovely big window.

Roll on the lottery.

Flickr's most interesting

I HAVE been very bad posting this week and will probably get something substantial together over the day. In the meantime I thought I would be lazy and post some pics. They are what Flickr.com considers to be my most interesting pics. I’ve said this before but it is a fantastic site for storing and sharing images. And one of it's many cool features is sorting out most interesting photographs.

Do check out Flickr . You can even view the most interesting pics of a day from all the Flickr community, who download roughly 100,000 pics a day. Try September’s contributions here and prepare to see some breathtaking photos.

Back to my pics and you will see the images are in the order of number one most interesting to number 11. I was only going to do one to 10 but I personally love number 11 so I added it too.


I like this shot, but I think its far from my most interesting.


I was delighted with how this one turned out.


It is always worth carrying your camera; you never know what you might see.


Taken during a weekend away with pals in Limerick.




Taken back in 1997.








I do like this but I dont understand its inclusion really. I only took it on Monday evening and somehow it has worked itself up through the 200 pics in my interesting ranks! The mind boggles.


I was delighted with this one. Taken in Belfast in 1997 and shows a child making a swing. Lampposts are used like this all the time. You just hitch up a rope and swing away. However it is dangerous as you can imagine.

When I was growing up the nearest lamp post was against a wall so all you could do was swing from side to side, kinda shite really.

More in a wee while.

Technorati tags: Redmum flickr most interesting Irishblogs photoblog

Sandwiches, mascara, Coco the clown and Mi Mi the panda

IT NEVER ceases to amaze me the lengths the young wan will go so she doesn’t have to do something she doesn’t want to, absolutely amazing.

Just this morning as she was finishing getting ready for school I asked her if she had made her sandwich.



She said yes and I asked her to bring it to me so I could see. I have found that it is much better to go down the doubting Thomas line than trust a teenager, HA! trust and teenager, two words that do not sit well together.

Besides which I have already told her that I will be watching everything, I will be listening to all the alarm bells that ring silently in your head over something that is just not quite right and that this situation will continue until she starts to cop on to some of the nonsense that has become part and parcel of her recent behaviour.

So she brought it in and by the look of the tinfoil it was old, very old. I touched the sandwich and it felt like a dry dishwashing sponge, yum.

There are two things wrong here.

First of all there is the question of not having eaten the previous day’s lunch and then there is the question of constantly trying to pull the wool over my eyes. What is all that about?

Bear in mind on the days where I have not made her a sandwich and she has to, I always ask to see it because she can be a lazy so and so and would prefer to starve than take two minutes, less than two minutes to make a sandwich.

I cannot understand why when she knows I will more than likely check, why she continues to try to lie and blagg her way out of things that I know to be the case.

Take for example my make-up, and bear in mind, she has been bought cosmetic items that I think are appropriate for young teens, clear mascara, lip gloss etc, etc. Yet everyday I come home and she looks like a cross between Coco the clown and Mi Mi the panda.


The young wan before

and after…

She obviously spends a large portion of her afternoon trying on my make up and another part of the afternoon taking it off badly, hence the panda eyes.

This pisses me off no end.

My mascara is nearly done, despite only being bought in the last six weeks and I have no foundation left.

But the biggest problem which led to the blanket ban on my cosmetics is that there has been more than one occasion where I am getting ready for work in the morning and I have my foundation, eye make up on and I reach for the mascara.

And it has vanished from the place where it lives, from the place where I keep so I know where it is.

And bear in mind that being a redhead I need my mascara as surely as others need an overcoat in the rain. I’m baldy-eyed without it. And not having it means I have to take off the make-up I have put on as it looks bizarre without mascara and then go to work barefaced.


Redmum without her mascara

As you can imagine this is a bad start to the day. And it happens often, which in itself is remarkable because there have been some very tense moments around the disappearing mascara.

But back to the sandwich, considering the fact that it is now routine that I ask about the sandwich, wouldn’t you think she would just make it? Maybe that’s too sensible.

*******

Now to something completely different, you can now send e-cards of some of my pics with Bravenet.

So far I have only downloaded a few of my Galway pictures but I will add more as time goes by and if there is any particular pic that you would like to see included, let me know and it will be so…

There is a permanent link to Bravenet at the right-hand side-bar of the page. Enjoy!

Technorati tags:

Irishblogs redmum teenagers

Rainy Days, Steamy Windows and Umbrellas

WE were very lucky to have the summer we have had here in Dublin, so you would think that we wouldn’t complain when there is a couple of rainy days, ha!

I’ve been doing a theme of ‘On The Buses’ photographs which turned into ‘Steamy Windows’ following the clammy, wet weather.

Can you picture the scene, there’s me minding my own business, taking pics of Dublin as I passed through the city centre on the bus.

When I spied a crowd of people waiting to get on a bus so I snapped the top of their heads.



Then one of them spotted the lens and pretty soon the whole bus stop was waving up at me.






While I like this picture, I believe tthat umbrellas should be banned from city centres, or at least people should be tested on their suitability to manage these eye-poking, scalp-lifting implements of torture.

Let's be honest, they don’t keep you dry, only your head and a hat would work perfectly well. Small people should not be allowed to carry golf umbrellas and those nazi-feckers who think they own the pavement should also be banned from carrying them.

A hat and a good coat probably is the best way to keep dry. While I admit I carried one this week, it was only cos I had painstakenly blowdried my hair and was not letting that time go to waste because of some rain.

However, an umbrella doesn't stop the fizz factor, ah ha, but a hat can reduce it... Honestly!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The view up O’Connell Street from a steamy top deck of Dublin Bus.



Check out the Steamy Window set here



Irishblogs Redmum rain umbrellas Dublin Ireland

Bursting bubblewrap is so satisfying

Here's something fun for all of ye who love to burst bubblewrap...



Burst away and then get a new sheet...

http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/bubblewrap.swf

And here's another way to while away five minutes by following this wee man about the screen and watch him try to catch the cursor.

http://freeweb.siol.net/danej/Zajcek.swf

I should have taken pictures

I SHOULD have taken pictures, I really should have… Before, during and after the extreme make-over we gave the young wan’s room this week.

I suppose my reasoning not to was that I would be mortified to allow pictures of how the young wan’s room looked before to an audience other than family and friends.

And it really was bad. The current ‘tidy that bloody room’ stretch and it has been a stretch of the incarceration type for both of us, has lasted since July.

Before she started back to school, before we even went on holiday at the start of August, I have been going mad about the state of her room. Really mad, it has been a complete disgrace.

I have been refusing point blank to clean it up, but as it is the first thing you see when you walk into the flat, it cannot be ignored.

So I decided a while ago to order one of those high-sleeper type beds where we could put what she needs underneath and chuck out everything else.

That was the idea.


It’s like this only a lot bigger and without the added extras on the bottom

As each day would pass, the room would look remarkably the same. Sometimes it would look tidyish, then the next day it would look like a bomb hit it.

I would go bananas.

Anyhow for the last week, I have been on her back for her to finally, once and for all, sort out the room.

All day Sunday, well that’s lie, in between her pals calling to the door, some of the room was done.

She was up late and cleared out a good bit, leaving most of it all over the place, all over the flat, all over my room.

Then the new bed arrived at 8am on Monday morning. I managed to lug the two large boxes up two flights of stairs.

It took me three hours to put up the frame, because I kept having to take it apart as it was badly marked and instead of attaching pole one to pole three and pole two to pole four, I am not sure what I did but it needed redone four times till it was right. I never realised there were so many different combinations of one, two, three and four.

On top of all this I had to finish cleaning, sorting and gutting out her room on Monday. In between the flat back large boxes full of bits and pieces that should eventually become a marvellous double bed, I kept having to lie down because I felt absolutely wretched.

Somehow, with the help of my pal M, who came to the rescue after work, we managed to have it all up and done by 9.30pm. Well bar one protective bar which would not go up, no way no how.

By 11pm, the young wan was still walking about picking things up one at a time from my bed, which was covered in all manners of shite.

Already snapping, tired, drained and still ill, I made her go back and fill her arms, otherwise I was in danger of never reaching my own bed again.

Three days on and the room still isn’t finished. The poor young wan got sick in the school the next day and is currently lying feeling urrgrghh on the sofa with the dog happily curled up on top of her.

Soon soon the room will be done and I will be able to walk past without having a heart attack.

I really should have taken pics of the before, during and after, and then again maybe that’s a good thing.

Catch the pigeon...

HERE'S a letter I read in the Evening Herald Wednesday evening. And I laughed loud and hard, a bit embarrassing on the bus.

I appeal to all parents to reprimand their children who deliberately run after and kick pigeons and other birds.

I have witnessed this cruel pastime on many occasions in parks, on beaches and in the city centre. The amazing thing is their ignorant parents get defensive when you highlight the situation.

These harmless wild birds deserve protection and I would like to ask your readers to speak up for them when they see this cruelty taking place.
B. Wright, Alliance for Animal Rights

Is it just me or is this just madness? Now don’t get me wrong I would be the first to say something to anyone I saw actually being cruel to an animal. But this is verging on nonsense.

Both me and the young wan have enjoyed immensely running after pigeons when she was a toddler, it reminds of the other simple pleasures like snowangels and kicking autumn leaves.

It was mighty craic to run after them, we didn’t want to catch them that wasn’t the point. It was seeing them flying up around you, magnificent. Even the doggie loves it. She will spent an hour running around the park after every bird, normally pigeons, and no matter how fast she is, she hasn’t a hope of even getting near them.

Anyway I always bring a ball for control as she loses all rhyme and reason around balls and nothing else will distract her. Pigeons are fast and we have all seen them land in the middle of the road to peck at something only to fly away with some traffic arrives.

So should we post warning signs for motorists to be watchful for pigeons on all roads everywhere?

I have immense respect for nature however if this person ever stopped me to say nonsense like that, I would probably not be defensive; instead it would probably be something like ‘ach catch yerself on!”

I wonder if this letter was a joke, part of me thinks it must be particularly given the author is called B Wright!!!

MayB Wrong more like…


Irishblogs Redmum Pigeon

Teenagers and intelligence

I KNEW it, I bloody well knew it.

“Teenagers really do get ‘dumber’, according to an article in The Irish Times today.

I knew if I did the research that some academic or scientific-type would provide me with the evidence to back up what is bloody well apparent in the Redmum household.

Written by Dick Ahistrom, the article says: “social intelligence diminishes as the brain begins to rewire itself during puberty”.

That would probably explain how the young wan at times seems to lose IQ points as you speak to her.

The article explains: “New research shows that puberty disturbs their ability to recognise their parents’ emotional state, leaving the teen oblivious to their frustration”.

OBLIVIOUS – that is so bloody true, but I would go so far as to add completely oblivious.

The research was uncovered during tests to find out why boys are 10 times more likely to be autistic than girls.

The tests involved three tasks, recognising facial expressions such as fear, anger, sadness and surprise, remembering faces; and telling whether someone is making eye contact with them.

“More surprisingly, he found that usually between the ages of 14 to 16 for girls and 15 to 17 for boys, teenagers are much less able to recognise the meanings of facial expressions such as fear and anger.”

There was a ray of hope at the end of the article “this dip in intelligence quickly diminishes leaving girls and boys able to respond normally to facial expressions as older teens”.

However, it said between the ages of 14 and 16 years old, that’s two bloody years, how is that quickly? And the young wan’s started already, so this could go on for another three years, that’s not quickly, that’s a b*ll*x.

I should have memed herself but I know the seven thing she is most likely to say is:

1. I don’t know
2. No
3. Yes
4. That was from before
5. *rolls eyes* (that counts in my book)
6. (that was the silence when you ask a question and don’t
get normal stock answers 1-4)
7. *SIGH* before slamming a door.

Here’s a link to the article, however The Irish Times is a subscription site so you may not be able to access it.

Technorati tags: Irishblogs redmum teenagers Intelligence Irish Times

Back to school and don't forget yer regulations...

THE sun is out, the weather has been on the whole stunning so it can only be back to school time.

It’s been, so far, a good back to school time (everything’s crossed). The young wan has settled right down to second-year and seems to be knuckling down to work, thank god. *BIG sigh of relief*

Her transition last year (September, 2004) to secondary school was tough, don’t get me wrong, not on her, not at all, it was bloody tough on me. She breezed in and out without a care in the world.

However, for me it began with the uniform in June 2004.

I remember my own uniform outfitting and at the time for our school the basic uniform cost £200, which was wild expensive in 1981.

But being the first girl in the family to go to a grammar school (its mad to think that even at that time, it wasn’t the good old days, that would have been such a big deal to my family) I got the bare minimum of what I needed.

We even had regulation knickers, your ehm… regulations (no seriously that’s what they were called). In our school your regulations were maroon and in theory we were supposed to wear them everyday.

The stories of how this was checked struck fear into even the most-savvy of first-years ie those who had older sisters in the school.

The joke was that at morning assembly, we would be told to stand in a line and well you can guess the rest…

Course this was complete nonsense. In reality we were expected to wear them for PE and then in the summer we would sew a white strip onto them to make them into athletic shorts.

I think I was in fifth year before a nun spotted us and went absolutely ape-shit.

However, we were still made to wear them – only we had to wear our tracksuits down to the hockey pitch where PE class was held to protect our modesty on the way and THEN we could get semi-naked.

Most girls I went to school with still get the hee-bee gee-bees thinking about them.

But we are not talking about my back to school days but the young wan’s.

Her uniform cost an arm and a leg. The coat alone cost €60 and it all had to be a particular coat from a specialised shop. And thankfully not a regulation in sight, not one pair.

Of course in keeping with the tradition of the young wan, the zip is broken but it's gonna be a couple of weeks before I can get either the coat mended or failing that a new coat.

Then there were the books. We had a list to get as long as your arm. And it felt rather like owning a car, not that I have but I imagine.

You know if the car breaks down, it doesn’t cost €20 to get fixed, no, not at all. You are more likely to be forking out either your week’s wages or a large percentage of your month’s wages.

The books were costly. There were few costing around the €10 mark, but there were many costing €40+.

One gloating parent was scathing about these prices (and I mean scathing) and went on length about how they were able to shop around. They would phone around all the book shops, the second-hand book shops, etc, etc hop on their bike, cross town and make their reduced purchase.

However in fairness to me I just would not have been able to do that, it was a lot of work, and the parent who did it is at home full-time, which would make it easier to do.

I thought I was being smart buying the books at a book and uniform fare at the school the previous June.

And here is the confession I thought it was a second-hand fare, D’OH, second-hand me arse.

A realisation later and queue redmum thinking b*ll*x!

When in Rome as they say and so she was kitted out in the finery and I turned down the shirts, opting to buy my own at some point over the summer and did saving some euro.

Then we attempted to get her books. I thought we had the list mostly covered but there were some that they didn’t have.

I turned down the school’s recommended art kit, I would compile that myself. And I refused to buy the calculator and other stuff like that.

But I still spent hundreds.

Towards the end of the summer we set off to get the rest. And Jaysus, we spent another couple of hundred.

I was bloody floored.

The whole thing cost more than a grand.

Seriously, MORE than a grand, about €1200ish.

Does that not shock you? Do I need to go on about how to pay this when you have a couple of kids in secondary school? Do I need to tell you how often the curriculum changes and the books are updated? Do I need to tell you how bloody difficult people on low-incomes would find this? And do I need to even mention those on social welfare who get a pittance towards this mad expense? Let’s not even mention growing kids and their penchant for destroying things.

The vast majority was put on credit card and no it’s not cleared, far bloody from it. But I won’t complain cos she went with everything well nearly everything that she needed.

Free education! That’s the biggest joke ever. Fianna Fail and the PDs should be ashamed of themselves.

Oh and my next post has to centre on my interpretation of her secondary school start but don’t get me started now, Jaysus no I am just about relaxed now.


Technorati tags:redmum backtoschool back to school redmum Fianna Fail PD Joke

One of the millions of Hurricane Katrina Stories

I have just come across an account of one Hurricane Katrina survivor, Michael Holman and his epic journey getting out of the city, the sights, the incidents, everything. It is absorbing reading and worth a stop-by.




A woman who sat beside her dead husband for five days.





His telling of the days after the hurricane is startling and his rendition of his and a motley crew of others escape from a camp with their dogs and cats is heartfelt.

Here's a taster:

On the refugee camp’s perimeter there was a girl named Robin from my neighborhood who wanted to save her cat, and a guy we just met named Carlos who was trying to get to LaPlace, so we teamed up. It was an odd group. Me with two dogs, Carlos who is an African American guy who works in the oil business, and Robin, a skinny white girl who paints movie designs or something like that. So we slipped out at 3 AM and walked along the side of I-10 to Clearview, and then walked through the dark and destroyed neighborhoods until I was on Airline Highway. Amazingly the police never stopped us, I think because we were such a bizarre grouping, and we weren’t shot by the looters or vigilante groups trying to stop them.

Michael's post is entitled One of the Millions of Hurricane Katrina Stories.

Pictures were taken from a BBC news special on the hurricane broadcast on September 6.

Tetra's awful week

POOR Tetra has just had an awful week. I previously reported on how she discovered that Ratty had come to visit and since then which was the start of August, she has been staying with the country boyfriend.



And it’s been great, he lives near me so we get to meet up a lot and do nice things, like having pints or meeting for coffee, having dinner.

Until Saturday night that is when they had the mother of all arguments, their biggest since they met and she called me at 1.45am upset asking could she come by.

In the argument, the country boyfriend charmingly told her that he didn’t want to see her again. It is not even worth going into what started the argument, just that it was absolute nonsense.

Bear in mind, everything she needed was in his place, she could go back to her apartment but would be confined to the bedroom which Ratty was unable to access.

Being more upset than angry, she was mostly bemused about what had just happened. So we had a glass of wine, chatted and then off we went to bed.

This is probably the last thing anyone needs when they are effectively homeless and already living out of a bag.

The homeless situation will continue until she is positive the rat/s has/ve been caught, and that the measures taken have been effective.

Aside from which the whole kitchen has been pulled apart and she cannot do anything either until she gets a carpenter in.

So they met up the next day and he continued with the ‘it’s over’ line, she grabbed her stuff and called me tearfully to come and meet her.

Wearing an auld bleach splattered velvet tracksuit, which I am never seen out of the house in, I made my way to where she was waiting, casting dignity to the wind.

It seems that carrying all her worldly possessions after such devastating news was just too much and she dumped one bag of her stuff in a bin and continued on her way.

Despite constant cajoling, she just would not go back so we could collect it now that we had more hands.

We went to mine and talked, drank wine, smoked cigarettes and tried to work out what looney behaviour was going on with the country boyfriend.

One upset Tetra finally went to bed.

The next day, he rang, despite Tetra thinking he would not, and he begged her forgiveness.

I say make him sweat and she did for two days. She met up with him last night and didn’t come home to me… Huh making him sweat indeed…

Anyway we found a solution to her homeless problem, for Christmas her aunt bought underwear as part of her present. The knickers are the biggest thing I have ever seen.

While Tetra has been glad for them, living out of bags as she is, and the fact that the country boyfriend had her laundry ticket over the last couple of days didn’t help, I told her that she could move into them, solving her homeless problem.


Nice and roomy - good views also

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs knickers dublin Ireland

All roads lead to O’Connell Street, or so you would think…

THE morning commute to work is becoming harder and harder. I wouldn’t mind but I don’t live THAT far from work, certainly not an hour away, which is how long it takes me to get there.

And the reason I go through this daily drama is down to the ongoing works on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.



As soon as you hit Parnell Square, which just before O’Connell Street, you grind to a halt and for as far as the eye can see, a river of double decker buses.

The car commuter can no longer be blamed for the deadlock on O’Connell Street as cars are banned, so its taxis and buses, public transport causing all the hassle.

I had to laugh recently, when Dublin’s Director of Traffic, Dublin City Council’s Owen Keegan said there was no problem on O’ Connell Street. At that time it was taking half an hour to travel the short distance of the road, it’s not much better now.

I suppose if you do not cross over O’Connell Street, it would not be a problem to you, and in all honestly, if you are unfortunate enough to have to pass through the capital city’s main thoroughfare, you’ll know the problems.

This problem has been growing and growing since the rejuvenation works to upgrade the road.

But I suspect something like this would have happened anyway due to the sheer volume of people and vehicles coming through the city centre every morning.

While it probably isn’t a popular thing to say, it might be time that we looked at the bus routes and take some of them off the O’Connell Street route.

My own bus practically leaves me from door to door, from home to work, so while I wouldn’t really be delighted if the bus route was changed, something really needs to be done.

Not all buses have to travel through the city centre.



While the works are going on, even the GPO is getting a facelift.



Maybe its time now to either get rid of all the gaudy fast food outlets on this important road or at the very least impose some planning bye-laws that makes them conform to some rules about their premises frontage. They really do mar the beauty of the street with both their shops and the litter they deposit on the street at the end of the working day.

Why is this allowed? Surely the best time to pick up rubbish is early morning, when people do not have to wade through bags and bags of smelly refuge with tourists taking photographs of the city’s landmarks framed with black bin bags of sh*t.

Progress on O’Connell Street is being made, albeit slowly, the first picture shows the works taken on August 29th and the next two were taken at the same spot this morning, September 6th.








Taken August 28


Taken June

One good thing about the works in particular is how they have dramatically increased the size of the pavements, a great thing as before it was beginning to get seriously congested.

Rushing to get through the madness that is morning time in Dublin, is becoming more and more like the fast-paced life of London.


Dublin or London?

This is certainly not something to be admired. I was always gobsmacked in London about how people rushed here and there, rushed to catch trains in tubes when I would do so having walked down.

Now I find myself cursing tourists and slow people as I run to catch buses or indeed just to catch traffic lights and be on my way.

Hopefully now with the increased pavements, the likelihood of me smacking a tourist out of the way has been diminished.

Here's a link to some of the works at Dublin City Council's website.

Photo Update

I have downloaded a lot of my pictures from Turkey for those of you who would like to see them. Check out the photographic set of Turkish Delight here.

One of my recent photographic projects has centred on reflections, let me know what you think. Check them out here.

All the other sets of pictures can be accessed here, nearly all of them have been updated, including the Dublin set.


Technorati tags:irishblogs dublin ireland O’ConnellStreet roadworks redmum flickr

De Bowwwwwwiiiiiiiissssssssss

IT was a big night in my area last night with a grudge soccer match between the local team the Bohemians or de Bohs as they are known locally pronounced de bowwwwissss and their arch rivals Shamrock Rovers or de Hoops.





Some bright spark Bohs’ fan (or so it looks) defaced a Shamrock Rovers monument and it made the paper along with the irate comments of some Shamrock Rovers’ fans.

Here what the Bohs website said about the incident:

Bohemian Football Club utterly condemns the defacing of the Shamrock Rovers monument in Milltown. The monument commemorates a ground that is a significant part of Irish soccer heritage, as much a part of that rich history as our own home, Dalymount Park, long recognised as the home of Irish football. The heritage and history of our game should transcend club rivalries. We would share in the sense of dismay of all true football fans at this wanton act of vandalism.

There’s a lot of rivalry sometimes ending in violence between the two teams so people were taking no chances in Phibsboro (where Bohs are located) last night for the match between the two.


Football grounds are to the bottom right of the picture

And that’s where Tetra and I met for a pint after work.



There was a huge Garda presence, Gardai on corners, Gardai on horses, and Gardai with big feck-off dogs.



We went into Doyles pub and had our drink, then at one point you could hear the chanting of the Rovers’ fans as they came by. At this point the bar staff ran out and pulled down the shutters on the pub, just in case.



(Bear in mind a Rovers’ fan last year threw a pigs head onto Bohs pitch during a match, yum and nice.)

The regulars were not impressed. We were drinking in the bar side of the pub, not the lounge and it is full of the regular, local and older crowd, mostly men, and most of them smoke and most of them were miffed that they couldn’t have their ciggie on demand.

The shutters were only down for about 10 minutes, just enough time to allow the crowd to get into Dalymount Park, where the game was being played.

We had one more drink and went back to my house, where the young wan was still doing her room, seriously.

However, that’s a rant in itself and I am too withered to even talk about it anymore.

As Friday night is lazy night, we decided to order a Chinese food take away.

Tetra went to the bathroom and came back slamming the door with gusto. Bollox, did I mention that the lovely man apparently managed to pull the handle from the inside of the door in the living room.

We discovered, well the young wan discovered last week that if the door is slammed shut, you are effectively locked into the living room.

It isn’t fixed yet, but after last night, it soon will be.

So the long and the short of it is that the next thing the food arrived, and I leant out the window to tell the delivery woman that we would be right down.

Then the door’s status became apparent and I could have throttled Tetra, and I know, I know, how was she to know that, as she kept telling me last night.

However that didn’t open the door and the delivery woman was still waiting, and waiting at the front door.

We flaffed about for what seemed like ages and we looked at the door, hoping for a brainwave, and nothing at all was coming.

We couldn’t kick the door open, no one else was in the house and we couldn’t get help there and then I saw the keys.

So I leant out the window and said to the girl: “this will sound mad but the handle is off the inside of my living room door and my friend has shut us in and we cannot get out. Is there any chance if I throw my keys down to you, could you come up and let us out?”

She looked more than dubious and went over the car to consult with her male passenger and then came back, I threw out the keys and up she came and rescued us.

Jaysus thank God for that!



The young wan has come up with a solution, I don’t think it will work, I imagine you’d see the sign just as soon as you slammed the door shut.

Oh and just in case you are interested here’s the final score as written on the Bohs website (definitely impartial as you can see).

Bohemians 1-3 Rovers:::02/09/05

Tony Grant put Bohs ahead after 11 minutes in a game which the home side dominated, but still lost 3-1.


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