Cake

A few years ago, during one of my visits to Ireland, I caught an Irish-language short film on television.  It involved a woman and a blind man, strangers, who wind up on the same compartment in a mostly-empty train.  The man engages in a monologue which clearly annoys the woman, and then...well, I won't ruin the ending for you.  Let's just say after you see this, you might understand why my memory of this film was spurred by the last image on yesterday's Cake Wrecks post.  (NOT for the squeamish!)

The Irish language is a funny thing.  Like modern Hebrew, it's an issue of national cultural pride, but also something of a manufactured language.  Case in point:  one bit of Irish a lot of non-Irish speakers know (besides pogue mahone) is the word craic, pronounced "crack", defined in a mid-nineties radio commercial for The Travel Channel (in which an Irish bartender advises a visiting American that "there's plenty of craic to be had in the back room") as "fun" or "a good time."  But in fact, craic is a mid-twentieth century addition to the Irish language, and is borrowed from the English in the sense of "to crack up"  (with laughter) or "to crack jokes."  The respelling is just to make it more Irish-y, something like adding an "e" to the words "Renaissance Faire" makes it seem more Olde English-y.

When I was over in Ireland I met a man who looked for all the world like he should have been wearing a pith helmet and hunting elephants in late 19th-century Kenya.  He fancied himself something of an expert on the Irish language, which is taught in school and used in all government publications but is otherwise only rarely spoken or written.  He looked over his daughter's Irish homework for a few minutes, then looked up, abashed, and said "The language has changed a lot since I learned it."

Still, there are TV programs in Irish, and movies like this one.  I believe a lot of them are funded through government grants in an effort to keep the language alive.  The actor playing the blind man in this film, Brendan Gleeson, was actually once a teacher of Irish.  He later went on to play another character who was both a teacher and had vision problems - Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody in the Harry Potter films.

And now, without further ado, here is a bit of Irish-language horror for y'all, with English subtitles helpfully provided.  "Cáca Milis" - "Cake."

Podge and Rodge

People in America seem to think that Ireland is all drinkin' and feckin' and fightin' and "Top o' the mornin' to ya" and "Faith an' begorrah, they're tryin' to steal me Lucky Charms!" But it's not like that at all. (Except for the drinkin' and feckin' and fightin', which is all totally, totally true.)*

One of the things I discovered on my last trip to Ireland was an interview show featuring puppets Podge and Rodge. It's not available in the U.S., but like almost everything else at the moment, bits of it are available on YouTube.

Here's a little sketch where Podge and Rodge discover the online world. "Show me the filth!"


Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

*It is. Really.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hooray! 'Tis time for the wearin' o' the green, the drinkin' o' the Guinness, the feckin' o' the lasses, and...

Oh, yeah. The digging out from the 15 inches of snow that fell yesterday.

Well, I'm not sure it was fifteen inches. It might just be twelve or so. I ran the snowblower last night before I went to bed, and there's at least another four or five inches that came down since then. And I haven't been across town to the other house yet.

The last major snowfall - which was also the first major snowfall of the season - was on Valentine's Day. There seems to be a holiday theme here. But what a difference a month has made! Waaaay back then, I used to have a job...

By the way, here's what I was up to a year ago.

Now, let's see if I have enough gas left to clean up the rest of the snow.

Snow on the Galty Mountains, March 2, 2006

This is the first photo I took during my trip to Ireland last year: the Galty Mountains as seen from Anglesboro, Kilmallock, County Limerick on Thursday, March 2, 2006. It had snowed the day before, up to five inches in some places, although in the areas I was visiting it was only on the mountaintops.

There are things that you notice in Ireland once you get past the "Wow, I'm in Ireland!" stage. One of them is the massive deforestation: much of Ireland looks like a green quilt of fields, meadows and pastures divided up by hedgerows and stone walls. Another is the color. It really is a very green place because the year-round climate is moist with temperatures generally above freezing, and the grass never enters a state of dormancy.

There are other things you notice, like the smell. Depending on where you are you may be assailed by charcoal or peat smoke, burning diesel, or the aromas of cows and/or sheep. There are regions where the air is fresh and clean, but usually these are far from any farms or residences.

Here is my first attempt to paint this scene:

Galty Mountains from Anglesboro, Kilmallock (1), painted 3/15/07

I was unhappy with this painting for several reasons. The sky is just an unnatural shade of blue, and doesn't lighten properly as it nears the horizon. The sky dominates the picture, when I wanted the mountains to dominate. The wall in the foreground is too bright, and I hate the tree on the right, which appears to be growing out of the column in the wall. Still, the hedgerows are pretty nice, and the mountain does look pretty good, small though it may be.

My second version of this painting:

Galty Mountains from Anglesboro, Kilmallock (2), painted 3/15/07

Here I have changed the color of the sky to a more realistic shade of blue, increased the size of the mountains, and darkened the wall. I'm also much happier with the tree on the right-hand side, and I've removed the column. But now I can't shake the feeling that we're looking at Mt. Fuji!

(Fun note: I wanted to paint the top of the wall Viridian Green, but I couldn't get the cap off that tube of paint. I tried and tried, but it wouldn't budge. I twisted harder and harder, and realized I was twisting the entire tube like taffy. A little more force and I would have ruptured the tube, splattering Viridian Green all over myself, my kitchen, and my painting. Ignoring all of my instincts, I gave up and put the tube down.)

So. Looking at these paintings, plus the one I posted yesterday, I have to say they're not bad for the first time I've picked up paints in a few years.

Happy New Year's Eve!

Today a friend of mine stopped by partway through his seven-hour drive back home from visiting with his family for the holidays. He got the nickel tour of my new house, which includes the bright blue porch, the Christmas tree, the lamps from Target, the original paintings (by me) fun-tacked here and there throughout the house, the basement (forgot to show him the coal bin or present him with a souvenir lump of coal), the attic, and everything in-between.

Before he went on his way we stopped at a local Italian restaurant for lunch - my treat, since today is his birthday. While we were there we were waited on by a cute enthusiastic waitress* whose fingers were completely unencumbered by rings. She was extra-friendly and super-chatty, and really, really liked the color of my shirt ("I love that color!" she cooed, "It's like - oatmeal!") and stroked my arm several times while enthusing over it. So I reacted to her the way I always do in situations like this.

"So, any big plans for New Year's Eve?" I utterly failed to ask.

"No, no. Another one at home all by myself!" she did not have the opportunity to respond.

"How tragic!" I did not retort. "Me, too! Say, maybe...ummm...if you'd like..." I might have stammered, if the conversation had taken place at all.

Bah. Humbug.

It's been a rough year. Ashes died in April after a long, lingering illness. I lost another uncle in May, also after a long illness. Minnie died in October after a brief but devastating illness. Some of my friends are having even rougher times. And I myself have suffered some losses that I haven't told you about.

But it hasn't been all bad. I got to see Ireland one more time, and London as well. I finally bought my grandmother's house at the end of May. I got to meet Adam Felber and a bunch of my fellow Felbernauts back in September. A new cat came into my life at the same time Minnie was leaving. I passed out candy and toys for my first Halloween at my new house, and I decorated my own Christmas tree and my own front porch for the first time. An old friend of mine had a baby, almost unexpectedly, while another friend and his wife had a baby after many years of trying. I talked to someone I've wanted to talk to for years. And I've met some people who I hope to get to know better as time goes by.

Life goes on, with or without our consent.

Another year is ending. Another year is beginning.

Good luck to us all.

*Note to me: Shannon. Remember that. Her name is Shannon. Like the airport.

Two popular search strings

I've been getting a lot of hits for two search strings lately, both of which I find disturbing, but for different reasons.

One is "firefox keeps crashing". This is unfortunate. I liked Firefox, but its increasingly frequent crashes forced me to abandon it. My gut feeling is that it has memory management issues that may require a substantial supply of available RAM, and maybe even lots of free hard drive space - neither of which I currently possess.

The other is "how to build a fire". What the hell is up with that? I wrote that piece as a sort of joke about the massive complexity involved with using a coal fireplace in Ireland. But if people need to look for instructions on how to make a basic wood fire...well, I'm kinda scared. (FYI: Use thin, dry, long-dead tinder arranged in a teepee to maximize airflow and thereby maximize the temperature of the base fire. Once you've got that going, you can feed the fire with pretty much anything combustible. I've even tossed an empty wine bottle into the center of the burning teepee and watched it melt. That's hot.)

We are not the people you see on TV

I was chatting with a friend overseas yesterday and I realized that she had derived some of her conceptions of what Americans are like from our TV programs that are shown over there.

It's only fair, I suppose. We Americans get most of our ideas about foreign countries from popular entertainment. Thus, we know that Norwegians are a bunch of tall blondes and redheads who carry large axes and wear helmets with horns and regularly raid neighboring countries for their gold. We know that Australians all wear khaki clothing and bush hats and carry big knives and hunt crocodiles* and say "G'day" and "shrimp on the barbie." We know that the Irish are a bunch of scrappers who like nothing more than getting drunk and getting into fights. Only it ain't so. (Well, except for the thing about the Irish, that's totally true.)

When I was in Ireland I saw my first episodes of Gilmore Girls. Sure, the show has snappy writing and engaging characters, but the setting didn't resemble anything I'm familiar with in America. In one episode the entire town lines up to bid farewell for the umpteenth time to its oldest citizen, who is once again on his deathbed; when he dies, a town meeting is held to determine what to do with his property. (I guess he didn't have any heirs or willed it to the town or something.) But those things don't happen here. And don't get me started on Dallas or Melrose Place or Beverly Hills 90210, which are all very popular overseas. And CSI - well, the bad science alone makes me incapable of watching one of those shows all the way through, but what I saw (again, while I was in Ireland) was pretty unrealistic in the non-science areas, too.

No, if you're in another country, you probably won't get a good idea of what America is like by watching our TV programs. Well...maybe one.

The single most realistic depiction of American life is Married...With Children. Watch that show, understand that, and you might understand us. Otherwise, bear in mind that what you're seeing on your TV is not America.

*R.I.P., Steve Irwin. Thank you for all you did. I always thought you'd die doing something stupid and risky. You didn't. Your death reminded us of how precarious a thing life is.

Studies for a self-portrait

I mentioned a while back that I don't have any nice pictures of me with Haley, and that someday I would paint one. The other day I finally sat down and decided to sketch out some ideas on a piece of scrap paper.

The first one I did (the blue figure in the lower left) came pretty close to what I was going for: a shadowy scribble conveying the essence without going into any detail.
The working title of this is Haley with Self-Portrait. I don't plan on putting anything much into the self-portrait part - for a while I considered just a few strokes of charcoal to represent me, but I've never worked with charcoal before, so I'll stick to acrylics.

The Haley figures are just thrown in for size and placement. I'll need to gather together a lot of Haley photos to do her justice. I'd like to do a more realistic rendering of her than I've ever done before, but I don't think my slapdash ham-fisted technique can really do her justice.

The second figure I did is the black one with blue hands in the lower right (I grabbed the wrong pen when I decided I'd made the arms too short). This figure is more realistically proportioned, but somehow seems to be in a more tentative pose.

The other figure sketches are just attempts at getting the basics of the design down, while the geometrical abstractions are an effort to get to what is the essential layout of the self-portrait.

This image contains a lie, by the way. I did not typically walk Haley while wearing the hat represented here, which is one of my tweed caps from Ireland. I usually wore a long-brimmed baseball cap to help me block out the glare of streetlights during our pre-sunrise waks. But I thought that would look a lot sillier in this picture, so the Irish hat is there instead.

There's floodin' down in D.C., all of the telephone lines are down...

Well, not quite yet. The phones are still working, but much of the Federal City isn't.

The last time I saw Washington D.C. was when I flew in to BWI from Newark on the last leg of my Ireland trip in March. As the plane soared along the Chesapeake Bay (I think it was the Chesapeake Bay) I couldn't shake the impression of buildings and human activity precariously built and conducted along a flood plain. But for the grace of the Cosmic All they would be underwater, I thought.

In the early 1970's Frederik Pohl wrote a story called The Gold at the Starbow's End. It's a depressing story of manipulation, deceit, and unexpected consequences set in the near-future - probably our present. In one passage Pohl envisions an America torn apart by Civil War, where several regional leaders lay claim to the title of President of the United States of America. One of them is a dimwitted thug who seeks to legitimize himself by clinging to the trappings of past Presidents in the soggy ruins of Washington, D.C., flooded by rising ocean levels.

It's not rising ocean levels that are responsible for the current D.C. flood - there will be plenty of time for that later. No, it's just unusually heavy rain that's pounding the entire East Coast. Other parts of the country are being cooked by unseasonably hot weather. Meanwhile, Gypsy Moths and Tent Caterpillars are responding to the situation by experiencing a population explosion and eating their way through the lush forests of Northeastern Pennsylvania, while a blight is killing all of our pine trees, painting large swaths of the mountains rust-red and setting up ideal conditions for devastating forest fires. And in the midst of all this, a National Academies of Science report released last week stated that climate change is real and not just something that Al Gore invented so he could go hang out at Cannes.

So I think in this environment it would be great if Congress were to put aside their debates on flag burning and gay marriage and baseball and pick up the issue of climate change. It's overdue - long overdue, by more than thirty years, since scientists and environmentalists began to sound the horn warning that human activity was changing our environment. We've spent well over 100 years building our greenhouse, molecule by molecule. It's unlikely that any speech presented on the floor of the House or the Senate would reverse those changes, today or tomorrow or next week or next month or next year.

But it would be nice to see such a speech anyway. Especially if the opposition's response were to be presented by someone standing ankle-deep in flood water.

Soon to be nothing but memories and rubble

The Gunster Center, a.k.a. the Student Center

One of the next changes coming to the University of Scranton will be the demolition of the Gunster Center, which will be replaced by a bigger Student Center. I have a lot of memories from this building - playing video games and pinball machines (Tetris, Altered Beast, Pinball Deluxe, Cue Ball Wizard, and others) in the basement, known then as "The Archives" and later as "The Wolves' Den", eating many meals in both the second floor cafeteria and the "new" (completed in 1985, I believe, the year that I started there) third floor cafeteria officially known as the "Pocono Northeast Room" (indicated by the glass windows on the left on the top floor), studying inbetween classes in the windowed room on the right, hanging out at Campus Ministries, buying National Lampoon in the bookstore, spending late nights in a lounge that was later transformed into offices...

I met the widow of the architect once at a dinner. She told me (and the others at our table) that the strange shape of the roof was meant to represent an open book. This had never occurred to anybody that I know, and the addition of the new cafeteria on the third floor disruped the symmetry of the design.

The clock in front is new to me, and I immediately dubbed it the "One-Faced Liar", because when I looked at it it was three minutes slow. (This is a reference to Shandon Bells in Cork, Ireland, known as the "Four-Faced Liar" because once upon a time each of the four clock faces on the tower showed a different time. Thoughts of Ireland are never far from my mind in Scranton.) It is entirely possible that there was another face on the other side - I never got around to checking. Clocks in classrooms in St. Thomas Hall were also off by a few minutes. I wonder if this ever causes any problems?

We had our SJLA reunion dinner in the Eagen Auditorium in the Gunster Center. It was a little sad, thinking that this was probably the last time we would see a building that had been a big part of our lives for four years.

My old mailbox, #741

I stepped out of our dinner to use the bathroom, the same bathroom that had been there in 1985, and I decided to give myself a quick tour of the surroundings. The mailboxes were still there, with exactly the same mailbox numbers - or in the case of my old mailbox, lack of a number.

The wall of plaques in the Eagen Auditorium

The plaques representing all of the country's Jesuit universities were still on the wall of the Eagen Auditorium. During one of our "back to the classroom" events a side issue came up regarding Jesuit identity at the school. Back in our day, Jesuit identity on the University of Scranton campus was maintained by the presence of Jesuits. But in the ensuing years Jesuit numbers have dwindled, just as the number of Catholic priests in the country has dwindled. Fewer and fewer Jesuits now walk the Z-bricks of The Commons. How do you maintain a Jesuit identity without Jesuits?

Curtain and stage at the Eagen Auditorium

Soon the Gunster Center will vanish into the past, and the Eagen Auditorium, the Pocono Northeast Room, the cafeteria, the Wolves' Den, and all of the other places in it will just be memories and rubble. I believe it has been the practice in recent U of S construction to salvage and incorporate portions of demolished buildings - windows, doors, other things - into the buildings that have taken their place. I wonder what of the Gunster Center will live on in its replacement?

Ireland and London, 2006

Here's an index of all of my posts about my Ireland/London March 2006 vacation.

Pre-flight
In deep
The tickets are purchased, and the countdown begins.
Travel preparations: 24 days and counting
Getting ready to order money, while the world collapses into chaos over some cartoons.
I hate being right
Mo' money, mo' problems. Or, never underestimate the ability of your bank to screw things up.
Baggage limits
Always check with your airline before you pack.
Final days
Four days and counting.
Memories, pressed between the pages of a book
How to record your travel memories without doing any writing.
Almost
Luggage is all packed. And then unpacked again.

Postcards from Ireland
An explanatory post written before I left. I thought I'd be doing quite a lot of posting from Ireland. I didn't.

Phase 1: A week and a half in Ireland
Ireland: First view
The first photo I took during this visit, and possibly my best.
How to build a fire
Around here we just set the thermostat and forget it. In Ireland there's a little bit more to staying warm.
The two most surprising things about Ireland
Brightly-colored buildings and palm trees.
Beer
Beer.
Photos, photos everywhere and no USB connection!
My first "postcard" from Ireland.
Mountains in Ireland
Fermoy and the Blackwater
Culture shock setting in
My second post from Ireland.
Cork
A view of Ireland's second-largest city.

Phase 2: London
London, part 1
Kensington Gardens.
London, part 2
Beginning our bus tour of London. The Marble Arch, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, St. Martin-In-The-Fields, a "very strange-looking statue", Nelson's Column, and a first glance of Big Ben.
Trafalgar Square statue: Alison Lapper Pregnant
Discovering the identity of the "very strange-looking statue".
London, part 3
Big Ben and Parliament.
London, part 4
The London Eye, the Dali statues, St. Paul's Cathedral, The Monument, and Tower Bridge.
London, Part 5
The Tower of London, and the bus tour wraps up. Piccadilly Circus at night, and Les Miserables at the Queen's Theater on the West End.
London, Part 6
Our second day in London. Oxford Street, The London Dungeon, and misadventures with buses.
Leaving London

Back from London, and an Ashes update
My third and final post from Ireland.

Phase 3: St. Patrick's Day in Ireland
Back to Ireland
Two euros and fifty cents
A strange encounter with a very specific panhandler.
St. Patrick's Day in Ireland
Photos from the local St. Patrick's Day parade.
Ireland: The End
Leaving Ireland, and some parting thoughts.

I'm baaaaack!
Back home in Nanticoke.

Sick, and tired

I have been pretty sick for over a week with what I think have been two colds. The middle of last week my symptoms started - sore sinuses, with the pain sliding backwards over the course of a day to become a sore throat, followed by a ticklish cough with lots of mucus. I think I was just getting over that when the sore throat sequence started again this weekend.

I haven't really felt right since I came back from Ireland. Travel is always stressful for me, and coming back to a dying cat and the details of buying a house probably didn't help much. Add to that some other stresses, and I'm suddenly not at my shining best.

Ashes is dead. Soon the buying-the-house stress will become fixing-the-house stress. Eventually I'll get over my cold. I look forward to getting back to semi-normal sometime soon.

Ireland: The End

Before I knew it it was time to go home.

I don't remember much of what went on that last Saturday, but I don't think it was very much. Packing, organizing, that sort of thing. Nothing exciting. And we all went to bed early since my flight was leaving Sunday morning, and it was a long drive to the airport, and we had to be there well in advance of my departure time.

I made it home without incident. The Atlantic was almost solidly cloudy along our entire route. Newark airport security was chaotic - arriving passengers had to claim our bags, go through Customs, re-check our bags, go back through a verrry slow security checkpoint, and then run across the airport to our connecting flights. All this with a carry-on bag that was dangerously overloaded with duty-free bath salts and a liter of Paddy whiskey.

Clouds on the way from Newark to BWI

I made it as far as baggage claim at BWI before my carry-on finally gave way - one of the D-ring connectors untwisted itself, rendering the shoulder strap useless.

I was the only passenger on my shuttle bus, which was driven by a Vietnam vet who currently does two weeks of medical missionary work each year in Ghana. He updated me on some of the events that had transpired in the three weeks since I had left the U.S. - mainly the dissolution of Iraq into outright civil war.

I got to my sister's house and couldn't find my car. I eventually located it in a side lot. I had a hard time getting the engine to turn over - it had been nearly a week since my sister had had it on the road, and once I got the car moving I quickly learned why: one of the rear tires was making a thwap-thwap-thwap noise. Feeling around the tire I couldn't locate anything that could have been responsible for the noise - maybe a stick had gotten caught in the wheel? - but I discovered that the left rear tire was very unevenly worn. So already a new expense was presenting itself to me.

I made it back to Nanticoke that night - a very dumb thing for me to do - and found Ashes weak and thin, but still alive. And he is still alive, on the bed behind me as I write this, three weeks after I returned home.

I miss some things about Ireland. I miss my friends, mainly. But I miss a few other things.

I miss Irish television. Sure, it's vapid and stupid and most shows are poorly-produced, but how does that compare to U.S. television, which is vapid and stupid and slickly produced? At least it felt more honest - or, when it was not being honest, the lack of honesty was at least blatantly obvious.
I miss The Podge and Rodge Show. This is a bizarre late-night show featuring two foul-mouthed anti-social puppets who interview figures from pop culture. (A typical quote: "Not that anybody gives a f*ck, but when is your new CD coming out?" Yes, the F-bomb is dropped reularly on The Podge and Rodge Show, at a fraction of the frequency you will hear it in everyday conversation.) It was good for a late-night laugh, and is the sort of thing you will never, ever see on U.S. broadcast TV.

I miss the cars. There were a lot fewer behemoths in everyday use, partly because gas is much more expensive over there - about twice what we pay for it. As long as fuel is so cheap in the U.S., we can expect the roads and highways to be clogged with oversized gas-guzzling cars and SUVs.

I'm happy to be home. There are some things about Ireland that were too quaint and laid-back for me. Still, there's a lot that I miss over there. I'm glad I got to visit one more time.

St. Patrick's Day in Ireland

I've been told that St. Patrick's Day is no big deal in Ireland, not like the huge celebrations that we have here in New York City or Scranton or Philadelphia or Chicago. Maybe that was true once upon a time, but not while I was there. St. Patrick's Day is a national holiday, a bank holiday when virtually nothing is open. Even small towns have big parades, even small-town bed & breakfasts fill up with visitors, and most restaurants close early for the night because most of their patrons are busy giving their business to nearby pubs.

It snowed on St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. This never happens, but it happened this year. So the local parade was a pretty chilly event. I stood there trying to blend in with the crowd, waving an Irish flag and snapping pictures.

The police in Ireland are known as
the Gardai, or Garda, or "gards".
Their cars are very visible and pretty cool.

The Irish Army. Well, some of the Irish Army.
If you blow up the picture, you may see white
streaks of falling snow.

The local marching band.

Women's bagpipe band. There's something about
a woman playing the bagpipes...

Drummers, part of the same group as the bagpipers

Float ridiculing the idea of Garda Reserves

One of the most contentious issues while I was in Ireland was the formation of the Garda Reserves - civilians who are deputized to perform some police functions. The group most opposed to this were the Gardai themselves. Among the "New Garda Reserves" on this float are a pimp. several transvestite prostitutes, a number of convicts, and Osama bin Laden (identified by a sign on his back).

Jumbo Breakfast Roll

The Jumbo Breakfast Roll float, celebrating both the song which is currently very popular throughout Ireland and the hand-held version of the favorite Irish breakfast. "Two eggs, two rasher, two sausage, two bacon, two puddins - one black and white..."

The crowd begins to disperse after the parade

And then the parade was over, and it was time to head back to my friend's house and decide what to do in the day-and-a-half remaining to me.

Two euros and fifty cents

It was the Wednesday before St. Patrick's Day. I had been to the library to access the Internet (I am a paid-up member of a one-room library in a small town in Ireland, at least until next March!) and was now wandering up and down the main street of town trying to pick up some St. Patrick's Day decorations - flags, hats, pins - and maybe some chocolate, too.

I had had more luck with the chocolate. Every store in town had an extensively decorated front window, with streamers in green, white, and orange (or "gold", as many call it), Irish flags, leprechauns, what have you. But within, no such items were being offered for sale for the most part. One store had Irish flags and big tricolor hats, but they were pretty expensive and I wanted to shop around. None of the stores I stopped in had anything else - well, I did get some groceries, including chocolate, at one of the three supermarkets in town.

There are two things you should know about shopping in Ireland: most small towns have busy, extensive Main Streets with plenty of shops of all sorts. This is mainly because there's nowhere else to go. There are no malls or Wal-Marts lurking on the outskirts of town - well, not the outskirts of small towns, anyway - to lure away customers and starve the local shops as has happened in so many towns in America. The only alternative to doing business with the local radio shop or supermarket or dress store or barbershop is to travel to the next closest town and shop at their versions of the stores, unless you're prepared to travel many miles. So each store has a sort of monopoly on whatever sort of product it offers, and can charge prices just short of the point at which shoppers will decide it's worth their while to travel to the next town, or to a faraway mall, and see if they can do better. So the bottom line is: while each small town has a busy and thriving downtown, most consumers are paying through the eye.

The other thing to remember is that most of the chocolate you can get in Ireland is made by Cadbury, but it comes in a dizzying range of varieties.

Anyway. I had been to the store with expensive Irish flags and tricolor hats, stopped at one or both of the supermarkets on the main street (the third is a bit more out of the way, best accessed by car) and bought some groceries, including several bars of chocolate, and marched uphill to the SPAR Shop, a convenience store that I knew had nice St. Patrick's Day badges.

I bought a badge - a gold-coated plastic harp on a green ribbon - and began my hike downhill to the first shop to buy a flag and a tricolor hat. I stuffed the badge into my bag of groceries (another thing you should know: bring your own shopping bags to Ireland - they'll charge you 15 cents per bag at the stores) and headed down into the crowds of people on the sidewalk. Ahead of me I saw a hulking man who looked a lot like Elliott Gould. I glanced at him for only a second and made eye contact.

Ooops.

The man loped directly up to me. "Excuse me," he said. I tried to keep moving, but he stood directly in front of me. "Excuse me. Would you be able to give me two euros and fifty cents?"

What? Two euros and fifty cents? Why not two euros, or three euros? Why such a precise amount?

"I'm sorry," I lied. "I don't have..." I hefted the grocery bag. "Groceries, you know." I hoped he didn't notice my pockets bulging with coins of every denomination, including plenty of two-euro and half-euro coins.

He seemed to accept this explanation and moved on to his next mark. I carefully fingered my wallet and my passport pouch to make sure that both were still there.

Why two euros and fifty cents?

I found out why a few days later. Much of Ireland and Irish TV had been preoccupied that week with the Cheltenham Gold Cup, a series of horse races being held in England where several Irish horses with names like Beef or Salmon and War of Attrition were competing. Most of the regular daytime TV schedule had been pre-empted or rearranged to accomodate the races. Some people, I was told, would skip out of work to watch the races so they could have a better idea how the horses would perform in upcoming Irish horse races. Many, many bets were being placed at the legal bookmaker's shops that were scattered throughout town.

And the minimum bet?

Two euros and fifty cents.

I wonder if this guy bet on War of Attrition?

Back to Ireland

Returning to Ireland was like a wet slap in the face - literally. We got off the plane at Cork in a cold, driving rain and had to march across the tarmac and line up (sorry, queue up) outside of the terminal to pass through Passport Control.

While we had been enjoying cold, clear, and dry weather in London (with the exception of a few horizon-hugging clouds and the occasional snowflurries), Ireland had been enduring cold, cloudy, and rainy weather the whole weekend. Still, it felt nice to be back.

I began the final phase of my trip, the buildup to St. Patrick's Day that coming Friday. I did a little more walking around town and took a few more photographs whenever we drove somewhere.

Panorama of the Galtees as seen from the South
Seven overlapping photos,
total full-resolution width approximately 12 feet

Ruins of a church in Ballylanders, currently used as a
drop-off site for recyclables (bins are behind me in photo)

Galtees seen from the North

And that was very nearly it. My time was running out, and St. Patrick's Day was drawing near. I couldn't wait to see what the local parade would be like.

Interlude 2: Three weeks without Sammie's sdfsdf.wox.org

March 15 was the last time I was able to go online in Ireland, and it was the first time I discovered that Sammie's sdfsdf.wox.org from Australia was offline. After returning to Nanticoke I was frustrated by my repeated failures to get onto Sammie's site. I eventually rummaged through my address book and found her e-mail address and fired off a message. I was delighted to get something back from Sammie which told me that her site was down due to technical issues with her web hosting service, not because she'd been eaten by koalas or carried off by a bunyip or swept away in the cyclone which hit a part of Australia about as close to her home as New Orleans is to Nanticoke (which is to say, not anywhere near).

It's been three weeks now. I just got another search engine query hit on my site from google.com.au for the phrase "sdfsdf.wox.org gone?" I've been getting a trickle of searches looking for this sort of information. People miss sdfsdf.wox.org. I miss sdfsdf.wox.org. I miss Sammie's writing, her gentle, self-effacing humor, her occasional deep insights, even her moments of self-doubt. I miss hearing about what's going on with her. I miss seeing her amazing photography. And I miss Sammie.

Sammie, I hope your site comes back soon. A lot of us do.

Related Posts:
Update, 5/4/2006: Sammie's new site is coming soon!
Sammie's deviantART site (April 30, 2006 - a link to an update by Sammie herself!)
The Blogger Buddy System (April 14, 2006)

Leaving London

Some of the rest you might already know. We had breakfast one last time at our hotel, packed our stuff, and checked out - not without incident. A new credit card system called "chip and PIN" has been strictly enforced since February 14 of this year in London and possibly throughout the entire U.K. requiring users of European-issued "chipped" credit cards to enter PIN numbers to use them - and woe unto you if you don't know your PIN number because you've never ever had to use it before. Fortunately, my credit cards were issued in the U.S. where "chip and PIN" is not yet in effect, so we were OK.

We hiked from our hotel to Paddington Station, dragging along our luggage newly-burdened with die-cast double-decker buses and pencil sharpeners in the shape of Big Ben. We took the Underground back to Victoria Station - beautiful and full of light in the daytime - and found our way to the Gatwick Express. The roomy, comfortable train glided easily out of the station on its southward course, past the vastness of the brick exterior of Victoria Station, past the industrial harshness and sky-scraping apartment buildings of South London, past the cramped tenements and row houses, past the chaotic garden plots known as the allotments, past gradually thinning houses giving way to fields and farmhouses and horses, and eventually past the highways that ring London, including one with a sign for Croydon. It took me a while to remember that this was referenced in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy ("not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon", a line which was not included in the movie version.) We also went through a tunnel at one point, which caused the Frenchman sitting across from me who was speaking to a woman on his cell phone to murmur a soft, drawn-out "Merrrrrde" after he was cut off in mid-conversation.

We got to Gatwick without any problems, but arrived too early to check our bags. We hung out a bit and got something to eat at the airport's McDonald's - the Happy Meal toy we got there, a Noddy figure with a garage door and storybook, is about ten times more complicated than anything I've seen in an American Happy Meal lately. By the time we made it back to the check-in desk, more than half of the people on our flight were there, too, waiting to check in. After check-in we were sent to a huge and vague central waiting area because Gatwick won't tell you what gate your flight is leaving from until it's time for you to board. I guess they like to keep their options open.

It was while we were waiting that we stopped in at the airport's Harrods (we never got to go to Harrods in London, even though it was quite close to our hotel) and at an excellent bookstore where I bought V For Vendetta.

After much anxious jumping up and checking of flight status displays, it was finally time for us to board. We made it onto the flight and soon were in the air.

We were heading back to Ireland.

London, part 6

Our second day of touring London was completely different from our first. We made it as far as the Disney Store on Oxford Street on a red double-decker bus before we hopped off to do some shopping.

I was not really impressed by Oxford Street. This was in part because I am a guy, and the word "shopping" generally doesn't send my heart singing the way it does for certain members of the fairer sex. (See my entry on "Hunting and gathering" for more about my views on shopping. The words "sports", "beer", or "Muscle Car" don't do much for me either, but I'm not sure what that means.) In part it was also because branches of many of the stores along Oxford Street, or their American analogs, are only a few minutes drive from my house in any of several local malls. But for my friends, this was a unique opportunity to shop at stores that I take for granted.

We spent a good bit of time on Oxford Street and decided to re-board a bus headed for Piccadilly Circus, where we would get our bearings, do some more shopping, and pick up a bus to our ultimate destination. I scanned the intricately complex bus schedule with some trepidation, aware of how I had gotten us dangerously far from our hotel the previous night by getting on the wrong bus. In the column for "Buses headed to this destination" the word "ALL" appeared for Piccadilly Circus. This looked easy.

Of course it was not. We sat in the upper deck with a French-speaking couple and enjoyed the ride for what seemed like a few minutes longer than it should have taken. Our bus eventually pulled across from a park, came to a stop - and then the driver shut off the engine. We began to mutter amongst ourselves and heard the driver, who was speaking to someone else, say "Do I still have passengers in my upper deck?" He came upstairs and, with some amusement, explained to us that this was the final destination for his bus. I wan't even aware that buses had final destinations in the middle of the day. Maybe it was lunchtime.

We got off somewhere in Bloomsbury and Fitzrova, possibly near Russell Square. Our bus options from this point were few, but we wanted to get in the neighborhood of the Tower Bridge, and we found a bus that would get us there. We got there by way of some of the less-touristy bits of South London, including an area known as The Elephant. But eventually we made it to within walking distance of our main destination for the day: The London Dungeon.


The London Dungeon is not an authentically historical site. It's basically a spook house, a place of grotesque and horrifying tableaux featuring wax figures and costumed actors. It's not too many steps above the haunted houses that are staged locally each Halloween, although the quality of the figures and the decorations in the Dungeon is a bit better than the stuff usually slapped together by firefighters and college students here.

Once again we were aided by a kindly couple who gave us a pass for a free adult admission with the purchase of an adult admission. As with the older couple at the Miso Noodle Bar the previous day and the guy who let us know that our Night Bus was headed in the wrong direction the previous night, contact was estblished by my friend, not by me. She is a good deal more sociable and engaging than I am and definitely has a way with people, whereas I tend to not make eye contact and simply hope that I don't have to defend my friends or myself from unprovoked acts of violence.

The London Dungeon is fun, but is mainly for kids. If you are traveling with adults only, don't expect anything more enlightening than a demonstration of various 17th-century torture implements (including one blunt member-chopper that I nicknamed the "tallywhacker".) But kids love the place.

Another bit of advice: if you go there, don't let on that you're a Catholic. They're not as tolerant of non-Protestants as you might think:
(Just kidding.)

We waited about a half hour to get into The London Dungeon. The tour itself took about 90 minutes (I think, I didn't actually check), and the after-tour in the gift shop took us right up to closing time. This was also closing time for pretty much everwhere else that we had considered visiting that day, so we decided to get a bus to Piccadilly Circus and go from there.

Again we were confounded by the bus schedules. We finally flagged down one bus and asked the driver where he was going. His response was "I don't know. I'm on diversion." - which seemed an odd sort of response from a man behind the wheel of a bus carrying passengers. We decided to let it go and try our luck elsewhere. We eventually got on a bus which was, once again, not going where we wanted to go. This was determined by my friend who, also once again, consulted with someone on the bus who advised us to ride that bus to the Liverpool Street station and get transportation from there. We opted to go Underground this time, the first time we had done that since we arrived in London via the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station and then the Circle Line to Paddington. This time we took the Central Line to Oxford Circus and then changed to the Bakerloo Line to Piccadilly Circus. We popped out in the lower floors of the Trocadero and did some shopping.

The afternoon had turned to evening and we hadn't had anything significant to eat since before noon. We hunted around a bit for a restaurant and decided on an Indian place on, I think, Shaftesbury Avenue. It was not a very good place. The food was overpriced and undersized and didn't taste very good. A request for water was responded to with the presentation of a huge bottle of very expensive mineral water. In the end the bill was twice what we had paid for the previous evening's meal.

We got our bearings and realized that we were very close to Leicester Square and Chinatown, two of the places specifically recommended by British blogger Puppetdude when I asked him for "advice for a hapless tourist". We staggered off to Leicester Square, zig-zagging from souvenir shop to souvenir shop, wandered around a bit (I had to restrain myself from taking pictures of a sign that simply read "SEX SHOP"), and eventually made our way back to a Starbucks. After coffee and pastries we gathered ourselves together and decided to make a push for Gerrard Street, London's Chinatown, which was heartbreakingly close and painfully full of what were probably wonderful and reasonably-priced Chinese restaurants. If only we had kept walking past the Indian place...

Our evening was pretty much over at this point. We walked down Wardour Street past two of the drunkest people I have ever seen in my life who were not face-down in puddles of their own vomit, walked past the Hard Rock Cafe and a group of bar-hopping girls who were dressed in skimpy clothing that seemed entirely inappropriate for the just-above-freezing temperatures, bid our farewells to Piccadilly Circus, got on a Night Bus actually headed for Paddington Station, and headed back to our hotel for one last night in London.

London, part 5

Crossing the Tower Bridge

Phase 1 of our visit to London - touring the city in an open-top bus - was just about over. Phase 2 was a few hours away: seeing Les Miserables at the Queen's Theater. In between we wanted to do some walking, some shopping, and some eating. But first we had a few more stops to make.

The Tower of London

The Tower of London is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to be imprisoned, tortured, and executed there. It's smaller than you would think for a place with so much history. Once again we were faced with an unacceptably long line for the tour itself. Fortunately the gift shop was open and there was no line there. Seeing a costumed Beefeater added to the sense that I was in a sort of historical amusement park with its long lines and gift shops and costumed characters. (These guys aren't just random people dressed in costumes but are actual retired military personnel, so the perception that they are the British equivalent of Mickey Mouse at Disneyworld is probably moderately annoying.)

Wellington Arch

We boarded our bus with the intent of riding the tour around past our starting point at the Marble Arch and back to Piccadilly Circus, which is relatively close to the West End theaters. Along the way we crossed the Blackfriars Bridge, rode along the Victoria Embankment, passed the London Eye on the far bank of the Thames, saw Big Ben once again, flew past Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace, zipped through Victoria Station, careened past Wellington Arch, made it around Hyde Park Corner without hitting any female astrophysicists on mopeds, rounded the Marble Arch, and headed on to Piccadilly Circus. I took pictures along the way, including one of this tiny car:

Look! A tiny, tiny car.
(Soon to be marketed in the U.S. as the "Smart Car")

Eventually we made our way to Piccadilly Circus and left the bus tour. It is said that you cannot stand for more than 37 minutes at Piccadilly Circus without meeting someone you know. I was wary of testing this theory - you never know who might show up.

Piccadilly Circus at night

We did some shopping and found a restaurant - the Miso Noodle Bar on Haymarket. This was a great little place, with good food, generous portions, courteous staff, and reasonable prices. We shared our table with an older couple from about an hour outside of London who came into town a few times a year, and were there that day to see a play. They were wrapping things up for the day, and kindly gave us a compact map of the city to help us during our visit. To my everlasting regret, I failed to give them my card with the address of this blog.

Les Miserables at the Queen's Theater was great. Jean Valjean was played by Tim Godwin, the understudy for the role, but I can't imagine the regular performer doing a better job. (I must admit that I found his resemblance to a bearded Jack Black in the opening scenes a little distracting!) Cornell John dominated the production in the part of Javert - during his ovation, I think I saw his smile broaden a bit when the audience's applause and whistles were punctuated by a certain American whooping from the balcony. The peformance was done on a purpose-built rotating stage which was used to simulate travel, provide in-the round views of scenes to all audience members, or simply allow for quick scene changes. I'd be interested in seeing how other touring companies stage the production, so I'll have to try to catch the show if it ever comes through Wilkes-Barre or Scranton.

After the show, it was just a matter of getting a Night Bus back to our hotel, or to Paddington Station, or to anything close. I managed to get us on a bus going the wrong way. We got off near St. Paul's, which is a pretty desolate spot in the middle of the night, but were able to quickly reboard a bus going in the right direction.

We made it back to our hotel, drew up some plans for the next day's adventures, and passed out.