Head Rambles

Grandad October 31st, 2006

I phoned those nice people in Google a while ago.

It wasn’t easy getting through as I had to go through one of those “Press 1 if you want Accounts” type exchanges. Google has so many fingers in the pie now that their phone menu is quite long.

So after I’d pressed 5 for enquiries, 9 for Applications, 158 for Google Earth, 3 for helpdesk and 0 to speak to something that was actually breathing, I finally got the chap I was looking for.

“Hey” says he. “How can I help ya?”. They seem to say “Hay” a lot these days. It used to be just “Hi”.

“Are you the chap that takes the photographs for Google Earth” says I.

There was a pause. “I’m sure I can help ya” says he. “What’s the problem?”.

I explained to him that they had been kind enough to include my house in Google Earth but that I wasn’t happy with the quality.

“Gee” says himself. “We try to please everyone. Even the Chinese. What’s the problem with the photo?”.

So I told him how the photo wasn’t very good resolution and that they had taken it in winter. This meant that the shadows were very long and all my garden was in the shade.

“Ah! And where do you live?”

“Search me” says I.

“Very funny. Ha ha.”

“Sorry about that” says I. “I couldn’t help it”. I gave him my address.

“That’s fine” says he. “We will send a spider to photo your site shortly”.

“Ah Jayzus no. Herself hates spiders. I have to spend ages chasing them around the house trying to catch them. Then it takes me another hour to get Herself down off the roof”.

“OK” says he. “We’ll send a bot”.

“Send what you like” says I, “as long as it doesn’t scare Herself or the dog”.

“Roger that” he said. [All Americans seem to think they are astronauts or in the army] “We will visit your site over the coming weeks. Anything else?”

“Any chance that when people type ‘blog’ in Google that my site will come out at the top?”

“No” says he, “but I’ll fix it that when they type ‘headrambles.com’ you’ll get a fair mention. Have a good day”.

I resisted the temptation to reply “Copy that. Thats’a big ten four, Good Buddy”

I was very happy with that call. He was such a nice bloke.

But then.. Bugger me but they photographed the place the next day! There was my house in Google Earth. Nice and crisp and clear. But it was a mess. The grass was untidy and the car was filthy. At least they should have given me a chance to spruce the place up a bit. I mean, you don’t photograph someone without giving them a chance to comb their hair?

So I have washed the car, mowed the lawn, and Herself has taken her underwear off the line. Now all I have to do is phone Google again.

• America , Around the house , Internet
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Grandad October 31st, 2006

One of the signs of getting old is that the weather forecast becomes one of your favourite programmes.  In recent years, they have been getting very accurate.

But they have excelled themselves now.  Yesterday evening, they forecast very strong winds today.  And they were right.  Very bad wind. Strong enough to cause damage.

But how do they do it?  How on earth could they have know that later in the evening I was going to have four cans of Guinness and a prawn vindaloo curry?

• Around the house
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Grandad October 30th, 2006

I’m going to ruffle a few feathers here. I know I’m in the minority, so statistically I’m going to annoy at least 100% of my three readers. Maybe more. But it is a subject that has plagued me all my life. Not just in the Autumn of my years.

“What is he on about?” you ask.

“Sport” says I.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against sport as such. It is very healthy for the kids to go out and kick a ball around the local playing field. Running is good too. It comes in handy when you are about to miss the bus, or when the girlfriend’s husband comes home unexpectedly.

What really irritates me is the obsession with sport. I hate sport personally, and that is my right. You like sport and that is your right. Just stop ramming it down my throat. Take it off the telly. Stop talking about it except among yourselves.

There is an assumption that we all love sport. There is a sport slot on every RTE news broadcast. Why isn’t there a gardening slot too? Or a pet lover’s spot? ["Today, Tiddles gave birth to five kittens. We go live now to our reporter outside the vet's surgery...."] Every day we have to sit and listen to some prat waffling on through a list of sports. And there are so many. Soccer, GAA, rugby, athletics, motor racing, golf. The list is bloody endless. And we have to get the inane details. The exact results of every horse race, the endless lists of soccer scores, how Beckham has chipped another fingernail.

Soccer is the worst. Endless programs devoted to it. I can’t go into the pub without someone asking what I thought of the game last night. I don’t care about the game last night. I didn’t see it. I was too busy trying to find a channel that wasn’t showing it.

And if the game isn’t bad enough, we have to wade through the analysis. “And what do you think the result would have been if he had missed that goal….” I ask you! All sports commentators seem to have the intelligence of amoebas. [Sorry, amoebas. I don't mean to insult you. It's just an expression]. I swear to God I heard one say recently - “Ireland scored their first goal after only two minutes, but from then on things went from bad to worse”. They have so many clichés that they throw them in without thinking.

And they are devoting their energies to talking about soccer players as if they [the players] were gods. Cop on! Soccer players are simple minded blokes who can only do one thing in life, and that is to kick a bit of plastic around a field. And they are paid sums of money that are frightening. A premiership footballer earns more in one hour that an African family can expect to earn in 50 generations. They are not worth it. Most of them have an intelligence rating that is so poor that if they dropped one point on the IQ scale, you’d have to water them. They are a bunch of primadonnas who burst into tears if someone touches them.

Another thing is the Irish obsession with British football. I know blokes who still rant on about the famine and the Brit occupation of our fair land for the last 600 years. But next thing you see them, wearing their Liverpool or Manchester United shirts and roaring at the telly as if their lives depended on it.

It’s getting so bad that people are painting their cars in team colours, and naming their kids after players. Why not name them after your favourite flower? ["Have you met my son Convallaria Majalis Murphy?"]

The worst of the lot is the World Cup. Every four years I lose the will to live. It goes on and on and on and on. Everyone is talking about it. The newspapers and the TV are full of it. You’d think it was Christ’s second coming. I say every four years, but there is now a two year run up to it. And when you think it is over for another four years, they start on about the Olympics. Oh God!!

If you like sport so much, why don’t you just get out a ball and kick it around the road. Preferably the M50.

• Rants
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Grandad October 29th, 2006

I have a problem. I was going to write about something today, but I’ve forgotten what it was.

Bugger.

I have discovered that this is one of the pains and pleasures of getting old. The memory starts playing tricks. It becomes erratic. I haven’t quite reached the stage where I forget to put my trousers on before going out, but I have come close. I suppose that day will come. It won’t be funny for me, but the neighbours will have a laugh.

I always had a strange memory. I could never remember names or faces. I remember a name for the length of time it takes to say it. I have a “I know that face from somewhere” moment in the street only to realise later it was my brother. But numbers? Give me a number and I’m OK. I know my phone number, my credit card number, my bank account numbers, my library card numbers, every phone number I ever had [If anyone is interested, my first number phone was back in the '50s - 907339. Don't bother ringing it - they changed them all in the '60s]. No problem at all with numbers.

It’s true what they say about long-term and short-term memory as you get older. I could give you graphic day by day accounts of my pre-school days, but don’t ask me what I watched on telly last night. Not that the latter is a good example - 99% of telly these days is instantly forgetable anyway.

One of the good thing about this is that we have an endless supply of good films on TV. People complain that they are all re-runs, but we don’t care. We have forgotten that we watched them so we can watch them all over again. I get the odd deja vu moment when watching a film, and realise at the very end that I had seen it before [three times], but what the heck..

Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to books. I read a lot. And I mean a lot. But I get books out of the library, because I don’t recognise the author or the plot, and then get home to realise after the first couple of pages that I have read it before. Hate that.

I lose things too. I can walk from A to B in the house, and somewhere in between I’ll put down my pipe or whatever. When I reach B I find the pipe is gone, and have to retrace my steps and try to remember where I’ve been.

Luckily we have two phones, but one is a mobile and the other is a wireless handset. The keyword here is “wireless”. It isn’t tied down, so it gets lost. Again, many happy moments wandering around the house with one phone ringing the other until we hear the lost one warbling from under the couch, or under the dog’s blanket. I just wish the remote controls had phone numbers, so we could find them as easily.

Herself is worse. She goes off and buys her fags and puts them away somewhere. We then spend many happy hours looking for them as she has forgotten. They usually turn up in the deep freeze or the coal hole or somewhere like that. Happy days.

But yesterday I had two experiences. One was that my daughter called. That’s not strange in itself, and we are always delighted to see her. No. The strange thing was that she phoned me before arriving to say there was something very important she had to collect. This morning I realised she had forgotten to collect the whatever-it-was [I've forgotten what]. She has memory lapses too and she young!

The other experience was stranger. I called into the local shop to get the paper. I had been in earlier in the week and bought a lot of stuff, but his Laser machine was on the blink so I couldn’t pay him. He said I could pay the next time I was in. So I bought my paper yesterday and told him to take the full amount off my Laser. He looked blankly at me. I reminded him about the Laser machine and the fact that I owed him €50 [50 is a number, so I remembered it.. Q.E.D.]. He had forgotten. And he is a young lad.

So there is hope for me yet. Or no hope for them. One or the other.

I have just realised that it is earlier than I thought. I thought it was 1pm, but my computer says it is midday.

I forgot to put the clocks back last night……………

• Around the house
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Grandad October 29th, 2006

People in the U.K. and beyond are always whinging about house prices. They haven’t a clue.

In the U.K. you can pick up a house for well under £100,000. In France you can find a nice pied-a-terre for €70,000 or less. But where can you buy yourself your own pad within easy commuting distance to the centre of the capital city for a mere €120,000?

Come to sunny Ireland and see what we have to offer!!

Buy yourself a lovely detached seaside residence, close to Dublin. Scenic area and close to all ameneties. This is a genuine sale. Get yourself on the housing ladder and never look back.

Click here for full details

• Property
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Grandad October 28th, 2006

The subject of combining alcohol and driving is a complex one.

We are very quick to scream that all drivers over the limit should be hung by the gonads from the top of the Dublin Spike [that conjures up an interesting mental picture?], and that will solve all the problems. It’s not that simple.

For generations, Ireland has had a drinking culture. If you are meeting friends, where do you meet them? The pub. You call around to a friends house - what is the first thing that is offered? A drink. The very word “celebration” means drink here. Alcohol is part of the culture.

I’m not against alcohol. I used to be a heavy drinker myself. I used to get hammered and drive home after. Now don’t start ranting at me now. I was foolish. I shouldn’t have done it. I was lucky and never hurt anyone. This was long before most of you were born and it’s in the past. I still have the odd jar, but not very often. And I don’t ever drive after even one drink. I’m too old for that game now.

I have seen some pretty horrific things in the past. I have seen people so drunk that their “friends” had to go through their pockets to find their car keys. I have seen people so drunk that their “friends” had to walk them out to their cars because they couldn’t make it on their own. Nowadays, people are more sensible but I’m sure the above still goes on.

I know a bloke who is an alcoholic. He is a very nice bloke. He has a wife and children. He held down a responsible job, and to look at him you would think he was an accountant or something. Always impeccably groomed and dressed. His only problem is that he always has drink on him. You wouldn’t know it [apart from the smell], but he hasn’t been sober in years. He lost his job in the end, because of the drink. Now he drives a taxi………

But what is the problem? The problem is that alcohol lowers inhibitions, and gives a sense of confidence and well being. That is why we drink it. And this is where the trouble starts.

A bloke goes out to meet his mates. He is sensible. He knows the dangers of drink driving. He has seen the ads, and has read the statistics. He is only going to have one. After all, the blood-alcohol limit allows for that.

But then he has his one. And and his inhibitions are lowered and the feeling of confidence kicks in. The mates are in good form and the craic is mighty. Sure one more won’t do any damage, so he has another. And so on. At that stage, it is not really his fault. Blame the alcohol, not him. Where he went wrong was in having that first one.

And the mates don’t help. Try walking into a pub with a gang, and ordering a soft drink. you get a torrent of “Ah Jayzus, are you a man or wha?” and the like. They buy him drink whether he wants it or not because “he has to enjoy himself”.

The bar staff don’t help either. Many’s the time I have seen people sitting at the bar, with their car keys [and of course the mobile phone] on the counter in front of them. And the bar staff continue to ply them with their tipple. The staff know damn well that the customer is driving and incapable, but that won’t stop them. I know times have changed and this is not so common but it still goes on.

The problem is that we are sending out mixed messages. It is OK to drive to the pub and have a drink. For a while we had catchy slogans like “Just two will do” and the like. If it weren’t OK, then there wouldn’t be a drink limit. There would be zero tolerance. But they ignore the effect of alcohol.

I would advocate zero tolerance, but we all tend to think of this as an urban problem. Just get a taxi or a bus….. etc. But there is another aspect that most people don’t think of. What about old bachelor Padjo who lives in the wilds of Kerry and spends his days in the fields, or out in his lobster boat? His only means of social contact is dropping down for a quiet pint in the local of an evening. Are we to deny him his only social outlet and confine him to his lonely life? There are hundreds, even thousands of Padjos still around. They don’t have buses or taxis and invariably live some distance from the pub.

It is tricky. and I don’t know what the answer is.

A couple of things do occur to me though.

The first thing that amazes me is the attitude to drunk drivers who kill someone. To me that is unintentional [they don't deliberately go out to kill someone] but it is still manslaughter by negligence. If I fire a gun at random in O’Connell Street and accidentally kill someone, I expect to receive a lengthy prison sentence. Yet the drunk driver receives maybe a year or two. Mixed messages again.

Another thing is the random breath testing. That is a good thing. But why don’t they do their random testing outside pubs at closing time? Drive past any pub in Ireland at eleven at night, and you will see car parks filled to capacity. Are they all driven by designated drivers? Hah!

The only answer to the problem is to change the culture of the people of Ireland. And that is just not going to happen.

• On the road
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