Head Rambles

Grandad April 30th, 2008

I was sitting here this morning minding my own business.

Herself came in.

"Would you ever nip down to the village, post these things and collect a woman?"

"A woman?" says I.

"Yes. Are you daft? You know what a woman is?  Long hair and glasses."

I am not the type to argue and I gave up asking questions decades ago.  It’s not worth the hassle.

I went and posted the yokes she gave me and then hung around the village until I saw a woman with long hair and glasses.

I bundled her into the car.  She seemed a bit surprised, but I’m going to use the Nuremberg Defence if it comes to trial.

I drove home and gave the woman to Herself.  Herself was delighted.

I’m hiding in my den now.  I don’t know what they are up to, and I don’t want to know.  Maybe herself has gone back to her medical experiments?  Maybe she just felt like a woman to woman chat?  There is a lot of crashing and banging going on out there, but I’m staying where I am.  I have Sandy with me for security.

There are times when a man knows when to keep his head down.

• Around the house
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Grandad April 29th, 2008

I have been memed yet again.

Normally I would go into a rant and tell yiz all to feck off, but this particular millstone has been handed to me by Sinéad, so I’ll be nice for once.

Usual rules apply…

Link to the person that tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Write six random things about you in a blog post.
Tag six people in your post.
Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
Let the taggee know your entry is up.

My problem now is that I have done this one so many times before that I have run out of interesting things to say.  So I’m going to vary the theme a bit and do six memories of childhood.

My earliest memory is of sitting in my pram at the age of 18 months.  I had a blue Dinky lorry that I dropped out of the pram, and I cried.  I still have that lorry, though it’s a bit battered now.  On another occasion, I remember my mother talking to a shopkeeper, and I wondered why they were making those strange sounds to each other.  Was this my first appreciation of language?

From the age of five, I used to walk to school every day.  It was about a mile and a half.  A girl from nearby used to collect me and walk with me.  She was about nine or ten, and I thought she was terribly old.

I was a member of Rathmines library, and used to cycle there every couple of weeks.  My favourite authors were Arthur Ransome and Monica Edwards.  I once arrived home and found I had lost all the books off the carrier of my bike.  I was gutted.  They all were returned safely.

My favourite shop was Geary’s on St Stephens Green at the top of Grafton Street.  They sold bikes on the ground floor, but upstairs was a haven of Airfix models and Hornby train sets.

My favourite pastime was to cycle down to the quays and watch the men unloading coal off the ships and loading Guinness onto other ships.  Maybe that’s what started me on the rocky road?

My favourite journey was one we did most years - to get the mail-boat to Holyhead in Wales [it was either on the Hibernia on the Canberra - there were only the two ships], and then the mail-train to London.  That involved a long stop at Crewe while they loaded and unloaded the mail.  I used to love watching the steam engines shunting in the yards there.  We also passed by the village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, where the station name took up most of the length of the platform.

So that’s it.  Boring, huh?

Instead of passing this on, why don’t we try an experiment?  I’m tired of telling you boring things about myself, so why don’t you ask me what you want to know?  The chances of my answering are slim, but you never know?

And then nip over to Eolaí’s site and buy a painting.  He is selling them at ridiculous prices and they are selling fast, so you’d want to be quick!

• Memes
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Grandad April 28th, 2008

I thought I would take things easy over the weekend.

There were a few things that needed doing but I have learned that there are few things that can’t be put off in life.

The lawns need cutting.  Sod it.  Too wet anyway.

The hedges need trimming.  Sod it.  Another few feet won’t hurt.

So, yesterday, I went for the papers, and they were full of crap and Sudoku.

I don’t know what it is about Sudoku.  I’m not an avid fan.  But it always sends me to sleep.

I grabbed a couple of Sudoku puzzles when Herself wasn’t looking and sure enough - five minutes later, I was gone.

I woke about an hour later, and saw the Sudoku on my lap.  I started to do it again, and of course that was me gone again for another hour.

I find it is more potent than any sleeping tablet.  It never fails.

I had a great nights sleep after all that sleep, and woke fresh as a daisy this morning, rearing to do things.

But my fucking server blew up, and it took a while to fix.

Now I’m knackered again.

Where’s that bloody Sudoku?

• Rambles
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Grandad April 28th, 2008

It seems like a long time ago, but the Irish Blog Awards were only last month.

AJ@Lecraic has put a great deal of effort into producing a nice little virtual book about the awards.

• Awards , Blogging
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Grandad April 27th, 2008

I was thinking of changing my colour scheme a little bit.

I’m just a wee bit tired of the colours that are there at the moment.

I’d go for black and blood red, but that’s a bit Goth.

Any ideas or suggestions?

• Blogging
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Grandad April 26th, 2008

Last night, I watched Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.

I consider myself a fair minded person, so I cleared my head of all pre-conceived notions and sat down to watch.

At the end of the film, I was baffled.

Was this the film that had started a global movement to combat Global Warming?

Was this the film that has the world’s nations in a spin?

Was this the film that ultimately led to Al Gore getting a Nobel Prize?

What I saw was an ego trip for a failed president.  We had long lingering shots of votes being recounted in Florida.  We had bits about how he should have won the election.

Then we had loads of shots of Al Gore looking wise and pensive as he stared out an aircraft window, or contemplated a lake.

We had a lot of family history.  We heard all about is father and the cattle they used to breed.  We heard how his father stopped growing tobacco when his sister died of cancer.

In between, there was a lot of stuff about Global Warming, I’ll grant you, but it seemed incidental to the promotion of Gore as a wise and caring person with a terrible line in off the cuff jokes.

The science bit was so dumbed down that I cringed.  Matt Groening cartoons showing greenhouse gasses fighting sunbeams, for God’s sake?  The ’science’ bits seemed to be selected so that Gore could demonstrate his incredible ‘wit’.  There were so many holes in his arguments I could have driven the entire American Navy through them.

All his data seemed to come from ‘friends of his’.  He was incredibly selective in his data too.

Most of the time, he showed us graphs showing climate trends since 1970 or 1960.  What?  An that basis I can argue that today is colder than yesterday, therefore by the end of next week, we’ll be into another ice age!

He was hot on the computer graphics too.  He showed us Manhattan after the Greenland Icecap has melted, and of course focused on the site of the World Trade Centre.  If you want to whip up American fervour, you must mention the World Trade Centre.

What I saw was a film glorifying Al Gore.  What I didn’t see was anything to make me worry unduly about Global Warming.

I must have seen the wrong film.

If anyone has the right one, can they send it to me please?

• Global Warming
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