Head Rambles

Grandad June 20th, 2008

It has become a bit of a tradition that whenever I travel the Dublin to Galway road, I stop off at Locke’s Distillery in Kilbeggan.

I also stop there if I’m on the Galway to Dublin road.

Not only is a handy place for a piss, but they serve good food and coffee.

Locke’s Distillery is supposed to be the oldest pot still in the world.  It still uses all the old traditions and methods, and its most striking feature is the huge water wheel at the side.

When we arrived, I was delighted to see the wheel churning away, creaking and groaning as it has for well over a hundred years.

While we were there, a coach driver came in.

“I have a coach load of tourists outside,” says he. “Where do you want me to put them?”

“Bring them through to the back,” says the manager.

I might add that Locke’s is one of Ireland’s finest tourist processing plants.  I almost felt sorry for the coach load.  Luckily there was a fortuitous thunderstorm which drowned out most of the screams from the back. 

Later, I had to nip out to the car to fetch something.  On my way back, I noticed the water wheel had stopped, which was very unusual.

I went up to the girl behind the counter.

“Do you know that the wheel has stopped?”

“Aw fuck!” says she.  “Someone must have thrown another Spaniard in the works.”

• On the road
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Grandad June 19th, 2008

Grandad is back in Head Rambles Manor, having wandered the highways and byways of The West.

It was not a pleasant trip, but then funerals rarely are happy occasions.

They are even worse when one is saying goodbye to a close relative and a close friend.

We will miss her and her wicked sense of humour.

Thank you to everyone who left comments after the last, somewhat cryptic message.  I wasn’t in the form for writing, and my head was in a spin, as I had to arrange hotels and dog minders and things like that. 

It’s one of the things I hate about growing old – the number of funerals.

It’s a sure sign of old age when the only time you meet some people is when someone else has popped their clogs. 

We used to meet regularly at weddings.  Then we started meeting at christenings.  Now we meet at funerals.

Bugger.

At least it didn’t rain.

• The Family
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Grandad June 16th, 2008

• Around the house
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Grandad June 15th, 2008

I went down for a pint or four last night.

“It’s quiet tonight?” I said to Pullit as I sat at my favourite stool and lit up the pipe.

“It’s the football,” said Pullit as he placed a nice pint in front of me. “They’re all over in the Inn shouting at the widescreens and getting themselves into a frenzy.”

“Jayzus, but I hate football,” I said after knocking a couple of inches off my pint.  “A shower of nancies chasing a ball around a fucking field isn’t my idea of entertainment.”

“I could never see the attraction,” Pullit agreed as he started pouring a couple of pints for some Americans who were huddled in the corner writing postcards.  I noticed he was using the slops from the previous night, which should give give them a nice dose of the gawks.

“How’s that web thing that you write coming on?” he asked as he engraved a couple of shamrocks in the heads of the pints.

“Terrible,” I said.  “I wrote about that treaty thing and now they are all blaming me for the No vote.”

Pullit laughed.  “Why were you so strong on the No thing anyway?  I didn’t think you were that much into politics?”

“It was Herself.  She dragged me up North to do some shopping and we ended up in the Sprucefield Shopping Centre.”  I shuddered.  “It was a terrible place.”

“What was so bad about it?” asked Pullit after shouting at the Americans to collect their pints, which were already going flat.

“There were only two fucking shops,” I replied. “A Boots and a Marks and Spencers.  I had to spend a couple of hours drinking coffee in a fucking McDonalds while she trawled the shops.  It was a nightmare.”

“What has that got to do with the treaty?”

“It has everything to do with the treaty.  I have had nightmares about Sprucefield ever since.

So I certainly never want to see Lisburn again.”

• Around the village
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Grandad June 13th, 2008

Today was a very good day for democracy.

It demonstrated very clearly that the government, if they hadn’t had their hand forced would have voted on an issue against the wishes of the people.  This begs the question as to what the outcome would be if Lisbon were to be put to a referendum in all the participating countries?

I think one lesson we should learn from this is that maybe the Lisbon Treaty is inherently flawed, as it does pass the power into hands of people who may be completely out of touch with their people.

Of course the politicians are now all running around like headless chickens claiming that the sky has fallen on their heads, and Biffo ‘Chicken Little’ Cowan must be taking a fair bit of flack from Brussels.  Frankly, he deserves it.

Where did  it go wrong for them?

The first thing the result shows is just how out of touch our government is with the people.  I include all the parties in that, not just the ones in power.

Bertie started the rot when he started the campaign by saying that only “loo-lahs” would even think of rejecting Lisbon.  This was a childish and frankly insulting thing to say about his own electorate.  The three main parties then sat back on their laurels and decided that their say was enough for us.  If they say vote yes, then of course we will all tag along.  Job done.

But they underestimated the Peoples’ intelligence and maturity.

We wanted to know what the treaty was about and they couldn’t tell us.  It even transpired that some who were advocating a yes vote hadn’t even read the treaty, including our Great Leader.

This, of course let the door open for the real “loo lahs” who started screaming about abortion and conscription, which threw the issue into further confusion.

So why did Ireland vote No?

First and foremost, the government failed abysmally to explain to us what the whole thing was about.  The are enough people confused about European affairs as it is without throwing a very complex document at us.  The onus was on them to explain clearly and concisely the pros and cons of the document but they failed.  They instead had the arrogance to ask us to just trust them and vote Yes.

The general mood of the People is not good at the moment.  We are facing massive price hikes, and unemployment.  Our public services are in a shambles.  The housing market has collapsed completely and the government is doing little or nothing about it.  Instead we have them granting themselves massive pay rises, and we have our recent leader in the dock over corruption.  The last thing the government should do is ask us to trust them.  We don’t.

When the government started to see [too late] that things weren’t going their way, they started threatening us.  They warned us of dire consequences if the treaty failed.  They pointed to the No advocates, and called them loonies, lefties, anti-Europe and God knows what else.  They said there was no alternative.  Some even said we would be thrown out of Europe.

In my opinion, today was not necessarily a vote against the government.  It was certainly not a vote against Europe.

It was a quiet rebellion by the People of Ireland for being treated like fools.

• Election
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