A Bad Week

I’ve been having a bad bloody week. One might say a bloody bad week even. I took my car to a garage for some routine maintenance, and, while it was driving just fine when I dropped it off, the engine literally started to splutter and jitter and buck just as soon as I drove it out of there, and by the time I drove it a mile down the road there was smoke pluming out of it and a good portion of the engine oil had burned off. This is the second time this has happened to me in recent years and this is the second mechanic whose door I shall never again darken. One does not mind paying for a mechanic, but when your car goes in drivable and comes out undrivable then it makes one wonder just a little bit if foul play is afoot. Of course mechanics will generally blame you or make out it’s a total coincidence, but that doesn’t really make the frustration any less….frustrating.

My car sounding like it has Covid after routine maintenance.

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One Day In Aughrim, Galway

“He had this green growth on his langer and so he went to the doctor. The doctor asked him if he’d been out somewhere foreign and he said he’d been to Mongolia and so the doctor said, ‘ah, you have the Green Mongolian Veneral Disease then, you might have to have it amputated’. So, he goes to a Chinese specialist and asks him, ‘Will I have to have it amputated?’ and the Chinese lad says, ‘no,’ to which he breathes a sigh of relief. And then the Chinese doctor continues, ’It will fall off all by itself.’” Continue reading “One Day In Aughrim, Galway” →

One Day In Bray

Sitting down on the train to go to Bray (all pics here) I get a bad smell, really bad, and it’s wafting off of my jeans. It’s a smell that reminds me of a teacher I had in school years ago. The man smelled so bad I used to sit right at the back of the class and his stink would still offend my nostrils. Continue reading “One Day In Bray” →

One Day In Clifden

Standing Stones, Clifden. These are thought to date back thousands of years to the Bronze Age and may have been where druids made human sacrifices

Arriving in Clifden with a sleepy head at 11.30, the first thing I go in search of is a cup of coffee. Entering a bakery in Market Street to acquire same I am served by a pleasant young black woman and when she speaks she has as Galway an accent as anybody could ever hear. I don’t know why this surprises me, but it does, and is a sort of wow moment which makes me smile a bit.

“Where’s the loo?” I ask.

“You mean the toilet?” she replies, to which I nod. These days I feel I am increasingly speaking a different language to the youth of today.

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One Day In Athlone

Arriving in Athlone at 7.30AM, after a sleepless night, I’m greeted by a gloomy, wet darkness and a light mist. (All photos are on Galway COW Facebook page here) The whole town is silent bar the sound of my Converse high tops slapping off the pavement. These are my super hero shoes, I always wear them when I am intent on getting stuff done, which is probably why they are so clean and new looking in spite of having had them for about two years. Continue reading “One Day In Athlone” →

One Day In Limerick

I jumped on the train to Limerick and just then realised I’d forgotten to charge my phone or bring my phone charger, and here’s what happened: I was bored out of my mind. (All photos from the day are on Facebook here).

After two hours of staring out the window about the only thing I registered throughout the whole 2 hour trip from Galway was a young woman getting on, pushing a buggy, in what appeared to be Mickey Mouse pyjamas.

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